10. The most remarkable specimen of this class is the Euphues of

Lilly, a book of little value, but which deserves notice on account of

the influence it is recorded to have had upon the court of Elizabeth; an

influence also over the public taste, which is manifested in the

literature of the age. It is divided into two parts, having separate

titles; the first, “Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit;” the second, “Euphues

and his England.” This is a very dull story of a young Athenian, whom

the author places at Naples in the first part and brings to England in

the second; it is full of dry commonplaces. The style which obtained

celebrity is antithetical, and sententious to affectation; the perpetual

effort with no adequate success rendering the book equally disagreeable

and ridiculous, though it might not be difficult to find passages rather

more happy and ingenious than the rest. The following specimen is taken

at random, and though sufficiently characteristic, is perhaps rather

unfavourable to Lilly, as a little more affected and empty than usual.

11. “The sharpest north-east wind, my good Euphues, doth never last

three days, tempests have but a short time, and the more violent the

thunder is, the less permanent it is. In the like manner it falleth out

with jars and carpings of friends, which, begun in a moment, are ended

in a moment. Necessary it is that among friends there should be some

thwarting, but to continue in anger not convenient: the camel first

troubleth the water before he drink; the frankincense is burned before

it smell; friends are tried before they be trusted, lest, shining like

the carbuncle as though they had fire, they be found, being touched, to

be without fire. Friendship should be like the wine, which Homer much

commending calleth Maroneum, whereof one pint being mingled with five

quarts of water, yet it keepeth his old strength and virtue, not to be

qualified by any discurtesie. Where salt doth grow nothing else can

breed; where friendship is built no offence can harbour. Then, Euphues,

let the falling out of friends be the renewing of affection, that in

this we may resemble the bones of the lion, which, lying still and not

moved, begin to rot, but being stricken one against another, break out

like fire, and wax green.”

12. “The lords and gentlemen in that court (of Elizabeth) are also an

example,” he says in a subsequent passage, “for all others to follow,

true types of nobility, the only stay and staff of honour, brave

courtiers, stout soldiers, apt to revel in peace and ride in war. In

fight fierce, not dreading death; in friendship firm, not breaking

promise; courteous to all that deserve well, cruel to none that deserve

ill. Their adversaries they trust not--that showeth their wisdom; their

enemies they fear not--that argueth their courage. They are not apt to

proffer injuries, not fit to take any; loth to pick quarrels, but

longing to revenge them.” Lilly pays great compliments to the ladies for

beauty and modesty, and overloads Elizabeth with panegyric. “Touching

the beauty of this prince, her countenance, her majesty, her personage,

I cannot think that it may be sufficiently commended, when it cannot be

too much marvailed at; so that I am constrained to say, as Praxiteles

did when he began to paint Venus and her son, who doubted whether the

world could afford colours good enough for two such fair faces, and I

whether my tongue can yield words to blaze that beauty, the perfection

whereof none can imagine; which, seeing it is so, I must do like those

that want a clear sight, who being not able to discern the sun in the

sky, are inforced to behold it in the water.”

|Its popularity.|

13. It generally happens that a style devoid of simplicity, when first

adopted, becomes the object of admiration for its imagined ingenuity and

difficulty; and that of Euphues was well adapted to a pedantic

generation who valued nothing higher than far-fetched allusions and

sententious precepts. All the ladies of the time, we are told, were

Lilly’s scholars; “she who spoke not Euphuism being as little regarded

at court as if she could not speak French.” “His invention,” says one of

his editors, who seems well worthy of him, “was so curiously strung,

that Elizabeth’s court held his notes in admiration.”[1309] Shakspeare

has ridiculed this style in Love’s Labour Lost, and Jonson in Every Man

out of his Humour; but, as will be seen on comparing the extracts I have

given above, with the language of Holofernes and Fastidious Brisk, a

little in the tone of caricature, which Sir Walter Scott has heightened

in one of his novels, till it bears no great resemblance to the real

Euphues. I am not sure that Shakspeare has never caught the Euphuistic

style, when he did not intend to make it ridiculous, especially in some

speeches of Hamlet.

[1309] In Biogr. Britannica, art. Lilly.

|Sydney’s Arcadia.|

14. The first good prose writer, in any positive sense of the word, is

Sir Philip Sydney. The Arcadia appeared in 1590. It has been said of the

author of this famous romance, to which, as such, we shall have soon to

revert, that “we may regard the whole literary character of that age as

in some sort derived and descended from him, and his work as the

fountain from which all the vigorous shoots of that period drew

something of their verdure and strength. It was indeed the Arcadia which

first taught to the contemporary writers that inimitable interweaving

and contexture of words, that bold and unshackled use and application of

them, that art of giving to language, appropriated to objects the most

common and trivial, a kind of acquired and adventitious loftiness, and

to diction in itself noble and elevated a sort of superadded dignity,

that power of ennobling the sentiments by the language, and the language

by the sentiments, which so often excites our admiration in perusing the

writers of the age of Elizabeth.”[1310] This panegyric appears a good

deal too strongly expressed, and perhaps the Arcadia had not this great

influence over the writers of the latter years of Elizabeth, whose age

is, in the passage quoted, rather too indefinitely mentioned. We are

sometimes apt to mistake an improvement springing from the general

condition of the public mind for imitation of the one writer who has

first displayed the effects of it. Sydney is, as I have said, our

earliest good writer; but if the Arcadia had never been published, I

cannot believe that Hooker or Bacon would have written worse.

[1310] Retrospective Review, vol. ii. p. 42.

|His Defence of Poesie.|

15. Sydney’s Defence of Poesie, as has been surmised by his last editor,

was probably written about 1581. I should incline to place it later than

the Arcadia; and he may perhaps allude to himself where he says; “some

have mingled matters heroical and pastoral.” This treatise is elegantly

written, with perhaps too artificial a construction of sentences; the

sense is good, but the expression is very diffuse, which gives it too

much the air of a declamation. The great praise of Sydney in this

treatise is, that he has shown the capacity of the English language for

spirit, variety, gracious idiom, and masculine firmness. It is worth

notice that under the word poesy he includes such works as his own

Arcadia, or in short any fiction. “It is not rhyming and versing that

maketh poesy; one may be a poet without versing, and a versifier without

poetry.”

|Hooker.|

16. But the finest, as well as the most philosophical, writer of the

Elizabethan period is Hooker. The first book of the Ecclesiastical

Polity is at this day one of the masterpieces of English eloquence. His

periods indeed are generally much too long and too intricate, but

portions of them are often beautifully rhythmical; his language is rich

in English idiom without vulgarity, and in words of a Latin source

without pedantry; he is more uniformly solemn than the usage of later

times permits, or even than writers of that time, such as Bacon,

conversant with mankind as well as books, would have reckoned necessary;

but the example of ancient orators and philosophers upon themes so grave

as those which he discusses may justify the serious dignity from which

he does not depart. Hooker is perhaps the first in England who adorned

his prose with the images of poetry; but this he has done more

judiciously and with more moderation than others of great name; and we

must be bigots in Attic severity, before we can object to some of his

grand figures of speech. We may praise him also for avoiding the

superfluous luxury of quotation, a rock on which the writers of the

succeeding age were so frequently wrecked.

|Character of Elizabethan writers.|

17. It must be owned, however, by every one not absolutely blinded by a

love of scarce books, that the prose literature of the queen’s reign,

taken generally, is but very mean. The pedantic Euphuism of Lilly

overspreads the productions which aspire to the praise of politeness;

while the common style of most pieces of circumstance, like those of

Martin Mar-prelate and his answerers (for there is little to choose in

this respect between parties), or of such efforts at wit and satire as

came from Greene, Nash, and other worthies of our early stage, is low,

and, with few exceptions, very stupid ribaldry. Many of these have a

certain utility in the illustration of Shakspeare and of ancient

manners, which is neither to be overlooked in our contempt for such

trash, nor to be mistaken for intrinsic merit. If it is alleged that I

have not read enough of the Elizabethan literature to censure it, I must

reply that, admitting my slender acquaintance with the numberless little

books that some years since used to be sold at vast prices, I may still

draw an inference from the inability of their admirers, or at least

purchasers, to produce any tolerable specimens. Let the labours of Sir

Egerton Brydges, the British Bibliographer, the Censura Literaria, the

Restituta, collections so copious, and formed with so much industry,

speak for the prose of the queen’s reign. I would again repeat that good

sense in plain language was not always wanting upon serious subjects; it

is to polite writing alone that we now refer.[1311] Spenser’s dialogue

upon the State of Ireland, the Brief Conceit of English Policy, and

several other tracts are written as such treatises should be written,

but they are not to be counted in the list of eloquent or elegant

compositions.

[1311] It is not probable that Brydges, as a man of considerable taste

and judgment, whatever some other pioneers in the same track may

have been, would fail to select the best portions of the authors he

has so carefully perused. And yet I would almost defy any one to

produce five passages in prose from his numerous volumes, so far as

the sixteenth century is concerned, which have any other merit than

that of illustrating some matter of fact, or of amusing by their

oddity. I have only noted, in traversing that long desert, two

sermons by one Edward Dering, preached before the queen (British

Bibliographer, i. 260 and 560), which show considerably more vigour

than was usual in the style of that age.

SECT. II.--ON CRITICISM.

_State of Criticism in Italy--Scaliger--Castelvetro--Salviati--In

other Countries--England._

|State of criticism.|

18. In the earlier periods with which we have been conversant, criticism

had been the humble handmaid of the ancient writers, content to explain,

or sometimes aspiring to restore, but seldom presuming to censure their

text, or even to justify the superstitious admiration that modern

scholars felt for it. But there is a different and far higher criticism,

which excites and guides the taste for truth and beauty in works of

imagination; a criticism to which even the great masters of language are

responsible, and from which they expect their reward. But of the many

who have sat in this tribunal, a small minority have been recognised as

rightful arbiters of the palms they pretend to confer, and an appeal to

the public voice has as often sent away the judges in dishonour as

confirmed their decision.

|Scaliger’s Poetry.|

|His preference of Virgil to Homer.|

19. It is a proof at least of the talents and courage which distinguished

Julius Cæsar Scaliger, that he, first of all the moderns (or, if there

are exceptions, they must be partial and inconsiderable), undertook to

reduce the whole art of verse into system, illustrating and confirming

every part by a profusion of poetical literature. His Poetics form an

octavo of about 900 pages, closely printed. We can give but a slight

sketch of so extensive a work. In the first book he treats of the

different species of poems; in the second, of different metres; the

third is more miscellaneous, but relates chiefly to figures and turns of

phrase; the fourth proceeds with the same subject, but these two are

very comprehensive. In the fifth we come to apply these principles to

criticism; and here we find a comparison of various poets one with

another, especially of Homer with Virgil. The sixth book is a general

criticism on all Latin poets, ancient and modern. The seventh is a kind

of supplement to the rest, and seems to contain all the miscellaneous

matter that he found himself to have omitted, together with some

questions purposely reserved, as he tells us, on account of their

difficulty. His comparison of Homer with Virgil is very elaborate,

extending to every simile or other passage, wherein a resemblance or

imitation can be observed, as well as to the general management of their

epic poems. In this comparison he gives an invariable preference to

Virgil, and declares that the difference between these poets is as great

as between a lady of rank and an awkward wife of a citizen. Musæus he

conceives to be far superior to Homer, according to the testimony of

antiquity; and his poem of Hero and Leander, which it does not occur to

him to suspect, is the only one in Greek that can be named in

competition with Virgil, as he shows by comparison of the said poem with

the very inferior effusions of Homer. If Musæus had written on the same

subject as Homer, Scaliger does not doubt but that he would have left

the Iliad and Odyssey far behind.[1312]

[1312] Quod si Musæus ea, quæ Homerus Scripsit, scripsisset, longè

melius eum scripturum fuisse judicamus.

The following is a specimen of Scaliger’s style of criticism,

chosen rather for its shortness than any other cause:--

Ex vicesimo tertio Iliadis transtulit versus illos in comparationem;

μαστιγι δ' αιεν ελαυνε κατωμαδον αἰ δέ οἱ ἱπποι

ὑψοσ' αειρεσθην ῥιμφα πρησσοντε κελευθον.

[mastigi d’ aien elaune katômadon; ai de hoi hippoi

hypsos' aeiresthên rhimpha prêssonte keleuthon.]

ισχνολογια [ischnologia] multa; at in nostro animata oratio;

Non tam præcipites bijugo certamine campum Corripuere, ruuntque

effusi carcere currus, &c. Cum virtutibus horum carminum non est

conferenda jejuna illa humilitas; audent præferre tamen grammatici

temerii. Principio, nihil infelicius quam μαστιγι αιεν ελαυνεν

[mastigi aien elaunen]. Nam continuatio et equorum diminuit

opinionem, et contemptum facit verberum. Frequentibus intervallis

stimuli plus proficiunt. Quod vero admirantur Græculi, pessimum

est, υψοσ' αειρεσθην [hypsos' aeiresthên]. Extento namque, et, ut

milites loquantur, clauso cursu non subsiliente opus est. Quare

divinus vir, _undantia lora_; hoc enim pro flagro, et _præcipites_,

et _corripuere campum_; idque in præterito, ad celeritatem. Et

_ruunt_, quasi in diversa, adeo celeres sunt. Illa vero supra omnem

Homerum, _proni in verbera pendent_. l. v. c. 3.

20. These opinions will not raise Scaliger’s taste very greatly in our

eyes. But it is not perhaps surprising that an Italian, accustomed to

the polished effeminacy of modern verse, both in his language and in

Latin, should be delighted with the poem of Hero and Leander, which has

the sort of charm that belongs to the statues of Bacchus, and soothes

the ear with voluptuous harmony, while it gratifies the mind with

elegant and pleasing imagery. It is not, however, to be taken for

granted that Scaliger is always mistaken in his judgments on particular

passages in these greatest of poets. The superiority of the Homeric

poems is rather incontestable in their general effect, and in the

vigorous originality of his verse, than in the selection of

circumstance, sentiment, or expression. It would be a sort of prejudice

almost as tasteless as that of Scaliger, to refuse the praise of real

poetic superiority to many passages of Virgil, even as compared with the

Iliad, and far more with the Odyssey. If the similes of the older poet

are more picturesque and animated, those of his imitator are more

appropriate and parallel to the subject. It would be rather whimsical to

deny this to be a principal merit in a comparison. Scaliger sacrifices

Theocritus as much as Homer at the altar of Virgil, and of course

Apollonius has little chance with so partial a judge. Horace and Ovid,

at least the latter, are also held by Scaliger superior to the Greeks

whenever they come into competition.

|His critique on modern Latin poets.|

21. In the fourth chapter of the sixth book, Scaliger criticises the

modern Latin poets, beginning with Marullus; for what is somewhat

remarkable, he says that he had been unable to see the Latin poems of

Petrarch. He rates Marullus low, though he dwells at length on his

poetry, and thinks no better of Augurellus. The continuation of the

Æneid by Maphæus he highly praises; Augerianus not at all. Mantuan has

some genius, but no skill; and Scaliger is indignant that some ignorant

schoolmasters should teach from him rather than from Virgil. Of Dolet he

speaks with great severity; his unhappy fate does not atone for the

badness of his verses in the eyes of so stern a critic; “the fire did

not purify him, but rather he polluted the fire.” Palingenius, though

too diffuse, he accounts a good poet, and Cotta as an imitator of

Catullus. Palearius aims rather to be philosophical than poetical.

Castiglione is excellent; Bembus wants vigour, and sometimes elegance;

he is too fond, as many others are, of trivial words. Of Politian

Scaliger does not speak highly; he rather resembles Statius, has no

grace, and is careless of harmony. Vida is reckoned, he says, by most

the first poet of our time; he dwells, therefore, long on the Ars

Poetica, and extols it highly, though not without copious censure. Of

Vida’s other poems the Bombyx is the best. Pontanus is admirable for

everything, if he had known where to stop. To Sannazarius and

Fracastorius he assigns the highest praise of universal merit, but

places the last at the head of the whole band.

|Critical influence of the academies.|

22. The Italian language, like those of Greece and Rome, had been

hitherto almost exclusively treated by grammarians, the superior

criticism having little place even in the writings of Bembo. But soon

after the middle of the century, the academies established in many

cities, dedicating much time to their native language, began to point

out beauties, and to animadvert on defects beyond the province of

grammar. The enthusiastic admiration of Petrarch poured itself forth in

tedious commentaries upon every word of every sonnet; one of which,

illustrated with the heavy prolixity of that age, would sometimes be the

theme of a volume. Some philosophical or theological pedants

spiritualised his meaning, as had been attempted before; the absurd

paradox of denying the real existence of Laura is a known specimen of

their refinements. Many wrote on the subject of his love for her; and a

few denied its Platonic purity, which, however, the academy of Ferrara

thought fit to decree. One of the heretics, by name Cresci, ventured

also to maintain that she was married; but this probable hypothesis had

not many followers.[1313]

[1313] Crescimbeni, Storia della Volgar Poesia, ii. 295-309.

|Dispute of Caro and Castelvetro.|

23. Meantime a multitude of new versifiers, chiefly close copyists of

the style of Petrarch, lay open to the malice of their competitors, and

the strictness of these self-chosen judges of song. A critical

controversy that sprung up about 1558 between two men of letters, very

prominent in their age, Annibal Caro and Ludovico Castelvetro, is

celebrated in the annals of Italian literature. The former had published

a canzone in praise of the king of France, beginning--

Venite all’ombra de’ gran gigli d’oro.

Castelvetro made some sharp animadversions on this ode, which seems

really to deserve a good deal of censure, being in bad taste, turgid,

and foolish. Caro replied with the bitterness natural to a wounded poet.

In this there might be nothing unpardonable, and even his abusive

language might be extenuated at least by many precedents in literary

story; but it is imputed to Caro that he excited the Inquisition against

his suspected adversary. Castelvetro had been of the celebrated academy

of Modena, whose alleged inclination to Protestantism had proved,

several years before, the cause of its dissolution, and of the

persecution which some of its members suffered. Castelvetro, though he

had avoided censure at that time, was now denounced about 1560, when the

persecution was hottest, to the Inquisition at Rome. He obeyed its

summons, but soon found it prudent to make his escape, and reached

Chiavenna in the Grison dominions. He lived several years afterwards in

safe quarters, but seems never to have made an open profession of the

reformed faith.[1314]

[1314] Muratori, Vita del Castelvetro, 1727. Crescimbeni, ii. 431.

Tiraboschi, x. 31. Ginguéné, vii. 365. Corniani, vi. 61.

|Castelvetro on Aristotle’s Poetics.|

24. Castelvetro himself is one of the most considerable among the

Italian critics; but his taste is often lost in subtlety, and his

fastidious temper seems to have sought nothing so much as occasion for

censure. His greatest work is a commentary upon the Poetics of

Aristotle; and it may justly claim respect, not only as the earliest

exposition of the theory of criticism, but for its acuteness, erudition,

and independence of reasoning, which disclaims the Stagyrite as a

master, though the diffuseness usual in that age, and the microscopic

subtlety of the writer’s mind may render its perusal tedious. Twining,

one of the best critics on the Poetics, has said, in speaking of the

commentaries of Castelvetro and of a later Italian, Beni, that “their

prolixity, their scholastic and trifling subtlety, their useless

tediousness of logical analysis, their microscopic detection of

difficulties invisible to the naked eye of common sense, and their waste

of confutation upon objections made only by themselves, and made on

purpose to be confuted--all this, it must be owned, is disgusting and

repulsive. It may sufficiently release a commentator from the duty of

reading their works throughout, but not from that of examining and

consulting them; for in both these writers, but more especially in Beni,

there are many remarks equally acute and solid; many difficulties will

be seen clearly stated, and sometimes successfully removed; many things

usefully illustrated and clearly explained; and if their freedom of

censure is now and then disgraced by a little disposition to cavil, this

becomes almost a virtue when compared with the servile and implicit

admiration of Dacier.”[1315]

[1315] Twining’s Aristotle’s Poetics, preface, p. 13.

|Severity of Castelvetro’s criticism.|

25. Castelvetro in his censorious humour did not spare the greatest

shades that repose in the laurel groves of Parnassus, nor even those

whom national pride had elevated to a level with them. Homer is less

blamed than any other; but frequent shafts are levelled at Virgil, and

not always unjustly, if poetry of real genius could ever bear the

extremity of critical rigour, in which a monotonous and frigid

mediocrity has generally found refuge.[1316] In Dante he finds fault

with the pedantry that has filled his poem with terms of science,

unintelligible and unpleasing to ignorant men, for whom poems are

chiefly designed.[1317] Ariosto he charges with plagiarism, laying

unnecessary stress on his borrowing some stories, as that of Zerbino,

from older books; and even objects to his introduction of false

names of kings, since we may as well invent new mountains and rivers, as

violate the known truths of history.[1318] This punctilious cavil is

very characteristic of Castelvetro. Yet he sometimes reaches a strain of

philosophical analysis, and can by no means be placed in the ranks of

criticism below La Harpe, to whom, by his attention to verbal

minuteness, as well as by the acrimony and self-confidence of his

character, he may in some measure be compared.

[1316] One of his censures falls on the minute particularity of the

prophecy of Anchises in the sixth Æneid; peccando Virgilio nella

convenevolezza della profetia, la quale non suole condescendere a

nomi proprj, ne a cose tanto chiare e particolari, ma, tacendo i

nomi, suole manifestare le persone, e le loro azioni con figure di

parlare alquanto oscure, si come si vede nelle profetie della

scrittura sacra e nell’Alessandra di Licophrone, p. 219 (edit.

1576). This is not unjust in itself; but Castelvetro wanted the

candour to own, or comprehensiveness to perceive, that a prophecy

of the Roman history, couched in allegories, would have had much

less effect on Roman readers.

[1317] Rendendola massimamente per questa via difficile ad intendere

e meno piacente a uomini idioti, per gli quali principalmente si

fanno i poemi, p. 597. But the comedy of Dante was about as much

written for _gl’idioti_, as the Principia of Newton.

[1318] Castelvetro, p. 212. He objects on the same principle to

Giraldi Cinthio, that he had chosen a subject for tragedy which

never had occurred, nor had been reported to have occurred, and

this of royal persons unheard of before, il qual peccato di

prendere soggetto tale per la tragedia non è da perdonare, p. 103.

|Ercolano of Varchi.|

26. The Ercolano of Varchi, a series of dialogues, belongs to the

inferior but more numerous class of critical writings, and after some

general observations on speech and language as common to men, turns to

the favourite theme of his contemporaries, their native idiom. He is one

who with Bembo contends that the language should not be called Italian,

or even Tuscan, but Florentine, though admitting, what might be

expected, that few agree to this except the natives of the city. Varchi

had written on the side of Caro against Castelvetro, and though upon the

whole he does not speak of the latter in the Ercolano with incivility,

cannot restrain his wrath at an assertion of the stern critic of Modena,

that there were as famous writers in the Spanish and French as in the

Italian language. Varchi even denies that there was any writer of

reputation in the first of these except Juan de la Mena, and the author

of Amadis de Gaul. Varchi is now chiefly known as the author of a

respectable history, which, on account of its sincerity, was not

published till the last century. The prejudice that, in common with some

of his fellow-citizens, he entertained in favour of the popular idiom of

Florence, has affected the style of his history, which is reckoned both

tediously diffuse, and deficient in choice of phrase.[1319]

[1319] Corniani, vi. 43.

|Controversy about Dante.|

27. Varchi, in a passage of the Ercolano, having extolled Dante even in

preference to Homer, gave rise to a controversy wherein some Italian

critics did not hesitate to point out the blemishes of their countryman.

Bulgarini was one of these. Mazzoni undertook the defence of Dante in a

work of considerable length, and seems to have poured out, still more

abundantly than his contemporaries, a torrent of philosophical

disquisition. Bulgarini replied again to him.[1320] Crescimbeni speaks

of these discussions as having been advantageous to Italian

poetry.[1321] The good effects, however, were not very sensibly

manifested in the next century.

[1320] Id. vi. 260. Ginguéné, vii. 491.

[1321] Hist. della Volgar Poesia, ii. 282.

|Academy of Florence.|

28. Florence was the chief scene of these critical wars. Cosmo I., the

most perfect type of the prince of Machiavel, sought by the

encouragement of literature in this its most innocuous province, as he

did by the arts of embellishment, both to bring over the minds of his

subjects a forgetfulness of liberty, and to render them unapt for its

recovery. The Academy of Florence resounded with the praises of

Petrarch. A few seceders from this body established the more celebrated

academy Della Crusca, of the _sieve_, whose appellation bespoke the

spirit in which they meant to sift all they undertook to judge. They

were soon engaged, and with some loss to their fame, in a controversy

upon the Gierusalemme Liberata. Camillo Pellegrino, a Neapolitan, had

published in 1584 a dialogue on epic poetry, entitled Il Caraffa,

wherein he gave preference to Tasso above Ariosto. Though Florence had

no peculiar interest in this question, the academicians thought

themselves guardians of the elder bard’s renown; and Tasso had offended

the citizens by some reflections in one of his dialogues. The academy

permitted themselves, in a formal reply, to place even Pulci and Boiardo

above Tasso. It was easier to vindicate Ariosto from some of

Pellegrino’s censures, which are couched in the pedantic tone of

insisting with the reader that he ought not to be pleased. He has

followed Castelvetro in several criticisms. The rules of epic poetry so

long observed, he maintains, ought to be reckoned fundamental

principles, which no one can dispute without presumption. The academy

answer this well on behalf of Ariosto. Their censures on the Jerusalem

apply, in part to the characters and incidents, wherein they are

sometimes right, in part to the language, many phrases, according to

them, being bad Italian, as _pietose_ for _pie_ in the first

line.[1322]

[1322] In the second volume of the edition of Tasso at Venice, 1735,

the Caraffa of Pellegrino, the Defence of Ariosto by the Academy,

Tasso’s Apology, and the Infarinato of Salviati, are cut into

sentences, placed to answer each other like a dialogue. This

produces an awkward and unnatural effect, as passages are torn from

their context to place them in opposition.

The criticism on both sides becomes infinitely wearisome; yet not

more so than much that we find in our modern reviews, and with the

advantage of being more to the purpose, less ostentatious, and with

less pretence to eloquence or philosophy. An account of the

controversy will be found in Crescimbeni, Ginguéné, or Corniani,

and more at length in Serassi’s Life of Tasso.

|Salviati’s attack on Tasso.|

29. Salviati, a verbose critic, who had written two quarto volumes on

the style of Boccaccio, assailed the new epic in two treatises, entitled

L’Infarinato. Tasso’s Apology followed very soon; but it has been

sometimes thought that these criticisms, acting on his morbid intellect,

though he repelled them vigorously, might have influenced that waste of

labour, by which, in the last years of his life, he changed so much of

his great poem for the worse. The obscurer insects whom envy stirred up

against its glory are not worthy to be remembered. The chief praise of

Salviati himself is that he laid the foundations of the first classical

dictionary of any modern language, the Vocabulario della Crusca.[1323]

[1323] Corniani, vi. 204. The Italian literature would supply several

more works on criticism, rhetoric, and grammar. Upon all these

subjects it was much richer, at this time, than the French or

English.

|Pinciano’s Art of Poetry.|

30. Bouterwek has made us acquainted with a treatise in Spanish on the

art of poetry, which he regards as the earliest of its kind in modern

literature. It could not be so according to the date of its publication,

which is in 1596; but the author, Alonzo Lopez Pinciano was physician to

Charles V., and it was therefore written, in all probability, many years

before it appeared from the press. The title is rather quaint,

Philosophia Antigua Poetica, and it is written in the form of letters.

Pinciano is the first who discovered the Poetics of Aristotle, which he

had diligently studied, to be a fragment of a larger work, as is now

generally admitted. “Whenever Lopez Pinciano,” says Bouterwek, “abandons

Aristotle, his notions respecting the different poetic styles are as

confused as those of his contemporaries; and only a few of his notions

and distinctions can be deemed of importance at the present day. But his

name is deserving of honourable remembrance, for he was the first writer

of modern times who endeavoured to establish a philosophic art of

poetry; and, with all his veneration for Aristotle, he was the first

scholar who ventured to think for himself, and to go somewhat farther

than his master.”[1324] The Art of Poetry, by Juan de la Cueva, is a

poem of the didactic class, containing some information as to the

history of Spanish verse.[1325] The other critical treatises which

appeared in Spain about this time seem to be of little importance; but

we know by the writings of Cervantes, that the poets of the age of

Philip were, as usual, followed by the animal for whose natural prey

they are designed, the sharp-toothed and keen-scented critic.

[1324] Hist. of Sp. Lit., p. 323.

[1325] It is printed entire in the eighth volume of Parnaso Español.

|French treatises of criticism.|

31. France produced very few books of the same class. The Institutiones

Oratoriæ of Omer Talon is an elementary and short treatise of

rhetoric.[1326] Baillet and Goujet gave some praise to the Art of Poetry

by Pelletier, published in 1555.[1327] The treatise of Henry Stephens,

on the Conformity of the French Language with the Greek, is said to

contain very good observations.[1328] But it must be (for I do not

recollect to have seen it) rather a book of grammar than of superior

criticism. The Rhetorique Française of Fouquelin (1555) seems to be

little else than a summary of rhetorical figures.[1329] That of

Courcelles, in 1557, is not much better.[1330] All these relate rather

to prose than to poetry. From the number of versifiers in France, and

the popularity of Ronsard and his school, we might have expected a

larger harvest of critics. Pasquier, in his valuable miscellany, Les

Recherches de la France, has devoted a few pages to this subject, but

not on an extensive or systematic plan; nor can the two Bibliothéques

Françaises, by La Croix du Maine and Verdier, both published in 1584,

though they contain a great deal of information as to the literature of

France, with some critical estimates of books, be reckoned in the class

to which we are now adverting. In this department of literature, without

doing a great deal, we had perhaps rather the advantage over our

neighbours.

[1326] Gibert, Baillet, printed in Jugemens des Savans, viii. 181.

[1327] Baillet, iii. 351. Goujet, iii. 97. Pelletier had previously

rendered Horace’s Art of Poetry into French verse, id. 66.

[1328] Baillet, iii. 353.

[1329] Gibert, p. 184.

[1330] Id. p. 366.

|Wilson’s Art of Rhetorique.|

32. Thomas Wilson, afterwards secretary of state, and much employed

under Elizabeth, is the author of an “Art of Rhetorique,” dated in the

preface January 1553. The rules in this treatise are chiefly from

Aristotle, with the help of Cicero and Quintilian, but his examples and

illustrations are modern. Warton says that it is the first system of

criticism in our language.[1331] But in common use of the word it is no

criticism at all, any more than the treatise of Cicero de Oratore; it is

what it professes to be, a system of rhetoric in the ancient manner;

and, in this sense, it had been preceded by the work of Leonard Cox,

which has been mentioned in a former chapter. Wilson was a man of

considerable learning, and his Art of Rhetorique is by no means without

merit. He deserves praise for censuring the pedantry of learned phrases,

or, as he calls them, “strange _inkhorn_ terms,” advising men “to speak

as is commonly received;” and he censures also what was not less

pedantic, the introduction of a French or Italian idiom, which the

travelled English affected in order to show their politeness, as the

scholars did the former to prove their erudition. Wilson had before

published an Art of Logic.

[1331] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iv. 157.

|Gascoyne; Webbe.|

33. The first English criticism, properly speaking, that I find, is a

short tract by Gascoyne, doubtless the poet of that name, published in

1575; “Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse or

Rhyme in English.” It consists only of ten pages, but the observations

are judicious. Gascoyne recommends that the sentence should as far as

possible be finished at the close of two lines in the couplet

measure.[1332] Webbe, author of a “Discourse of English Poetry” (1586),

is copious in comparison with Gascoyne, though he stretches but to

seventy pages. His taste is better shown in his praise of Spenser for

the Shepherd’s Kalendar, than of Gabriel Harvey for his “Reformation of

our English verse;” that is, by forcing it into uncouth Latin measures,

which Webbe has himself most unhappily attempted.

[1332] Gascoyne, with all the other early English critics, was

republished in a collection by Mr. Haslewood in two volumes,

1811 and 1815.

|Puttenham’s Art of Poesie.|

34. A superior writer to Webbe was George Puttenham, whose “Art of

English Poesie,” published in 1589, is a small quarto of 258 pages in

three books. It is in many parts very well written, in a measured prose,

rather elaborate and diffuse. He quotes occasionally a little Greek.

Among the contemporary English poets, Puttenham extols “for eclogue and

pastoral poetry Sir Philip Sydney and Master Chaloner, and that other

gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd’s Kalendar. For ditty and amorous

ode I find Sir Walter Rawleigh’s vein most lofty, _insolent_,

[bold? or uncommon?] and passionate; Master Edward Dyer for elegy most

sweet, solemn, and of high conceit; Gascon [Gascoyne] for a good metre

and for a plentiful vein; Phaer and Golding for a learned and well

connected verse, specially in translation, clear, and very faithfully

answering their author’s intent. Others have also written with much

facility, but more commendably perhaps, if they had not written so much

nor so popularly. But last in recital and first in degree is the queen

our sovereign lady, whose learned, delicate, noble muse easily

surmounteth all the rest that have written before her time or since, for

sense, sweetness, and subtilty, be it in ode, elegy, epigram, or any

other kind of poem, heroic or lyric, wherein it shall please her majesty

to employ her pen, even by so much odds as her own excellent estate and

degree exceedeth all the rest of her most humble vassals.”[1333] On this

it may be remarked, that the only specimen of Elizabeth’s poetry which,

as far as I know, remains, is prodigiously bad.[1334] In some passages

of Puttenham, we find an approach to the higher province of

philosophical criticism.

[1333] Puttenham, p. 51. of Haslewood’s edition, or in Censura

Literaria, i. 348.

[1334] Ellis’s Specimens, ii. 162.

|Sydney’s Defence of Poesy.|

35. These treatises of Webbe and Puttenham may have been preceded in

order of writing, though not of publication, by the performance of a

more illustrious author, Sir Philip Sydney. His Defence of Poesy was not

published till 1595. The Defence of Poesy has already been reckoned

among the polite writings of the Elizabethan age, to which class it

rather belongs than to that of criticism; for Sydney rarely comes to any

literary censure, and is still farther removed from any profound

philosophy. His sense is good, but not ingenious, and the declamatory

tone weakens its effect.

SECT. III.--ON WORKS OF FICTION.

_Novels and Romances in Italy and Spain--Sydney’s Arcadia._

|Novels of Bandello;|

36. The novels of Bandello, three parts of which were published in 1554,

and a fourth in 1573, are perhaps the best known and the most admired in

that species of composition after those of Boccaccio. They have been

censured as licentious, but are far less so than any of

preceding times, and the reflections are usually of a moral cast. These

however, as well as the speeches, are very tedious. There is not a

little predilection in Bandello for sanguinary stories. Ginguéné praises

these novels for just sentiments, adherence to probability, and choice

of interesting subjects. In these respects, we often find a superiority

in the older novels above those of the nineteenth century, the golden

age, as it is generally thought, of fictitious story. But, in the

management of these subjects, the Italian and Spanish novelists show

little skill; they are worse cooks of better meat; they exert no power

over the emotions beyond what the intrinsic nature of the events related

must produce; they sometimes describe well, but with no great

imagination; they have no strong conception of character, no deep

acquaintance with mankind, not often much humour, no vivacity and spirit

of dialogue.

|of Cinthio.|

37. The Hecatomithi, or Hundred Tales, of Giraldi Cinthio have become

known in England by the recourse that Shakspeare has had to them in two

instances, Cymbeline and Measure for Measure, for the subjects of his

plays. Cinthio has also borrowed from himself in his own tragedies. He

is still more fond of dark tales of blood than Bandello. He seems

consequently to have possessed an unfortunate influence over the stage;

and to him, as well as his brethren of the Italian novel, we trace those

scenes of improbable and disgusting horror, from which, though the

native taste and gentleness of Shakspeare for the most part disdained

such helps, we recoil in almost all the other tragedians of the old

English school. Of the remaining Italian novelists that belong to this

period, it is enough to mention Erizzo, better known as one of the

founders of medallic science. His Sei Giornate contain thirty-six

novels, called Avvenimenti. They are written with intolerable prolixity,

but in a pure and even elevated tone of morality. This character does

not apply to the novels of Lasca.

|of the Queen of Navarre.|

38. The French novels, ascribed to Margaret Queen of Navarre, and first

published in 1558, with the title “Histoire des Amans fortunés,” are

principally taken from the Italian collections or from the fabliaux of

the trouveurs. Though free in language, they are written in a much less

licentious spirit than many of the former, but breathe throughout that

anxiety to exhibit the clergy, especially the regulars, in an odious or

ridiculous light, which the principles of their illustrious authoress

might lead us to expect. Belleforest translated, perhaps with some

variation, the novels of Bandello into French.[1335]

[1335] Bouterwek, v. 286, mentions by name several other French

novelists of the sixteenth century: I do not know anything of them.

|Spanish romances of chivalry.|

39. Few probably will now dispute, that the Italian novel, a picture of

real life, and sometimes of true circumstances, is perused with less

weariness than the Spanish romance, the alternative then offered to the

lovers of easy reading. But this had very numerous admirers in that

generation, nor was the taste confined to Spain. The popularity of

Amadis de Gaul and Palmerin of Oliva, with their various continuators,

has been already mentioned.[1336] One of these, “Palmerin of England,”

appeared in French at Lyons in 1555. It is uncertain who was the

original author, or in what language it was first written. Cervantes has

honoured it with a place next to Amadis. Mr. Southey, though he

condescended to abridge Palmerin of England, thinks it inferior to that

Iliad of romantic adventure. Several of the tales of knight-errantry

that are recorded to have stood on the unfortunate shelves of Don

Quixote, belong to this latter part of the century, among which Don

Bellianis of Greece is better known by name than any other. These

romances were not condemned by Cervantes alone. “Every poet and prose

writer,” says Bouterwek, “of cultivated talent, laboured to oppose the

contagion.”[1337]

[1336] La Noue, a severe Protestant, thinks them as pernicious to the

young as the writings of Machiavel had been to the old. This he

dwells upon in his sixth discourse. “De tout temps,” this honest

and sensible writer says, “il y a eu des hommes, qui ont esté

diligens d’escrire et mettre en lumière des choses vaines. Ce qui

plus les y a conviez est, que ils sçavoient que leurs labeurs

seroient agréables a ceux de leurs siècles, dont la plus part a

toujours heimé [aimé] la vanité, comme le poisson fait l’eau. Les

vieux romans dont nous voyons encor les fragmens par-ci et par-la,

a savoir de Lancelot du Lac, de Perceforest, Tristan, Giron le

courtois, et autres, font foy de ceste vanité antique. On s’en est

repeu l’espace de plus de cinq cens ans, jusques à ce que nostre

langage estant devenu plus orné, et nostres esprits plus

fretillans, il a fallu inventer quelque nouveauté pour les egayer.

Voila comment les livres d’Amadis sont venus en evidence parmi nous

en ce dernier siècle. Mais pour en parler au vrai, l’Espagne les a

engendrez, et la France les a seulement revetus de plus beaux

habillemens. Sous le regne du roy Henry second, ils ont eu leur

principale vogue; et croy qui si quelqu’un les eust voulu alors

blasmer, en luy eust craché au visage,” &c. p. 153, edit. 1588.

[1337] In the opinion of Bouterwek (v. 282), the taste for chivalrous

romance declined in the latter part of the century, through the

prevalence of a classical spirit in literature, which exposed the

mediæval fictions to derision. The number of shorter and more

amusing novels might probably have more to do with it; the serious

romance has a terrible enemy in the lively. But it revived, with a

little modification, in the next age.

|Diana of Montemayor.|

40. Spain was the parent of a romance in a very different style, but, if

less absurd and better written, not perhaps much more interesting to us

than those of chivalry, the Diana of Montemayor. Sannazaro’s beautiful

model of pastoral romance, the Arcadia, and some which had been written

in Portugal, take away the merit of originality from this celebrated

fiction. It formed, however, a school in this department of literature,

hardly less numerous, according to Bouterwek, than the imitators of

Amadis.[1338] The language of Montemayor is neither laboured nor

affected, and though sometimes of rather too formal a solemnity,

especially in what the author thought philosophy, is remarkably

harmonious and elevated; nor is he deficient in depth of feeling or

fertility of imagination. Yet the story seems incapable of attracting

any reader of this age. The Diana, like Sannazaro’s Arcadia, is mingled

with much lyric poetry, which Bouterwek thinks, is the soul of the whole

composition. Cervantes indeed condemns all the longer of these poems to

the flames, and gives but limited praise to the Diana. Yet this romance,

and a continuation of it by Gil Polo, had inspired his own youthful

genius in the Galatea. The chief merit of the Galatea, published in

1584, consists in the poetry which the story seems intended to hold

together. In the Diana of Montemayor, and even in the Galatea, it has

been supposed that real adventures and characters were generally

shadowed--a practice not already without precedent, and which, by the

French especially, was carried to a much greater length in later times.

[1338] Hist. Span. Lit. p. 305.

|Novels in the picaresque style.|

|Guzman d’Alfarache.|

41. Spain became celebrated about the end of this century for her novels

in the _picaresque_ style, of which Lazarillo de Tormes is the oldest

extant specimen. The continuation of this little work is reckoned

inferior to the part written by Mendoza himself; but both together are

amusing and inimitably short.[1339] The first edition of the most

celebrated romance of this class, Guzman d’Alfarache, falls within the

sixteenth century. It was written by Matthew Aleman, who is said to have

lived long at court. He might there have acquired, not a knowledge of

the tricks of common rogues, but an experience of mankind, which is

reckoned one of the chief merits of his romance. Many of his stories

also relate to the manners of a higher class than that of his hero.

Guzman d’Alfarache is a sort of prototype of Gilblas, though, in fact,

La Sage has borrowed very freely from all the Spanish novels of this

school. The adventures are numerous and diversified enough to amuse an

idle reader, and Aleman has displayed a great deal of good sense in his

reflections, which are expressed in the pointed condensed style affected

by most writers of Spain. Cervantes has not hesitated to borrow from him

one of Sancho’s celebrated adjudications, in the well-known case of the

lady, who was less pugnacious in defence of her honour than of the purse

awarded by the court as its compensation. This story is, however, if I

am not mistaken, older than either of them.[1340]

[1339] In a former chapter, on the authority of Nicolas Antonio, which

I do not find very trustworthy, I have said that the first edition

of Lazarillo de Tormes was in 1586. It seems, however, to be

doubtful, from what we read in Brunet, whether this edition exists.

In return he mentions one printed at Burgos in 1554, and three at

Antwerp in 1553 and 1555. Supplement au Manuel du Libraire, art.

Hurtado. The following early edition is also in the British Museum,

of which I transcribe the title-page. La Vida de Lazarillo de

Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades, nuevamente impressa,

corregida, y de nuevo anadida en este segunda impression. Vendense

en Alcala de Henares en casa de Salzedo librero año de N.D. 1554. A

colophon recites the same date and place of impression. The

above-mentioned Antwerp edition of 1553 seems to be rather

apocryphal. If it exists, it must be the first; and is it likely

that the first should have been printed out of Spain?

Though the continuation of Lazarillo de Tormes is reckoned inferior

to the original, it contains the only story in the whole novel

which has made its fortune, that of the man who was exhibited as a

sea-monster.

[1340] The following passage, which I extract from the Retrospective

Review, vol. v. p. 199, is a fair and favourable specimen of Aleman

as a moralist, who is however apt to be tedious, as moralists

usually are.

“The poor man is a kind of money that is not current, the subject

of every idle housewife’s chat, the offscum of the people, the dust

of the street, first trampled under foot, and then thrown on the

dunghill; in conclusion, the poor man is the rich man’s ass. He

dineth with the last, fareth with the worst, and payeth dearest;

his sixpence will not go so far as the rich man’s threepence; his

opinion is ignorance, his discretion foolishness, his suffrage

scorn, his stock upon the common, abused by many, and abhorred by

all. If he come into company he is not heard; if any chance to meet

him, they seek to shun him; if he advise, though never so wisely,

they grudge and murmur at him; if he work miracles, they say he is

a witch; if virtuous, that he goeth about to deceive; his venial

sin is a blasphemy; his thought is made treason; his cause, be it

never so just, is not regarded; and to have his wrongs righted, he

must appeal to that other life. All men crush him; no man favoureth

him. There is no man that will relieve his wants; no man that will

bear him company when he is alone and oppressed with grief. None

help him, all hinder him; none give him, all take from him; he is

debtor to none, and yet must make payment to all. O the unfortunate

and poor condition of him that is poor, to whom even the very hours

are sold which the clock striketh, and payeth custom for the

sunshine in August.”

This is much in the style of our English writers in the first part

of the seventeenth century, and confirms what I have suspected,

that they formed it in a great measure on the Spanish school.

Though this sententiousness and antithetical balancing of clauses

is not pleasant to read, it is less insipid than the nerveless

elegance of the Italians. Guzman d’Alfarache was early translated

into English, as most other Spanish books were; and the language

itself was more familiar in the reigns of James and Charles than it

became afterwards.

|Las Guerras de Granada.|

42. It may require some excuse that I insert in this place Las Guerras

de Granada, a history of certain Moorish factions in the last days of

that kingdom, both because it has been usually referred to the

seventeenth century, and because many have conceived it to be a true

relation of events. It purports to have been translated by Gines Perez

de la Hita, an inhabitant of the city of Murcia, from an Arabic original

of one Aben Hamili. Its late English translator seems to entertain no

doubt of its authenticity; and it has been sagaciously observed that no

Christian could have known the long genealogies of Moorish nobles which

the book contains. Most of those, however, who read it without

credulity, will feel, I presume, little difficulty in agreeing with

Antonio, who ranks it “among Milesian fables, though very pleasing to

those who have nothing to do.” The Zegris and Abencerrages, with all

their romantic exploits, seem to be mere creations of Castilian

imagination; nor has Conde, in his excellent history of the Moors in

Spain, once deigned to notice them even as fabulous; so much did he

reckon this famous production of Perez de la Hita below the historian’s

regard. Antonio mentions no edition earlier than that of Alcala in 1604;

the English translator names 1601 for the date of its publication, an

edition of which year is in the Museum; nor do I find that any one has

been aware of an earlier, published at Saragoça in 1595, except Brunet,

who mentions it as rare and little known. It appears by the same

authority that there is another edition of 1598.

|Sydney’s Arcadia.|

43. The heroic and pastoral romance of Spain contributed something, yet

hardly so much as has been supposed, to Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, the

only original production of this kind, except such wretched and obscure

attempts at story as are beneath notice, which our older literature can

boast. The Arcadia was published in 1590, having been written, probably,

by its highly accomplished author about ten years before.

|Its character.|

44. Walpole, who thought fit to display the dimensions of his own mind,

by announcing that he could perceive nothing remarkable in Sir Philip

Sydney (as if the suffrage of Europe in what he admits to be an age of

heroes were not a decisive proof that Sydney himself over-topped those

sons of Anak), says of the Arcadia, that it is “a tedious lamentable

pedantic pastoral romance, which the patience of a young virgin in love

cannot now wade through.” We may doubt whether Walpole could altogether

estimate the patience of a reader so extremely unlike himself; and his

epithets, except perhaps the first, are inapplicable; the Arcadia is

more free from pedantry than most books of that age; and though we are

now so accustomed to a more stimulant diet in fiction, that few would

read it through with pleasure, the story is as sprightly as most other

romances, sometimes indeed a little too much so, for the Arcadia is not

quite a book for “young virgins,” of which some of its admirers by

hearsay seem not to have been aware. By the epithet “pastoral,” we may

doubt whether Walpole knew much of this romance beyond its name; for it

has far less to do with shepherds than with courtiers, though the idea

might probably be suggested by the popularity of the Diana. It does not

appear to me that the Arcadia is more tiresome and uninteresting than

the generality of that class of long romances, proverbially among the

most tiresome of all books; and, in a less fastidious age, it was read,

no doubt, even as a story, with some delight.[1341] It displays a

superior mind, rather complying with a temporary taste than affected by

it, and many pleasing passages occur, especially in the tender and

innocent loves of Pyrocles and Philoclea. I think it, nevertheless, on

the whole inferior in sense, style, and spirit, to the Defence of Poesy.

The following passage has some appearance of having suggested a

well-known poem in the next age to the lover of Sacharissa; we may

readily believe that Waller had turned over, in the glades of Penshurst,

the honoured pages of her immortal uncle.[1342]

[1341] “It appears,” says Drake, “to have been suggested to the mind

of Sir Philip by two models of very different ages, and to have

been built, in fact, on their admixture; these are the Ethiopic

History of Heliodorus, bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, and the

Arcadia of Sannazaro,” p. 549. A translation of Heliodorus had been

published a short time before.

[1342] The poem I mean is that addressed to Amoret, “Fair! that you may

truly know,” drawing a comparison between her and Sacharissa.

45. “The elder is named Pamela, by many men not deemed inferior to her

sister; for my part, when I marked them both, methought there was (if at

least such perfections may receive the word of more) more sweetness in

Philoclea, but more majesty in Pamela: methought love played in

Philoclea’s eyes, and threatened in Pamela’s; methought Philoclea’s

beauty only persuaded, but so persuaded as all hearts must yield;

Pamela’s beauty used violence, and such violence as no heart could

resist, and it seems that such proportion is between their minds.

Philoclea so bashful, as if her excellencies had stolen into her before

she was aware; so humble, that she will put all pride out of

countenance; in sum, such proceeding as will stir hope, but teach hope

good manners; Pamela, of high thoughts, who avoids not pride with not

knowing her excellencies, but by making that one of her excellencies to

be void of pride; her mother’s wisdom, greatness, nobility, but, if I

can guess aright, knit with a more constant temper.”

|Inferiority of other English fictions.|

46. The Arcadia stands quite alone among English fictions of this

century. But many were translated in the reign of Elizabeth from the

Italian, French, Spanish, and even Latin, among which Painter’s Palace

of Pleasure, whence Shakspeare took several of his plots, and the

numerous labours of Antony Munday may be mentioned. Palmerin of England

in 1580, and Amadis of Gaul in 1592, were among these; others of less

value, were transferred from the Spanish text by the same industrious

hand; and since these, while still new, were sufficient to furnish all

the gratification required by the public, our own writers did not much

task their invention to augment the stock. They would not have been very

successful, if we may judge by such deplorable specimens as Breton and

Greene, two men of considerable poetical talent, have left us.[1343] The

once famous story of the Seven Champions of Christendom, by one Johnson,

is of rather a superior class; the adventures are not original, but it

is by no means a translation from any single work.[1344] Mallory’s

famous romance, La Morte d’Arthur, is of much earlier date, and was

first printed by Caxton. It is, however, a translation from several

French romances, though written in very spirited language.

[1343] The Mavilia of Breton, the Dorastus and Fawnia of Greene, will

be found in the collections of the indefatigable Sir Egerton

Brydges. The first is below contempt; the second, if not quite so

ridiculous, is written with a quaint affected and empty Euphuism.

British Bibliographer, i. 508. But as truth is generally more

faithful to natural sympathies than fiction, a little tale, called

Never too Late, in which Greene has related his own story, is

unaffected and pathetic. Drake’s Shakspeare and his Times, i. 489.

[1344] Drake, i. 529.

CHAPTER XVII.

HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE, FROM 1500 TO 1600.

SECT. I.--ON MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE.

_Algebraists of this Period--Vieta--Slow Progress of Copernican

Theory--Tycho Brahe--Reform of Calendar--Mechanics--Stevinus--Gilbert._

|Tartaglia and Cardan.|

1. The breach of faith towards Tartaglia, by which Cardan communicated

to the world the method of solving cubic equations, having rendered them

enemies, the injured party defied the aggressor to a contest, wherein

each should propose thirty-one problems to be solved by the other.

Cardan accepted the challenge, and gave a list of his problems, but

devolved the task of meeting his antagonist on his disciple Ferrari. The

problems of Tartaglia are so much more difficult than those of Cardan,

and the latter’s representative so frequently failed in solving them, as

to show the former in a higher rank among algebraists, though we have

not so long a list of his discoveries.[1345] This is told by himself in

a work of miscellaneous mathematical and physical learning, Quesiti ed

invenzioni diverse, published in 1546. In 1555, he put forth the first

part of a treatise intitled Trattato di numeri e misure, the second part

appearing in 1560.

[1345] Montucla, p. 568.

|Algebra of Pelletier.|

2. Pelletier of Mans, a man advantageously known both in literature and

science, published a short treatise on algebra in 1554. He does not give

the method of solving cubic equations, but Hutton is mistaken in

supposing that he was ignorant of Cardan’s work, which he quotes. In

fact he promises a third book, this treatise being divided into two, on

the higher parts of algebra; but I do not know whether this be found in

any subsequent edition. Pelletier does not employ the signs + and -,

which had been invented by Stifelies, using _p_ and _m_ instead, but we

find the sign √ of irrationality. What is perhaps the most original in

this treatise, is that its author perceived that, in a quadratic

equation, where the root is rational, it must be a divisor of the

absolute number.[1346]

[1346] Pelletier seems to have arrived at this not by observation, but

in a scientific method. Comme _x_² = 2_x_ + 15. (I substitute the

usual signs for clearness), il est certain que _x_ que nous

cherchons doit estre contenu également en 15, puisque _x_² est égal

à deux _x_, et 15 davantage, et que tout nombre _censique_ (quarré)

contient les racines également et précisément. Maintenant puisque 2

_x_ font certain nombre de racines, il faut donc que 15 fasse

l’achèvement des racines qui sont nécessaires pour accomplir _x_².

p. 40. (Lyon, 1554.)

|Record’s Whetstone of Wit.|

3. In the Whetstone of Wit, by Robert Record, in 1557, we find the signs

+ and -, and, for the first time, that of equality =, which he

invented.[1347] Record knew that a quadratic equation has two roots. The

scholar, for it is in dialogue, having been perplexed by this as a

difficulty, the master answers, “That variety of roots doth declare that

one equation in number may serve for two several questions. But the form

of the question may easily instruct you which of these two roots you

shall take for your purpose. Howbeit, sometimes you may take

both.”[1348] He says nothing of cubic equations, having been prevented

by an interruption, the nature of which he does not divulge, from

continuing his algebraic lessons. We owe therefore nothing to Record but

his invention of a sign. As these artifices not only abbreviate, but

clear up the process of reasoning, each successive improvement in

notation deserves, even in the most concise sketch of mathematical

history, to be remarked. But certainly they do not exhibit any peculiar

ingenuity, and might have occurred to the most ordinary student.

[1347] “And to avoid the tedious repetition of these words, “is equal

to,” I will set, as I do often in work use, a pair of parallels,

_gemowe_ lines of one length thus =, because no two things can be

more equal.” The word _gemowe_, from the French _gemeau_, twin

(Cotgrave) is very uncommon: it was used for a double ring, a

_gemel_ or _gemou_ ring. Todd’s Johnson’s Dictionary.

[1348] This general mode of expression might lead us to suppose, that

Record was acquainted with negative, as well as positive roots, the

fictæ radices of Cardan. That a quadratic equation of a certain

form has two positive roots, had long been known. In a very modern

book, it is said that Mohammed ben Musa, an Arabian of the reign of

Almamon, whose algebra was translated by the late Dr. Rosen in

1831, observes that there are two roots in the form _ax_² + _b_ =

_cx_, but that this cannot be in the other three cases. Libri,

Hist. des Sciences Mathématiques en Italie, vol. ii. (1838).

Leonard of Pisa had some notion of this, but did not state it,

according to M. Libri, so generally as Ben Musa. Upon reference to

Colebrook’s Indian Algebra, it will appear that the existence of

two positive roots in some cases, though the conditions of the

problem will often be found to exclude the application of one of

them, is clearly laid down by the Hindoo algebraists. But one of

them says, “People do not approve a negative absolute number.”

|Vieta.|

|His discoveries.|

4. The great boast of France, and indeed of algebraical science

generally, in this period, was Francis Viète, oftener called Vieta, so

truly eminent a man that he may well spare laurels which are not his

own. It has been observed in another place, that after Montucla had

rescued from the hands of Wallis, who claims everything for Harriott,

many algebraical methods indisputably contained in the writings of his

own countryman, Cossali has stepped forward, with an equal cogency of

proof, asserting the right of Cardan to the greater number of them. But

the following steps in the progress of algebra may be justly attributed

to Vieta alone. 1. We must give the first place to one less difficult in

itself, than important in its results. In the earlier algebra,

alphabetical characters were not generally employed at all, except that

the Res, or unknown quantity, was sometimes set down R. for the sake of

brevity. Stifelius, in 1544, first employed a literal notation, A. B. C.

to express unknown quantities, while Cardan, and according to Cossali,

Luca di Borgo, to whom we may now add Leonard of Pisa himself, make some

use of letters to express indefinite numbers.[1349] But Vieta first

applied them as general symbols of quantity, and by thus forming the

scattered elements of specious analysis into a system, has been justly

reckoned the founder of a science, which, from its extensive

application, has made the old problems of mere numerical algebra appear

elementary and almost trifling. “Algebra,” says Kästner, “from

furnishing amusing enigmas to the Cossists,” as he calls the first

teachers of the art, “became the logic of geometrical invention.”[1350]

It would appear a natural conjecture, that the improvement, towards

which so many steps had been taken by others, might occur to the mind of

Vieta simply as a means of saving the trouble of arithmetical operations

in working out a problem. But those who refer to his treatise entitled,

De Arte Analytica isagoge, or even the first page of it, will, I

conceive, give credit to the author for a more scientific view of his

own invention. He calls it logistice speciosa, as opposed to the

logistice numerosa of the older analysis;[1351] his theorems are all

general, the given quantities being considered as indefinite, nor does

it appear that he substituted letters for the known quantities in the

investigation of particular problems. Whatever may have suggested this

great invention to the mind of Vieta, it has altogether changed the

character of his science.

[1349] Vol. i. p. 54. A modern writer has remarked, that Aristotle

employs letters of the alphabet to express indeterminate

quantities, and says it has never been observed before. He refers

to the Physics, in Aristot. Opera, i. 543, 550, 565, &c., but

without mentioning any edition. The letters α [alpha], β [beta], γ

[gamma], &c. express force, mass, space or time. Libri, Hist. des

Sciences Mathématiques en Italie, i. 104. Upon reference to

Aristotle, I find many instances in the sixth book of the Physicæ

Auscultationes, and in other places.

Though I am reluctant to mix in my text which is taken from

established writers, any observations of my own on a subject

wherein my knowledge is so very limited as in mathematics, I may

here remark, that although Tartaglia and Cardan do not use single

letters as symbols of known quantity, yet, when they refer to a

geometrical construction, they employ in their equations double

letters, the usual signs of lines. Thus we find, in the Ars Magna,

AB _m_ AC, where we should put _a_ - _b_. The want of a good algorithm

was doubtless a great impediment, but it was not quite so deficient

as from reading modern histories of algebraical discovery, without

reference to the original writers, we might be led to suppose.

The process by which the rule for solving cubic equations was

originally discovered, seems worthy, as I have intimated in another

place (p. 221), of exciting our curiosity. Maseres has investigated

this in the Philosophical Transactions for 1780, reprinted in his

Tracts on Cubic and Biquadratic Equations, p. 55-69, and in

Scriptores Logarithmici, vol. ii. It is remarkable, that he does

not seem to have been aware of what Cardan has himself told us on

the subject in the sixth chapter of the Ars Magna; yet he has

nearly guessed the process which Tartaglia pursued; that is, by a

geometrical construction. It is manifest, by all that these

algebraists have written on the subject, that they had the clearest

conviction they were dealing with continuous, or geometrical, not

merely with discreet, or arithmetical, quantity. This gave them an

insight into the fundamental truth, which is unintelligible so long

as algebra passes for a specious _arithmetic_, that _every_ value,

which the conditions of the problem admit, may be assigned to

unknown quantities, without distinction of rationality and

irrationality. To abstract number itself irrationality is

inapplicable.

[1350] Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 63.

[1351] Forma autem Zetesin ineundi ex arte propria est, non jam in

numeris suam logicam exercente, quæ fuit oscitantia veterum

analystarum, sed per logisticen sub specie noviter inducendam,

feliciorem multo et potiorem numerosa, ad comparandum inter se

magnitudines, proposita primum homogeniorum lege, &c. p. i. edit.

1646.

A profound writer on algebra, Mr. Peacock, has lately defined it,

“the science of general reasoning by symbolical language.” In this

sense there was very little algebra before Vieta, and it would be

improper to talk of its being known to the Greeks, Arabs, or

Hindoos. The definition would also include the formulas of logic.

The original definition of algebra seems to be, the science of

finding an equation between known and unknown quantities, per

oppositionem et restaurationem.

5. Secondly, Vieta understood the transformation of equations, so as to

clear them from coefficients or surd roots, or to eliminate the second

term. This however is partly claimed by Cossali for Cardan. Yet it seems

that the process employed by Cardan was much less neat and short than

that of Vieta, which is still in use.[1352] 3. He obtained a solution of

cubic equations in a different method from that of Tartaglia. 4. “He

shows,” says Montucla, “that when the unknown quantity of any equation

may have several positive values, for it must be admitted that it is

only these that he considers, the second term has for its coefficient

the sum of these values with the sign -, the third has the sum of the

products of these values multiplied in pairs; the fourth the sum of such

products multiplied in threes, and so forth; finally, that the absolute

term is the product of all the values. Here is the discovery of Harriott

pretty nearly made.” It is at least no small advance towards it.[1353]

Cardan is said to have gone some way towards this theory, but not with

much clearness, nor extending it to equations above the third degree. 5.

He devised a method of solving equations by approximation, analogous to

the process of extracting roots, which has been superseded by the

invention of more compendious rules.[1354] 6. He has been regarded by

some as the true author of the application of algebra to geometry,

giving copious examples of the solution of problems by this method,

though all belonging to straight lines. It looks like a sign of the

geometrical relation under which he contemplated his own science, that

he uniformly denominates the first power of the unknown quantity

_latus_. But this will be found in older writers.[1355]

[1352] It is fully explained in his work De Recognitione Æquationum,

cap. 7.

[1353] Some theorems given by Vieta very shortly and without

demonstration, show his knowledge of the structure of equations. I

transcribe from Maseres, who has expressed them in the usual

algebraic language. Si _a_ + _b_ × _x_ - _x_² æquetur _ab_, _x_

explicabilis est de qualibet illarum duarum _a_ vel _b_. The second

theorem is:--

a} ab}

Si x³ - b}x² + ac}x

c} bc}

æquetur _abc_, _x_ explicabilis est de qualibet illarum trium _a_,

_b_, vel _c_. The third and fourth theorems extend this to higher

equations.

[1354] Montucla, i. 600. Hutton’s Mathematical Dictionary. Biog.

Univers. art. Viète.

[1355] It is certain that Vieta perfectly knew the relation of algebra

to magnitude as well as number, as the first pages of his In Artem

Analyticam Isagoge fully show. But it is equally certain that

Tartaglia and Cardan, and much older writers, Oriental as well as

European, knew the same; it was by help of geometry, which Cardan

calls _via regia_, that the former made his great discovery of the

solution of cubic equations. Cossali, ii. 147. Cardan, Ars Magna,

ch. xi.

_Latus_ and _radix_ are used indifferently for the first power of

the unknown quantity in the Ars Magna. Cossali contends that Fra

Luca had applied algebra to geometry. Vieta, however, it is said,

was the first who taught how to construct geometrical figures by

means of algebra, Montucla, p. 604. But compare Cossali, p. 427.

A writer lately quoted, and to whose knowledge and talents I bow

with deference, seems, as I would venture to suggest, to have

overrated the importance of that employment of letters to signify

quantities, known or unknown, which he has found in Aristotle, and

in several of the moderns, and in consequence to have depreciated

the real merit of Vieta. Leonard of Pisa, it seems, whose algebra

this writer has for the first time published, to his own honour and

the advantage of scientific history, makes use of letters as well

as lines, to represent quantities. Quelquefois il emploie des

lettres pour exprimer des quantités indéterminées, connues ou

inconnues, sans les représenter par des lignes. On voit ici comment

les modernes ont été amenés à se servir des lettres d’Alphabet

(même pour exprimer des quantités connues) long temps avant Viète,

à qui on a attribué à tort une notation qu’il faudrait peut-être

faire remonter jusqu’à Aristote, et que tant d’Algébraistes

modernes ont employée avant le géomètre Français. Car outre Leonard

di Pise, Paciolo et d’Autres géomètres Italiens firent usage des

lettres pour indiquer les quantités connues, et c’est d’eux plutôt

que d’Aristote que les modernes ont appris cette notation. Libri,

vol. ii. p. 34. But there is surely a wide interval between the use

of a short symbolic expression for particular quantities, as M.

Libri has remarked in Aristotle, or even the _partial_ employment

of letters to designate known quantities, as in the Italian

algebraists, and the method of stating general relations by the

exclusive use of letters, which Vieta first introduced. That

Tartaglia and Cardan, and even, as it now appears, Leonard of Pisa

went a certain way towards the invention of Vieta, cannot much

diminish his glory; especially when we find that he entirely

apprehended the importance of his own logistice speciosa in

science. I have mentioned above, that, as far as my observation has

gone, Vieta does not work particular problems by the specious

algebra.

6. “Algebra,” says a philosopher of the present day, “was still only an

ingenious art, limited to the investigation of numbers; Vieta displayed

all its extent, and instituted general expressions for particular

results. Having profoundly meditated on the nature of algebra, he

perceived that the chief characteristic of the science is to express

relations. Newton with the same idea defined algebra an universal

arithmetic. The first consequences of this general principle of Vieta

were his own application of his specious analysis to geometry, and the

theory of curve lines, which is due to Descartes; a fruitful idea, from

which the analysis of functions, and the most sublime discoveries, have

been deduced. It has led to the notion that Descartes is the

first who applied algebra to geometry; but this invention is really due

to Vieta; for he resolved geometrical problems by algebraic analysis,

and constructed figures by means of these solutions. These

investigations led him to the theory of angular sections, and to the

general equations which express the values of chords.”[1356] It will be

seen in the notes that some of this language requires a slight

limitation.

[1356] M. Fourier, quoted in Biographie Universelle.

7. The Algebra of Bombelli, published in 1589, is the only other

treatise of the kind during this period that seems worthy of much

notice. Bombelli saw better than Cardan the nature of what is called the

irreducible case in cubic equations. But Vieta, whether after Bombelli

or not, is not certain, had the same merit.[1357] It is remarkable that

Vieta seems to have paid little regard to the discoveries of his

predecessors. Ignorant, probably, of the writings of Record, and perhaps

even of those of Stifelius, he neither uses the sign = of equality,

employing instead the clumsy word Æquatio, or rather Æquetur,[1358] nor

numeral exponents; and Hutton observes that Vieta’s algebra has, in

consequence, the appearance of being older than it is. He mentions,

however, the signs + and -, as usual in his own time.

[1357] Cossali. Hutton.

[1358] Vieta uses =, but it is to denote that the proposition is true

both of + and -; where we put ±. It is almost a presumption of

copying one from another, that several modern writers say Vieta’s

word is _æquatio_. I have always found it _æquetur_; a difference

not material in itself.

|Geometers of this period.|

8. Amidst the great progress of algebra through the sixteenth century,

the geometers, content with what the ancients had left them, seem to

have had little care but to elucidate their remains. Euclid was the

object of their idolatry; no fault could be acknowledged in his

elements, and to write a verbose commentary upon a few propositions was

enough to make the reputation of a geometer. Among the almost

innumerable editions of Euclid that appeared, those of Commandin and

Clavius, both of them in the first rank of mathematicians for that age,

may be distinguished. Commandin, especially, was much in request in

England, where he was frequently reprinted, and Montucla calls him the

model of commentators for the pertinence and sufficiency of his notes.

The commentary of Clavius, though a little prolix, acquired a still

higher reputation. We owe to Commandin editions of the more difficult

geometers, Archimedes, Pappus, and Apollonius; but he attempted little,

and that without success, beyond the province of a translator and a

commentator. Maurolycus of Messina had no superior among contemporary

geometers. Besides his edition of Archimedes, and other labours on the

ancient mathematicians, he struck out the elegant theory, in which

others have followed him, of deducing the properties of the conic

sections from those of the cone itself. But we must refer the reader to

Montucla, and other historical and biographical works, for the less

distinguished writers of the sixteenth age.[1359]

[1359] Montucla. Kästner. Hutton. Biogr. Univ.

|Joachim Rhæticus.|

9. The extraordinary labour of Joachim Rhæticus in his trigonometrical

calculations, has been mentioned in our first volume. His Opus Palatinum

de Triangulis was published from his manuscript by Valentine Otho, in

1594. But the work was left incomplete, and the editor did not

accomplish what Joachim had designed. In his tables the sines, tangents,

and secants are only calculated to ten, instead of fifteen places of

decimals. Pitiscus, in 1613, not only completed Joachim’s intention, but

carried the minuteness of calculation a good deal farther.[1360]

[1360] Montucla, p. 581.

|Copernican theory.|

10. It can excite no wonder that the system of Copernicus, simple and

beautiful as it is, met with little encouragement for a long time after

its promulgation, when we reflect upon the natural obstacles to its

reception. Mankind can in general take these theories of the celestial

movements only upon trust from philosophers; and in this instance it

required a very general concurrence of competent judges to overcome the

repugnance of what called itself common sense, and was in fact a

prejudice as natural, as universal, and as irresistible as could

influence human belief. With this was united another, derived from the

language of Scripture; and though it might have been sufficient to

answer, that phrases implying the rest of the earth and motion of the

sun are merely popular, and such as those who are best convinced of the

opposite doctrine must employ in ordinary language, this was neither

satisfactory to the vulgar, nor recognised by the church. Nor were the

astronomers in general much more favourable to the new theory than

either the clergy or the multitude. They had taken pains to familiarise

their understandings with the Ptolemaic hypothesis; and it may be often

observed that those who have once mastered a complex theory are better

pleased with it than with one of more simplicity. The whole weight of

Aristotle’s name, which, in the sixteenth century, not only biassed the

judgment, but engaged the passions, connected as it was with general

orthodoxy and preservation of established systems, was thrown into the

scale against Copernicus. It was asked what demonstration could be given

of his hypothesis; whether the movements of the heavenly bodies could

not be reconciled to the Ptolemaic; whether the greater quantity of

motion, and the complicated arrangement which the latter required, could

be deemed sufficient objections to a scheme proceeding from the Author

of nature, to whose power and wisdom our notions of simplicity and

facility are inapplicable; whether the moral dignity of man, and his

peculiar relations to the Deity, unfolded in Scripture, did not give the

world he inhabits a better claim to the place of honour in the universe,

than could be pretended, on the score of mere magnitude, for the sun. It

must be confessed, that the strongest presumptions in favour of the

system of Copernicus were not discovered by himself.

11. It is easy, says Montucla, to reckon the number of adherents to the

Copernican theory during the sixteenth century. After Rhæticus, they may

be nearly reduced to Reinold, author of the Prussian tables; Rothman,

whom Tycho drew over afterwards to his own system; Christian Wursticius

(Ursticius), who made some proselytes in Italy; finally, Mæstlin, the

illustrious master of Kepler. He might have added Wright and Gilbert,

for the credit of England. Among the Italian proselytes made by

Wursticius, we may perhaps name Jordano Bruno, who strenuously asserts

the Copernican hypothesis; and two much greater authorities in physical

science, Benedetti and Galileo himself. It is evident that the

preponderance of valuable suffrages was already on the side of

truth.[1361]

[1361] Montucla, p. 638.

|Tycho Brahe.|

12. The predominant disinclination to contravene the apparent testimonies

of sense and Scripture had, perhaps, more effect than the desire of

originality in suggesting the middle course taken by Tycho Brahe. He was

a Dane of noble birth, and early drawn by the impulse of natural genius

to the study of astronomy. Frederic III., his sovereign, after Tycho had

already obtained some reputation, erected for him the observatory of

Uraniburg in a small isle of the Baltic. In this solitude he passed

above twenty years, accumulating the most extensive and accurate

observations which were known in Europe before the discovery of the

telescope and the improvement of astronomical instruments. These,

however, were not published till 1606, though Kepler had previously used

them in his Tabulæ Rodolphinæ. Tycho himself did far more in this

essential department of the astronomer than any of his predecessors; his

resources were much beyond those of Copernicus, and the latter years of

this century may be said to make an epoch in physical astronomy.

Frederic, Landgrave of Hesse, was more than a patron of the science. The

observations of that prince have been deemed worthy of praise long after

his rank had ceased to avail them. The emperor Rodolph, when Tycho had

been driven by envy from Denmark, gave him an asylum and the means of

carrying on his observations at Prague, where he died in 1601. He was

the first in modern times who made a catalogue of stars, registering

their positions as well as his instruments permitted him. This

catalogue, published in his Progymnasmata in 1602, contained 777, to

which, from Tycho’s own manuscripts, Kepler added 223 stars.[1362]

[1362] Montucla, p. 653-659.

|His system.|

13. In the new mundane system of Tycho Brahe, which, though first

regularly promulgated to the world in his Progymnasmata, had been

communicated in his epistles to the Landgrave of Hesse, he supposes the

five planets to move round the sun, but carries the sun itself with

these five satellites, as well as the moon, round the earth. Though

this, at least at the time, might explain the known phenomena as well as

the two other theories, its want of simplicity always prevented its

reception. Except Longomontanus, the countryman and disciple of Tycho,

scarce any conspicuous astronomer adopted an hypothesis which, if it had

been devised some time sooner, would perhaps have met with better

success. But in the seventeenth century, the wise all fell into the

Copernican theory, and the many were content without any theory at all.

14. A great discovery in physical astronomy may be assigned to Tycho.

Aristotle had pronounced comets to be meteors generated below

the orbit of the moon. But a remarkable comet in 1577 having led Tycho

to observe its path accurately, he came to the conclusion that these

bodies are far beyond the lunar orbit, and that they pass through what

had always been taken for a solid firmament, environing the starry orbs,

and which plays no small part in the system of Ptolemy. He was even near

the discovery of their elliptic revolution; the idea of a curve round

the sun having struck him, though he could not follow it by

observation.[1363]

[1363] Montucla, p. 662.

|Gregorian calendar.|

15. The acknowledged necessity of reforming the Julian calendar gave in

this age a great importance to astronomy. It is unnecessary to go into

the details of this change, effected by the authority of Gregory XIII.,

and the skill of Lilius and Clavius, the mathematicians employed under

him. The new calendar was immediately received in all countries

acknowledging the pope’s supremacy; not so much on that account, though

a discrepancy in the ecclesiastical reckoning would have been very

inconvenient, as of its real superiority over the Julian. The protestant

countries came much more slowly into the alteration; truth being no

longer truth, when promulgated by the pope. It is now admitted that the

Gregorian calendar is very nearly perfect, at least as to the

computation of the solar year, though it is not quite accurate for the

purpose of finding Easter. In that age, it had to encounter the

opposition of Mæstlin, an astronomer of deserved reputation, and of

Scaliger, whose knowledge of chronology ought to have made him

conversant with the subject, but who, by a method of squaring the

circle, which he announces with great confidence as a demonstration,

showed the world that his genius did not guide him to the exact

sciences.[1364]

[1364] Montucla, p. 674-686.

|Optics.|

16. The science of optics, as well as all other branches of the mixed

mathematics, fell very short of astronomy in the number and success of

its promoters. It was carried not much farther than the point where

Alhazen, Vitello, and Roger Bacon left it. Maurolycus of Messina, in a

treatise published in 1575, though written, according to Montucla, fifty

years before, entitled Theoremata de Lumine et Umbra, has mingled a few

novel truths with error. He explains rightly the fact that a ray of

light, received through a small aperature of any shape, produces a

circular illumination on a body intercepting it at some distance; and

points out why different defects of vision are remedied by convex or

concave lenses. He had however mistaken notions as to the visual power

of the eye, which he ascribed not to the retina but to the crystalline

humour; and on the whole, Maurolycus, though a very distinguished

philosopher in that age, seems to have made few considerable discoveries

in physical science.[1365] Baptista Porta, who invented, or at least

made known, the camera obscura, though he dwells on many optical

phenomena in his Magia Naturalis, sometimes making just observations,

had little insight into the principles that explain them.[1366] The

science of perspective has been more frequently treated, especially in

this period, by painters and architects than by mathematicians. Albert

Durer, Serlio, Vignola, and especially Peruzzi, distinguished themselves

by practical treatises; but the geometrical principles were never well

laid down before the work of Guido Ubaldi in 1600.[1367]

[1365] Id. p. 695.

[1366] Montucla, p. 698.

[1367] Id. p. 708.

|Mechanics.|

17. This author, of a noble family in the Apennines, ranks high also

among the improvers of theoretical mechanics. This great science,

checked, like so many others, by the erroneous principles of Aristotle,

made scarce any progress till near the end of the century. Cardan and

Tartaglia wrote upon the subject; but their acuteness in abstract

mathematics did not compensate for a want of accurate observation and a

strange looseness of reasoning. Thus Cardan infers that the power

required to sustain a weight on an inclined plane varies in the exact

ratio of the angle, because it vanishes when the plane is horizontal,

and becomes equal to the weight when the plane is perpendicular. But

this must be the case if the power follows any other law of direct

variation, as that of the sine of inclination, that is, the height,

which it really does.[1368] Tartaglia, on his part, conceived that a

cannon-ball did not indeed describe two sides of a parallelogram, as was

commonly imagined even by scientific writers, but, what is hardly less

absurd, that its point-blank direction and line of perpendicular descent

are united by a circular arch, to which they are tangents. It was

generally agreed, till the time of Guido Ubaldi, that the arms of a

lever charged with equal weights, if displaced from the horizontal

position, would recover it when set at liberty. Benedetti of Turin had

juster notions than his Italian contemporaries; he ascribed the

centrifugal force of bodies to their tendency to move in a straight

line; he determined the law of equilibrium for the oblique lever, and

even understood the composition of motions.[1369]

[1368] Id. p. 690.

[1369] Montucla, p. 693.

18. If, indeed, we should give credit to the sixteenth century for all

that was actually discovered, and even reduced to writing, we might now

proceed to the great name of Galileo. For it has been said that his

treatise Della Scienza Mechanica was written in 1592, though not

published for more than forty years afterwards.[1370] But as it has been

our rule, with not many exceptions, to date books from their

publication, we must defer any mention of this remarkable work to the

next volume. The experiments, however, made by Galileo, when lecturer in

mathematics at Pisa, on falling bodies, come strictly within our limits.

He was appointed to this office in 1589, and left it in 1592. Among the

many unfounded assertions of Aristotle in physics, it was one that the

velocity of falling bodies was proportionate to their weights; Galileo

took advantage of the leaning tower of Pisa to prove the contrary. But

this important, though obvious experiment, which laid open much of the

theory of motion, displeased the adherents of Aristotle so highly, that

they compelled him to leave Pisa. He soon obtained a chair in the

university of Padua.

[1370] Playfair has fallen into the mistake of supposing that this

treatise was _published_ in 1592; and those who, on second

thoughts, would have known better, have copied him.

|Statics of Stevinus.|

19. But on the same principle that we exclude the work of Galileo on

mechanics from the sixteenth century, it seems reasonable to mention

that of Simon Stevinus of Bruges; since the first edition of his Statics

and Hydrostatics was printed in Dutch as early as 1585, though we can

hardly date its reception among the scientific public before the Latin

edition in 1608. Stevinus has been chiefly known by his discovery of the

law of equilibrium on the inclined plane, which had baffled the

ancients, and, as we have seen, was mistaken by Cardan. Stevinus

supposed a flexible chain of uniform weight to descend down the sides of

two connected planes, and to hang in a sort of festoon below. The chain

would be in equilibrio, because, if it began to move, there would be no

reason why it should not move for ever, the circumstances being

unaltered by any motion it could have; and thus there would be a

perpetual motion, which is impossible. But the part below, being equally

balanced, must, separately taken, be in equilibrio. Consequently the

part above, lying along the planes, must also be in equilibrio; and

hence the weight of the two parts of the chain must be equal, or if that

lying along the shorter plane be called the power, it will be to the

other as the lengths; or if there be but one plane, and the power hang

perpendicularly, as the height to the length.

20. It has been doubted whether this demonstration of Stevinus be

satisfactory, and also whether the theorem had not been proved in a

different manner by an earlier writer. The claims of Stevinus, however,

have very recently been maintained by an author of high reputation.[1371]

The Statics of this ingenious mathematician contain several novel and

curious theorems on the properties of other mechanical powers besides

the inclined plane. But Montucla has attributed to him what I cannot

find in his works. “In resolving these questions (concerning the ratios

of weights on the oblique pulley), and several others, he frequently

makes use of the famous principle which is the basis of the Nouvelle

Mécanique of M. Varignon. He forms a triangle, of which the three sides

are parallel to the three directions, namely, of the weight and the two

powers which support it; and he shows that these three lines express

this weight and these powers respectively.”[1372] Playfair, copying

Montucla, I presume, without looking at Stevinus, has repeated this

statement, and it will be found in other modern histories of physical

science. This theorem, however, of Varignon, commonly called the

triangle of forces, will not, unless I am greatly mistaken, be

discovered in Stevinus. Had it been known to him, we may presume that he

would have employed it, as is done in modern works on mechanics, for

demonstrating the law of equilibrium on the inclined plane, instead of

his catenarian hypothesis, which is at least not so elegant or capable

of so simple a proof. It is true that in treating of the oblique pulley,

he resolves the force into two, one parallel, the other perpendicular to

the weight; and thus displays his acquaintance with the composition of

forces. But whether he had a clear perception of all the dynamical laws,

involved in the demonstration of Varignon’s theorem, may possibly be

doubtful; at least, we do not find that he has employed it.

[1371] Playfair’s Dissertation. Whewell’s Hist. of Inductive Sciences,

ii. 11, 14. Compare Drinkwater’s Life of Galileo, p. 83. The

reasoning which Mr. W. suggests for Stevinus, whether it had

occurred to him or not, may be very just, but borders, perhaps,

rather too much on the metaphysics of science.

[1372] Montucla, ii. 180.

|Hydrostatics.|

21. The first discovery made in hydrostatics since the time of Archimedes

is due to Stevinus. He found that the vertical pressure of fluids on a

horizontal surface is as the product of the base of the vessel by its

height, and showed the law of pressure even on the sides.[1373]

[1373] Montucla, ii. 180.

|Gilbert on the Magnet.|

22. The year 1600 was the first in which England produced a remarkable

work in physical science; but this was one sufficient to raise a lasting

reputation to its author. Gilbert, a physician, in his Latin treatise on

the Magnet, not only collected all the knowledge which others had

possessed on that subject, but became at once the father of experimental

philosophy in this island, and by a singular felicity and acuteness of

genius, the founder of theories which have been revived after the lapse

of ages, and are almost universally received into the creel of the

science. The magnetism of the earth itself, his own original hypothesis,

nova illa nostra et inaudita de tellure sententia, could not, of course,

be confirmed by all the experimental and analogical proof, which has

rendered that doctrine accepted in recent philosophy; but it was by no

means one of those vague conjectures that are sometimes unduly

applauded, when they receive a confirmation by the favour of fortune. He

relied on the analogy of terrestrial phenomena to those exhibited by

what he calls a _terrella_, or artificial spherical magnet. What

may be the validity of his reasonings from experiment it is for those

who are conversant with the subject to determine, but it is evidently by

the torch of experiment that he was guided. A letter from Edward Wright,

whose authority as a mathematician is of some value, admits the

terrestrial magnetism to be proved. Gilbert was also one of our earliest

Copernicans, at least as to the rotation of the earth;[1374] and with

his usual sagacity inferred, before the invention of the telescope; that

there must be a multitude of fixed stars beyond the reach of our

vision.[1375]

[1374] Mr. Whewell thinks that Gilbert was more doubtful about the

annual than the diurnal motion of the earth, and informs us that in

a posthumous work he seems to hesitate between Tycho and

Copernicus. Hist. of Inductive Sciences, i. 389. Gilbert’s argument

for the diurnal motion would extend to the annual. Non probabilis

modo sed manifesta videtur terræ diurna circumvolutio, cum natura

semper agit per pauciora magis quam plura, atque rationi magis

consentaneum videtur unum exiguum corpus telluris diurnam

volutationem efficere quam mundum totum circumferri.

[1375] l. 6. c. 3. The article on Gilbert in the Biographie Universelle

is discreditable to that publication. If the author was so very

ignorant as not to have known anything of Gilbert, he might at

least have avoided the assumption that nothing was to be known.

Sarpi, who will not be thought an incompetent judge, names Gilbert

with Vieta, as the only original writers among his contemporaries.

Non ho veduto in questo secolo uomo quale abbia scritto cosa sua

propria, salvo Vieta in Francia e Gilberti in Inghilterra. Lettere

di Fra Paolo, p. 31.

SECT. II.--ON NATURAL HISTORY.

_Zoology--Gesner, Aldrovandus. Botany--Lobel, Cæsalpin, and others._

|Gesner’s Zoology.|

23. Zoology and botany, in the middle of the sixteenth century, were as

yet almost neglected fields of knowledge; scarce anything had been added

to the valuable history of animals by Aristotle, and those of plants by

Theophrastus and Dioscorides. But in the year 1551 was published the

first part of an immense work, the History of Animals, by that prodigy

of general erudition, Conrad Gesner. This treats of viviparous

quadrupeds; the second, which appeared in 1554, of the oviparous; the

third, in 1555, of birds; the fourth, in the following year, of fishes

and aquatic animals; and one, long afterwards published in 1587, relates

to serpents. The first part was reprinted with additions in 1560, and a

smaller work of woodcuts and shorter descriptions, called Icones

Animalium, appeared in 1553.

|Its character by Cuvier.|

24. This work of the first great naturalist of modern times is thus

eulogised by one of the latest:--“Gesner’s History of Animals,” says

Cuvier, “may be considered as the basis of all modern zoology; copied

almost literally by Aldrovandus, abridged by Jonston, it has become the

foundation of much more recent works; and more than one famous author

has borrowed from it silently most of his learning; for those passages

of the ancients, which have escaped Gesner, have scarce ever been

observed by the moderns. He deserved their confidence by his accuracy,

his perspicuity, his good faith, and sometimes by the sagacity of his

views. Though he has not laid down any natural classification by genera,

he often points out very well the true relations of beings.”[1376]

[1376] Biogr. Universelle, art. Gesner.

|Gesner’s arrangement.|

25. Gesner treats of every animal under eight heads or chapters: 1. Its

name in different languages; 2. Its external description and usual place

of habitation (or what naturalists call _habitat_); 3. Its natural

actions, length of life, diseases, &c.; 4. Its disposition, or, as we

may say, moral character; 5. Its utility, except for food and medicine;

6. Its use as food; 7. Its use in medicine; 8. The philological

relations of the name and qualities, their proper and figurative use in

language, which is subdivided into several sections. So comprehensive a

notion of zoology displays a mind accustomed to encyclopedic systems,

and loving the labours of learning for their own sake. Much of course

would have a very secondary value in the eyes of a good naturalist. His

method is alphabetical, but it may be reckoned an alphabet of genera;

for he arranges what he deems cognate species together. In the Icones

Animalium we find somewhat more of classification. Gesner divides

quadrupeds into Animalia Mansueta and Animalia Fera; the former in two,

the latter in four orders. Cuvier, in the passage above cited, writing

probably from memory, has hardly done justice to Gesner in this respect.

The delineations in the History of Animals and in the Icones are very

rude; and it is not always easy, with so little assistance from

engraving, to determine the species from his description.

|His additions to known quadrupeds.|

26. Linnæus, though professing to give the synonyms of his predecessors,

has been frequently careless and unjust towards Gesner; his mention of

several quadrupeds (the only part of the latter’s work at which I have

looked), having been unnoticed in the Systema Naturæ. We do not find

however that Gesner had made very considerable additions to the number

of species known to the ancients; and it cannot be reckoned a proof of

his acuteness in zoology, that he placed the hippopotamus among aquatic

animals, and the bat among birds. In the latter extraordinary error he

was followed by all other naturalists till the time of Ray. Yet he shows

some judgment in rejecting plainly fabulous animals. In the edition of

1551 I find but few quadrupeds, except those belonging to the countries

round the Mediterranean, or mentioned by Pliny and Ælian.[1377] The

Reindeer, which it is doubtful whether the ancients knew, though there

seems reason to believe that it was formerly an inhabitant of Poland and

Germany, he found in Albertus Magnus; and from him too Gesner had got

some notion of the Polar Bear. He mentions the Musk deer, which was

known through the Arabian writers, though unnoticed by the ancients. The

new world furnished him with a scanty list. Among these is the Opossum,

or Semi-Vulpa (for which Linnæus has not given him credit), an account

of which he may have found in Pinzon or Peter Martyr;[1378] the Manati,

of which he found a description in Hernando’s History of the Indies; and

the Guinea Pig, Cuniculus Indus, which he says was, within a few years,

first brought to Europe from the New World, but was become everywhere

common. In the edition of 1560, several more species are introduced.

Olaus Magnus had, in the meantime, described the Glutton; and Belon had

found an Armadillo among itinerant quacks in Turkey, though he knew that

it came from America.[1379] Belon had also described the Axis deer of

India. The Sloth appears for the first time in this edition of Gesner,

and the Sagoin, or Ouistiti, as well as what he calls Mus Indicus alius,

which Linnæus refers to the Racoon, but seems rather to be the Nasua, or

Coati Mondi. Gesner has given only three cuts of monkeys, but was aware

that there were several kinds, and distinguishes them in description. I

have not presumed to refer his cuts to particular species, which

probably, on account of their rudeness, a good naturalist would not

attempt. The Simia Inues, or Barbary ape, seems to be one, as we might

expect.[1380] Gesner was not very diligent in examining the histories of

the New World. Peter Martyr and Hernando would have supplied him with

several he has overlooked, as the Tapir, the Pecary, the Anteater, and

the fetid Polecat.[1381]

[1377] In Cardan, De Subtilitate, lib. 10, published in 1550, I find

the anteater, ursus formicarius, which, if I am not mistaken,

Gesner has omitted, though it is in Hernando d’Oviedo; also a

cercopithecus, as large as man, which persists long in standing

erect, amat pueros et mulieres, conaturque concumbere, quod nos

vidimus. This was probably one of the large baboons of Africa.

[1378] In the voyage of Pinzon, the companion of Columbus in his last

voyage, when the continent of Guiana was discovered, which will be

found in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus, a specimen of the genus

Didelphis is mentioned with the astonishment which the first

appearance of the marsupial type would naturally excite in a

European. Conspexere etiamnum ibi animal quadrupes, prodigiosum

quidem; nam pars anterior vulpem, posterior vero simiam

præsentabat, nisi quod pedes effingit humanos; aures autem habet

noctuæ, et infra consuetam alvum aliam habet instar crumenæ, in qua

delitescunt catuli ejus tantisper, donec tuto prodire queant, et

absque parentis tutela cibatum quærere, nec unquam exeunt crumenam,

nisi cum sugunt. Portentosum hoc animal cum catulis tribus Sibiliam

delatum est; et ex Sibilia Illiberim, id est Granatam, in gratiam

regum, qui novis semper rebus oblectantur, p. 116, edit. 1532. In

Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis, dec. i. lib. 9, we find a longer

account of the monstrosum illud animal vulpino rostro,

cercopithecea cauda, verpertilioneis auribus, manibus humanius,

pedibus simiam æmulans; quod natos jam filios alio gestat quocunque

proficiscatur utero exteriore in modum magnæ crumenæ. This animal,

he says, lived some months in Spain, and was seen by him after its

death. Several species are natives of Guiana.

[1379] Tatus, quadrupes peregrina. The species figured in Gesner is

Dasypus novem cinctus. This animal, however, is mentioned by

Hernando d’Oviedo under the name Bardati.

[1380] Sunt et cynocephalorum diversa genera, nec unum genus

caudatorum. I think he knew the leading characteristics founded on

the tail, but did not attend accurately to subordinate

distinctions, though he knew them to exist. The three principal

Simian divisions were familiarly known in Europe not very long

after the time of Gesner, as we find by an old song of Elizabeth’s

time:--

The ape, the monkey, and baboon did meet

A breaking of their fast in Friday Street.

British Bibliographer, i. 342.

[1381] The Tapir is mentioned by Peter Martyr, the rest in Hernando.

|Belon.|

27. Less acquainted with books but with better opportunities of

observing nature than Gesner, his contemporary Belon made greater

accessions to zoology. Besides, his excellent travels in the Levant and

Egypt, we have from him a history of fishes in Latin, printed in 1553,

and translated by the author into French, with alterations and

additions; and one of birds, published in French in 1555, written with

great learning, though not without fabulous accounts, as was usual in

the earlier period of natural history. Belon was perhaps the first, at

least in modern times, who had glimpses of a great typical conformity in

nature. In one of his works he places the skeletons of a man and a bird

in apposition, in order to display their essential analogy. He

introduced also many exotic plants into France. Every one knows, says a

writer of the last century, that our gardens owe all their beauty to

Belon.[1382] The same writer has satisfactorily cleared this eminent

naturalist from the charge of plagiarism, to which credit had been

hastily given.[1383] Belon may on the whole be placed by the side of

Gesner.

[1382] Liron, Singularités Historiques, i. 456.

[1383] Id. p. 438. It had been suspected that the manuscripts of

Gilles, the author of a compilation from Ælian, who had himself

travelled in the east, fell into the hands of Belon who published

them as his own. Gesner has been thought to insinuate this; but

Liron is of opinion that Belon was not meant by him.

|Salviani and Rondelet’s Ichthyology.|

28. Salviani published in 1558 a history of fishes (Animalium Aquatilium

Historia), with figures well executed, but by no means numerous. He

borrows most of his materials from the ancients, and having frequently

failed in identifying the species they describe, cannot be read without

precaution.[1384] But Rondelet (De Piscibus Marinis, 1554), was far

superior as an ichthyologist, in the judgment of Cuvier, to any of his

contemporaries, both by the number of fishes he has known, and the

accuracy of his figures, which exceed three hundred for fresh-water and

marine species. His knowledge of those which inhabit the Mediterranean

Sea was so extensive that little has been added since his time. “It is

the work,” says the same great authority, “which has supplied almost

everything which we find on that subject in Gesner, Aldrovandus,

Willoughby, Artedi, and Linnæus; and even Lacepede has been obliged, in

many instances, to depend on Rondelet.” The text, however, is far

inferior to the figures, and is too much occupied with an attempt to fix

the ancient names of the several species.[1385]

[1384] Biogr. Univ. (Cuvier.)

[1385] Biogr. Univ.

|Aldrovandus.|

29. The very little book of Dr. Caius on British Dogs, published in

1570, the whole of which I believe has been translated by Pennant in his

British Zoology, is hardly worth mentioning; nor do I know that

zoological literature has anything more to produce till almost the close

of the century, when the first and second volumes of Aldrovandus’s vast

natural history was published. These, as well as the third, which

appeared in 1603, treat of birds; the fourth is on insects; and these

alone were given to the world by the laborious author, a professor of

natural history at Bologna. After his death in 1605, nine more folio

volumes, embracing with various degrees of detail most other parts of

natural history, were successively published by different editors. “We

can only consider the works of Aldrovandus,” says Cuvier, “as an immense

compilation without taste or genius; the very plan and materials being

in a great measure borrowed from Gesner; and Buffon has had reason to

say that it would be reduced to a tenth part of its bulk by striking out

the useless and impertinent matter.”[1386] Buffon, however, which Cuvier

might have gone on to say, praises the method of Aldrovandus and his

fidelity of description, and even ranks his work above every other

natural history.[1387] I am not acquainted with its contents; but

according to Linnæus, Aldrovandus, or the editors of his posthumous

volumes, added only a very few species of quadrupeds to those mentioned

by Gesner, among which are the Zebra, the Jerboa, the Musk Rat of

Russia, and the Manis or Scaly Anteater.[1388]

[1386] Id.

[1387] Hist. Naturelle, Premier Discours. The truth is that all

Buffon’s censures on Aldrovandus fall equally on Gesner, who is not

less accumulative of materials not properly bearing on natural

history, and not much less destitute of systematic order. The

remarks of Buffon on this waste of learning are very just, and

applicable to the works of the sixteenth century on almost every

subject as well as zoology.

[1388] Collections of natural history seem to have been formed by all

who applied themselves to the subject in the sixteenth century;

such as Cordus, Mathiolus, Mercati, Gesner, Agricola, Belon,

Rondelet, Ortelius, and many others. Hakluyt mentions the cabinets

of some English collectors from which he had derived assistance.

Beckmann’s Hist. of Inventions, ii. 57.

|Botany; Turner.|

30. A more steady progress was made in the science of botany, which

commemorates, in those living memorials with which she delights to

honour her cultivators, several names still respected, and several books

that have not lost their utility. Our countryman, Dr. Turner, published

the first part of a New Herbal in 1551; the second and third did not

appear till 1562 and 1568. “The arrangement,” says Pulteney, “is

alphabetical according to the Latin names, and after the description he

frequently specifies the places and growth. He is ample in his

discrimination of the species, as his great object was to ascertain the

Materia Medica of the ancients, and of Dioscorides in particular,

throughout the vegetable kingdom. He first gives names to many English

plants; and allowing for the time when specifical distinctions were not

established, when almost all the small plants were disregarded, and the

Cryptogamia almost wholly overlooked, the number he was acquainted with

is much beyond what could easily have been imagined in an original

writer on his subject.”[1389]

[1389] Pulteney’s Historical Sketch of the Progress of Botany in

England, p. 68.

|Maranta; Botanical Gardens.|

31. The work of Maranta, published in 1559, on the method of

understanding medicinal plants, is, in the judgment of a later writer of

considerable reputation, nearly at the head of any in that age. The

author is independent, though learned, extremely acute in discriminating

plants known to the ancients, and has discovered many himself,

ridiculing those who dared to add nothing to Dioscorides.[1390] Maranta

had studied in the private gardens formed by Pinelli at Naples. But

public gardens were common in Italy. Those of Pisa and Padua were the

earliest, and perhaps the most celebrated. One established by the Duke

of Ferrara, was peculiarly rich in exotic plants procured from Greece

and Asia.[1391] And perhaps the generous emulation in all things

honourable between the houses of Este and Medici led Ferdinand of

Tuscany, sometime afterwards near the end of the century, to enrich the

gardens of Pisa with the finest plants of Asia and America. The climate

of France was less favourable; the first public garden seems to have

been formed at Montpellier, and there was none at Paris in 1558.[1392]

Meantime the vegetable productions of newly discovered countries became

familiar to Europe. Many are described in the excellent History of the

Indies by Hernando d’Oviedo, such as the Cocos, the Cactus, the Guiacum.

Another Spanish author, Carate, first describes the Solanum Tuberosum,

or potato, under the name of Papas.[1393] It has been said that tobacco

is first mentioned, or at least first well described by Benzoni, in Nova

Novi Orbis Historia, (Geneva, 1578).[1394] Belon went to the Levant soon

after the middle of the century, on purpose to collect plants; several

other writers of voyages followed before its close. Among these was

Prosper Alpinus, who passed several years in Egypt, but his principal

work, De Plantis Exoticis is posthumous, and did not appear till 1627.

He is said to be the first European author who has mentioned

coffee.[1395]

[1390] Sprengel Historia Rei Herbariæ (1807), i. 345.

[1391] Id. 360.

[1392] Id. 363.

[1393] Id. 378.

[1394] Id. 373.

[1395] Id. 384. Corniani, vi. 25. Biogr. Univ. Yet, in the article on

Rauwolf, a German naturalist, who published an account of his

travels in the Levant as early as 1581, he is mentioned as one of

the first qui ait parlé de l’usage de boire du café, et en ait

décrit la preparation avec exactitude. It is possible that this

book of Rauwolf being written in German, and the author being

obscure in comparison with Prosper Alpinus, his prior claim has

been till lately overlooked.

|Gesner.|

32. The critical examination of the ancients, the establishment of

gardens, the travels of botanists thus furnished a great supply of

plants; it was now required to compare and arrange them. Gesner first

undertook this; he had formed a garden of his own at Zurich, and has the

credit of having discovered the true system of classifying plants

according to the organs of fructification; which however he does not

seem to have made known, nor were his botanical writings published till

the last century. Gesner was the first who mentions the Indian Sugarcane

and the Tobacco, as well as many indigenous plants. It is said that he

was used to chew and smoke tobacco, “by which he rendered himself giddy

and in a manner drunk.”[1396] As Gesner died in 1564, this carries back

the knowledge of tobacco in Europe several years beyond the

above-mentioned treatise of Benzoni.

[1396] Sprengel, 373, 390.

|Dodoens.|

33. Dodoens, or Dodonæus, a Dutch physician, in 1553, translated into

his own language the history of plants by Fuchs, to which he added 133

figures. These, instead of using the alphabetical order of his

predecessor, he arranged according to a method which he thought more

natural. “He explains,” says Sprengel, “well and learnedly the ancient

botanists, and described many plants for the first time;” among these

are the Ulex Europæus and the Hyacinthus non scriptus. The great aim of

rendering the modern Materia Medica conformable to the ancient seems to

have made the early botanists rather inattentive to objects before their

eyes. Dodoens himself is rather a physician than a botanist, and is more

diligent about the uses of plants than their characteristics. He

collected all his writings, under the title Stirpium Historiæ Pemptades

Sex, at Antwerp in 1583, with 1341 figures, a greater number than had

yet been published.

|Lobel.|

34. The Stirpium Adversaria by Pena and Lobel, the latter of whom is

best known as a botanist, was published at London in 1570. Lobel indeed,

though a native of Lille, having passed most of his life in England, may

be fairly counted among our botanists. He had previously travelled much

over Europe. “In the execution of this work,” says Pulteney, “there is

exhibited, I believe, the first sketch, rude as it is, of a natural

method of arrangement, which however extends no further than throwing

the plants into large tribes, families, or orders, according to the

external appearance or habit of the whole plant or flower, without

establishing any definitions or characters. The whole forms forty-four

tribes. Some contain the plants of or two modern genera, others many,

and some, it must be owned, very incongruous to each other. On the whole

they are much superior to Dodoens’s divisions.”[1397] Lobel’s Adversaria

contains descriptions of 1200 or 1500 plants with 272 engravings; the

former are not clear or well expressed, and in this he is inferior to

his contemporaries; the latter are on copper, very small, but

neat.[1398] In a later work, the Plantarum Historia, Antwerp, 1576, the

number of figures is very considerably greater, but the book has been

less esteemed, being a sort of complement to the other. Sprengel speaks

more highly of Lobel than the Biographie Universelle.

[1397] Historical Sketch, p. 102.

[1398] Sprengel, 399.

|Clusius.|