1480 some revival is apparent, but the quality of the publication is
greatly lowered. Classics continued to be printed, but they retire into
the background before canon and civil law, and the apparent number is
greatly helped out by ephemeral pamphlets, such as papal briefs and
addresses on public occasions. The endeavour to render Rome an
intellectual centre had manifestly failed, nor has she deserved this
character at any subsequent period, except for the few years during
which wits and scholars gathered around Leo X. Before leaving the
subject, nevertheless, a tribute should be paid to the merits of Joannes
Philippus de Lignamine, a native of Messina, apparently a man of good
family, and not improbably the first native Italian to exercise the
typographic art, in whose productions may be traced rudimentary ideas of
a higher order than were vouchsafed to his mercantile contemporaries. It
can hardly be by accident that the same man who in 1472 prints the first
vernacular book that had appeared in Rome, should in the same year
publish, although in Latin, the first biography of an Italian
contemporary, his own memoir of his own sovereign, Ferdinand of Naples;
should in 1473 issue the vernacular poetry of Petrarch; and in 1474 a
book of such national interest as the "Italia Illustrata" of Flavio
Biondo. His publications are always of high quality, and it would be
interesting to learn more respecting him. He is described as a member of
the Pope's household, and was certainly something more than a
professional printer.
The establishment of printing at Rome had naturally ensued upon the
migration of the printers from the small adjoining town of Subiaco, and
the choice of the latter place as the cradle of Italian typography had
probably been determined by the German nationality of the majority of
the inmates of its celebrated monastery. The introduction of printing
into Venice, two years after Rome, was probably less the effect of
accident. Joannes de Spira, who, as we have seen, so promptly secured a
monopoly of so much value as the exclusive exercise of printing for five
years, must have been an enterprising and far-seeing man, to whom the
opulence and comparative freedom of Venice would offer greater
attractions than the doubtful patronage of an Italian despot. This view
of his character is confirmed by the boldness of his first undertakings.
Before obtaining any privilege he had produced two of the most
voluminous works of antiquity then accessible—Pliny's Natural History
and Cicero's Epistolæ ad Familiares. The soundness of his judgment was
evinced by the demand for a second edition of his Cicero within four
months, an unusual occurrence in the history of early printing. Tacitus
followed, and the German printer's patriotism is indicated by his
description of the Germania as "libellus aureus." His brother and
successor, Vindelinus, displays even greater energy, producing fifteen
books within the year 1470, among them so important a work as Livy's
History, and gaining especial honour as the first printer of Petrarch.
The rest are almost entirely classical, and so are the few books printed
in this year by his rival, Nicolas Jenson, the most elegant of all the
Italian printers. In 1471 Venetian printing takes a wider range; law
books increase; Jensen produces books of morals and of religious
edification in the vernacular; Christopher Valdarfer publishes the
Decameron of Boccaccio. More important still is the appearance of two
independent Italian translations of the Bible, one from the press of
Vindelinus, one without name of printer. As no other Italian city
emulated the example of Venice, an example frequently repeated by her
before the close of the century, we are justified in assuming that in no
other Italian city could such a thing be done. Interesting too is a
vernacular translation of Cardinal Bessarion's exhortation to the
Italian princes to take arms against the Turk, showing a public for
productions of contemporary interest, outside the ranks of those who
could read Latin. In the following year, 1472, printed editions of no
fewer than six classical authors make their appearance at Venice,
Cicero's Tusculan Questions; Catullus, with Tibullus and Propertius, and
the Silvæ of Statius; Ausonius, with a considerable appendix of minor
poets; Macrobius's commentary on the "Somnium Scipionis," and the
authors of "De Re Rustica." Although some of the cities dependent upon
Venice—Padua, Treviso, Verona—were beginning to have printing-presses,
their typographers were not equal to such undertakings, and Venice must
have been the headquarters of production and distribution for her
extensive and opulent territory, and probably for many of the
neighbouring states. Her abundant capital and industry, liberal
administration in non-political matters, and the confluence of strangers
must be reckoned among the principal causes of this activity, to which
Mr. Horatio Brown adds another, the abundance and excellence of paper,
which the Venetian senate had protected a century before by prohibiting
the export of rags from their dominions.
The extent and growth of the Venetian book-trade will appear by the
following notice of the number of works printed from 1469 to 1486, which
would be considerably augmented if dates could be safely assigned to
undated books:—
1469 4 books.
1470 22 books.
1471 48 books.
1472 36 books.
1473 28 books.
1474 40 books.
1475 37 books.
1476 52 books.
1477 55 books.
1478 64 books.
1479 16 books.
1480 71 books.
1481 79 books.
1482 74 books.
1483 104 books.
1484 66 books.
1485 84 books.
1486 71 books.
By 1495 the number of publications has risen to 119, the general
character of the books remaining much as before. The productions of the
Venetian press from 1469 to 1500 occupy more space in Panzer's catalogue
than those of Rome, Florence, Naples, Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Ferrara,
Padua, Parma, and Treviso put together.
Space allows only a brief glance at the typographical productions of the
five most important of the seven Italian cities which possessed
printing-presses by 1471—Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Milan and Naples.
Bologna, as might be expected in a university city, especially produces
erudite books, particularly in philosophy, mathematics, and medicine.
Petrarch and Boccaccio, however, relieve the general aridity, and there
is a fair sprinkling of classics. Ferrara's taste lies much in the same
direction, but it is remarkable for a school of Hebrew printing, and
does itself honour by the _editio princeps_ of Seneca's tragedies, and
even more so by that of Boccaccio's "Teseide," the first publication of
an Italian epic poem other than the "Divina Commedia." Florence appears
more tardy in developing the new art than might have been expected under
Medicean rule; and her early productions would seem comparatively
unimportant but for Bettini's "Monte Sancto di Dio" (1477), the first
example of a printed book containing copperplate engraving, and the
famous Dante of 1481, partly illustrated in the same manner. The
artistic eminence of Florence renders the production of this work within
her precincts especially significant; and in 1490 a school of
wood-engraving arises which surpasses the Venetian, and often confers
great artistic value upon typographical productions otherwise of little
account. Another interesting feature of Florentine typography, from
about 1480 until the end of the century, is the number of original
publications by native men of letters, such as Politian, the Pulcis,
and, in quite a different manner, Savonarola. Florence understood the
duty of encouraging contemporary talent better than any other Italian
city; yet, although she was the Athens of Italy, and possessed its
Pericles, the comparison between the extent of her typographical
production and that of Venice shows that the public is the better
patron. When, at a much later period, wealth and public spirit departed
from Venice to an extent which they never did from Florence, the lead
passed to the latter city.
Milan is, for the first few years, principally devoted to the classics,
upon which law and theology gradually gain ground. Its great glory is
the first book printed in Greek—Lascaris's Grammar, 1476. Simoneta's
"History of Francesco Sforza," put forth by the authority of Lodovico
Sforza about 1479, is also a memorable book. Naples, where printing was
never very active, does little for classical literature, but produce
numerous works by local writers of distinction, from Archbishop
Caraccioli to the licentious Masuccio. The number of Hebrew books is a
remarkable feature.
This slight degustation—analysis it cannot be called—of the fruits of
Italian Renaissance literature confirms the proposition with which we
began, that it was far more utilitarian than that of ages often
stigmatised as matter-of-fact and prosaic. The reproductions of
classical authors were not in general stimulated by enthusiasm for their
beauties, but by their utility, either for the information they
contained, or as books for school or college. Outside their circle very
little of a fanciful or imaginative character appeared, and this chiefly
in the shape of impressions of vernacular authors, such as Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Original genius was at almost as low an ebb as
it has ever been, although a band of most gracefully accomplished men of
letters surrounded Lorenzo de' Medici, and Ariosto and Machiavelli were
growing up. In partial explanation of this circumstance, it may be
remarked that the fifteenth century, brilliant in its inventions and
discoveries, was, in a literary point of view, one of the most
unproductive periods in European history. Petrarch and Boccaccio in
Italy, Chaucer in England, left no successors; with the exception of
Æneas Sylvius, it would be difficult to point to any writer of the first
half of the century eminent by his achievements in elegant literature.
Had printing been invented in the thirteenth century, or in the age of
Elizabeth, we might have had a different story to record; but it must
now be said that for a long time it did little for the encouragement of
genius, hardly even of high talent. Yet the age as a whole was by no
means flat or prosaic, only its imagination was more powerfully
attracted to art than to letters, and a spiritual charm is chiefly
recognisable among its books in proportion as art has influenced them,
whether in the design of exquisite type or of beautiful illustration.
This utilitarian character of literature, as we have remarked, tended to
discourage readers for amusement or for the love of letters; and this in
turn discouraged printers and publishers from any serious effort to
provide vernacular reading. Literature accordingly remained for a long
time the property of the humanists, which is as much as to say that it
was imitative and not creative. The merits and defects of this excellent
class of men cannot be better exhibited than by their attitude towards
Greek. It was not one of indifference, they translated Greek authors
into Latin with exemplary pains; but they thought this quite
sufficient, and made no effort to render the originals accessible. They
valued Greek authors for their information, not for their style, and had
no idea of the value of the language as an instrument of education. A
creative epoch was required for this, such as speedily came with the
overthrow of the old order of Italy, with the discovery of America,
above all, with the Reformation. No age can bestow so great a boon upon
literature as the fifteenth century did by the invention of printing;
but it was not an age in which the hero flourished conspicuously as man
of letters.
FOOTNOTES:
[149:1] It seems to have been afterwards sought to imply that Spira's
monopoly was intended only to protect his copyright in books actually
published by him, but the language of the original document is clear.
It may be remarked that, did not other arguments abundantly suffice,
this transaction would prove the date 1461, in Nicolas Jenson's _Decor
Puellarum_, to be a misprint, as if he had printed before 1469 he would
have acquired a _locus standi_ which could not have been ignored in
Spira's favour.
SOME BOOK-HUNTERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY[161:1]
I feel that I owe an apology for presenting you with anything so scrappy
and disconnected as the paper you are to hear to-night. Being
unexpectedly called upon to fill a gap at a time when pressure of
occupation prevented my writing anything requiring care or study, I
bethought me of the story of the minister who, when about to officiate
as a substitute for another, received at the same time a hint that the
congregation were particular about quantity no less than quality, and
that they would expect the length of his public exercises to attain the
average of the regular incumbent. The absent gentleman was remarkable
for fluency, the _locum tenens_ was a man of few words. He did his best,
but by-and-by found himself with a vacant quarter of an hour and a
vacant head; when suddenly a happy thought flashed into the void, and he
exclaimed, "And now, O Lord, I will relate an anecdote." I too in my
emergency have taken refuge in anecdotage, and, in default of anything
of my own, I am about to bore or entertain you with some anecdotes of
book-collectors of the seventeenth century, borrowed from that
illustrious gossip and anecdote monger, Nicius Erythræus, with a brief
account of whom I will preface my paper.
I scarcely think that I shall underrate the amount of information
respecting Nicius Erythræus current at this time in this country by
remarking that the name is probably best known as a pseudonym of
Coleridge, under which his poem of "Lewti," a Circassian love-chant, was
first given to the world, and most readers will have deemed his adoption
of it a mere freak. I confess that I am myself unable to discover what
Nicius Erythræus has to do with the Circassians, but it is not an
imaginary name, being the Latinisation of that of Vittorio dé Rossi, an
Italian Jesuit, who flourished during the last quarter of the sixteenth,
and the first half of the seventeenth century, and, always writing in
Latin, translated his vernacular appellation into that language. The
circumstance of his having written in Latin is no doubt one principal
reason why he is now so little remembered. He was one of the pioneers of
a reviving form of literature, the anecdotic. Poggio Bracciolini had
written a very popular book of anecdotes in the fifteenth century, but
his tales are often mere Joe Millers, and not always authentic. Nicius's
stories are _bona-fide_ anecdotes or reminiscences of actual personages,
with most of whom he had conversed. All roads, it is said, lead to Rome,
and his position as an ecclesiastic about the Papal court, albeit a
hungry and discontented one (he had sorely prejudiced himself by a
romance, the "Eudemia," in which he had made too free with the
characters of influential people), brought him into contact with every
man of mark who resorted to it, whether a denizen of Rome or a foreign
visitor. His gallery of portraits includes two persons of much interest
to Britain, John Barclay, Scot by descent if French by birth, author of
the "Argenis"; and Teresa, the fair Armenian, who wedded our countryman
Sir Robert Sherley, in his adventurous Persian travels. In my opinion he
is a most entertaining writer, lively and animated, with a bright
descriptive touch; an elegant Latinist, and though much given to
relating stories which the subjects of them would have wished to consign
to oblivion, he is at bottom very good-natured. His principal work is
his "Pinacotheca," or Portrait Gallery, in three parts, each containing
a hundred sketches of contemporaries, all people of some note, if only
for their eccentricities, and many of whom, but for him, would now be
utterly unknown. He doubtless retails much gossip at second-hand, but I
do not think that he has invented anything, and I believe that we see
his contemporaries in his pages much as they really were. For proofs,
authorities, _pièces justificatives_, you must look elsewhere, and
Nicius shuns a date as if it were the number of the beast.
Perhaps the most interesting of the particulars relating to library
matters imparted by my author are those respecting a man second only to
Grolier as a patron of fine binding, but of whose personal character
and habits, were it not for Nicius, we should know nothing. Every one
interested in the bibliopegic art is more or less acquainted with the
beautiful bindings executed for Demetrius Canevarius, physician to Urban
VII., elected Pope in 1590, but whom all his leech's skill could not
keep alive upon the Papal throne for more than twelve days. This
certainly does not seem to have been the fault of the physician, who
was, Nicius tells us, a Genoese of noble family, who condescended to the
medical profession in the hope of becoming rich. In this there is
nothing to criticise; but unfortunately, avarice seems to have been his
master passion, indeed his only passion, except the love of books, which
has given him an honourable place in literary history. Having removed
from Genoa to Rome, he soon obtained the confidence of many of the
Cardinals, and became the most celebrated and opulent physician of his
day. But his habits were most parsimonious; he never, in his own house,
says Nicius, tasted fowl or fish, or anything that any sumptuary law
could have forbidden in any age. He lived by himself; his meals,
consisting of bread, soup, and a scrap of meat, were brought him by an
old woman who never entered the house, and drawn up to the first floor
in a basket. He bought his new clothes ready made, and his second-hand
clothes from the Jews. As soon as he got any money, he put it out to
interest, and when he got the interest upon that, he put it out again.
The one exception to this parsimony was the expense to which he went in
buying books. Dry as pumice, says Nicius, in every other respect, in
this he was most liberal; if you look, that is, to the total sum he
expended, and not to the prices he gave for individual books. For he
beat the booksellers down unrelentingly, and would carry off their books
at much lower prices than they asked, notwithstanding their lamentations
and complaints that they were going to be ruined. How could he achieve
this? By the magic of ready money; the bibliopole found it better after
all to part with the book at a small profit for money down than to keep
it on his shelves till some one bought it and forgot to pay. Thus was
Canevarius unknowingly a forerunner of the political economists, and an
initiator of the principle of small profits and quick returns. Of the
bindings which constitute his glory with posterity Nicius says nothing;
but ascribes his prowess as a collector in great measure to a love of
fame. No unworthy motive either, but it is likely that public spirit had
quite as much to do with it; for Canevarius not merely collected the
library which he expected to perpetuate his name with posterity, but
bequeathed it to his native city of Genoa, and left by his will an
annuity of two hundred crowns to a caretaker. It would be interesting to
learn what became of the books and the pension; if the facts are not
already upon record they ought to be investigated. From the preface to a
posthumous work of Canevarius, published by his brother, it would almost
seem that the family had some control over it, and if so they may have
dilapidated it. If the library, when transmitted to Genoa, contained all
the elaborate bindings which are now esteemed so precious, it was a
bequest of more value than could have been supposed at the time. Though
stingy and covetous in his life, Canevarius was a benefactor to many at
his death. He left, Nicius says, such a multitude of legacies, and such
a host of minute directions to be observed after his decease, that his
will was as big as a book. The ruling passion of parsimony remained with
him, and he gave a remarkable instance of it in his last illness.
"When," says Nicius, "ten days before his death, an old woman who had
come to nurse him gave him an egg to suck, and then took a new napkin
from a cupboard to wipe his lips; 'What mean you,' cried he, 'by
spoiling a new napkin? was there never a tattered one in the house?
Depart to the infernal regions!'" Yet even here Canevarius emerges
victorious, for the disparaging biographer is constrained to admit that
he _had_ a new napkin.
The next chapter of bibliographical anecdote which I propose to cite
from Nicius Erythræus is not derived from his Pinacotheca, but from his
Epistles. It relates to persons of more importance than Demetrius
Canevarius, to no less a man, indeed, than Cardinal Mazarin, and to the
eminent French scholar Gabriel Naudé, then (1645) employed as his agent
in collecting the first Mazarin Library, so unhappily destroyed and
dispersed a few years afterwards by the hostile Parliament of Paris.
Naudé has deplored the fate of the collection in a book devoted to it,
and Nicius, his intimate friend and correspondent, powerfully confirms
the loss which letters thus received by his description of Naudé's
exertions as a collector, in a letter he writes to Cardinal Chigi, Papal
nuncio in Germany. After mentioning that Naudé had seventeen years
before obtained great credit by a work "On the Formation of Public
Libraries," and that Mazarin having laid the foundation of his library
by buying that of a Canon of Limoges, consisting of six thousand
volumes, Naudé had doubled this number by purchases within one year; he
adds, "Finding nothing more to buy in Paris he went to Belgium, and
there took the pick of the market; and this year has come to Italy,
where the booksellers' shops seem devastated as by a whirlwind. He buys
up everything, printed or manuscript, in all languages, leaves the
shelves empty behind him, and sometimes comes down upon them with a
rule, and insists upon taking their contents by the yard. Often, seeing
masses of books accumulated together, he asks the price of the entire
lot; it is named; differences ensue; but, by dint of urging, bullying,
storming, our man gets his way, and often acquires excellent books among
the heap, for less than if they had been pears or lemons. When the
vendor comes to think over the matter, he concludes that he has been
bewitched, and complains that he would have fared better with the
butterman, or the grocer. Did you see our Naudé coming out of a
bookseller's shop you could never help laughing, so covered from head
to foot is he with cobwebs, and that learned dust which sticks to books,
from which neither thumps nor brushes, it seems, would ever be able to
free him. I have seen multitudes of Hebrew books in his bedroom, so
stained and greasy and stinking, that one's nose seemed damaged
irrecoverably; they must have been disinterred from Jewish kitchens,
smelling as they did of smoke, soup, cheese, pickles, or rather of a
mixture of each and all these aromas. If he gives them a place in his
library, he will undoubtedly bring in the mice; they will flock in from
Paris and the suburbs, hold their feasts, convoke their parliaments, and
deliberate on the ways and means of resisting the cats, their capital
enemies. But, without joking, Naudé means that Paris shall have the
finest public library in Europe."
I need not dwell further on the sad fate of this magnificent collection,
nor remind you that Mazarin formed a second which, especially for one
book's sake, has endeared him to many who know little of him as a
statesman, and that little not always to his advantage. After hearing of
his munificence and indomitable spirit in the collection of books, we
may feel more reconciled to the first book ever printed in Europe being
popularly associated with his name, although "Gutenberg Bible" would
still be the more appropriate designation.