And for the poor, a home in their old age, the care of religious

women in time of sickness, generous maintenance, kindness, honour,

and respect. What a prodigious amount of moral and religious

education was conveyed in schools for the young, annexed to such

hospitals and colleges, wherein the two duties of prayer and

almsdeeds made up a portion of the daily life, and in which the

instincts of reverence must have become a sort of second nature!

In the fifteenth century we find these foundations rapidly

multiplying, and their scholastic character assuming a larger

development. To the masters of grammar and singing is now frequently

added a third for _writing_; the grammar-master is not unfrequently

provided with an usher, which seems to argue that the scholars were

becoming more numerous, and the salary of the masters is fixed higher

than that of the other priests. In the College of Bradgate in Kent no

chaplain was to be admitted who had not three qualifications--_bene

legere, bene construere, et bene cantare_. The great English prelates

had a special love for founding colleges of this description in the

places of their birth. Thus Thomas Scott, Archbishop of York, founded

the college and school of Rotherham; and Kempe, Archbishop of York,

and cardinal, who was a poor husbandman’s son, converted the parish

church of Wye, his native place, into a college for the education

of youth, and for perpetual prayer to be made therein “for the

sowles of them that set hym to schole.” And Chichele of Canterbury,

as has been already said, founded the college of Higham Ferrars in

Northamptonshire. This formerly occupied a grand quadrangle with

two great wings. The schoolhouse, in the florid style of Gothic

architecture, is, I believe, still standing; but the remainder of the

stately and beautiful buildings were a few years since laid waste

by the steward of a noble earl, and the site occupied by barns and

hunting stables. Choral schools appear moreover to have been attached

to the private chapels of great households. Thus there was a “Maister

of the childer” among the officers of the Earl of Northumberland’s

chapel, and the eight children belonging to King Edward IV.’s chapel

had likewise their “Maister” who was to draw them not only to the

study of prictsong, but also to that of their _facet_ or grammar,

“and suche other vertuous things.” Moreover his household accounts

contain the pay and livery of the “Scholmaster’s teaching, given in

the house.” Besides this choral school the same king maintained a

sort of Palatine Academy at his court, formed of six or more young

gentlemen, or _henxmen_, as they are called, whose master was to

teach them “to read clenely and surely, to learn them their harness;”

and moreover to teach them “_sundry languages_, and other vertuous

learnings, such as to harp, to pipe, to sing and to dance, each to be

trained to that kind of vertue that he is most apt to learn, with

remembrance dayly of Goddes Service.”

Another proof of the increasing interest which was being felt in the

work of education, is the occasional transformation of charitable,

into educational, institutions. Reading school was originally one

of those numerous hospitals which the lordly abbots had established

in their town. It was designed for certain poor women serving God

day and night, who prayed for the king’s estate and the soul of the

founder, the good abbot, Hugh. They had a fair chapel for divine

service, bread, meat, and drink from the abbey, and an annual sum of

money and outfit of clothing. The sisters were widows of respectable

persons in the town who had fallen into poverty; they had a _quasi_

religious character, and the formulary of their admission included

prayer, sprinkling of holy water, the blessing of the veil and

mantle, and the giving of the kiss of peace. In 1446, Abbot Thorne

suppressed this hospice, though as he applied its revenues to the

use of the almoner, we will hope that they were expended in charity.

“On a tyme, however,” says an anonymous and rather discontented

writer, “Kyng Edward IV. cam through Redyng to Woodstock,” and

expressed himself much displeased that “Saint Johny’s House,” as well

as another house for lazars, had been diverted from its original

purpose. He commanded Beauchamp, Bishop of Salisbury, to institute a

reform, but he was unable to do so, and departed “ful ylle content.”

However, some years later, at the suggestion of Henry VII., the

hospital was re-endowed as “a fre scole,” and although when the

nameless author, above quoted, wrote, there was as yet “neither

scole, nor man, nor woman, nor chyld, relieved there,” yet in due

time the master and usher were appointed, and the school attained

no inconsiderable renown as a place of learning. It is remarkable

that among the privileges of the abbots of Reading was that of

granting school licenses. No one was permitted to open a school of

any description in the town without the approbation of the Abbot and

Convent, who exercised within certain limits the same authority as a

diocesan chancellor.

At Bury, again, the abbots had so early as 1193 founded in the town

a free school for forty poor boys. The building was near the present

shire house whence the street still retains the name of School

Street. This school was still flourishing in the reign of Henry VI.,

for we find a letter addressed by Abbot Curteys, a great friend of

that amiable and scholar-loving king, to Master William Farceaux,

graduate in grammar and arts, and master of the School of Bury. And

not to weary the reader with the enumeration of names and places, I

will only add that all the large abbeys appear to have maintained not

one, but several of these endowed free schools in various parts of

their domains.

The greater variety of seminaries now existing was gradually

introducing a greater separation of classes; hitherto students of

all ranks had mingled under the same master, but now aristocratic

distinctions began to be made. Eton soon became the favourite

resort of the sons of the gentry, though not a few continued to be

prepared for the universities at the monastic schools, especially at

Glastonbury and Pollesworth. The latter was found in an admirable

state of discipline at the time of the suppression, when the

commissioners testified to the fact that the town which had sprung

up round the monastery was almost entirely peopled, by “artifycers,

laborers, and vitellers, that lyve by the said house, and the

repayre and resorte that ys made to the _gentylmennes children and

studiounts_ that doo ther lif to the numbre of xxx. or xl. and moo,

that ther be right vertuously brought upp.” At Hyde Abbey eight noble

youths were received as students, who always ate at the abbot’s

table. Winchcombe likewise retained its character for learning, and

Abbot Kidderminster, by his wise government and encouragement of good

letters, is said to have made his school flourish so much that it

became equal to a little university.

If we put together the different classes of schools enumerated above,

it will, I think, appear that in the fifteenth century England was

quite as amply provided with the means of education for rich and poor

as she is in the present day. There were, it seems, two large public

schools for the gentry, other schools for the upper classes attached

to monasteries and the larger colleges; monastic and collegiate

schools for the middle classes, and other endowed free schools of a

similar grade, and schools attached to smaller hospitals, evidently

for a yet humbler class, such as the children of the neighbouring

villages, or the tenantry of the founder; and lastly, there were the

priests’ or parish schools, usually governed by a dame.

A more general interest was being felt in the work of education

among all classes, and an attentive study of the household accounts

of noble families of this period will discover among the items of

expenditure a more frequent mention of “pennes,” “ynke,” and “bokes.”

Hallam notices that the Paston letters, all written by members of

a private family during the reigns of Henry VI., Edward IV., and

Richard III., are not only grammatical, but fluent and elegant in

their style, and he remarks that it is a proof how unfairly we

should measure the refinement and education of an age merely by its

published literature. England in the fifteenth century was in too

troublous a state for men to have much leisure for writing books; and

hence though there was evidently an increased relish for literary

pursuits under our Lancastrian princes, we are not surprised to find

few additions to our national literature during this period. Yet

some writers there were, such as the poets Occleve and Lydgate; the

former a disciple of Chaucer, and author of a poem on the education

of princes; whilst Lydgate, the monk of Bury, enjoyed an immense

reputation in his own day, and in ours has been equally undervalued.

He was educated at Oxford, and was a man of varied learning, familiar

with the literature of France and Italy, both which countries he had

visited, a mathematician and a classical scholar, and altogether

well qualified to fill the post of professor in his own abbey.

Here he taught the sons of the nobility “the art of versification,

_elegancies_, poetry, rhetoric, geometry, astronomy, and theology.”

He was equally esteemed by the pious king Henry VI., who visited him

in his monastic cell, and by the London goldsmiths and citizens,

who employed him in writing verses, and contriving quaint devices

for their May games and city pageants. Of his two hundred and fifty

poems none have been judged worthy to find a place in the various

collections of the British poets, published during the last century.

Halliwell has published a selection of his minor pieces, but his

“Court of Sapience,” a noble poem extending to several hundred

stanzas, remains still in MS., or in the early Caxton editions. The

student of English literature is often perplexed to understand the

principles which appear to have directed the choice of our modern

editors. With the exception of Chaucer and Gower, whose claims were

too great to be disallowed, no ante-reformation poets are admitted

into the collections of Southey or Chalmers, with the exception

of Hawes and Skelton, whose doggerel is tolerated, possibly on

account of its scurrility. Even Occleve, though but a second-rate

versifier, is better than these, but Lydgate’s “Court of Sapience”

is incomparably superior to anything that appeared between the times

of Chaucer and Spenser. Its tone, however, is essentially Catholic,

and even theological, and this, together with the monkish titles of

some of his works, such as _the Lyf of our Ladye, and the Legende of

St. Edmund_, seem to have occasioned his exclusion by collectors,

who have not been ashamed to rake together all the rubbish, and

worse than rubbish, of our Restoration and Georgian periods. If the

ancient religious poetry of this country should ever find an editor,

readers who are accustomed to suppose that intelligible English dates

from the time of Spenser, would be amazed at the power and pathos

possessed by earlier writers. When we examine such poetical fragments

as are still preserved, the wonder perhaps ceases, that they should

have found small favour from modern editors. For the most part they

are devoted to celebrate the glories of the Blessed Virgin, or the

Mysteries of the Passion. The first subject has, of course, no chance

of indulgence from a Protestant public, and the second is hardly more

popular when treated precisely in the same spirit as it is presented

to us in the prayers of St. Bridget, or the devout productions of

antique Christian art. To Catholics, however, it is a joy and a

solace to look back into past centuries, and remember that there were

days when our poets drank of a purer fount than that of Castaly;

and made it their pride to celebrate in their verse, not Dian, nor

Proserpine, but the Immaculate Queen of Heaven. Of Chaucer’s devotion

to this theme I have already spoken, but other poets before his time

delighted in dedicating their verses to her who, as she has inspired

the most exquisite designs of the artist’s pencil, has also claimed

not the least beautiful productions of the poet’s pen. Thus, one

sings of her as “Dame Lyfe,” and describes how

As she came by the bankes, the boughs eche one,

Lowked to the Ladye, and layd forth their branches,

Blossoms and burgens (new shoots) breathed ful swete,

Floures bloomed in the path where she forth stepped,

And the gras that was dry greened belive.

Others, according to their quaint fashion, mixed up English and

Latin rhymes in a style which, barbarous as it is, is certainly not

deficient in harmony. One little poem, ascribed to a writer in the

reign of Henry III., commences thus:--

Of all that is so fayr and bright,

Velut maris Stella;

Brighter than the day is light,

Parens et puella.

I crie to The, Thou se to me,

Levedy, preye the Sone for me,

Tam pia,

That Ich mote come to The,

Maria.

Another class of poems is dedicated to the sorrows of Mary; from

one of which, apparently of the fourteenth century, entitled “The

Lamentation of the Blessed Virgin,” I extract but two verses, the

exceeding pathos of which can hardly be surpassed. Our Ladye is

supposed to be addressing her complaint to some happy mother, and

drawing a contrast between _her_ joys and her own sorrows:

O woman, a chaplet chosen thou hast

Thi childe to wear it does the gret likynge,

Thou settest it on with great solas,

And I sit with my Sone sore wepynge,

His chaplet is thornys sore prickynge,

His mouth I kis with a sorrowful cheer,

I sith wepynge, and thou sit synnynge,

For now lies ded my dere Sone dere.

Thou hast thi sone ful whole and sounde

And myn is ded upon my kne,

Thi childe is lose, and myn is bounde,

Thy childe is lyf, and myn--ded is He!

Whi was this, doghter, but for the?

For my Childe trespast never here;

Me think ye be holden to wepe with me,

For now lies ded my dere Sone dere.

The mystery, entitled “The Wepynge of the Thre Maries,” is a dramatic

paraphrase of the Gospel history, told in the same homely and

pathetic strain. It is thus that St. Mary Magdalene describes Our

Ladye at the foot of the Cross:--

When she herd Hym for His enmyse preye,

And promesid the thefe the blissis aye,

And to hirself no worde wolde saye,

She sighed, be ye sure;

The Sonne hynge, and the Mother stode,

And ever she kissid the drops of Blode

That so fast ran down.

And when after the Resurrection she runs joyfully to tell the holy

women that she has seen her risen Lord, and the second Mary asks

But have ye seen our Lord, Sister, are ye sure?

Her reply is from the heart:--

Sister, I have sene mi gretest tresure,

He callit me Mary by my name,

_And spake with me homlye_.

Warton, in his “History of English Poetry,” has published a few

fragments of poems on the Passion, which he ascribes to the reigns of

Henry III. and Edward I. There is a harmony in the versification of

the following that one scarcely looks for at so early a date:--

Jhesu for thi muckle might

Thou gif us of Thi grace,

That we may day and night

Thinken of Thi face:

In myn herte it doth me gode

Whan y thinke on Jhesu blod,

That ran down bi ys syde;

Fro ys herte don to ys fot,

For us he spradde ys hertis blod,

His wondes wer so wyde.

* * * * *

Ever and aye He haveth us in thought,

He will not lose that He so dearly bought.

And again:--

Now sprinketh[300] rose and lylie flour

That whilen ber that swete savour,

In somer, that swete tyde:

Ne is no queen so stark and stour,

Ne is no Ladye so bright in bower,

That ded ne schal by glyde:

Whoso wot flesh lust forgo, and heven’s blysse abyde

On Jhesu, be is thought anon, that therled[301] was in ys syde.

I will give but one fragment more, which is taken from a sort of

dialogue between our Lord on the Cross and the devout soul:--

Behold mi side

Mi woundes spred so wide

Restless I ride,

Lok on me, and put fro ye pride:

Dear Man, my love,

For my love sinne no more.

Jhesu Christe, mi lemman swete,

That for me deyedis on rood tree,

With al myn herte I The biseke

For Thi woundes two and thre;

That so fast in my herte

Thi love rooted might be,

As was the spere in Thi side

When Thou suffredst deth for me.

A great number of the Church hymns and other devotions are also to

be found translated in a versified form for the use of the laity,

such as the _Veni Creator_, the _Popule mi, quid feci?_ and other

portions of the Holy Week office. These fragments, which are mere

indications of the rich stores of religious literature possessed by

our ancestors, must not be lost sight of when studying the subject

of popular education. Were we to credit the majority of writers

on ancient manners, the poetry of the Middle Ages was exclusively

furnished by the profane and licentious _jongleurs_, whose

productions have been very diligently sought out and republished for

the edification of the curious, whilst the very existence of a vast

body of popular religious poetry is systematically ignored. Yet the

one class of writings is surely as characteristic of the age to which

it belongs as the other; and we are bound not to condemn the morals

of our forefathers from the study of that portion of their literature

which is corrupt and reprehensible, without also receiving the

evidence furnished by poetry of a totally opposite description.

We must not conclude our notice of the English writers of the

Lancastrian period without briefly noticing the names of two learned

monks. The first was John Capgrave, author of the _Legenda Sanctorum

Angliæ_, which Leland says was chiefly derived from an earlier

collection of saints’ lives by John of Tynemouth, a monk of St.

Alban’s, who died in 1370. Capgrave also produced other learned

works, a MS. copy of one of which, a commentary on the Book of

Genesis, is preserved in the library of Oriel College, and contains

in its initial letter a portrait of the author presenting his book to

Duke Humphrey, whose autograph is at the end of the volume. The other

religious writer was Walter Hilton, a Carthusian monk of Shene. His

“Scale of Perfection,” an invaluable spiritual treatise, which formed

the favourite study of Sir Thomas More, has been reprinted, but a

considerable number of his other spiritual works exist in manuscript

in the British Museum, and yet await an editor.

If the English did not compose many books at this period, they

bought and transcribed them with great diligence. More books were

copied during the first half of the fifteenth century than during

any previous century and a half. Book collectors were enterprising

enough to take journeys into Italy, and returned laden with literary

treasures; among whom, besides Fleming, already noticed, were

Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, the friend of Pius II.; John Free, a

British ecclesiastic, afterwards Bishop of Worcester; Millyng,

Abbot of Westminster; and Sellynge, Prior of Canterbury; all of

whom had studied the classical literature at Padua, or in Guarini’s

Florentine school. In the household accounts of Sir John Howard,

founder of the house of Norfolk, is a bill for the transcribing,

illuminating, and “flourishing” of books. Enormous sums were spent

by literary dandies on bookbinding. Edward IV. is said to have

spent as much on binding a book as was then the price of an ox,

and “caused thereafter to be delivered to his binder six yards of

velvet, ditto of silk, besides laces, tassels, and gilt nails.” The

Lancastrian princes were all patrons of letters: Henry V., as we

know, was a scholar of Queen’s, though, judging from his life after

leaving the university, we can hardly suppose him to have been at

that time much of a reading man. At a later period, however, he seems

to have had literary tastes, and in order to gratify them he did

not always return the books he borrowed. After his death, petitions

were presented from the Countess of Westmoreland and the Prior of

Christchurch, praying that certain books borrowed of them by the King

might be restored. Those lent by the Prior consisted of the works

of St. Gregory. His son, Henry VI., was the very type of a scholar;

whilst his uncle Beaufort, Cardinal and Bishop of Winchester, and

his two brothers, the Regent, Duke of Bedford, and Humphrey, Duke of

Gloucester, were all distinguished as men of learning. Duke Humphrey

was beyond all doubt the most munificent patron of letters that had

yet appeared in England, and did his best to redeem her schools

from the charge of barbarism brought against them by Poggio and the

other classic scholars of Italy. He was a great book collector,

and the copies he caused to be transcribed were all of the most

costly and splendid description, written on vellum and adorned with

illuminations: 129 such manuscripts[302] were bequeathed by him to

the University of Oxford, of which _one_, and one alone, remains. All

the others were destroyed by the pious visitors of Edward VI., who

considered that everything that was enriched with illuminations must

be a popish missal, and therefore only fit to be cast to the flames.

The solitary survivor is a copy of _Valerius Maximus_, the index to

which is written by the hand of Humphrey’s dear and learned friend

Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Alban’s.

Humphrey’s patronage was not confined to English scholars. Heeren

prints a Latin epistle, addressed by him to the Italian Decembrio,

who had presented him with a translation of Plato _De Republica_. He

employed several learned French and Italian translators, and to him

Leonard Aretino dedicated his version of Aristotle, the presentation

copy of which is preserved in the Bodleian. Pope Pius II., in a

letter written about the middle of the century, mentions the fact

that the duke had sent into Italy and procured several professors to

explain the Latin poets and orators in his own country. And Vossius

speaks of a certain master from Ferrara, to whom he gives the name of

Titus Livius, and who, he says, came into England by the invitation

of the Duke of Gloucester, and while there wrote a life of Henry V.,

and dedicated it to his son Henry VI. This life has been republished

by Heeren. The real name of the author is unknown, and he probably

assumed that of the Latin historian to indicate that he imitated his

style.

Duke Humphrey’s chief assistant, however, in his literary labours

was the learned abbot named above, John Whethamstede of St. Alban’s.

He was originally a monk of Tynemouth, in Northumberland (which was

a cell of St. Alban’s), whence he removed to Gloucester Abbey; then

he was made prior of Gloucester College at Oxford, in which office

he had every opportunity for indulging his taste for study and his

equally characteristic liberality; for he spent a considerable sum

in the erection of a new library, on which he bestowed many books

prefixed with verses, warning off the fingers of pilferers. He also

adorned the college with painted windows, set up inscriptions under

the Crucifix and other holy images, and poured out so many other

benefactions on the house that he was formally declared to be its

second founder.

He was elected Abbot of St. Alban’s for the first time in 1420, and

having resigned his office in 1440, was elected a second time in

1451. It would be no easy matter to catalogue all his good deeds,

for Whethamstede was a great reformer and builder, and setter to

rights of decayed offices. In fact, he united in a very uncommon

degree the literary and the practical gifts, and while busy with his

books and libraries, did not forget the repairing of brew-houses

and enclosing of kitchen gardens; in spite of which services, the

monks very unjustly accused him of neglecting their affairs, and

giving all his time to study. Weever enumerates all the multifarious

decorations in the shape of painted windows, gilded and illuminated

verses, and other ornaments which he set up in his abbey. “Our

Lady’s Chapel,” he says, “was very curiously trimmed and depicted,

and letters dispersed therein in gold.” The north part of the abbey

church being somewhat dark, he made it glorious with new windows,

introducing, with taste more classical than suitable, the figures

of such heathen philosophers as had testified of Christ. He also

expended great sums in books for the abbey library, “as well for

the use of the brethren of the cloister as for the scholars;” an

expression which shows that the monastic school was still kept up.

These books exceeded eighty-seven in number, besides which he caused

to be begun the copying of Nicholas de Lyra’s great commentary on the

Bible, and employed Lydgate to translate the metrical life of St.

Alban into English verse. He also added many of his own compositions,

such as his _Granarium_, a sort of theological commonplace book,

in five volumes, dedicated to Duke Humphrey. The duke was fond of

visiting the abbey, to which he was a great benefactor, and employed

Whethamstede in collecting books for him; and after his death, St.

Alban’s was very fitly chosen as the place of his interment.

We must now for a time leave the company of princes and abbots,

and take our way through the streets of London--a city which, even

in the days of Henry II., was thickly populated with schoolboys,

and which, thanks to his pious namesake Henry VI., kept up its

name as a place of good learning in the fifteenth century. We have

already seen something of the university and domestic education of

Old England, but we have yet to make ourselves acquainted with the

schools and scholars of the middle class. The English Commons were

at this precise period fast rising in wealth and importance, and the

number among them who sought a good education for their children was

every year on the increase. The London citizens particularly were

men of intelligence and enterprise, fully conscious of the weighty

position they held in the State, and perfectly well qualified to

fill it. Nor let the fastidious reader scorn the idea of scholarship

as associated with that of a community of mercers and fishmongers;

for it is a fact of which England has no cause to be ashamed, that

many of her greatest public men, and not a few of her best scholars,

have risen from the mercantile and working classes. Lord mayors and

aldermen have not unfrequently spent the wealth they have amassed by

trade in foundations of charity or learning. Thus, Elsing Spittal,

at Cripplegate, was founded in 1329, by a London mercer, for the

sustentation of a hundred blind men; St. Lawrence’s College, in 1332,

by Lord Mayor Poulteney; St. Michael’s College, by Sir William

Walworth, of Wat Tyler-slaying celebrity; and Leadenhall College,

by Sir Simon Eyre, another lord mayor and draper, who provided that

a school should be attached to his college under the care of three

schoolmasters and an usher. His wishes do not seem to have been

carried out, but in 1446 his beautiful chapel was given over to the

newly-established confraternity of the Holy Trinity; and some of the

priests belonging to this society, says Stowe, celebrated divine

service in this chapel every market day for the market people.

So again in 1418, William of Sevenoaks, who from a foundling had made

his way to civic honours, built and endowed a college in his native

place, and a free school for the townsmen’s children; and, not to

multiply examples, the renowned Sir Richard Whittington, mercer and

Lord Mayor of London, after founding his noble College and Hospital

of St. Michael’s Royal, and repairing St. Bartholomew’s Hospital,

built at his own expense the great library of the Grey Friars, and

expended a considerable sum in furnishing it with reading pews, and

causing to be transcribed a fair copy of Nicholas de Lyra for the

friars’ use. Men of this stamp were solicitous to see their city

provided with good schools, and in 1446 we find a petition presented

to Parliament by four city priests, begging the honourable Commons

to take into consideration the great number of grammar-schools that

had formerly existed in the metropolis, and the fact that many of

them had lately fallen into decay. The petitioners go on to say that

many persons now resort to London to be informed of grammar, through

lack of good schoolmasters in the provinces, “wherefore it were

expedient that in London were a sufficient number of scholes and good

informers in grammar; for where there is gret number of lerners, and

few techers, the maisters wax rich of money, and the lerners poorer

in cunning, agenst all virtue and order of weal publik.” They entreat

therefore that schools may be opened in each of their parishes, and

persons learned in grammar set over them “there to teach to all that

will learn.” In compliance with this petition, we find the good king

Henry VI. founding no fewer than eight grammar-schools in this and

the following year. And Mercers’ School was likewise established in

connection with the Mercers’ Company.

Stowe describes the grammatical disputations kept up between the

scholars of these academies even in his time, and lets us know that

the scholars of St. Paul’s were wont to call those of St. Anthony’s

“Antonie pigs,” by reason that St. Anthony is usually figured with

a pig following him; and that they in their turn retaliated on

their rivals the sobriquet of “pigeons,” many such birds being wont

to make their haunt in the spire of St. Paul’s church. And it was

their custom when they met one another in the street to provoke one

another to disputation with the words _Salve tu quoque; placetne

disputare?_ To which, if the answer were _Placet_, they fell to

words, and soon to blows also, the satchels full of grammars serving

as convenient weapons, which oftentimes bursting in the fray,

the books were scattered about in heaps to the great trouble of

the passers-by. The least admirable thing recorded of the London

schoolboys, however, is their taste for cock-fighting. On Shrove

Tuesday every schoolboy in London brought a cock to his master, and

the whole of that forenoon, says Fitz Stephen, “is spent by them in

seeing the cocks fight in their schoolroom.” No wonder that Colet,

among other retrenchments, prohibited his scholars of St. Paul’s from

taking part in these Shrovetide cock-fightings, as a description of

sport eminently fitted to foster in the boyish nature those brutal

tendencies which are perhaps indigenous to the soil. That a taste

for learning and a generous disposition to encourage it were to

be found among not a few of the London citizens of this period is

sufficiently clear; and among many names that might be given of

founders of schools and lovers of letters, that of John Carpenter,

town clerk of London in the reigns of Henry V. and Henry VI., must

not be omitted. He was executor to Whittington, and the personal

friend of two at least of those four priests above named who had

petitioned Parliament for the establishment of more schools. These

were Thomas Neel, Master of the Hospital of St. Thomas de Acon, and

Incumbent of St. Mary, Colechurch; and William Lichfield, Rector

of Allhallows the Great. Lichfield was a considerable writer both

in prose and verse, whom Stowe calls “a great student and a famous

preacher.” These two excellent ecclesiastics took part in many good

works with John Carpenter, and probably assisted him in making that

collection of books, afterwards mentioned in his will. Carpenter

seems also to have had a taste for the arts; for the famous Dance of

Death painted in the cloisters of old St. Paul’s, was placed there

at his expense, with accompanying verses from the pen of Lydgate. It

is, however, as an encourager of liberal education that he claims a

place in these pages, and the benefaction by which he left certain

tenements in the city “for finding and bringing up four poor men’s

children with meat, drink, apparel, and learning, at the schools in

the universities, for ever,” was the foundation which has since grown

into the City of London School.[303]

But after all, the mind is trained by other things than schools and

pedagogues; and the London apprentice, no less than the university

undergraduate, drew in no small part of his education from the scenes

and daily life that went on around him. Old London, no less than

old Oxford, had a teaching of her own; she was not altogether that

place of smoke and trade and unceasing business which we think of

now when we name “the City:” she had a fairer,--I had almost said a

poetic--side, and her old historians grow eloquent when they describe

it. Who would suppose that it is the great Babylon that Fitz Stephen

is speaking of when he praises the picturesque beauty of the suburbs,

“with the citizens’ gardens and orchards planted with trees tall and

sightly, and adjoining together. On the north side,” he continues,

“are pastures and meadows, with brooks running through them, turning

water-mills with a pleasant noise. Not far off is a great forest and

a well-wooded chase, having good covert for harts, does, boars, and

wild bulls. The cornfields are not of a hungry, sandy mould, but as

the fruitful fields of Asia, yielding plentiful increase, and filling

the barns with corn. And there are near London abundance of wells,

sweet, wholesome, and clear, such as Holy-well, Clerken-well, and

St. Clement’s-well, much frequented by scholars and youth of the

city in summer evenings when they walk forth to take the air.” Stowe

likewise speaks of these pleasant walks in the suburbs, and adds a

feature of touching beauty to the picture:--“Near a fair field in

Houndsditch, belonging to the Prior of the Holy Trinity, were some

cottages and little garden-plots for poor bed-rid people, built by

some prior of that house; and in my youth I remember devout persons

were accustomed, specially on Fridays, to walk that way to bestow

their alms on the poor, who lay in their beds near the window, that

opened low, and on it was spread a fair linen cloth and a pair

of beads, to show that there lay a bed-rid person unable but to

pray only.” Within the walls were 130 churches, besides convents,

priories, and hospitals innumerable. In Westcheap, near the north

door of St. Paul’s, stood the great Crucifix surrounded by figures of

saints, where the choristers of St. Paul’s had a goodly exhibition

for singing on certain days the responsory, _Sancte Deus fortis_, and

thither on all feasts of St. Paul’s came the chapter in embroidered

vestments and wearing rose garlands on their heads. This last

ornament was very commonly worn in English processions, specially on

the summer festivals of Whit-Sunday and Corpus Christi, and not only

by canons and choristers, but also by young scholars, as we learn

from Matthew Paris. There were city companies then as now, and there

were guilds and confraternities, which gave to their members “gret

commodyte and surety of lyvyng,” and which recreated the citizens

with their gorgeous processions, while they provided support for

their poor brethren during life, and after death, burial, prayers,

and masses. On the feast of the patron saint, the guild brethren had

a dinner, of course, and generally an interlude or sacred drama;

and Fitz Stephen assures us that the citizens of his time preferred

those which were from sacred subjects, such as the Passion, or

the martyrdom of a saint. Clerkenwell received its name from the

Fraternity of Parish Clerks, who yearly assembled there to play “some

large history of Holy Scripture,” and in the reign of Henry IV.

enacted one which lasted _eight days_, and was “of matter from the

creation of the world.”

But, to use the words of our old historian, “a city should not only

be commodious and serious, but also merry and sportful,” and London

had nothing to blame herself for on this head. During the Easter

holidays there were sham fights on the river, with leaping, dancing,

shooting, and cock-fighting, and great twisted trees were brought

in from the woods to adorn the house of every man of worship. The

great May-pole hung in Westcheap, and on May morning every citizen

went forth early into the country to seek the May. All through the

summer months bonfires were kept up on the eves of great festivals,

and tables set out in the streets with meat and drink plentifully

provided by the wealthy householders, who invited the neighbours and

passers-by to eat and be merry with them with great familiarity,

and so thank God for His benefits. And Rome herself never witnessed

a more graceful celebration of the feasts of St. John Baptist and

the Holy Apostles than that which used to be held in the streets

of London, where “every man’s door was shadowed with green birch,

fennel, and St. John’s-wort, together with white lilies and such

like, and garnished with garlands of beautiful flowers, among which

lamps of glass burnt all the night;”[304] while some hung out huge

branches of iron, curiously wrought, whence hung hundreds of lamps

at once, and this was particularly the custom in New Fish-street.

At Christmas, of course, the houses and conduits were decked with a

profusion of evergreens, and the Christmas revels must be left to the

imagination of the reader.

When the holidays were over, came sports and contentions of another

sort. The masters of the different schools held solemn meetings

in the London churches, and their scholars disputed logically,

grammatically, and demonstratively. The disciples of rival academies

“_capped_ or _potted_ verses one with another, nipping and quipping

their fellows with pleasant rhymes, which caused much laughter.”

The poets sometimes addressed their fun and their verses to their

masters, expending their wit in hopes to obtain a holiday. And,

however it may be explained, I find more notices of versifiers among

the London scholars than elsewhere. Indeed, we must fain suppose

that the citizens had a naturally poetic vein when we read of their

gorgeous and fanciful devices. Chaucer tells us that the good

shopkeepers of the Cheap had weary work with their apprentices, who,

when there were any “ridings” or royal entries, would leap out of the

shop, and not return till they had seen all the sight, and had a good

dance into the bargain. And really, when we read how the fifth Harry

rode into London with little birds fluttering round his helmet, green

boughs cast in his way, priests, with gilded copes, swinging censers,

and every street exhibiting a castle, or a giant, or a legend of some

saint, we cannot wonder that it was sometimes a difficult matter to

keep the ’prentices behind the counter.

Surely too there must have been scholars among the citizens to devise

such scenes as were exhibited at the entry of Henry VI., when a

tabernacle of curious work arose on Cornhill, wherein Dame Sapience

appeared, surrounded by the seven liberal arts; and when divers

wells poured forth goodly wine to the passers-by, appropriately

named the Well of Mercy, of Grace, or of Pity. But, in fact, most

of such pageants were designed by men of letters, and no one was

more frequently called on for this purpose than the monk of Bury.

He was exceedingly popular with the London citizens, and whether a

disguising was intended by the company of goldsmiths, a May game for

the sheriffs, or a carol for the Coronation, it was generally Lydgate

who supplied the poetry. And he, in his turn, loved the citizens, and

ever spoke well of them in his verse:--

Of seaven things I prayse this citty,

Of true meaning and faithful observance,

Of righteousness, truth, and equity,

Of stableness aye kept in legiance.

A testimony to which we must add that delivered two hundred years

earlier by Fitz Stephen. “I do not think,” he says, “that there is

any city to be found wherein are better customs in frequenting the

churches, in serving God, in keeping holidays, in giving alms, in

entertaining strangers, in solemnising marriages, in furnishing

banquets, celebrating funerals, and burying dead bodies.” He

adds, however, that London had some “inconveniences,” such as the

immoderate drinking of some foolish persons, and the frequent fires.

Such then were some of the scenes in the midst of which the young

citizen grew up, and which supplied him with many ideas beyond those

of his shop wares and his reckonings. Sometimes he passed over to

France or Flanders to procure his stores of silks and velvets, or

fine Paris thread; and on such occasions, book collectors, like Duke

Humphrey, or Tiptoft of Worcester, did not disdain to employ the

services of an intelligent merchant to procure them choice copies

of foreign works. Treaties of commerce were generally negotiated by

merchants, who were thus brought into contact with courtiers and

politicians, and not unfrequently the commercial treaty was but the

veil to conceal more profound political intrigues. We need not,

therefore, be surprised to find a commission issued by Edward IV., in

1464, to Richard Whitehill and William Caxton, conferring on them the

quality of ambassadors at the court of Burgundy, to reopen the trade

with that country, which had been suspended in consequence of certain

prohibitive decrees issued by Philip the Good. All that we know of

Caxton up to this time was, that he had begun his education in a poor

school of the weald of Kent, and had probably perfected it in some

one of the London grammar-schools; that he had been apprenticed to

Master Robert Large, a mercer of Cheapside, who became Lord Mayor in

1440, and dying the next year, left the sum of twenty marks to his

_servant_ William Caxton. Then he appears as a travelling agent of

the London mercers in Brabant, and Holland, and Flanders, in which

countries he spent thirty years of his life, and at last we find

him at the court of Burgundy, to which the Flemish provinces were

then subject. When his mission was ended, he continued to reside at

the court, and was at Bruges in 1468, when the marriage took place

between Duke Charles the Bold and Margaret Plantagenet, sister to

Edward IV. He probably received some office in the household of the

Duchess, but he seems to have had little to do, and to fill up his

time the English mercer took to literary pursuits; considering, as

he says, that every man is bounden by the counsel of the wise man to

eschew sloth and idleness. He therefore resolved to translate into

English the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye,” by Raoul de Fevre,

wherein he had great delight, both for the novelty of the same, and

the fair language of the French; and having concluded to begin this

work, he forthwith took pen and ink, and set to work; but after

writing five or six quires, fell into despair over his task and put

it aside. Duchess Margaret, however, at this juncture came to his

aid: she had heard of his proposed translation, and required the

quires to be brought to her for inspection; praised them, found fault

with the English here and there, and finally commanded the translator

to continue and make an end.

“I might not disobey her dreadful command,” says Caxton, “seeing

that I was a servant of her Grace, and received of her yearly fee.”

Dibdin, in his “Typographical Antiquities,” endeavours to prove that

Caxton had _printed_ the original French book before _translating_

it into English; but this is mere conjecture, and there seem no

satisfactory grounds for supposing him to have turned his attention

to the new art of printing before the year 1471, when his English

translation of the “Recuyell of the Historyes of Troye” was printed

by him at Cologne. We are not told how he acquired a knowledge of the

art, which had then been in operation for about twenty years, but the

motive which led to his first applying himself to it was, as he tells

us, the desire to multiply copies of his book, which was in request

with divers gentlemen. Three years later he returned to England and

set up the first English printing-press in the Almonry of Westminster

Abbey, the learned abbot Millyng being his first patron, and evincing

a lively interest in his success. Caxton’s earliest works were

mostly his own translations; “The Game and Play of Chess” was the

first production of his Westminster press, and its second edition

was adorned with woodcuts. Another was “The Doctrine of Sapience,”

also translated by him from the French, and intended “for the use of

parish priests, and for the erudition of simple people.” “The Dictes

and Sayings of Philosophers” was a translation from the pen of his

accomplished friend Anthony Woodville, Lord Rivers, who had so high

an opinion of his printer’s literary powers that he permitted him

to overlook and correct the sheets. This accomplished nobleman, the

chosen “champion” of the English ladies, the best scholar, the best

poet, and the best jouster of King Edward’s court, helped to set the

types with his own hand, and afterwards presented both the book and

the printer to his royal brother-in-law.

Caxton did not altogether pursue his art in the spirit of a

tradesman. He evidently had it much at heart to provide his

countrymen with good and useful books, and took considerable pains

in their selection. In spite of Gibbon’s sneer at the number of

saints’ legends[305] and romances that issued from his press, we have

every reason to admire the variety of subjects to be found in the

sixty-four works which he lived to publish. They embrace religion

history, poetry, law, ritual, and romance. No original work of the

Latin classics appears on the list, which does not argue much for

the scholarship of the English reading public at that time, and

offers a striking contrast to the state of things in Italy, where

the first works printed at the Subiaco press were “Lactantius,” St.

Augustine’s “City of God,” and Cicero’s “Rhetoric;” and these were

followed a little later by twenty-three editions of ancient Latin

authors. But in England, though a few individuals had shown an

interest in the classic revival, the nation at large was, at this

time, wholly indifferent to the subject, and Caxton had to consult

their taste, at the same time that he attempted to raise and refine

it. He himself was no classical scholar; nevertheless, he chose a

certain number of French versions of ancient authors for translation

into English, such as the Treatise “De Senectute” of Cicero, Ovid’s

“Metamorphoses,”[306] Boethius’ “De Consolatione,” the “Fables of

Æsop,” and Cato’s “Morals.” The last he recommended as the best book

that could be used by children in schools. He likewise translated a

French narrative of Virgil’s “Æneid;” and contemptible as this sort

of literature may appear to scholars, it helped to give his readers

a certain acquaintance with the names and subjects of classical

authors, and prepared the way for the study of the originals.

On the other hand, the number of English works which he produced, and

the care he expended on presenting them to his readers in clear and

simple language, “casting away the chaff of superfluity, and showing

the picked gram of sentence,” gave a powerful stimulus to his native

literature. His own favourite author was Chaucer, in printing whose

works he grudged neither care nor expense: and he incidentally gives

us to understand that the English gentry of that period had, like

himself, a marvellous love for their great poet. He had no slight

difficulty in getting a correct MS. to print from, and his first

edition of Chaucer’s poems was, therefore, full of inaccuracies. A

young gentleman criticised its defects, and offered, if he would

print another edition, to supply him with a certain very correct

copy, which was in the possession of his father, who loved it much,

and would not willingly part with it. Caxton agreed to the proposal,

by which, of course, he lost considerably as a tradesman, but gained

in the esteem of the learned: and one is glad to find that the young

gentleman, in fulfilment of his part of the bargain, did not purloin

the book from his father but “got it from him full gently,” and

delivered it to the careful custody of the honest printer.

Not content with the labour of printing and translating, which he

carried on with so much eagerness that, as he tells us, his eyes

were half blinded with continual looking at the white paper, the

indefatigable old man undertook, at the age of seventy, to compose

his “Chronicles of England,” and “Description of Britain,” which

books he intended to convey to English readers a certain amount of

information about the history and geography of their own country. He

had plenty of critics while engaged on these works; some wanted him

to use only “old and homely” terms; others, who were finer clerks,

begged him to write the most _curious_ words he could find. Caxton

good humouredly complains of the difficulty he found in pleasing

everybody, and remarks on the variable character of the English

language, which gives ground for supposing that the English people

must be born under the domination of the moon, never steadfast, but

ever wavering. His own good sense, however, decided that the best

English for any writer to use is that common phraseology which is

more readily understood than what is antique or curious. He never

assumed the airs of a scholar, and in his preface to a modernised

version of Higden’s “Polychronicon,” calls himself “William Caxton, a

simple person,” and modestly apologises for his attempt to render the

rude old English of his author into more intelligible language.

One of his translations from the French, entitled “The Mirror of

the World,” gives an outline of as much natural philosophy as was

at that time known. This book was printed at the request, and at

the cost, of Hugh Brice, a London alderman, and the choice speaks

well for the intelligence of that worthy citizen. Caxton seems to

have taken considerable pains over it, and says he has made it so

plain, that every _reasonable_ man may understand it, and begs his

readers’ indulgence if there be found any fault in the measurements

of the sun, moon, or firmament. To assist the intelligence of his

“reasonable” readers, he added twenty-seven diagrams explanatory

of scientific principles, and woodcuts representing the seven

liberal arts. In these woodcuts we observe that the schoolmaster

generally appears seated, while his scholars kneel before him. The

grammar-master is furnished with a rod, which need not cause dismay,

for perhaps it was but the ferule, part of the academic insignia of a

master of arts. The logician’s book rests on a reading-desk, and he

is expounding its contents to his kneeling pupils.

Dibdin calculates that Caxton’s translations alone would fill

twenty-five octavo volumes, and that they extend to over 5000

closely-printed pages. His biographer Lewis bears witness to the

fact that in his original writings he constantly expresses himself

as “a man who lived in the fear of God, and desired much to promote

His honour and glory.” But he thinks it necessary to regret that he

should have been carried away by the superstitions of his times so

far as to print saints’ legends, advocate pilgrimages to the Holy

Land, and proclaim himself an enthusiastic admirer of the Crusades.

Mercer and printer as he was, Caxton was indeed thoroughly informed

with the spirit of chivalry. It was this that directed his choice

of “The History of Godfrey de Bouillon,” “The Book of Chivalry,”

and the “Histories of King Arthur.” In his preface to the first,

the venerable printer makes an appeal to all Christian princes to

establish peace and amity one with another and unite for the recovery

of the Holy City, where our Blessed Saviour Jesus Christ redeemed us

with His Precious Blood; to encourage them to which “he emprised to

translate his book.” In the second he utters a lament for the good

days when the knights of England were really knights, “when each

man knew his horse, and his horse knew him.” And in the third he

confesses his conviction that Arthur was no fabulous character, but

a real man; and exhorts his readers to study his noble deeds, “for

herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness,

hardiness, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue, and

sin. Do after the good, and leave the evil undone, and it shall bring

you good fame and honour.”

Lewis informs us that the progress of printing terribly alarmed the

ignorant and illiterate monks, who saw in the advancement of learning

their own impending ruin. If so, they took a very strange way of

expressing their alarm, for they were the first to patronise the new

invention; so that in a very few years after Caxton had set up his

press in Westminster Abbey, other printing-presses were at work in

the monasteries of St. Alban’s, Worcester, Bury, and others. The monk

who first introduced printing at St. Alban’s was the schoolmaster;

his name is not known, though Sir H. Chauncey styles him “Insomuch.”

Bale and Pits tell us that he was a reader in history, and say that

he had collected materials for a history of England, but died before

it was completed, that his papers fell into Caxton’s hands, who

printed them under his own name. But this is evidently incorrect.

The St. Alban’s printer was still working his press in 1486; and

Caxton’s chronicles were printed six years earlier. Before the

death of Caxton, several other printers, both English and foreign,

were established in London, and among the latter was the celebrated

Fleming Wynkyn de Worde. An Oxford press was at work so early as

1478, and seven years later the Latin translation of the Epistles of

Phalaris issued from the press, to which is affixed a Latin couplet,

boasting that the English who had been wont in former times to be

indebted to the Venetians for their books, now themselves exported

books to foreign countries:--

Celatos, Veneti, nobis transmittere libros

Cedite; nos aliis vendimus, O Veneti.

However, I have no intention here of tracing the history of English

printers, and have only said thus much of Caxton, because he presents

us with an admirable example of an intelligent Englishman of the

middle class--a practical persevering man, full of the healthy energy

which belongs to a life of labour; a vigorous, homely writer who

desired, in his day, to serve his country in so far as he had the

needful “cunning;” whose plain broad sense is illumined by a ray of

piety, and warmed into a touch of generous enthusiasm, which makes

his name more dear and venerable to us than that of many a profounder

scholar. Is it fancy or partiality which makes one detect in the

fair large type that he uses, so clear and readable, a reflection

of his own simple and genuine character; a character which, making

allowance for the difference of station, reminds us of that of the

great Alfred, to whose written language also that of Caxton bears a

remarkable resemblance.

He died in the year 1492, at the age of eighty, having two years

previously completed his translation of “The Craft how to Die Well,”

from which the following is an extract:--“When it is so, that what

a man maketh or doeth, it is made to come to some end, and if the

thing be good and well made, it must needs come to good end; then,

by better and greater reason, every man ought to intend in such wise

to live in this world in keeping the commandments of God that he may

come to a good end. And then out of this world, full of wretchedness

and tribulation, he may go to heaven unto God and His saints, into

joy perdurable.”

Two years after writing these lines he was laid to rest in the Church

of St. Margaret’s, Westminster, not far from the spot where for

eighteen years he had carried on his noble and useful labours.

_CHAPTER XX._

THE RENAISSANCE AT FLORENCE.

A.D. 1400 TO 1492.

Eastern travellers tell us of certain richly-irrigated soils in

tropical lands, whereon the seeds that are cast spring up in a single

night, covering, as if by magic, vasts plains, which before appeared

barren wastes, with a mantle of tender green. Something like this

was the rapid fertilisation exhibited in the world of letters after

the death of Petrarch. More than a century, indeed, had to elapse

before Italy could produce any names fit to compete with those of

Dante, Petrarch, or Bocaccio; but the freshly-awakened enthusiasm

for ancient learning, to which the writings of the two latter had

so largely contributed, gave birth to a generation of scholars

whose labours communicated a new direction to European studies.

They did not leave behind them, as monuments of their genius, epic

poems or philosophical discoveries, but they disinterred forgotten

manuscripts, restored their corrupted texts, revived the study of

Greek, and at the same time made known to Western Christendom the

works of the great Greek authors by means of their own laborious

Latin translations. They were, in short, a generation of grammarians,

critics, and pedagogues, and were the instruments of achieving an

intellectual revolution hardly less momentous than the religious and

political revolutions which were to follow in after years.

The watered soil and the fruitful seed did not fail to be cherished

by the sun of princely favour. The fifteenth century was not more

remarkable for its learned men, than for its noble patrons of

learning. In Naples there was Alphonsus of Arragon, who, in the

midst of his warlike campaigns, had the Commentaries of Cæsar read

to him daily, and whose displeasure against the Florentine Republic

was appeased by the timely present of a copy of Livy. When Gianozzo

Manetti was sent to him as ambassador from Florence, and delivered

to him his opening oration, the king, out of respect to so great

a scholar, would not so much as raise his hand to brush away a

troublesome fly; and on one occasion, when Manetti had joined in a

dispute which Alphonsus was carrying on with certain learned men of

his court on the subject of the Holy Trinity, he so won the royal

heart by his skill and eloquence that the king exclaimed, “Had I

but a single loaf, I would divide it with Gianozzo!” He was one of

the greatest book collectors of his time, and loved to surround

himself with scholars, such as Antony of Palermo, commonly known as

Panormita, who is said to have cured his royal master of a fever by

reading to him the Life of Alexander, by Quintus Curtius. Perhaps

it was after his recovery that Alphonsus despatched Panormita to

Venice for the singular purpose of begging from the Venetian senators

_an arm_ of the Roman historian, with which classical relic he

triumphantly returned to Naples. Most of the other men of letters

who then flourished in Italy, such as Poggio, Filelfo, Valla, and

George of Trebizond, were at one time or other attached to his court,

and magnificently rewarded for their literary labours; and Pius II.,

in his “Description of Europe,” numbers Alphonsus himself among

the philosophers of the day, and says that he could discourse both

learnedly and gracefully on the most abstruse theological questions.

At Ferrara, Nicholas of Este not only refounded the university of

that city, but succeeded in gaining possession of two great teachers,

Guarino the Elder, and John Aurispa, who directed the education of

his son Lionel, and whose schools were frequented by students from

every European land. Lionel repaid their care by himself becoming an

elegant scholar, and establishing at his court an academy of poetry;

and his brother Borso, who succeeded him, proved, perhaps, a yet

more splendid patron of letters, though he had not himself received

a learned education. A new poem of Leonardi, a map of the world, or

a correct copy of Ptolemy’s geography, were treasures which won from

Duke Borso many a golden florin for the scholar fortunate enough to

present them; and the archives of Ferrara and Modena became crowded

with decrees for the protection of scholars, which Tiraboschi assures

us are no less remarkable for the elegant Latinity in which they are

drawn up, than for the munificent spirit in which they are conceived.

The Gonzaghi held rule at Mantua, and there an academy flourished

under the princely patronage of the Marquis John Francis, concerning

which I must speak a little more particularly, as its master in

some respects stands alone among the pedagogues of the Renaissance.

Who has not heard of Victorino da Feltre, and the “Casa Giojosa,” in

which he taught his crowd of princely pupils, contriving to mingle

in their ranks not a few poor scholars, the perpetual objects of

his generous solicitude; whose fame was so widely spread, and whose

blameless character was so respected, that in those days of bitter

scholastic jealousies all the greatest masters of Italy offered him

their gratuitous services, and counted it an honour to direct a class

in the “Joyous House” of Mantua? The house derived its name from the

beauty of its situation, and the care which Gonzaga had taken to

adorn it with everything that could contribute to the pleasure or

instruction of its inmates. It contained galleries and arcades, all

painted with pictures of children at prayer, at study, or at play;

around it stretched delicious gardens and woods well stored with

game, and the graver lectures of the master were relieved by lessons

in riding, dancing, fencing, and every other graceful accomplishment

suitable for noble youth. Victorino, on assuming the direction

of the academy, did not entirely discountenance these pleasant

pastimes, nor did he turn the Joyous House into a Castle Dismal; he

contented himself with introducing such reforms as banished habits of

self-indulgence, and prepared his pupils, not only to become elegant

gentlemen, but hardy soldiers. He reduced the princely banquets

to a reasonable limit, confiscated sweetmeats, and showed himself

pitiless upon all coxcombry in dress. It is remarkable, that though

he left not a line behind him as a monument of his scholarship, his

celebrity has survived to our own day, and certainly equals that of

the greatest of his contemporaries, resting as it does solely on

his merits as a teacher of youth. Not merely was he distinguished

as a lecturer in Greek, Latin, and mathematics (though even in that

capacity he had few equals), but as one who trained the heart, formed

the manners, and established, as the basis of all education, a strict

observance of religious duties, victory over the passions, and the

mortification of pride, selfishness, and sensuality.

A no less passionate admirer of the ancient authors than his friend

Guarino, who often assisted him in his school, Victorino was careful

to guard his pupils from the paganising tendencies which he discerned

in the spirit of the age. Along with the Greek and Latin classics,

therefore, he presented to their study the Fathers of the Church, and

the Divine Scriptures, and when lecturing on the heathen poets and

historians, he was wont, in a few luminous words, to lay before his

hearers the grand Christian principles which were never to be effaced

from the soul by Gentile sophistries and eloquence. Those principles

he taught yet more by example than by precept. Two hours before his

classes opened, Victorino might have been found in the hospitals and

prisons of Mantua, relieving and comforting every form of distress.

He founded among his noble pupils an association of charity, for

enabling poor scholars to pursue their studies with greater facility,

and this he did, not merely as a means of carrying out his favourite

work of charity, but yet more with the view of training the sons of

the Italian _noblesse_ from their earliest years to care for the

inferior classes, and to give to the poor out of their abundance.

His whole life was marked by a total disregard of his own private

interests. The good Marchioness, Paula Gonzaga, never made but one

complaint of him, and that was, that often as she tried to furnish

him with a better wardrobe, he frustrated her charitable attempts;

for so soon as he found himself possessed of two coats, one went to

clothe a poorer man than himself. It may be added, that though a

simple layman, he embraced a stricter rule of life than was followed

by many an ecclesiastic of the time. In an age when the practice of

frequent communion was far from common, he approached the holy table

twice every week, and encouraged his pupils to communicate every

Sunday. It is said that in the early part of his scholastic career,

his intercourse with St. John Capistran and St. Bernardine of Siena

had awakened in his soul a strong desire to enter the cloister, from

which he was deterred by the arguments of his learned friend Ambrose

Traversari, who assured him that his vocation was to remain in the

world, and there train souls for heaven. And as a divine vocation

he embraced it; and cast over the scholastic profession a grace, a

dignity and a beauty of holiness which made Eugenius IV. exclaim,

when he was presented to him at Florence, “If my rank as Supreme

Pontiff permitted it, I would rise from my seat to show honour to so

great a man!”

However, it must not be supposed that Victorino was a mere devotee,

or that his school was of a retrograde class, excluding the new

lights of classical literature. He was the friend and correspondent

of all the scholars of his day, and the pupils of the “Casa Giojosa”

were no whit behind their countrymen in classical acquirements.

Ambrose Traversari, who was considered to equal Leonard of Arezzo as

a Latinist, and to surpass him in his knowledge of Greek, has left

an account, in his “Hodœporicon” and in his epistles, of a visit

which he paid to the school of Victorino, and a kind of friendly

examination to which he subjected its pupils. “I reached Mantua,” he

writes, “where I was welcomed with singular kindness by Victorino,

the best of men, and my very dear friend. He is with me as much as

his serious occupations allow; and not he alone, but the greater

part of his disciples. Some of them are so well advanced in Greek,

that they translate it into Latin. He teaches Greek to the sons and

daughters of the prince, and they all write in that language.” Again,

“Yesterday Victorino presented to me Gian Lucido, the youngest son

of the prince of Mantua, a youth of about fourteen. He recited to me

200 Latin verses of his own composition, in which he described the

pomp with which the Emperor Sigismund had been received at Mantua.

The little poem was very beautiful, and rendered more so by the grace

and correctness of its delivery. Then he showed me two theorems which

the boy had added to the geometry of Euclid. There was also one of

his sisters at the academy who, though only ten years old, writes

Greek so well, that I am ashamed to say many of my own scholars

cannot show anything to equal it.” This last-named pupil was Cecilia

Gonzaga, whose learning afterwards became renowned throughout Italy.

Her sister Margaret, also a pupil of Victorino, became the wife of

Lionel of Este, but she herself consecrated her talents to God, and

entered a convent of poor Clares, founded by her mother in the city

of Mantua.[307]

While the smaller potentates of Italy were vying one with another

in their encouragement of letters and learned men, the Sovereign

Pontiffs were setting them the example on a yet more magnificent

scale. From 1447 to 1455 the chair of St. Peter was filled by

Nicholas V., who to extreme simplicity of manners united immense

learning, and a mind capable of vast and magnificent designs. Whilst

he was restoring peace to Italy putting an end to the schism which

had sprung out of the Council of Basle, planning a fresh crusade,

and laying plans for the rebuilding of Rome, on a plan realised

only in the pages of Vasari, his agents were busy, all over the

world, collecting, collating, or translating manuscripts, and giving

to the world, in versions undertaken at his sole expense, those

long-forgotten works of classical antiquity, the “History of Diodorus

Siculus,” the “Cyropedia” of Xenophon, the histories of Polybius,

Thucydides, and Herodotus, the “Iliad” of Homer, the geography of

Strabo, many of the works of Plato, and the Greek Fathers of the

Church. Most of the scholars of whom we shall have to speak in the

following pages were employed by him as translators and secretaries,

and were amply recompensed for their work. Poggio was thus enabled

to complete his version of Diodorus. Lorenzo Valla received 500

gold scudi for his translation of Thucydides; 10,000 scudi, a

house and estate, were promised to Filelfo for his translation of

Homer, and when giving Perotti 500 scudi for his Latin Polybius,

the Pontiff condescended to apologise for the smallness of the sum,

which he owned was below the value of the book. He is known to have

offered 5000 scudi for a Hebrew version of St. Matthew’s Gospel,

which, however, was never found. In his early years he had often

given utterance to the promise that if he ever found himself in the

possession of riches, he would employ them in the multiplication of

good books. He nobly kept his word; and, when he died, left, as his

bequest to his successor, the Vatican library, furnished, through his

munificence, with 5000 precious manuscripts.

The accession to the pontifical chair of Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini,

who became Pope in 1458, under the title of Pius II., seemed to

promise much for the world of letters. He had already acquired a

European fame as a poet and historian, and had received the laurel

crown from the hands of Frederic III. But his short pontificate

was almost entirely absorbed in preparations for the projected

crusade, which he had resolved to undertake for the recovery of

the Eastern Empire, and death alone prevented his carrying out his

grand designs, and accompanying the army into the East in order to

encourage the soldiers with his presence. Meanwhile a flood of Greek

refugees poured into Europe, contributing very largely to encourage

the restoration of ancient learning, though they certainly had

not given the movement its first impulse. Even before the fall of

Constantinople in 1453, many Greek scholars had judged it prudent to

pass over into Italy in order to escape the ruin impending over their

country. Others, again, had been attracted thither by the Council of

Florence, held in 1441, for the extinction of the Greek schism. Among

the latter was the celebrated Bessarion, Archbishop of Nice, who,

convinced of the fallacy of the Greek claims by the arguments of the

Latin prelates, urged his countrymen to acknowledge the supremacy of

the Holy See, and thereby incurred so much odium among them as to

be forced to remain in exile. He was raised to the purple by Pope

Eugenius IV., and employed in several important legations, but it was

as a man of letters that he chiefly distinguished himself. His house

at Rome became a sort of academy, and in it he trained a number of

scholars, both Greek and Latin, not only in learning, but in piety

and good manners; for Bessarion was as remarkable for his courtesy

and virtue as for his erudition. His great library, collected at

a cost of 30,000 golden scudi, was presented to the Republic of

Venice, in return for the affection with which he had been received

in that city; and though he only acquired a knowledge of the Latin

tongue after his removal to Italy, he produced several works in that

language, among which was a “Defence” of his favourite philosopher

Plato.

But neither Rome nor Naples was destined to be the Athens of modern

Europe, but a city, still proud of her republican institutions,

though on the point of surrendering all but the name of sovereignty

into the hands of a successful family of merchant princes. Many

circumstances had combined to render Florence the focus of the great

literary movement then in progress, and thither chiefly resorted the

exiled Greek scholars--such as Argyrophilus, George of Trebizond,

Theodore of Gaza, and Gemistus. Schools had been opened in this

city so early as 1393 by Emmanuel Chrysoloras, which may be said

to have given the first impulse to the revival of Greek studies.

Emmanuel came over to Italy, in the first instance, in the quality

of ambassador from Constantinople, to seek for aid against the

Turkish arms among the princes of the West. But he found it more

to his taste, and possibly also to his profit, to exchange his

diplomatic functions for those of a professor of letters, and soon

reckoned among his disciples a group of scholars who were in their

turn promoted to chairs of Greek rhetoric in the universities of

Venice, Ferrara, Bologna, and Naples. One of these, Guarino, had

been formerly acquainted with Chrysoloras at Constantinople, whither

he had travelled in 1388 in search of manuscripts. Guarino was at

that time only eighteen years of age, and after acquiring the Greek

language, he set out on his return to Italy, bearing with him two

great chests filled with the treasures which he had collected. A

storm overtook the vessel, and in his dismay the captain ordered

the whole cargo on board the ship to be cast into the sea. In vain

did Guarino throw himself at his feet, and conjure him to spare his

precious volumes; they were ruthlessly hurled to the fishes, and

when morning dawned the poor scholar’s raven locks were discovered

to have turned as white as snow, such had been the anguish which his

loss had caused him. However, if he had lost his books, he had not

lost his learned gifts, and on reaching Italy, he became professor of

rhetoric, first at Florence, and afterwards at Venice and Ferrara.

John Aurispa was more fortunate in his researches, and succeeded,

in 1423, in bringing back to Italy 238 Greek manuscripts. We have

already spoken of him as lecturing at Ferrara under the patronage

of the Este. He was secretary both to Eugenius IV. and Nicholas V.,

and before settling at Ferrara had also taught both at Bologna and

Florence. He was succeeded in the chair of rhetoric in the latter

city by the celebrated Filelfo, who had likewise made the grand

tour of the East, and brought home a magnificent Greek library.

This last-named scholar had studied at Constantinople under John

Chrysoloras, brother to Emmanuel, whose daughter Theodora he married,

a circumstance which swelled his already preposterous vanity, and

which he never lost any opportunity of trumpeting to the Greek-loving

world.

Filelfo, on returning to Italy, first selected Bologna as the happy

spot which was to be blessed with his erudite presence. He entered

the city in a sort of triumph, the enthusiastic populace giving

him the welcome ordinarily reserved for sovereign princes, and

erecting a chair of Moral Philosophy and eloquence for his express

occupation, with the handsome annual salary of 450 gold scudi.

Every day saw some new festa invented to do honour to the great

Professor and his charming “Chrysolorine,” as he somewhat affectedly

designated his Greek spouse; and for a brief space Filelfo declared

himself satisfied with the amount of homage offered to his genius.

“Bologna is a charming city,” he writes in one of his epistles;

“the inhabitants are courteous, and not insensible to letters; and

what specially pleases me is the consideration and affection which

they display towards _me_.” In 1428, however, a popular revolution

dissipated all these pleasing prospects; Filelfo, in company with the

Papal Legate, had to fly for his life, and while the cities of Italy

scrambled which should obtain possession of so rare a scholar, the

coveted prize fell to the share of Florence, where Cosmo de’ Medici

and his rival, Philip Strozzi, were just then struggling which should

outshine the other in acts of princely munificence. The vanity of

Filelfo was once more for a time amply gratified for the Florentines

yielded him their hearty applause, and if we are to credit his own

words, made him the great lion of their city. “All Florence runs

after me” he writes in his letters; “everybody loves me; everybody

honours me and lauds me to the skies; my name is in everybody’s

mouth. Not only the first men of the city, but the noble ladies also

give place when they meet me, and show me so much respect that I am

really ashamed. I have every day 400 hearers, or more, and all of

them persons of rank and importance.”

And it must be owned that Filelfo worked hard to gain their applause.

The routine of his everyday work involved an amount of labour to

voice and brain, under which any one but a professor of the fifteenth

century must have succumbed. About daybreak he began by lecturing to

a crowded audience on Cicero, Livy, or the Iliad. His explanations of

Cicero were considered his greatest successes and by his ready and

brilliant eloquence he seemed to reproduce the Roman orator to the

eyes and ears of his hearers. Returning home, he gave audience to

the favoured few who were happy enough to be on his list of private

pupils; and at mid-day he was again in the public chair, commenting

on Terence, or the Greek historians, Xenophon and Thucydides. Every

evening there were literary reunions and learned academies to be

attended, or private assemblies, in which Filelfo was, or, at any

rate, considered himself to be, the great centre of attraction, and

nurtured his good opinion of himself with the homage of an obsequious

crowd. Even Sunday was no day of rest to him, for then, in the Church

of Sta. Maria dei Fiori, he lectured and commented on Dante.

The fascination of such a life, however, had a make-weight of

mortification. Filelfo was possessed with one of those bitter and

malignant dispositions that turn the very sweets of life into poison.

His very jokes were malignant, as, when disputing with another

grammarian on the quantity of a Greek syllable, he offered to pay him

200 scudi if he were proved wrong, on condition that, if right, he

might have the satisfaction of shaving off his adversary’s beard. The

poor grammarian lost his wager, and, in spite of all his entreaties,

Filelfo gratified his revenge in the true spirit of a literary

Shylock. It was quite enough for any other scholar to be praised and

honoured for him to become at once the mark for Filelfo’s spite.

“What does Guarino know, of which Filelfo is ignorant?” he exclaims

in one of his letters, his bile being excited by the fact that

Guarino’s name was just then in everybody’s mouth. This intolerable

presumption raised him enemies in every city; and, indeed, in those

days it seems to have been the habit of literary men to spend the

greater part of their time in biting and devouring one another.

Filelfo, perhaps, may be regarded as the most venomous disputant

of them all. He who talked so much of being “loved” by everybody,

hated and made himself hated by the entire world. He hated the men

of learning who shared with him the favour of the Florentines,

because he regarded them as his rivals. He hated the great Cosmo, the

Pericles of the New Athens, because his benefits were not exclusively

showered on himself. He hated the good and honest citizen Niccoli,

the founder of St. Mark’s public library, because he was a friend of

the Medici. And he hated the very populace who gaped and wondered

at his erudition, because his appetite for flattery growing as it

was ministered to, they could not always satisfy its cravings,

and at such times Filelfo was ready to denounce them all in that

malignant language of which the elegant commentator on Tully was an

accomplished master. He poured out his venom on Cosmo in a series

of villanous libels, accusing him of attempting his life by poison

and the dagger; yet, at the very time when he was inventing these

calumnies against a man who had loaded him with favours, he was

himself hiring assassins to attack his rival, Carlo Marsuppini, in

the streets of Florence--a crime for which the Republic afterwards

condemned him to have his tongue cut out, should he ever set foot

again upon their territory.

To his other vices Filelfo added that of a grasping avarice: he was

continually appealing to the different princes of Italy for larger

money advances, and loading them with abuse if they did not satisfy

his demands. He threatened Pius II. to turn Turk, if the pension

granted by that Pontiff were not more regularly paid; and his

contemporary scholars continually complained that, after promising

them books, he would afterwards withdraw from his bargain, and demand

back again from them what was not really his own property. But,

in candour, it must be confessed that, in this last-named matter,

Filelfo appears to have been more sinned against than sinning. A very

bad habit prevailed at that time among literary men of borrowing

books and never returning them. Francesco Barbaro is accused of

keeping a chest of Filelfo’s books for thirty years; and similar

peccadilloes are charged to the account of Aurispa and Giustiniani.

Possibly, observes Tiraboschi, they regarded book thefts in the same

light as monks had been used occasionally to regard the pilfering of

holy relics. Anyhow, the injury was sensibly felt by the unfortunate

owner, and did not improve the asperity of his temper.

Whatever infamy attaches to the character of Filelfo, he met with his

match in one of the literary rivals whom he encountered at Florence.

Poggio Bracciolini had received his education in his native city,

and to a perfect knowledge of Latin and Greek literature added the

rarer merit of being a good Hebrew scholar. For thirty-four years of

his life he held the office of apostolic secretary under successive

Pontiffs, and during all that time he never spent an entire year

in any one city. He was present in his official capacity at the

Council of Constance, and to while away the hours that hung heavy

on his hands, made an excursion to the neighbouring abbey of St.

Gall, and disinterred from a damp tower the mouldering manuscript of

Quinctilian’s “Institutes.” From thence he passed over to England

to pursue his researches in the monastic libraries of this country,

but declares that they were full of nothing but “modern doctors,

whom _we_ should not think worthy so much as to be heard.” By his

discoveries of classic authors, and his own critical and historical

writings, he contributed more than any other scholar of his time

to the revival of learning, so that some writers have gone so far

as to confer on the first half of the fifteenth century the title

of “the age of Poggio.” But his glory was sadly clouded by the

furious quarrels in which he engaged with all his contemporaries,

and the foul and disgraceful language which he poured out against

every one who was unhappy enough to come into collision with him.

Among the works of this great champion of classic Latinity are four

“Invectives” against Filelfo, and five against Lorenzo Valla. The

latter were written in revenge for certain criticisms which Valla had

published of his Epistles, and are, says Tiraboschi, “a disgraceful

monument to the memory of a writer who observes neither rule nor

measure, but defiles his pen with every hideous abomination which

malice could suggest against his adversaries.” Valla, who was a

scholar of precisely the same temper, replied in his “Antidotes to

Poggio,” and Filelfo in his “Satires”--all of which are said to be

conceived in the same rabid and malignant strain. Nor was it only

against such men as these that Poggio directed his venom. Guarino

was made the subject of another ferocious onslaught, for no worse

misdemeanour than having differed from Poggio in preferring the

character of Cæsar to that of Scipio! George of Trebizond, a man of

like temper to his own, was another of his opponents, and on one

occasion the two disputants, after publicly giving each other the

lie, came to blows, and were with difficulty separated by their

hearers. And at last this detestable spirit grew on him to such

a degree that, no longer content with attacking individuals, he

published libels, if we may so say, on the literary world at large,

and did his best in his “Dialogue against Hypocrites,” to slaughter

the reputation of every man of virtue and celebrity in the world

of letters, such as the Blessed John Dominic, Ambrose Traversari,

Cardinal Luca Manzuoli, and the entire Franciscan Order. With all

this, Poggio probably held the first place among the scholars of

his time, unless the superiority be given to his adversary, Lorenzo

Valla, who is generally held to have surpassed him in grammatical

erudition. Erasmus, indeed, treated the merits of Poggio very

lightly. “Poggio was possessed of so little real learning,” he

says, “that, even if his books were less full of abominations than

they are, they would not repay perusal; as it is, were he even the

most erudite of writers, all good men must regard him with horror.”

Nor can a much better character be given to Valla; in arrogance

and vanity he equalled Filelfo; and in his famous “Treatise on the

Elegance of the Latin Tongue,” gave the world to understand that

he was about to explain a language which before his time had been

understood by none. “These books,” he says, “_will contain nothing

that has ever been said by anybody else_. For many ages past, not

only has no one been able to speak Latin, but none have understood

the Latin they read, the philosophers have had no comprehension

of the philosophers, the advocates of the orators, the lawyers of

the jurists,” and so of the rest. This kind of self confidence is,

however, so universal among scholars of the age as hardly to call

for special notice; but it was the least fault of which Valla stands

charged. Passing over grosser accusations brought against him by

adversaries whose habits of calumny render their testimony of little

value, there was a taint of ingratitude in Valla’s character which

is particularly offensive. Having, in his “Declamation against the

Donation of Constantine,” attacked the claims of the Holy See in

terms which Hallam himself admits could not be excused, be retired

from Rome, and found a warm welcome at the court of Naples. Here,

however, he soon got involved in difficulties with the Inquisition,

in consequence of certain impieties to which he gave utterance on

the subject of the Holy Trinity and other fundamental dogmas of

the faith. He was only released from prison through the friendly

interference of Panormita. Yet as soon as he recovered his liberty

he engaged in a furious quarrel with his benefactor, and spared

no calumnies by which he could bring discredit on his name and

character. He treated it as a crime for any one to differ from

him in any point of taste and criticism, and punished all such

transgressions by blackening the fair fame of his opponents.

Nevertheless, he met with far gentler treatment than he deserved,

for it was after he had established his renown as the best Latinist,

and, next to Poggio, the most malignant calumniator of his day, that

Nicholas V. invited him back to Rome, made him a canon of St. John

Lateran, and employed him in numerous translations, all of which

were liberally paid for. Valla accepted the dignities and the money

offered him by the Pope, and took advantage of his favourable turn

of fortune to complete that attack on the papal sovereignty which he

had before left unfinished; and he did so in a style which, Hallam

informs us, rather resembles the violence of Luther than what might

have been expected from a Roman official of the fifteenth century.

The clemency shown him by the Pope was perhaps excessive, for he was

suffered to live at Rome unmolested, and retained the office and

pension of apostolic secretary to the day of his death.

It must be owned that the portrait gallery through which we are

passing, has thus far been anything but pleasing, nor can it be

denied that in their main features of malice and presumption, most of

the scholars of the age exhibit a family resemblance to those noted

above. Hallam observes that the inferior renown enjoyed by Giannozzo

Manetti, is probably owing to the greater mildness of his character,

which involved him in fewer of those altercations to which Poggio and

Valla owed a great part of their celebrity. And Tiraboschi apologises

to his readers for leaving some portions of his history somewhat

obscure, on the ground that the calumnies and misrepresentations

indulged in by almost all writers of the period, render it nearly

impossible to rely on any of their statements, and to accept as facts

anything which they may say unfavourable of one another.

Some noble exceptions, however, are to be found, and among them

may be quoted the example of Leonard Bruni, or, as he is more

frequently styled from the place of his birth, Leonard Aretino.

Whilst Chancellor of Florence he one day engaged in a public

philosophic dispute with Giannozzo Manetti, in which the latter

gained the advantage over him. Stung with annoyance, Leonard let fall

some injurious words, to which, however, Giannozzo replied with his

customary good temper, and both returned to their respective homes.

But Leonard was so pursued by remorse for his fault that he could not

close his eyes all night, and so soon as morning dawned, he hastened

to the house of Giannozzo, who was greatly surprised to see the first

magistrate of Florence at his door at such an early hour. Leonard,

however, only bade him follow him into the city, and conducting

him to the great bridge over the Arno, then the most frequented

thoroughfare, he publicly asked his pardon, and acknowledged he had

had no rest since he had spoken injuriously of so noble an adversary.

Giannozzo received his apology with a modesty which was equally

admirable, and the friendship which from that day sprung up between

these two great men, remained unbroken to the death of Leonard,

on which occasion the funeral oration was spoken over his body by

Giannozzo.

From the scholars of Florence let us now turn to her Mecænas, the

merchant prince, who, for thirty years, held the first rank in the

Republic, and deserved to obtain from his grateful fellow citizens

the title of “Father of his country.” Cosmo de’ Medici was beyond all

question the greatest of his illustrious race. Machiavel calls him

the most magnificent and most generous of men, and Flavio declares

that he surpassed all his contemporaries in wisdom, humanity, and

liberality. His political career seems to have been for the most

part free from the vice of selfish ambition; whilst as a patron of

letters, even in that age of splendid patrons, he had no equal.

In Florence alone he founded three public libraries, expending

36,000 ducats on that of St. Mark’s, which he enriched with 400

Latin and Greek manuscripts, whilst he appointed as librarian

Thomas di Sarzana, afterwards Pope Nicholas V. A few years later

he rebuilt the library, and added a collection of Hebrew, Arabic,

Sanscrit, and Chaldaic books, collected at enormous cost. His love

of literature was so genuine, and so superior to the selfishness

of a mere bibliopolist, that even when in temporary exile at

Venice, he could not help opening his purse-strings in favour of

the Venetian library of St. George, and employed his fellow exile,

the architect Michelozzi, in providing it with reading benches and

other conveniences, presenting it also with many books. It was his

wish to draw to Florence all the learned men of the day. He it was

who invited thither the Greek Professor Argyrophilus, to the end

that he might instruct the Florentine youth in the philosophy of

Aristotle. A vast number of Greek exiles received from him a princely

welcome, to say nothing of the crowd of native scholars who thronged

his palace. Pages might be filled with the mere enumeration of the

convents, churches, and hospitals which he built or endowed, not

merely at Florence, but even at Jerusalem, where he founded a large

hospital for poor pilgrims. He had stewards and administrators in

every part of Europe, who helped him to dispense his treasures on

worthy objects. Yet with all this, his own establishment was always

conducted on the most modest scale, and he who enriched scores of

Florentine families, never assumed a more brilliant appearance than

that of an ordinary citizen. His liberality was altogether free from

ostentation, and appears to have flowed from the purest and most

Christian motives. “Never yet,” he complained to one of his friends,

“have I been able to spend in God’s honour the sums for which, when I

look over my ledger, I find myself indebted to Him.”

It was in the year 1438, whilst Pope Eugenius IV. was residing

at Florence, and the Council was still sitting which had for its

object the extinction of the Greek schism, that a certain Greek,

named George Gemistus, arrived in the city, and one day entered the

palace of Cosmo with a copy of Plato under his arm. This celebrated

scholar had received the surname of _Pletho_, in consequence of his

enthusiastic admiration of the academic philosopher, and is more

commonly known by this sobriquet than by his patronymic. Pletho, as

we shall therefore call him, read a few pages of his book to the

enraptured ears of Cosmo, and very soon communicated to him a portion

of his own enthusiasm. Until then Cosmo had been a stranger to all

save the Peripatetic philosophy, and the ideas which now presented

themselves to his mind seemed like the opening of some new world. In

his delight he conceived the plan of establishing a Platonic academy

at Florence, a design which was put into execution without delay.

Platonism, however, was then so new in the schools of the West, that

Cosmo could find no professor who seemed capable of filling the chair

of philosophy to be attached to this academy; and he resolved to

educate for that purpose a child whose talents had already attracted

his notice. Marsilius Ficinus was the son of his physician; his tiny

frame and delicate constitution seemed incapable of making head

against the host of maladies with which he had been beset from the

cradle. But Cosmo’s quick eye discerned the indications of early

genius. “This boy,” he said, “is destined to cure, not the maladies

of the body, but those of the soul.”

With his customary bounty, he became a second father to his future

professor, and under his direction, Ficinus received a thoroughly

Platonic education. He was carefully reared in the maxims and

philosophy of the great master, to the end that having early imbibed

the principles of Platonism as a kind of second nature, he might be

qualified afterwards to become the head preceptor of the new academy.

The whole scheme had something visionary about it, and no less so was

the character of the man chosen to carry it out. From his boyhood he

was a poet and a dreamer. He loved to wander at early daybreak by

the banks of the Arno, and recite aloud to the woods and the stream

the verses of Virgil’s “Georgics.” Light and country air were his

two necessaries; he seemed to live in the sunshine, and on those

rare occasions when the fair sky of Florence was overspread with

clouds, he could neither write nor study. His work as a composer was

exclusively carried on in the early morning hours; then it was that

his genius seemed to wake with the sunrise; and if he also spent long

night hours over his manuscripts, he only then applied himself to the

labour of revision. Cosmo gave him a little lamp, which was often

found burning when daylight dawned in the east; he also provided him

with books, and specially with manuscripts of Plato procured from

Venice at an enormous cost, and to these Ficinus applied himself with

such incessant application, that his health almost entirely gave

way; in fact, his life seemed always hanging by a single thread, and

was preserved only by such extraordinary precautions as are bestowed

on some exotic plant. At the age of twenty-three, the young student

considered himself ready to read to a learned assembly, presided

over by Cosmo, the first pages of his “Platonic Institutions.”

When the lecture was over, his patron smiled and gently shook his

head. Ficinus understood the gesture, but was not discouraged; he

prepared for a fresh course of studies, and placed himself under the

historian Platina, more illustrious for his Greek erudition than for

his orthodoxy, but the latter condition was not greatly cared for

by the young Platonist. In a few months he found that he had made

such rapid progress, that, remodelling his work, he submitted it to

the judgment of Marcus Musurus, the Greek professor of Venice, and

the first editor of Aristophanes. He found Musurus sitting at his

writing-table, and having engaged him to give an impartial opinion,

began the reading of his manuscript. As the professor listened, he

amused himself with turning over the various implements before him.

Ficinus at last paused, and asked him what he thought of it.

“I think _this_,” said Musurus, and taking the ink bottle, he shook

it over the open manuscript as if it had been sand. Ficinus betrayed

no impatience, which is saying something for his philosophy; and

retiring to the country house which Cosmo had presented to him,

devoted himself to the task of a third revision. Before it was

completed his great patron died leaving his son Pietro and his

grandson Lorenzo de Medici to succeed him in his pre-eminence, both

in the literary and political world. Pietro and Lorenzo showed

themselves as eager to encourage the Platonic academy as its

first founder had been; and their enthusiasm was shared by their

contemporaries. All the scholars of Italy aspired to the honour

of membership; Landino, Alberti, and John Picus of Mirandola,

these met together, and contended for the silver laurel wreath,

which was the prize of merit; and one of Pietro’s first acts was

to establish a professorship, the chair of which was immediately

bestowed on Ficinus. In the meetings of this academy the honours

bestowed on Plato came very near to idolatry. Its festivals were

the anniversaries of his birth and death, a lamp was burnt in his

honour, and the professor, in lecturing to his fellow academicians,

addressed them, not as “my brethren in Christ,” but as “my brethren

in Plato.” It was, perhaps, unfortunate that Ficinus did not rest

content with his professor’s chair and his academic reputation. In

such a position his Platonic enthusiasm might have been productive of

little injury, but at the age of forty-two he entered the priesthood,

became canon of Florence, and took up the study of theology. Plato,

however, was not laid aside for St. Paul. On whatever subject he

wrote or spoke, says Tiraboschi, he seemed unable to refrain from

tinging it with the doctrines of the academy. Gemistus, his first

master, had been an avowed disciple of the Alexandrian school, and in

the furious controversy then raging between the Platonists and the

Aristotelians, had highly lauded not only the writings of the Greek

philosopher, but those of Hermes and Zoroaster. In fact, as Hallam

cautiously expresses it, “there were some grounds for ascribing

to him a rejection of Christianity.” Ficinus cannot be charged

with similar scepticism, though his lectures seem to have sown the

seeds of religious doubt in the minds of some of his hearers. He

believed the Gospels, but they were the Gospels _Platonised_. He

went so far as to desire that his favourite author should be read

in the Christian churches, and published eighteen books of what he

called “Platonic Theology.” Hallam calls this work “a beautiful, but

visionary and hypothetical system of Theism.” He did not attack the

Christian dogmas, but he treated them as a philosopher rather than as

a theologian. He was not content with gathering up and giving to the

world the profound maxims of his illustrious master; but he undertook

to harmonise the teaching of Plato and the teaching of Scripture, and

attempted to prove that all the most prominent Christian mysteries

were to be found in the _Criton_, which he regarded almost as a

second Gospel.[308]

The extravagances in which Ficinus indulged were equally maintained

in other learned academies. That which flourished at Rome under

the direction of Pomponius Lœtus drew on its members the hostility

of Paul II., who has been repeatedly charged with “persecuting

the learned,” out of that natural antipathy to learning, of which

Popes and cardinals are sometimes imagined to possess a kind of

monopoly. The historian who originated the charge, however, is no

other than Platina, the former master of Ficinus, whom Paul II. had

made an enemy by suppressing the college of the _Abbreviatori_ to

which he belonged. He was himself a member of the Roman academy,

the suppression of which has been differently related by different

historians, but it appears certain that the alleged crime of the

members was, not their learning, but a real or supposed plot against

the Government and certain impious and anti-Christian tenets which

they were reported to hold. Tiraboschi considers that their innocence

of the charges brought against them may be deduced from the fact

that, after a year’s imprisonment, they were all set at liberty, and

that Platina in particular was afterwards honourably employed by

Sixtus IV., who made him librarian of the Vatican Library. Possibly

the impieties of which they were guilty might rather have sprung

from the foolish conceit of pedants than any positive unbelief; yet

still it must be owned that some of their acts had a suspicious

character, and could not but have appeared reprehensible in the eyes

of the Pontiff. Michael Canensius declares they were wont to affirm

that the Christian religion rested on no sufficient evidence, but

only on the testimony of a few weak-headed saints: that they laid

aside the use of their Christian names, and adopted others chosen

from the great heathens of antiquity; that they were in the habit

of swearing by the heathen gods and goddesses; that they disputed

concerning the immortality of the soul, and maintained many Platonic

errors, that Pomponius disdained the Scriptures, and was wont to

say that Christianity was only fit for barbarians, and that, in his

enthusiasm for ancient Rome, he even raised and decorated altars to

the god Romulus. Some of these charges the accused did not deny; but

though examined under the torture, it does not seem that anything

transpired which offered satisfactory proofs of the existence of a

conspiracy.[309] Paul contented himself, therefore, with suppressing

the academy, and thereby earned for himself immense obloquy, and the

character of being an enemy of letters; a most undeserved reproach,

for, besides maintaining a number of poor scholars in his palace, and

being an eager collector of ancient manuscripts and monuments, his

biographer tells us that he was accustomed to spend many hours of the

night reading the ancient authors, and “that he loved all learned

men, _provided_ that to their learning were joined good manners.”

This last condition was not always thought equally essential by

patrons of letters of this period, who seem, as a general rule, to

have cared but little what a man’s life was, provided he knew Greek.

Filelfo, however, adds his testimony (which, in this instance, may

perhaps be regarded as trustworthy), that Paul II. “was ever a

favourer of learned men.”

We must not, however, suppose that the scholars of the Renaissance

were exclusively made up of captious grammarians and philosophic

sceptics. The movement had its fairer side; it was bewitching in

its promise of literary excellence, and was not even devoid of its

character of romance. Chivalry was not yet entirely extinct, and

among the masters and scholars of the Italian schools some took up

the cause of learning in a truly chivalrous spirit, and without a

thought of self-interest, devoted themselves to study and teaching,

as to a work by which they might benefit their kind. Their enthusiasm

for their favourite pursuits appears sometimes in a more amiable

character than that which it assumed in the hands of Poggio and his

adversaries. Among the grammar professors enumerated by Tiraboschi

we find the name of Piattino de’ Piatti, a noble youth brought up

as a page in the household of Galeazzo Sforza, who for a very small

offence caused him to be imprisoned for fifteen months in a frightful

dungeon. We next find him figuring at a splendid tournament at the

court of Ferrara, where he bore away the prize, and at the same time

struck up an ardent friendship with the poet Strozza, who addressed

some verses to him, praising him for knowing how to blend together

the merits of the soldier and the scholar. For several years he

bore arms under the Duke of Urbino, but his warlike occupations

did not hinder him from cultivating the Muses, and he published a

volume of Latin poems, which was one of the earliest works printed

in Italy. Disappointed at not receiving the promotion he expected

from the French kings Charles VIII. and Louis XII., he abandoned

the profession of arms, and embraced that of schoolmaster in the

little village of Garlasco, opening his humble academy with as much

solemnity as if it had been a university, with a learned Latin

oration. And we are assured that the number of good scholars then

to be found in Italy was so great that many other villages besides

Garlasco could boast of possessing as their schoolmasters first-rate

professors of eloquence.

But the palm of Christian scholarship belongs, at this time, beyond

all question, to John Picus, Prince of Mirandola, whose brief life

closed in his thirty-second year, and whose acquirements probably

surpassed those recorded of any other scholar. Whilst still a child

he evinced so retentive a memory as to be able at once to repeat

any verses recited in his presence, and displayed a sort of natural

predisposition to the study of the _belles-lettres_. His mother,

however, who wished him to embrace the ecclesiastical state, sent

him to Bologna, to read canon law, at the age of fourteen, and after

spending two years there, he proceeded to study philosophy in the

principal schools of France and Italy. Besides a knowledge of the

scholastic writers, he acquired during the next six years the Latin,

Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic tongues; but his enthusiastic

and imaginative disposition led him to explore with eagerness the

mysteries of the Jewish Cabala, a mass of mystic doctrine attributed

to Esdras; on which idle fallacies, says Corniani, Mirandola expended

a genius which was fitted to reach the most elevated truths of

philosophy.

In his twenty-third year the young scholar appeared at Rome, and

astonished the learned world by offering publicly to defend nine

hundred theses on questions logical, ethical, mathematical, physical,

metaphysical, theological, magical, and cabalistic; in short, _de

omni re scibili_. Four hundred of these propositions were taken from

Latin, Greek, Jewish, and Arabic doctors; the rest were announced

to be his own opinions, which he was prepared to defend, subject

to the judgment of the Church. There was a dash of vanity in all

this, excusable perhaps in so young a scholar, who could not but

be conscious of his superiority, and who in his anxiety to display

it, offered to pay the expenses of any learned man who might come

to oppose him from the utmost parts of the earth. His propositions

were meanwhile examined by order of Innocent VIII., and thirteen

of them pronounced unsound; whereupon he published an “Apology,”

explaining in what sense they were put forth, but wholly submitting

to the judgment passed on them by authority. The Holy Father,

therefore, while condemning the theses, forbade their author to be

in any way molested, and when some of his enemies revived these

accusations on the death of Innocent, his successor, Alexander VI.,

appointed a commission, which declared his innocence of the charge

of heresy. He next appeared at Florence, the most brilliant of all

the brilliant throng that was gathered in the court of Lorenzo de’

Medici, and was admitted to the closest friendship of that prince,

and his favourite scholars Ficinus and Politian. Young, gifted in

mind and person, and possessed of all the fairy favours of rank,

wealth, and an honourable fame, Picus of Mirandola yielded at first

to the fascinations of the world, which perhaps never assumed a more

bewitching guise than in the court of the Medici. His ardent poetic

temperament was sensitively alive to the seductions of pleasure,

when pleasure came hand in hand with all that was graceful in art

and polished in literature. But a few years of such life sufficed to

withdraw the veil from his eyes; the pursuit after worldly honours

and delights seemed after all, to use his own words, but a child’s

chase after painted soap-bubbles; and the day came when, flinging all

his lighter poetry into the flames, he prostrated before the altar of

the Blessed Virgin, and vowed to dedicate the remainder of his life

to the service of God alone. From that time he became as remarkable

for his admirable virtues, as he had been before for his learning;

his charities to the poor were dispensed on a princely scale, and

so great a horror did he conceive for the vain glory into which he

had been once betrayed, that he only allowed his writings to appear

under the name of some other author. He refused every solicitation to

engage in public disputations, and spent the remainder of his days

in mingled prayer and study, to which latter exercise, says Paul

Cortese, he generally devoted twelve hours a day.

It is remarkable that Picus of Mirandola, though so thoroughly

imbued with the literary tastes of the Renaissance, was very far

from sharing in that contempt for the elder Christian schoolmen,

in which the scholars of the fifteenth century commonly indulged.

When Hermolaus Barbarus, in one of his letters, gave vent to his

sentiments of scorn for men who could write such bad Latin, Picus

replied in an epistle, which Hallam quotes as affording a favourable

example of the ease and elegance of his own style, and in which he

puts a very good defence in the mouth of those despised barbarians;

and Hermolaus had nothing better to say in return than that they

would certainly have disowned their advocate for defending them in

such classical language.

But we must now enter the school of another Florentine canon, who

had the merit not only of being learned in Greek and Latin, but of

possessing some of that original and poetic genius which, since the

days of Petrarch, had been rare in Italy, overlaid, it may be, by

the superincumbent weight of grammar learning. Angelo Politian had

first made himself known to the world of letters by a graceful poem,

composed when a mere youth on the occasion of a tournament, at which

Julian and Lorenzo, the two sons of Pietro de’ Medici, appeared in

the lists. The young poet, scarce fifteen years of age, was at once

received into the Medici Palace, and astonished his tutors, Landino,

Argyrophilus, and Ficinus, with his Latin epigrams. He was not much

older when he undertook to translate Homer into Latin verse, and at

twenty-nine we find him filling the chair of rhetoric at Florence, a

distinction of which he was abundantly vain. Vanity was, in fact, his

prevailing fault, and it raised him a swarm of enemies who could not

forgive his airs of superiority, and those biting sarcasms which he

knew how to clothe in the most elegant Latin. But even his enemies

admitted that, as a professor of eloquence, he stood without a rival.

Equally at home in Greek, Latin, or Hebrew eloquence, in the Platonic

or the Peripatetic philosophy, in rhetoric or in jurisprudence, he

amazed his hearers by the multiplicity of his acquirements, no less

than by the facility of his style. No wonder that a lecturer of this

stamp should succeed in drawing around him all the great intellects

of that wonderful age. On the benches beneath that chair you might

see the young prince Picus of Mirandola, and the grey-headed men who

had been Politian’s own masters; a crowd of foreigners, too, such as

the Englishmen Grocyn and Linacre, who were destined to carry back

the seeds of polite letters to their own barbaric land, and other

pilgrims from France, Germany, and Portugal, besides native scholars

from all the cities of Italy. Lorenzo, who in 1469 had succeeded

to his father’s wealth and dignities, would also join the learned

throng, and hang on the honied words of the young professor. As

every one knows, the Muses are not always so happy as to carry the

Graces in their train, and Politian’s portrait has been drawn by

Jovius in no very flattering terms. On first beholding him, he says,

it was impossible to avoid an involuntary movement of surprise and

disgust; his huge, unsightly nose, squinting eye, and awkward stoop,

inspired no favourable impression; but no sooner had he begun to

speak, than your senses were fairly taken captive, and closing your

eyes, you willingly gave yourself up to the power of that graceful

eloquence and the exquisite music of that voice, which very soon

made you indifferent to the defect of other natural advantages in

the speaker. “Yes,” you might have said to yourself as you listened,

“this is indeed rhetoric; hitherto in that chair I have listened to

grammarians and critics, but the Muses have at last taken pity on our

grammar-beladen ears, and sent us one who can feel the sentiment of

Virgil and Homer, as well as explain their syntax.”

It was, in fact, the possession of that inexplicable gift, the

poetic sensibility, which raised Politian to an eminence differing

so very widely from that of the Poggios and Vallas who had preceded

him, and which made him more charming as a lecturer, and perhaps

more amiable as a man. Instead of wrangling over verbs and cases,

he loved to picture to his own and his hearers’ imagination, the

rural scenes which Virgil painted; and seizing some happy phrase

of the Latin poet, to expand, to colour, to revivify it till you

wandered under the shade of the beech trees, and heard the very hum

of the bees among the odorous limes. At such moments, laying down

his book, with the skill of an Improvisatore, he would take you to

the woods and fields, and make you listen to “the soft and soul-like

sounds” of the wind, as it sighed among the pines, to the rustling

of the oak leaves in Vallombrosa, to the merry chattering of the

tiny brook over its bed of pebbles, and the lowing of the herds in

the rich Tuscan pastures. All this, to the ears of the Florentines,

so long condemned to a sort of intellectual aridity, was like fresh

showers on a thirsty soil. To none was it more delightful than to

Lorenzo, himself a poet of no mean ability, and keenly alive to the

charm of rural sights and rural sounds; and after listening to such

a lecture, he would wait in the hall, and taking the professor by

the arm, would lead him out to that fair villa at Fiesole, which

looked over the dome and towers of Florence, and over a varied

landscape of mountains, woods, and gardens, all glittering in the

sunset glories of a Tuscan sky. There were gathered day after day

the choicest intellects and the most erudite minds, men of all

nations and of all gifts: critics, artists, poets, antiquarians;

Lorenzo had a welcome for each, and was as ready to reward the happy

presentee of an ancient medal or a classic vase, as he was to add

to his library a Greek manuscript brought from the farther end of

Europe by Lascaris,[310] or a new treatise from the pen of Landino.

Every day some fresh treasure was displayed to the admiration of his

illustrious friends, some _chef d’œuvre_ of ancient sculpture, or a

heap of Eastern manuscripts, sold to him by a Jewish merchant for

their weight in gold. “I love these books so dearly,” he once said,

“that I would give my whole princely wardrobe to purchase them.”

The arts were not forgotten. Perugino was among the honoured guests

of Fiesole; and among the pupils of Politian was the young sculptor

Michael Angelo Buonarotti, whom Lorenzo lodged in his palace, and

treated as his own son. The Platonic academicians, too, found a warm

supporter in the grandson of their founder, and Ficinus gratified

to the full his thirst for sunshine, and his dreamy poetic tastes

in that little chamber, where morning after morning he loved to

throw open the windows, and listen to the song of the birds as they

greeted the dawn, and drink in the fragrance of the hawthorn and the

honeysuckle, and the thousand exotic plants which blossomed on the

parterres and terraces. There, to use the exquisite similitude of the

English philosopher, “the breath of the flowers in the open air came

and went like the warbling of music;”[311] there the fountains threw

up their graceful jets, and made a pleasant murmur to the ear, and

the sensitive and highly-wrought organisation of the Platonic scholar

was soothed and invigorated by contact with all that was beautiful to

the eye and ear in nature or in art.

All this was delightful enough, nor is it to be wondered at that

the grace and fascination of such scenes blinded the eyes of those

who took part in them, and the judgment of those who have been

their historians. But, in truth, there was another side to the

picture. The revival of classic taste at Florence was a revival of

practical Paganism. It was not a mere return to those principles

which had been admitted in the Christian schools before the rise

of Scholasticism, when the Latin poets were freely studied even in

ecclesiastical seminaries, and the Greek learning of the monks of St.

Gall earned for some among them the title of the _Frati Ellenici_.

It was a great deal more than this. It not only restored the study

of the classic writers, but also their habits of thought, and their

gross sensuality. It revived the Pagan, and excluded the Christian

ideas; Christ was no longer recognised as “the One Teacher of man;”

on the contrary, even from the pulpit you heard quotations from

Virgil and Juvenal quite as often as from the Gospels. A style of

speaking had become fashionable, according to which a certain sort

of barbarism was associated with the idea of Christianity, as though

it were something Gothic and transmontane. The Saints and Fathers

of the Church gradually disappeared from the schools; the touching

representations of Christian mysteries were withdrawn from the

public eye; and society, instead of being permeated, as in former

centuries, with an atmosphere of the faith, was now redolent of

heathenism. Christianity was looked on as unworthy of furnishing

subjects to the pen or pencil of the scholar. In those trellised

gardens where the wits of Florence assembled to listen to the

graceful eloquence of Politian, were grouped fragments of ancient

art or the copies of modern sculptors, the eager students of the new

school of naturalism. Here it was an undraped Venus, there a Satyr or

a Bacchanal. Sometimes Lorenzo appeared among the brilliant throng,

and condescended to assign to the artists whom he entertained a new

subject for their genius. To Pollajuolo he gave the twelve labours

of Hercules, to Ghirlandajo the misfortunes of Vulcan, to Luca

Signorelli all the gods and goddesses of Olympus, whose stories were

to be represented with little of that reserve demanded by Christian

modesty. Yet artists might have been found at that time whose genius

was impressed with a more religious character, but they received

no encouragement at Florence, where the school most in favour was

that which substituted sensual for mystic beauty; and this debased

heathenised taste equally pervaded the Florentine literature and

schools.

The books admitted as class-books into the new academies were

precisely those authors which have been in all ages proscribed as

the most dangerous, but which were now placed in the hands of the

young without restriction of any sort. And, indeed, what kind of

moral safeguards were likely to be supplied by professors such as

Filelfo, Poggio, and Valla, whose licentious language was unhappily

rather the rule than the exception among the teachers of the day?

The study of the Scriptures, which in earlier times had filled so

large a place in the scholastic course, was now all but entirely laid

aside; and we are assured that some would even ask, with astonishing

simplicity, what use could be derived from the knowledge of events

that had happened so many ages ago? As to that liturgical element

which had hitherto mingled so largely in the scheme of Christian

education, it had little chance of being preserved in an age when

not lay professors alone, but even ecclesiastics, were so besotted

with their devotion to Pagan models, as to show themselves ashamed

of the language of the Church formularies. Whilst some escaped

from the misery of reciting their Latin breviaries by obtaining

permission to use a Greek or Hebrew version, others gave up reading

the Epistles of St. Paul through fear of accustoming their ears to so

unclassical a style; and numerous proposals were set on foot for what

was called a reform of the Liturgy, which should have for its object

the correction of its style and its adaptation to classical forms.

But even these were not the worst excesses. Tiraboschi assures us

that scepticism and open unbelief were becoming frightfully common

among men of letters, and specially in the Italian universities

which were declared in the following century to be hot-beds of

infidelity. Yet so innate in the human soul is the craving for some

kind of mysticism, that at the very time that faith in the Christian

mysteries was being rejected, many were entangling themselves

in the absurdities of the Jewish Cabala; and not a few addicted

themselves to magical studies, practising rites and incantations of

most shocking impiety. Even where these grosser disorders did not

exist, the combined influence of heathenism and sensuality produced

a certain irreligious and intensely worldly tone, more difficult,

perhaps, to combat than open vice or infidelity; and it was of this

that Savonarola complained when from the pulpit of St. Mark’s he

first addressed the Florentines with his fervid Biblical eloquence,

but found his glowing words fall, as he expressed it, upon hearts as

hard and as cold as marble.

In other respects, also, the age of the Medici resembled but too

closely that of Augustus. It was an age when a people were being

cajoled to surrender their freedom into the hands of an absolute

ruler, who used as his instrument for undermining republican

institutions weapons far more deadly than the sword. Lorenzo had

read Tacitus to some purpose, and thoroughly understood his maxim,

that the easiest way to enslave a nation is first to corrupt it.

He scrupled not to secure his political ascendancy in Florence

by ministering to the baser passions of the populace. He amused

them with shows and dances, carnival masquerades, and midnight

processions, in which the flood-gates of license were freely opened,

and heathen fables were represented in all their most unseemly

crudeness; and in return they let him steal away their independence,

and appropriate to himself the authority of the sovereign of Florence

under the title of her First Citizen. Magnificent orgies were held by

torchlight, wherein the triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne, or some other

such subject, was enacted by bands of superbly-dressed masquers,

singing those celebrated carnival songs composed by Lorenzo,

which were, we are told, for the most part, immoral and indecent,

expressing, not the graceful Platonism of a classical academy, but

a mythological burlesque, flavoured for the grosser tastes of the

populace.

It was against this flood of iniquity in the schools, the palace,

and the public streets, that the bold eloquence of Savonarola was at

this time directed, creating a moral reaction, which proved, however

fallacious in its brilliant promise of reform. Taking the Scriptures

as his weapon of warfare, he dealt rude and terrible blows at those

who were sapping the very foundations of Christianity with their

elegant Paganism. He complained that priests and doctors now thought

of nothing but rhetoric. They studied Horace and Cicero to prepare

themselves for the cure of souls. They gave up the study of the

Scriptures in order to preach Plato from the pulpit. The very art

and music which they encouraged were instruments of demoralisation

rather than of popular instruction. Most terrible was the eloquence

with which he attacked the authors of such abuses. “How have _you_

renounced the Devil and his pomps?” he exclaimed in one of his

sermons--“you, who every day do his works, and attend not to the

law of Christ, but the literature of the Gentiles; declaring the

Scriptures to contain only food fit for women, and demanding in their

place the eloquence of Tully and the sounding words of the poets to

be preached to you!” On no subject were his strictures more unsparing

than on the education of the young. He built his hopes of reform not

on his grown-up hearers and converts; but on the children, for whose

benefit he sought to introduce a system of studies, the principles

of which in the main coincided with those of the ancient Christian

schools. He did not propose the exclusion of the heathen poets and

philosophers, but demanded that no lesson in Pagan literature should

be given without a simultaneous one from Christian sources; that the

Scriptures should be ever in the hand of the professor; that St.

Jerome and St. Augustine should be studied together with Homer and

Cicero; that no book of immoral tendency should be tolerated in the

schools; and that teachers should not fail to point out to their

pupils the folly and impiety of the heathen fables.