The revival of letters in Italy--Influence of the
princes--Classical tastes tending to pedantry and
paganism--Greek philosophy and its effects--Influence of
the Dukes of Urbino.
When writing upon Italy of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,
a prominent place must be allotted to letters and arts. At Urbino
in particular, their progress was then great, their influence
proverbial; and our next eight chapters will contain notices of them
which would have interrupted the continuity of our previous narrative.
The reigns of Dukes Federigo and Guidobaldo I. extended over a
period which general consent has regarded as the most brilliant in
Italian history, and which we have repeatedly named its golden age.
High expectations are naturally entertained of literature, arts,
and general refinement in a cycle of such pretension. We look for
a rapid advance of thought in paths of learning and science whence
during long centuries it had been excluded. We anticipate a widely
disseminated zeal for classic writers, an eager rivalry to outstrip
them in branches of speculative knowledge, which they especially
cultivated. We imagine the imitative arts revived under the influence
of new and more exquisite standards. And we reckon upon the diffusion
of a taste and capacity for enjoying those things among classes
hitherto excluded from such intellectual enjoyments. In each of these
expectations the student of literary history will be gratified; yet
there are several sorts of composition which, if separately examined,
offer disappointing results, and scarcely a single work written
during the fifteenth century has maintained universal popularity. The
explanation is easy. This age was one of unprecedented intellectual
activity, when men's minds were devoted to the acquisition of
knowledge which they had laboriously to hunt out, and doubtingly to
decipher. They had to cut for themselves tracks through an unexplored
region, without grammars or commentaries to serve them as guides and
landmarks. The toilsome habits thus formed were forthwith exercised
for the benefit of subsequent investigators, and were applied to
smoothing the path which they had themselves penetrated. Thus
was it that the first successful scholars became grammarians and
commentators. Surrounded by ample stores of intelligence, they had
no occasion to cultivate new germs of thought. Their first object
was to secure and render accessible the treasures which antiquity
had unfolded to them; their next, to elaborate them in varied forms,
to reproduce them in the manner most congenial to their intellectual
wants. Thus they became more industrious than original, laborious
rather than creative. Again, those who, on entering the garden of
knowledge, thought of its fruits rather than of its approaches,
instead of seeking the reward of their toils among the fair mazes of
poetry and belles lettres, aimed at more arduous rewards, and climbed
the loftiest and most slippery branches in search of golden apples.
The harvest of scholastic philosophy which they thus gathered in
may seem scarcely worthy of the fatigues given to its acquisition;
but from the seeds so obtained, cultivated and matured as they have
been by many after labourers, a copious and healthful store of
intellectual food has been secured for subsequent generations. The
work performed by these pioneers of learning and truth was, however,
more calculated to crush than to inspire that more elastic fancy
which preferred the flowery mead to the tree of knowledge. The spirit
of the age was ponderous and prosaic, and the few who attempted to
rise above its denser atmosphere into poetic regions were clogged by
the trammels of a dead language, and by obsolete associations which
they dared not shake off. The fifteenth century was consequently rich
in scholars, copious in pedants, but poor in genius, and barren of
strong thinkers.
These circumstances necessarily detract from the popular interest of
Italian literary history at this important period, all influential
to its after destinies, and we mention them in the conviction that
general readers must feel disappointed with this portion of our
work. The vast mass of materials then created now reposes in the
principal storehouses of learning, much of it unpublished, and but
a small part rendered accessible in recent editions. As it would
be an unprofitable task to labour upon these materials for merely
critical purposes, we have for the most part satisfied ourselves with
an examination of the authors immediately connected with Urbino; nor
shall we be tempted much beyond that narrow limit, by the facility
of borrowing from those copious and intelligent writers who have
successfully investigated the intellectual progress of Italy.
The revival of civilisation, and its handmaid arts, is a problem
so inexplicable on the ordinary principles which regulate human
progress,[64]--its causes were so complex, and many of them so
remote, and singly so little striking,--that it were, perhaps,
vain to hope for a satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. It
may be, that the ever revolving cycle of human affairs had brought
round a period predestined to intellectual development, or that mind,
awakening from the slumber of centuries, possessed the energies of
renewed youth. But in a season of universal and sudden progress it is
difficult to distinguish between cause and effect,--to decide whether
mind aroused liberty, or if freedom was the nurse of intelligence.
[Footnote *64: The secret is not far to seek, but it was inexplicably
hidden from men in Dennistoun's day. The continuity of life and
of art the most sensitive expression of life, is understood and
acknowledged by too few among us; but that there is an historical
continuity in art as in life would be easy to prove, since no part
can be adequately grasped or explained save in relation to the whole.
Of course, as Renan admitted, history has its sad days, but all
are, as it were, a part of the year which would be incomplete and
inexplicable without them. Thus there is no gulf fixed between the
art of Greece and the art of the Middle Age or the Renaissance; each
is an inevitable part of the whole, and the later was what it was
because of the old. Burckhardt, one of the greatest students of our
time, seems to have understood this also with his usual happiness.
M. Auguste Gerard tells us in his notice of the life of its author,
which serves as a Preface to the French edition of _Le Cicerone_,
that "Burckhardt en vrai disciple de la Renaissance considérait
l'Italie comme un tout continu; et dans l'histoire de l'art de même
que dans l'énumération des oeuvres, il ne séparait pas l'Italie
antique de l'Italie moderne. La section du _Cicerone_ qui était
dédiée à l'architecture commençait aux temples de Paestum pour
finir aux villas Napolitaines et Génoises des XVIIe et XVIIIe
siècles." In that idea lies the future of all criticism.]
The feeble hold which the popes retained over their temporal
power during their residence at Avignon, and during the great
schism, promoted the independence of the ecclesiastical cities,
many of which then passed under the dominion of domestic tyrants,
or assumed the privileges of self-government. In either case the
result was favourable to an expansion of the human mind. The sway
of the seigneurs, being based on no such aristocratic machinery
as supported the fabric of feudalism, threw fewer obstructions in
the way of individual merit. The popular communities could only
exist by a diffusion of political and legislative capacity, and
the commercial enterprises to which they in general devoted their
energies increased at once the demand for public spirit and its
production. Even those intestine revolutions to which democracies
were especially subject contributed largely to the same end; for,
although in such convulsions the dregs of the populace often rise to
the surface, talent, when backed by energy and daring, there finds
extraordinary opportunities for display. Indeed, the multiplication
of commonwealths, under whatever form of government, tended, in
a country situated as the Italian Peninsula then was, to the
development of intellect. Defended by the Alps and the sea from
invasion, their physical and intellectual advantages constituted
an influence which supplied the want of union and nationality. They
thus could safely pursue their individual aims, and even indulge
in rivalry and contests which, though perilous to a less favoured
people, were for them incentives to a praiseworthy and patriotic
exertion. Whilst the separate existence of these petty states was
calculated to promote both political science and mental culture, it
rendered the one subservient to the advantage of the other, and, in
the multitude of official and diplomatic employments, literary men
found at once useful occupation and honourable independence. Nor was
this result limited to one form of government. If the tempest-tossed
democracy of Florence shone the brightest star in the Italian galaxy,
the stern oligarchy of Venice shed an almost equal lustre in some
branches of letters and art; and, on the other hand, the not less
popular institutions of Pisa, Siena, and Lucca emitted but feeble
and irregular coruscations. So also in the despotic states, whilst
literature was ever cherished under the ducal dynasty of Urbino, and
whilst it was favoured at intervals by the Sforza and Malatesta,
the d'Este and Gonzaga, and by the Aragonese sovereigns of Naples,
its genial influence was unknown in some other petty courts. Again,
if we turn to the papal throne, we shall find the accomplished
Nicolas, Pius, Sixtus, Julius, and Leo, sitting alternately with the
Boeotian Calixtus, Paul, Innocent, and Alexander. From an impartial
review of Italian mediæval history it appears that democratic
institutions were by no means indispensable to the expansion of
genius, since the progress of letters and arts was upon the whole
nearly equal in the republics and the seigneuries, under the tyranny
of a condottiere or the domination of a faction.[*65]
[Footnote *65: Far from being indispensable, the democratic
institutions had very little to do with the progress of the arts
which were fostered by individuals, whether in a tyranny such as
Urbino or in a so-called republic such as Florence.]
But, before entering upon the proper subject of this chapter, it may
be well briefly to consider the influence which the petty princes
of Italy exercised upon the revival and cultivation of letters and
arts. The dominion of these chiefs, though hereditary in name, was in
general maintained, as it had been gained, by the sword. To them, as
to the savage, arms were an instinctive pursuit, warfare a primary
occupation. For their frequent intervals of truce (and in no other
sense was peace known to them), their circumscribed sovereignty
gave little occupation. Domestic polity was still an undeveloped
science, and their leisure fell to be spent upon intellectual
objects, or in grovelling debaucheries. The number who preferred
the nobler alternative is very remarkable, when compared with the
like class in other parts of Europe. During the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries literature was cultivated and art was encouraged
by a large proportion of the sovereigns and feudatories of Italy,
when the bravest condottieri were often their most liberal patrons.
Such were the impetuous Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, the gallant
Francesco Sforza, the treacherous Ludovico il Moro; whilst the
Gonzaga of Mantua, and the d'Este of Ferrara, but most especially
the ducal houses of Urbino, extended, during successive generations,
an enlightened and almost regal protection to genius of every
shade. Nothing akin to this is to be found in the republics. Siena,
Pisa, and Lucca produced many great artists, but literature found
in them neither a cradle nor an asylum. The commercial communities
of Venice and Genoa belonged to an entirely different category of
circumstances; and Florence, though an exception to our remark, owed
its pre-eminence not less perhaps to the patronage of the Medici than
to an unparalleled prevalence of talent and public spirit among its
citizens.
In times when the popular will, if not the source of power, was
its best support, it became the interest of the dominant prince
or party so to use authority as to please and flatter the masses;
to cloak their own usurpations by throwing a lustre around their
administration, and to preserve the confidence of their subjects by
institutions calculated to promote the national glory. In this way
individual talent might be stimulated, and public civilisation might
advance, even whilst freedom was on the decline; and, as the means
commanded by the seigneurs were ample, they could patronise genius,
and surround their courts with literary retainers, who in democratic
communities were left to their own resources. Thus the Sforza and the
d'Este, even the savage Malatesta of Rimini, befriended genius, which
found no haven in the republics of Genoa and Lucca, and, the fashion
having once been established among their princely houses, letters
were cultivated by not a few of these soldiers of fortune, but more
especially by the ladies of their families.
These unquestionable facts are met by an allegation that the
fountains of princely patronage were so tainted, their streams so
generally corrupt, as to blight the fruits which they seemed to
foster, and that their influence thus from a blessing became a curse.
Let us examine a little the grounds for this assertion, for surely it
is not by such sweeping and prejudiced denunciations that we shall
arrive at truth. As to the ornamental arts, there cannot be a doubt
that these received, throughout Italy, from governments of every
form, as well as from numberless corporations and individuals, a
hearty encouragement which might well shame our degenerate age. Yet
the ducal palace at Urbino, the Palazzo del T at Mantua, the tombs
of the Scaligers, and the medallions of Malatesta, yield the palm to
no republican works of the same class. It was by Cosimo and Lorenzo
de' Medici, and by Duke Federigo di Montefeltro, that the undeveloped
energies of new-born science, and the long neglected classics of
Greece and Rome were nursed and tended through their years of
infancy, which storms of faction, in most of the free states,
condemned to neglect. The enlightened liberality of these princes,
and of Malatesta Novello, founded libraries for the preservation of
works composed under their own beneficent encouragement, as well
as of manuscripts collected by them from all quarters at immense
cost, and this when no republic but Venice aspired to such literary
distinctions. Nor were the troubled waters of democratic strife
safe for the poet's gay bark and light canvas. Even Dante, though
made of sternest stuff, sought shelter in a courtly harbour from
the hurricanes of Florentine faction. It is true that, in many
compositions of minstrels trained in princely halls, the themes
are ephemeral and the epithets overstrained, savouring, to a purer
taste and more severe idiom, of unworthy subserviency; nor is the
other polite literature, emanating from the same atmosphere, exempt
from similar blemishes. But allowance must be made for the seducing
fecundity of the language in superlatives, more redolent of dulcet
sounds than of definite signification, a quality which has ever
tempted Italian mediocrity to assume the borrowed plumes of poesy,
and to conceal its native barrenness under magniloquent but flimsy
common-places. The well earned gratitude of authors is fittingly paid
in compliments, eulogies, or dedications, and as such coin is at the
unlimited command of the debtor, and useful only to the receiver, its
over-issue is fairly excusable. This results from principles inherent
in human nature, and it matters little whether the obligations have
been incurred from sovereigns or from subjects, under an autocrat or
a democracy. Even among ourselves, in times when talent had more to
hope from private patronage than from extended popularity, a similar
currency was scarcely less in vogue, and it was only the poverty of
our idiom that kept its circulation within bounds. Hence, were the
independence of the best English writers of a century or two ago to
be estimated from their dedicatory addresses, or their occasional
odes, a condemnation as unreasonable as sweeping would go forth
against names long inscribed in our temple of fame. This argument
might easily be extended; but enough has been said to show that
more was done for the support of letters under princely than under
popular institutions, and that the adulatory epithets natural to the
language, and inherent in the usages of Italy, are no certain index
of base subserviency.
But, on the other hand, independent sovereignty, irrespective of
political forms, was of primary importance to the encouragement
of mental cultivation. The separation of Italy into a multitude
of petty states converted almost every town into a capital, which
its rulers and its citizens took equal pride in decorating. The
patriotism thus generated was intense in proportion to the narrow
field on which it was exercised, and an expenditure, restrained by
severe sumptuary restrictions, found scope on monuments honourable
to the public. Thus there ensued, between hostile communities and
emulous factions, a rivalry in arts as in arms, whereby public
institutions prospered, and individual genius was encouraged. Fanes,
whose glories seem to defy the waste of time, were thus raised for
the devotional requirements of the people; palaces grew up the
bulwark of their liberties; citadels were fortified to rivet their
chains; and even when the ultimate results were fatal to freedom,
the talent and activity thus stimulated were sure to eventuate in
industrial progress, as well as in the restoration of letters and the
improvement of art.
* * * * *
The human mind, when aroused from its long and leaden slumbers, at
first instinctively leaned for support upon such vestiges of ancient
learning as had survived the wreck of ages. To excavate and examine
these was the laborious task assumed by early students, in which
Petrarch and Boccaccio sedulously joined. But, justly appreciating
them as materials on which to found a new fabric, rather than as
the substitutes for original thought, "the all-Etruscan three"
happily combined enthusiasm for classic models with the power to
rival them in a language simultaneously matured by themselves for
the daring undertaking. The fifteenth century arrived; it was an
epoch of reaction; one of other tendencies and tastes, when genius,
as Ginguené has happily observed, was superseded by erudition.
Entering the path which Petrarch had partially explored, its
pioneers neglected the better portion of his example. They spent
their energies in rummaging obscure recesses of monastic libraries,
and wasted time and learning in transcribing, collating, and
annotating the various manuscripts which thus fell within their
grasp. In exhuming and renovating these monuments of a long-buried
literature, they were forgetful of the fact that their dealings were
with dead corpses; and whilst submitting the recovered fragments to
philological analysis, they perversely sought to embody their own
souls in these decayed members. As such materials were incapable
of being reanimated, or even remodelled into more apt forms,
this unnatural union was seldom effected without violence to the
sentiment. Even the ablest writers devoted themselves to the arid
task of scholia and translations, composing in the dead tongues
such original works as they attempted. The result was a monstrous
metempsychosis, whereby thought, enchained in uncongenial bodies,
lost its due influence, and appeared in, at best, an unseemly
masquerade. Hence the language of the century was Latin, its manner
pedantic, its spirit coldly artificial.
But whilst the historian of that age laments the shackles thus
imposed upon its literature, it were unjust to withhold from it
the merit of preserving those treasures of ancient history and
philosophy, eloquence and poetry, which, under happier auspices and
more judicious treatment, have elevated thought, enlarged intellect,
and enriched the style of later times. Although unable to refine
the true metal from its dross, the pedants of "fourteen hundred"
were miners who discovered the precious ore, and ascertained its
component ingredients. The fashionable ardour for collecting early
MSS. of ancient authors was very generally accompanied with untiring
perseverance in mastering their intricacies. Philology and grammar
thus grew into sciences, and their professors held the keys of human
erudition. Deep ought to be our gratitude for the contingent of
classical literature rescued from a rapid destruction by such arduous
and self-denying labours; and a history of these discoveries, and
of the zeal and enterprise volunteered by the early commentators
and publishers of the ancient authors, would form an interesting
monument of undaunted and generally successful diligence. Yet,
in a comprehensive view of the results springing from these new
tendencies, it is impossible to blind ourselves to the evils that
emanated from them. From the nerve, grandeur, and elegance of Greek
and Roman writers, there was much to learn with advantage; but their
influence was directly antagonist to the highest sentiments of a
Christian, and, in the main, a devotional people. When tried by such
a test, their philosophy was hollow, their heroism selfish, their
refinement corrupted. Nor was it only by reproducing the themes and
the philosophy of distant ages that classicism clogged the elasticity
of reviving literature. By inculcating extinct languages as the
only means fitted for expressing their ideas, Italian literati
checked the progress of their vernacular tongue,--that best bulwark
of nationality,--and at the same time impeded the free expansion
of thought, which, thus conducted into artificial channels, could
but stagnate or freeze. The mind, habituated to find in literature
a restraint, came to regard natural feeling as a solecism, living
images as incongruous anomalies, warmth of sentiment as a blemish
sedulously to be avoided. Under such false training, knowledge
received the impress of a languid conventionality; and even those who
condescended to write in Italian, chilled their compositions with
the pedantry of antique idioms. The classic style thus introduced
had many inherent defects. Borrowed plumage is seldom becoming, and
servile imitations are always bad. Besides, the ancient type had been
originally modelled by a people, and in an age, little sympathetic
with those for whom it was now reproduced, and whose sentiments were
cramped equally by the conventionalisms of an obsolete manner, or
by the adoption of a dead tongue. Hence is it that the fifteenth
century, so signalised by the diffusion of knowledge, and the advance
of the fine arts, has bequeathed to us fewer eminent writers than
those which immediately preceded and followed it, and that during its
course Italian literature was unquestionably retrograde.
This is especially true of poetry, in an age of erudition when
learning was essentially prosaic. The collation of manuscripts,
the construction of grammars, the mastering of idioms, the revived
subtleties of Greek dialectics, were ponderous studies with which the
taste for literature of a lighter and more elastic tendency could ill
assimilate. The chords whence Dante had evoked majestic notes, that
seemed to swell from higher spheres, lay silent and unstrung; the
lyre of Petrarch was left in feebler hands.
Nor was this the only evil resulting from an excess of the classical
mania. Languages in which Christianity had not been naturalised
were ill adapted for the expression of revealed truth; and the new
scholarship, discarding the barbarisms of monastic Latin, imported
into theological as well as profane compositions, the phrases of
a pagan age. To find the personages of the Trinity, or even the
hagiology of Rome, familiarly discussed under mythological names, is
to us merely absurd and revolting;[*66] but when men, already imbued
with classical predilections, were accustomed to mix up in words the
objects of their worship with the demigods of their admiration, the
natural consequence was a confusion of ideas nowise favourable to the
maintenance of their faith or the purity of their morals.
[Footnote *66: Neither absurd nor revolting, I think, since, a little
fantastically certainly, but very truly none the less, it expresses
that continuity of the religious sense in Europe which is perhaps the
one eternal thing to be found in it. If the saints are not in a very
real sense the gods in exile, they are excellent imitations of them.]
A not less prejudicial element emanated from the revived philosophies
of Greece, which now arrested attention and divided the speculations
of learned men. That derived from Aristotle, and known to Europe
through the sages of Arabia, had long occupied the cloisters, where
alone mind was then exercised, or its operations studied. The rival
system of Plato came directly from its native soil; and was first
publicly taught in Italy early in the fifteenth century, by Gemistus
Plato,[*67] of Constantinople. It attracted the notice of Cosimo
PATER PATRIÆ, who after having Marsilio Ficino, son of his
physician, grounded in its mysteries by Greeks of learning, placed
him at the head of an academy in Florence, instituted by himself
for the dissemination of its doctrines. From thence these radiated,
absorbing the attention of literary men, and enlisting many converts
from the Stagirite faith. Aristotle and Plato became the watchwords
of contending sects,[*68] and the usual jarring results of such
logomachy were not long wanting. The merits of a question, at first
exaggerated by its respective zealots, were lost sight of in the
torrent of abuse which gradually superseded argument, and inflamed
every evil passion. Far overleaping the legitimate limits or literary
warfare, disputant logicians advanced from replies to libels, from
words to blows, and, after exhausting the armoury of invective,
had recourse to the dagger. But on a subject so painful we are not
called to enter. Backed by the authority of Nicholas V., the zeal
of Cardinal Bessarion, and the example of the Medici, the sublime
and imaginative speculations of Platonism for a time prevailed over
the more material system of the Stagirite, and Florence became their
head-quarters. The human mind, unaided by revelation, has never
invented any system so abstractly beautiful, so pure in its morals,
so elevating in its conceptions, so harmonious in its conclusions.
Its lofty ethics rank next to the doctrines of inspiration, for it
taught that happiness is the natural result of virtue, and that
the mischiefs entailed by the passions are ill repaid by their
transient pleasures. Yet, though thus intrinsically calculated to
ennoble and refine the heart of fallen man, the Platonic theories
indirectly led to lamentable results, both to the religion and the
morality of the age. The divine revelation was by them virtually
superseded, and paganism, from an affectation, became a conviction,
or, at the least, a prevailing fashion, warping the manners and
phrases, the faith and spirit of the age. Men lived for the present
world by the light of human reason, until they forgot or denied a
future existence, and a holier wisdom. The first blow struck at this
practical heathenism came from Paul II., a Venetian, who was behind
the age in its knowledge, as well as in its extravagances, and who
relentlessly persecuted what he had not the capacity to redargue.
Mind was, however, no longer to be silenced by papal bulls, or
trammelled by penal fetters: it regarded the use of such weapons as
proof that the spiritual armoury contained none more serviceable, and
learned to demur to an ecclesiastical despotism it already loathed.
Succeeding pontiffs disavowed the policy of Paul: but the old respect
for the papacy was shaken; doubts arrayed themselves against dogmas,
cavilling superseded blind faith, until the dissolute example set
by the courts of Innocent, Alexander, and Leo, converted scepticism
into infidelity, apathy into open aggression. It is impossible to
contemplate the great talents, the unwearied application, absorbed by
these rival systems of philosophy, without a sigh that they should
have been wasted on inquiries so purely speculative; yet, it cannot
be denied that the controversy prepared weapons that have since
done good service in many a better cause; that it developed mental
energies, and matured intellectual discipline, from which the world
continues largely to benefit.
[Footnote *67: Not Plato, but Plethon. He refused the name of Plato
with which he was hailed by Cosimo de' Medici. Cf. Ficino in preface
to his _Plotini Epitome_ (Firenze, 1492). "Magnus Cosimus, quo
tempore concilium inter Graecos et Latinos, sub Eugenio pontefice
Florentinæ tractabatur, philosophum Graecum, nomine Gemistum
cognomine Plethonem, quasi Platonem alterum de mysteriis Platonicis
disputantem frequenter audivit; e cujus ore ferventi sic afflatus
est protinus, sic animatus, ut inde Academiam quandam alta mente
conceperit, hanc opportuno primum tempore pariturus." Marsilio Ficino
had a poor understanding of Plato.]
[Footnote *68: Cf. GEORGIOS TRAPEZUNTIOS, _Comparatio
Platonis et Aristotelis_.]
* * * * *
Although the revival of letters had been advancing during several
generations ere the chiefs of Montefeltro sought other laurels than
those of the battle-field, it was reserved for these princes to
contribute no mean aids towards their full development in that golden
harvest which the fifteenth century saw gathered in. Indeed, the
concurrent testimony of all writers has claimed for the sovereigns of
Urbino a foremost place among the friends of literature. In the words
of the general motto of this work, which well condense the prevailing
opinion, "it is notorious beyond question even of the malignant, that
the house of Montefeltro and della Rovere has for a long time past
been that which [most] shed a lustre upon Italy by letters, arms, and
every sort of rare worth, and that the court of Urbino may be termed
a Pegasean spring, in the language of historic truth rather than of
poetic hyperbole." It was to the successive reigns of Dukes Federigo
and Guidobaldo I. that such expressions were generally applied, and
to them our attention will now be directed; but in a future portion
of this work we shall endeavour to maintain for their della Rovere
successors a similar reputation.
Were we to estimate the celebrities of Urbino by the encomiums of
their partial countrymen, and measure their claims upon mundane
immortality by the standard set up by Baldi Lazzari, Grossi,
Cimarelli, and Olivieri, it would become our indispensable duty
to add at least a volume to the present work. But these authors
were deeply imbued with that peculiarly Italian patriotism which,
narrowing its sympathies within the limits of a township or a petty
state, enshrined provincial mediocrity in a temple of fame modelled
upon a scale of national splendour. Believing that the dignity of
their little fatherland depended upon the notices of its existence
which they could worm out of antique memorials, however doubtful in
authority, and upon the number of notable names they could connect
with its localities, they tasked themselves to this investigation
with industry worthy of a nobler and more useful object. Many folio
volumes, ponderous in their contents as in their material, were
the result; but they preserve only laborious trifling, a harvest
of wordy conclusions gleaned from a soil barren of tangible facts,
dissertations which may be summed up in the axiom _ex nihilo
nihil fit_, "nothing comes of nought." Like those of the northern
senachies, their themes were often legendary or invented, and it
would have been scarcely a loss to literature had these productions
been equally fugitive. Should the worthies mentioned in the following
chapters seem scarcely to maintain the literary renown of Urbino, our
readers ought in justice to remember that scarcely a tithe has found
place in our pages of those whom zealous eulogists have placed upon
the roll of Italian literati, but
"Whose obscurer name
No proud historian's page will chronicle."