Chapter III (2)

40. England under Edward IV. presents an appearance, in the annals of publication, about as barren as under Edward the Confessor; there is, I think, neither in Latin nor in English, a single book that we can refer to this decennial period.[356] Yet we find a few symptoms, not to be overlooked, of incipient regard for literature. Leland enumerates some Englishmen who travelled to Italy, perhaps before 1460, in order to become disciples of the younger Guarini at Ferrara: Robert Fleming, William Gray, bishop of Ely, John Free, John Gunthorpe, and a very accomplished nobleman, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester. It is but fairness to give credit to these men for their love of learning, and to observe, that they preceded any whom we could mention on sure grounds either in France or Germany. We trace, however, no distinct fruits from their acquisitions. But, though very few had the means of attaining that on which we set a high value in literature, the mere rudiments of grammatical learning were communicated to many. Nor were munificent patrons, testators, in the words of Burke, to a posterity which they embraced as their own, wanting in this latter period of the middle ages. William of Wykeham, chancellor of England under Richard II. and bishop of Winchester, founded a school in that city, and a college at Oxford in connection with it, in 1373.[357] Henry VI., in imitation of him, became the founder of Eton school, and of King’s College, Cambridge, about 1442.[358] In each of these schools seventy boys, and in each college seventy fellows and scholars, are maintained by these princely endowments. It is unnecessary to observe, that they are still the amplest, as they are much the earliest, foundations for the support of grammatical learning in England. What could be taught in these, or any other schools at this time, the reader has been enabled to judge; it must have been the Latin language, through indifferent books of grammar, and with the perusal of very few heathen writers of antiquity. In the curious and unique collection of the Paston letters we find one from a boy at Eton in 1468, wherein he gives two Latin verses, not very good, of his own composition.[359] I am sensible that the mention of such a circumstance may appear trifling, especially to foreigners: but it is not a trifle to illustrate by any fact the gradual progress of knowledge among the laity; first in the mere elements of reading and writing, as we did in a former chapter; and now, in the fifteenth century, in such grammatical instruction as could be imparted. This boy of the Paston family was well born, and came from a distance; nor was he in training for the church, since he seems by this letter to have had marriage in contemplation.

[356] The University of Oxford, according to Wood, as well as the
church generally, stood very low about this time: the grammar
schools were laid aside; degrees were conferred on undeserving
persons for money. A.D. 1455, 1466. He had previously mentioned
those schools as kept up in the university under the
superintendence of masters of arts. A.D. 1442. The statutes of
Magdalen College, founded in the reign of Edward, provide for a
certain degree of learning.--Chandler’s Life of Waynflete, p. 200.

[357] Lowth’s Life of Wykeham. He permits in his statutes a limited
number of sons of gentlemen (gentilium) to be educated in his
school. Chandler’s Life of Waynflete, p. 5.

[358] Waynflete became the first head master of Eton in 1442. Chandler,
p. 26.

[359] Vol. i., p. 301. Of William Paston, author of these lines, it is
said, some years before, that he had “gone to school to a Lombard
called Karol Giles, to learn and to be read in poetry, or else in
French. He said, that he would be as glad and as fain of a good
book of French or of poetry as my master Falstaff would be to
purchase a fair manor,” p. 173. (1459).

|Paston letters.|

41. But the Paston letters are, in other respects, an important testimony to the progressive condition of society; and come in as a precious link in the chain of the moral history of England, which they alone in this period supply. They stand indeed singly, as far as I know, in Europe; for though it is highly probable that in the archives of Italian families, if not in France or Germany, a series of merely private letters equally ancient may be concealed, I do not recollect that any have been published. They are all written in the reigns of Henry VI., and Edward IV., except a few, that extend as far as Henry VII., by different members of a wealthy and respectable, but not noble, family; and are, therefore, pictures of the life of the English gentry in that age.[360] We are merely concerned with their evidence as to the state of literature. And this, upon the whole, is more favourable than, from the want of authorship in those reigns, we should be led to anticipate. It is plain that several members of the family, male and female, wrote not only grammatically, but with a fluency and facility, an epistolary expertness, which implies the habitual use of the pen. Their expression is much less formal and quaint than that of modern novelists, when they endeavour to feign the familiar style of ages much later than the fifteenth century. Some of them mix Latin with their English, very bad, and probably for the sake of concealment; and Ovid is once mentioned as a book to be sent from one to another.[361] It appears highly probable, that such a series of letters, with so much vivacity and pertinence, would not have been written by any family of English gentry in the reign of Richard II., and much less before. It is hard to judge from a single case; but the letter of Lady Pelham, quoted in the first chapter, is ungrammatical and unintelligible. The seed, therefore, was now rapidly germinating beneath the ground; and thus we may perceive that the publication of books is not the sole test of the intellectual advance of a people. I may add, that although the middle of the fifteenth century was the period in which the fewest books were written, a greater number, in the opinion of experienced judges, were transcribed in that than in any former age.

[360] This collection is in five quarto volumes, and has become scarce.
The length has been doubled by an injudicious proceeding of the
editor, in printing the original orthography and abbreviations of
the letters on each left-hand page, and a more legible modern form
on the right. As orthography is of little importance, and
abbreviations of none at all, it would have been sufficient to have
given a single specimen.

[361] “As to Ovid de Arte Amandi, I shall send him you next week, for I
have him not now ready.” iv. 175. This was between 1463 and 1469,
according to the editor. We do not know positively of any edition
of Ovid de Arte Amandi so early; but Zell of Cologne is supposed to
have printed one before 1470, as has been mentioned above. Whether
the book to be sent were in print, or manuscript, must be left to
the sagacity of critics.

|Low condition of public libraries.|

42. It may be observed here, with reference to the state of learning generally in England down to the age immediately preceding the Reformation, that Leland, in the fourth volume of his Collectanea, has given several lists of books in colleges and monasteries, which do not by any means warrant the supposition of a tolerable acquaintance with ancient literature. We find, however, some of the recent translations made in Italy from Greek authors. The clergy, in fact, were now retrograding, while the laity were advancing; and when this was the case, the ascendency of the former was near its end.

|Rowley.|

|Clotilde de Surville.|

43. I have said that there was not a new book written within these ten years. In the days of our fathers, it would have been necessary at least to mention as a forgery the celebrated poems attributed to Thomas Rowley. But, probably, no one person living believes in their authenticity; nor should I have alluded to so palpable a fabrication at all, but for the curious circumstance that a very similar trial of literary credulity has not long since been essayed in France. A gentleman of the name of Surville published a collection of poems, alleged to have been written by Clotilde de Surville, a poetess of the fifteenth century. The muse of the Ardèche warbled her notes during a longer life than the monk of Bristow; and having sung the relief of Orleans by the Maid of Arc in 1429, lived to pour her swan-like chant on the battle of Fornova in 1495. Love, however, as much as war, is her theme; and it was a remarkable felicity that she rendered an ode of her prototype Sappho into French verse, many years before any one else in France could have seen it. But having, like Rowley, anticipated too much the style and sentiments of a later period, she has, like him, fallen into the numerous ranks of the dead who never were alive.[362]

[362] Auguis, Recueil des Poètes, vol. ii. Biogr. Univ., Surville.
Villemain, Cours de Littérature, vol. ii. Sismondi, Hist. des
Français, xiii. 593. The forgery is by no means so gross as that of
Chatterton; but, as M. Sismondi says, “We have only to compare
Clotilde with the Duke of Orleans, or Villon.” The following lines,
quoted by him, will give the reader a fair specimen:--

Suivons l’amour, tel en soit le danger;
Cy nous attend sur lits charmans de mousse.
A des rigueurs; qui voudroit s’en venger?
Qui (meme alors que tout désir s’émousse)
Au prix fatal de ne plus y songer?
Règne sur moi, cher tyran, dont les armes
Ne me sauroient porter coups trop puissans!
Pour m’epargner n’en crois onc a mes larmes;
Sont de plaisir, tant plus auront de charmes
Tes dards aigus, que seront plus cuisans.

It has been justly remarked, that the extracts from Clotilde in the
Recueil des Anciens Poètes occupy too much space, while the genuine
writers of the fifteenth century appear in very scanty specimens.

SECT. IV. 1471-1480.

_The same Subjects continued--Lorenzo de’ Medici--Physical
Controversy--Mathematical Sciences._

|Number of books printed in Italy.|

44. The books printed in Italy during these ten years amount, according to Panzer, to 1297; of which 234 are editions of ancient classical authors. Books without date are of course not included; and the list must not be reckoned complete as to others.

45. A press was established at Florence by Lorenzo, in which Cennini, a goldsmith, was employed; the first printer, except Caxton and Jenson, who was not a German. Virgil was published in 1471. Several other Italian cities began to print in this period. The first edition of Dante issued from Foligno in 1472; it has been improbably, as well as erroneously, referred to Mentz. Petrarch had been published in 1470, and Boccace in 1471. They were reprinted several times before the close of this decade.

|First Greek printed.|

46. No one had attempted to cast Greek types in sufficient number for an entire book; though a few occur in the early publications by Sweynheim and Pannartz;[363] while in those printed afterwards at Venice, Greek words are inserted by the pen; till, in 1476, Zarot of Milan had the honour of giving the Greek grammar of Constantine Lascaris to the world.[364] This was followed in 1480 by Craston’s lexicon, a very imperfect vocabulary; but which for many years continued to be the only assistance of the kind to which a student could have recourse. The author was an Italian.

[363] Greek types first appear in a treatise of Jerome, printed at Rome
in 1468. Heeren, from Panzer.

[364] Lascaris Grammatica Græca, Mediolani ex recognitione Demetrii
Cretensis per Dionysium Paravisinum, 4to. The characters in this
rare volume are elegant and of a moderate size. The earliest
specimens of Greek printing consist of detached passages and
citations, found in a very few of the first printed copies of Latin
authors, such as the Lactantius of 1465, the Aulus Gellius and
Apuleius of Sweynheim and Pannartz, 1469, and some works of
Bessarion about the same time. In all these it is remarkable that
the Greek typography is legibly and creditably executed, whereas
the Greek introduced into the Officia et Paradoxa of Cicero, Milan,
1474, by Zarot, is so deformed as to be scarcely legible. I am
indebted for the whole of this note to Greswell’s Early Parisian
Greek Press, i. 1.

|Study of antiquities.|

47. Ancient learning is to be divided into two great departments; the knowledge of what is contained in the works of Greek and Roman authors, and that of the matériel, if I may use the word, which has been preserved in a bodily shape, and is sometimes known by the name of antiquities. Such are buildings, monuments, inscriptions, coins, medals, vases, instruments, which by gradual accumulation have thrown a powerful light upon ancient history and literature. The abundant riches of Italy in these remains could not be overlooked as soon as the spirit of admiration for all that was Roman began to be kindled. Petrarch himself formed a little collection of coins; and his contemporary Pastrengo was the first who copied inscriptions; but in the early part of the fifteenth century, her scholars and her patrons of letters began to collect the scattered relics, which almost every region presented to them.[365] Niccolo Niccolì, according to the funeral oration of Poggio, possessed a series of medals, and even wrote a treatise in Italian, correcting the common orthography of Latin words, on the authority of inscriptions and coins. The love of collections increased from this time; the Medici and other rich patrons of letters spared no expense in accumulating these treasures of the antiquary. Ciriacus of Ancona, about 1440, travelled into the East in order to copy inscriptions; but he was naturally exposed to deceive himself and to be deceived; nor has he escaped the suspicion of imposture, or at least of excessive credulity.[366]

[365] Tiraboschi, vols. v. and vi. Andrès, ix. 196.

[366] Tiraboschi. Andrès, ix. 199. Ciriaco has not wanted advocates;
some of the inscriptions he was accused of having forged have
turned out to be authentic; and it is presumed in his favour, that
others which do not appear may have perished since his time. Biogr.
Univ., Cyriaque. One that rests on his authority is that which is
supposed to record the persecution of the Christians in Spain under
Nero. See Lardner’s Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. i, who,
though by no means a credulous critic, inclines to its genuineness.

|Works on that subject.|

48. The first who made his researches of this kind collectively known to the world, was Biondo Flavio, or Flavio Biondo,--for the names may be found in a different order, but more correctly in the first,[367]--secretary to Eugenius IV., and to his successors. His long residence at Rome inspired him with the desire, and gave him the opportunity, of describing her imperial ruins. In a work, dedicated to Eugenius IV., who died in 1447, but not printed till 1471, entitled, Romæ Instauratæ libri tres, he describes, examines, and explains by the testimonies of ancient authors, the numerous monuments of Rome. In another, Romæ Triumphantis libri decem, printed about 1472, he treats of the government, laws, religion, ceremonies, military discipline, and other antiquities of the republic. A third work, compiled at the request of Alfonso, king of Naples, and printed in 1474, called Italia Illustrata, contains a description of all Italy, divided into its ancient fourteen regions. Though Biondo Flavio was almost the first to hew his way into the rock, which should cause his memory to be respected, it has naturally happened, that, his works being imperfect and faulty, in comparison with those of the great antiquaries of the sixteenth century, they have not found a place in the collection of Grævius, and are hardly remembered by name.[368]

[367] Zeno, Dissertazioni Vossiane, i. 229.

[368] A superior treatise of the same age on the antiquities of the
Roman city is by Bernard Rucellai (de Urbe Româ, in Rer. Ital.
Scrip. Florent., vol. ii.). But it was not published before the
eighteenth century. Rucellai wrote some historical works in a very
good Latin style, and was distinguished also in the political
revolutions of Florence. After the death of Lorenzo, he became the
protector of the Florentine academy, for the members of which he
built a palace with gardens. Corniani, iii. 143. Biogr. Univ.,
Rucellai.

|Publications in Germany.|

49. In Germany and the Low Countries the art of printing began to be exercised at Deventer, Utrecht, Louvain, Basle, Ulm, and other places, and in Hungary at Buda. We find, however, very few ancient writers; the whole list of what can pass for classics being about thirteen. One or two editions of parts of Aristotle in Latin, from translations lately made in Italy, may be added. Yet it was not the length of manuscripts that discouraged the German printers; for besides their editions of the Scriptures, Mentelin of Strasburg published, in 1473, the great encyclopædia of Vincent of Beauvais, in ten volumes folio, generally bound in four; and, in 1474, a similar work of Berchorius, or Berchœur, in three other folios. The contrast between these labours and those of his Italian contemporaries is very striking.

|In France.|

50. Florus and Sallust were printed at Paris early in this decade, and twelve more classical authors at the same place before its termination. An edition of Cicero ad Herennium appeared at Angers in 1476, and one of Horace at Caen, in 1480. The press of Lyons also sent forth several works, but none of them classical. It has been said by French writers, that the first book printed in their language is Le Jardin de Dévotion, by Colard Mansion of Bruges, in 1473. This date has been questioned in England; but it is of the less importance, as we have already seen that Caxton’s Recueil des Histoires de Troye has the clear priority. Le Roman de Baudouin comte de Flandres, Lyon, 1474, seems to be the earliest French book printed in France. In 1476, Les Grands Chroniques de St. Denis, an important and bulky volume, appeared at Paris.

|In England, by Caxton.|

51. We come now to our own Caxton, who finished a translation into English of his Recueil des Histoires de Troye, by order of Margaret, duchess of Burgundy, at Cologne, in September 1471. It was probably printed there the next year.[369] But soon afterwards he came to England with the instruments of his art; and in 1474, his Game of Chess, a slight and short performance, is supposed to have been the first specimen of English typography.[370] In almost every year from this time to his death in 1483, Caxton continued to publish those volumes which are the delight of our collectors. The earliest of his editions bearing a date in England, is the “Dictes and Sayings,” a translation by Lord Rivers from a Latin compilation, and published in 1477. In a literary history it should be observed, that the Caxton publications are more adapted to the general than the learned reader, and indicate, upon the whole, but a low state of knowledge in England. A Latin translation, however, of Aristotle’s ethics was printed at Oxford in 1479.

[369] This book at the Duke of Roxburgh’s famous sale brought 1060_l._

[370] The Expositio Sancti Hieronymi, of which a copy, in the public
library at Cambridge, bears the date of Oxford 1468 on the
title-page, is now generally given up. It has been successfully
contended by Middleton, and lately by Mr. Singer, that this date
should be 1478; the numeral letter x having been casually omitted.
Several similar instances occur, in which a pretended early book
has not stood the keen eye of criticism: as the Decor Puellarum
ascribed to Nicolas Jenson of Venice in 1461, for which we should
read 1471; a cosmography of Ptolemy with the date of 1462; a book
appearing to have been printed at Tours in 1467, &c.

|In Spain.|

52. The first book printed in Spain was on the very subject we might expect to precede all others, the Conception of the Virgin. It should be a very curious volume, being a poetical contest, on that sublime theme, by thirty-six poets, four of whom had written in Spanish, one in Italian, and the rest in Provençal or Valencian. It appeared at Valencia in 1474. A little book on grammar followed in 1475, and Sallust was printed the same year. In that year printing was also introduced at Barcelona and Saragossa, in 1476 at Seville, in 1480 at Salamanca and Burgos.

|Translations of Scripture.|

53. A translation of the Bible by Malerbi, a Venetian, was published in 1471, and two other editions of that, or a different version, the same year. Eleven editions are enumerated by Panzer in the fifteenth century. The German translation has already been mentioned; it was several times reprinted in this decade; one in Dutch appeared in 1477, one in the Valencian language, at that city, in 1478;[371] the New Testament was printed in Bohemian, 1475, and in French, 1477; the earliest French translation of the Old Testament seems to be about the same date. The reader will of course understand, that all these translations were made from the Vulgate Latin. It may naturally seem remarkable, that not only at this period, but down to the Reformation, no attempt was made to render any part of the Scriptures public in English. But, in fact, the ground was thought too dangerous by those in power. The translation of Wicliffe had taught the people some comparisons between the worldly condition of the first preachers of Christianity and their successors, as well as some other contrasts, which it was more expedient to avoid. Long before the invention of printing it was enacted, in 1408, by a constitution of Archbishop Arundel, in convocation, that no one should thereafter “translate any text of Holy Scripture into English, by way of a book, or little book or tract; and that no book should be read that was composed lately in the time of John Wicliffe, or since his death.” Scarcely any of Caxton’s publications are of a religious nature.

[371] This edition was suppressed or destroyed; no copy is known to
exist; but there is preserved a final leaf containing the names of
the translator and printer. M’Crie’s Reformation in Spain, p. 192.
Andrès says (xix. 154), that this translation was made early in the
fifteenth century, with the approbation of divines.

|Revival of literature in Spain.|

54. It would have been strange if Spain, placed on the genial shores of the Mediterranean, and intimately connected through the Aragonese kings with Italy, had not received some light from that which began to shine so brightly. Her progress, however, in letters was but slow. Not but that several individuals are named by compilers of literary biography in the first part of the fifteenth century, as well as earlier, who are reputed to have possessed a knowledge of languages, and to have stood at least far above their contemporaries. Alfonsus Tostatus passes for the most considerable; his writings are chiefly theological, but Andrès praises his commentary on the Chronicle of Eusebius, at least as a bold essay.[372] He contends that learning was not deficient in Spain during the fifteenth century, though admitting that the rapid improvements made at its close, and about the beginning of the next age, were due to Lebrixa’s public instructions at Seville and Salamanca. Several translations were made from Latin authors into Spanish, which, however, is not of itself any great proof of Peninsular learning. The men to whom Spain chiefly owes the advancement of useful learning, and who should not be defrauded of their glory, were Arias Barbosa, a scholar of Politian, and the more renowned, though not more learned or more early propagator of Grecian literature, Antonio of Lebrixa, whose name was latinised into Nebrissensis, by which he is commonly known. Of Arias, who unaccountably has no place in the Biographie Universelle, Nicolas Antonio gives a very high character.[373] He taught the Greek language at Salamanca probably about this time. But his writings are not at all numerous. For Lebrixa, instead of compiling from other sources, I shall transcribe what Dr. M’Crie has said with his usual perspicuous brevity.

[372] ix. 151.

[373] In quo Antonium Nebrissensem socium habuit, qui tamen quicquid
usquam Græcarum literarum apud Hispanos esset, ab uno Aria emanâsse
in præfatione suarum Introductionum Grammaticarum ingenue
affirmavit. His duobus amplissimum illud gymnasium, indeque
Hispania tota debet barbariei, quæ longo apud nos bellorum dominatu
in immensum creverat, extirpationem, bonarumque omnium
disciplinarum divitias. Quas Arias noster ex antiquitatis penu per
vicennium integrum auditoribus suis larga et locuplete vena
communicavit, in poetica facultate Græcanicaque doctrina
Nebrissense melior, a quo tamen in varia multiplicique doctrina
superabatur. Bibl. Vetus.

|Character of Lebrixa.|

55. “Lebrixa, usually styled Nebrissensis, became to Spain what Valla was to Italy, Erasmus to Germany, or Budæus to France. After a residence of ten years in Italy, during which he had stored his mind with various kinds of knowledge, he returned home, in 1473, by the advice of the younger Philelphus and Hermolaus Barbarus, with the view of promoting classical literature in his native country. Hitherto the revival of letters in Spain was confined to a few inquisitive individuals, and had not reached the schools and universities, whose teachers continued to teach a barbarous jargon under the name of Latin, into which they initiated the youth by means of a rude system of grammar, rendered unintelligible, in some instances, by a preposterous intermixture of the most abstruse questions in metaphysics. By the lectures which he read in the universities of Seville, Salamanca, and Alcala, and by the institutes which he published on Castilian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew grammar, Lebrixa contributed in a wonderful degree to expel barbarism from the seats of education, and to diffuse a taste for elegant and useful studies among his countrymen. His improvements were warmly opposed by the monks, who had engrossed the art of teaching, and who, unable to bear the light themselves, wished to prevent all others from seeing it; but, enjoying the support of persons of high authority, he disregarded their selfish and ignorant outcries. Lebrixa continued to an advanced age to support the literary reputation of his native country.”[374]

[374] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Spain, p. 61. It is probable
that Lebrixa’s exertions were not very effectual in the present
decennium, nor perhaps in the next, but his Institutiones
Grammaticæ, a very scarce book, were printed at Seville in 1481.

|Library of Lorenzo.|

56. This was the brilliant æra of Florence, under the supremacy of Lorenzo de’ Medici. The reader is probably well acquainted with this eminent character, by means of a work of extensive and merited reputation. The Laurentian library, still consisting wholly of manuscripts, though formed by Cosmo, and enlarged by his son Pietro, owed not only its name, but an ample increase of its treasures, to Lorenzo, who swept the monasteries of Greece through his learned agent, John Lascaris. With that true love of letters which scorns the monopolising spirit of possession, Lorenzo permitted his manuscripts to be freely copied for the use of other parts of Europe.

|Classics corrected and explained.|

57. It was an important labour of the learned at Florence to correct, as well as elucidate, the text of their manuscripts, written generally by ignorant and careless monks, or trading copyists (though the latter probably had not much concern with ancient writers), and become almost wholly unintelligible through the blunders of these transcribers.[375] Landino, Merula, Calderino, and Politian were the most indefatigable in this line of criticism during the age of Lorenzo. Before the use of printing fixed the text of a whole edition--one of the most important of its consequences--the critical amendments of these scholars could only be made useful through their oral lectures. And these appear frequently to have been the foundation of the valuable, though rather prolix, commentaries we find in the old editions. Thus those of Landino accompany many editions of Horace and Virgil, forming, in some measure, the basis of all interpretative annotations on those poets. Landino in these seldom touches on verbal criticism; but his explanations display a considerable reach of knowledge. They are founded, as Heeren is convinced, on his lectures, and consequently give us some notion of the tone of instruction. In explaining the poets, two methods were pursued, the grammatical and the moral, the latter of which consisted in resolving the whole sense into allegory. Dante had given credit to a doctrine, orthodox in this age, and long afterwards, that every great poem must have a hidden meaning.[376]

[375] Meiners, Vergleich. der Sitten, iii. 108. Heeren, p. 293.

[376] Heeren, pp. 241, 287.

|Character of Lorenzo.|

58. The notes of Calderino, a scholar of high fame, but infected with the common vice of arrogance, are found with those of Landino in the early editions of Virgil and Horace. Regio commented upon Ovid, Omnibonus Leonicenus upon Lucan, both these upon Quintilian, many upon Cicero.[377] It may be observed, for the sake of chronological exactness, that these labours are by no means confined, even principally, to this decennial period. They are mentioned in connection with the name of Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose influence over literature extended from 1470 to his death in 1492. Nor was mere philology the sole, or the leading, pursuit to which so truly noble a mind accorded its encouragement. He sought in ancient learning something more elevated than the narrow, though necessary, researches of criticism. In a villa overhanging the towers of Florence, on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompaniment.

[377] Id. 297.

|Prospect from his villa at Fiesole.|

59. Never could the sympathies of the soul with outward nature be more finely touched; never could more striking suggestions be presented to the philosopher and the statesman. Florence lay beneath them; not with all the magnificence that the later Medici have given her, but, thanks to the piety of former times, presenting almost as varied an outline to the sky. One man, the wonder of Cosmo’s age, Brunelleschi, had crowned the beautiful city with the vast dome of its cathedral; a structure unthought of in Italy before, and rarely since surpassed. It seemed, amidst clustering towers of inferior churches, an emblem of the Catholic hierarchy under its supreme head; like Rome itself, imposing, unbroken, unchangeable, radiating in equal expansion to every part of the earth, and directing its convergent curves to heaven. Round this were numbered, at unequal heights, the Baptistery, with its gates worthy of Paradise; the tall and richly decorated belfry of Giotto; the church of the Carmine, with the frescos of Masaccio; those of Santa Maria Novella, beautiful as a bride, of Santa Croce, second only in magnificence to the cathedral, and of St. Mark; the San Spirito, another great monument of the genius of Brunelleschi; the numerous convents that rose within the walls of Florence, or were scattered immediately about them. From these the eye might turn to the trophies of a republican government that was rapidly giving way before the citizen-prince who now surveyed them; the Palazzo Vecchio, in which the signiory of Florence held their councils, raised by the Guelf aristocracy, the exclusive, but not tyrannous faction that long swayed the city; or the new and unfinished palace which Brunelleschi had designed for one of the Pitti family, before they fell, as others had already done, in the fruitless struggle against the house of Medici; itself destined to become the abode of the victorious race, and to perpetuate, by retaining its name, the revolutions that had raised them to power.

60. The prospect, from an elevation, of a great city in its silence, is one of the most impressive, as well as beautiful, we ever behold. But far more must it have brought home thoughts of seriousness to the mind of one who, by the force of events, and the generous ambition of his family, and his own, was involved in the dangerous necessity of governing without the right, and, as far as might be, without the semblance of power; one who knew the vindictive and unscrupulous hostility which, at home and abroad, he had to encounter. If thoughts like these could bring a cloud over the brow of Lorenzo, unfit for the object he sought in that retreat, he might restore its serenity by other scenes which his garden commanded. Mountains bright with various hues, and clothed with wood, bounded the horizon, and, on most sides, at no great distance; but embosomed in these were other villas and domains of his own; while the level country bore witness to his agricultural improvements, the classic diversion of a statesman’s cares. The same curious spirit which led him to fill his garden at Careggi with exotic flowers of the east, the first instance of a botanical collection in Europe, had introduced a new animal from the same regions. Herds of buffaloes, since naturalised in Italy, whose dingy hide, bent neck, curved horns, and lowering aspect, contrasted with the greyish hue and full mild eye of the Tuscan oxen, pastured in the valley, down which the yellow Arno steals silently through its long reaches to the sea.[378]

[378]
Taliâ Fæsuleo lentus meditabar in antro,
Rure suburbano Medicum, qua mons sacer urbem
Mæoniam, longique volumina despicit Arni:
Qua bonus hospitium felix placidamque quietem
Indulget Laurens.
_Politiani Rusticus._

And let us from the top of Fiesole,
Whence Galileo’s glass by night observed
The phases of the moon, look round below
On Arno’s vale, where the dove-coloured steer
Is ploughing up and down among the vines,
While many a careless note is sung aloud,
Filling the air with sweetness--and on thee,
Beautiful Florence, all within thy walls,
Thy groves and gardens, pinnacles and towers,
Drawn to our feet.

It is hardly necessary to say that these lines are taken from my
friend Mr. Rogers’s Italy, a poem full of moral and descriptive
sweetness, and written in the chastened tone of fine taste. With
respect to the buffaloes, I have no other authority than these
lines of Politian, in his poem of Ambra, on the farm of Lorenzo at
Poggio Cajano.

Atque aliud nigris missum, quis credat? ab Indis,
Ruminat insuetas armentum discolor herbas.

But I must own, that Buffon tells us, though without quoting any
authority, that the buffalo was introduced into Italy as early as
the seventh century. I did not take the trouble of consulting
Aldrovandus, who would perhaps have confirmed him--especially as I
have a better opinion of my readers than to suppose they would care
about the matter.

|Platonic academy.|

61. The Platonic academy, which Cosmo had planned, came to maturity under Lorenzo. The academicians were divided into three classes:--the patrons (mecenati), including the Medici; the hearers (ascoltatori, probably from the Greek word ἀκρόαται [akroatai]); and the novices, or disciples, formed of young aspirants to philosophy. Ficino presided over the whole. Their great festival was the 13th of November, being the anniversary of the birth and death of Plato. Much of absurd mysticism, much of frivolous and mischievous superstition, was mingled with their speculations.[379]

[379] Roscoe. Corniani.

|Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino.|

62. The Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino were published during this period, though, perhaps, written a little sooner. They belong to a class prominent in the literature of Italy in this and the succeeding century; disquisitions on philosophy in the form of dialogue, with more solicitude to present a graceful delineation of virtue, and to kindle a generous sympathy for moral beauty, than to explore the labyrinths of theory, or even to lay down clear and distinct principles of ethics. The writings of Plato and Cicero, in this manner, had shown a track, in which their idolators, with distant and hesitating steps, and more of reverence than emulation, delighted to tread. These Disputations of Landino, in which, according to the beautiful patterns of ancient dialogue, the most honoured names of the age appear--Lorenzo and his brother Julian; Alberti, whose almost universal genius is now best known by his architecture; Ficino, and Landino himself--turn upon a comparison between the active and contemplative life of man, to the latter of which it seems designed to give the advantage, and are saturated with the thoughtful spirit of Platonism.[380]

[380] Corniani and Roscoe have given this account of the
Disputationes Camaldulenses. I have no direct acquaintance with the
book.

|Philosophical dialogues.|

63. Landino was not, by any means, the first who had tried the theories of ancient philosophy through the feigned warfare of dialogue. Valla, intrepid and fond of paradox, had vindicated the Epicurean ethics from the calumnious or exaggerated censure frequently thrown upon them, contrasting the true methods by which pleasure should be sought with the gross notions of the vulgar. Several other writings of the same description, either in dialogue or regular dissertation, belong to the fifteenth century, though not always published so early, such as Franciscus Barbarus, De Re Uxoria,[381] Platina, De Falso et Vero Bono, the Vita Civile of Palmieri, the moral treatises of Poggio, Alberti, Pontano, and Matteo Bosso, concerning some of which little more than the names are to be learned from literary history, and which it would not, perhaps, be worth while to mention, except as collectively indicating a predilection for this style, which the Italians long continued to display.[382]

[381] This, which has been already mentioned, may be considered as much
the earliest, having been published about 1417. Shepherd’s Poggio,
c. 3. Barbaro was a noble Venetian, who had learned Latin under
Gasparin of Barziza. He was afterwards chiefly employed in public
life. This treatise De Re Uxoria, of which some account may be
found in Corniani (ii. 137) made a considerable impression at that
early time. Corniani thinks it the only work of moral philosophy in
the fifteenth century, which is not a servile copy of some ancient
system. The more celebrated Hermolaus was grandson of this Francis
Barbarus.

[382] Corniani is much fuller than Tiraboschi on these treatises.
Roscoe seems to have read the ethical writing of Matteo Bosso (Life
of Leo X., c. xx.), but hardly adverts to any of the rest I have
named. Some of them are very scarce.

|Paulus Cortesius.|

64. Some of these related to general criticism, or to that of single authors. My knowledge of them is chiefly limited to the dialogue of Paulus Cortesius, De Hominibus Doctis, written, I conceive, about 1490; no unsuccessful imitation of Cicero, De Claris Oratoribus, from which indeed modern Latin writers have always been accustomed to collect the discriminating phrases of criticism. Cortesius, who was young at the time of writing this dialogue, uses an elegant, if not always a correct Latinity; characterising agreeably, and with apparent taste, the authors of the fifteenth century. It may be read in conjunction with the Ciceronianus of Erasmus, who, with no knowledge, perhaps, of Cortesius has gone over the same ground in rather inferior language.

|Schools in Germany.|

65. It was about the beginning of this decade that a few Germans and Netherlanders, trained in the college of Deventer, or that of Zwoll, or of St. Edward’s near Groningen, were roused to acquire that extensive knowledge of the ancient languages which Italy as yet exclusively possessed. Their names should never be omitted in any remembrance of the revival of letters; for great was their influence upon the subsequent times. Wessel of Groningen, one of those who contributed most steadily towards the purification of religion, and to whom the Greek and Hebrew languages are said, but probably on no solid grounds, to have been known, may be reckoned in this class. But others were more directly engaged in the advancement of literature. Three schools, from which issued the most conspicuous ornaments of the next generation, rose under masters, learned for that time, and zealous in the good cause of instruction. Alexander Hegius became, about 1475, rector of that at Deventer, where Erasmus received his early education.[383] Hegius was not wholly ignorant of Greek, and imparted the rudiments of it to his illustrious pupil. I am inclined to ascribe the publication of a very rare and curious book, the first endeavour to print Greek on this side of the Alps, to no other person than Hegius.[384] Louis Dringeberg founded, not perhaps before 1480, a still more distinguished seminary at Schelstadt in Alsace. Here the luminaries of Germany in a more advanced stage of learning, Conrad Celtes, Bebel, Rhenanus, Wimpheling Pirckheimer, Simler, are said to have imbibed their knowledge.[385] The third school was at Munster; and over this Rodolph Langius presided, a man not any way inferior to the other two, and of more reputation as a Latin writer, especially as a poet. The school of Munster did not come under the care of Langius till 1483, or perhaps rather later; and his strenuous exertions in the cause of useful and polite literature against monkish barbarians extended into the next century. But his life was long: the first, or nearly such, to awaken his countrymen, he was permitted to behold the full establisment of learning, and to exult in the dawn of the Reformation. In company with a young man of rank, and equal zeal, Maurice, count of Spiegelberg, who himself became the provost of a school at Emmerich, Langius visited Italy, and, as Meiners supposes, though, I think, upon uncertain grounds, before 1460. But not long afterwards, a more distinguished person than any we have mentioned, Rodolph Agricola of Groningen, sought in that more genial land the taste and correctness which no cisalpine nation could supply. Agricola passed several years of this decade in Italy. We shall find the effects of his example in the next.[386]

[383] Heeren, p. 149, says that Hegius began to preside over the school
of Deventer in 1480; but I think the date in the text is more
probable, as Erasmus left it at the age of fourteen, and was
certainly born in 1465. Though Hegius is said to have known but
little Greek, I find in Panzer the title of a book by him, printed
at Deventer in 1501, De Utilitate Lingua Græcæ. The life of Hegius
in Melchior Adam is interesting. Primus hic in Belgio literas
excitavit, says Revius, in Daventria Illustrata, p. 130. Mihi, says
Erasmus, admodum adhuc puero contigit uti præceptore hujus
discipulo Alexandro Hegio Westphalo, qui ludum aliquando celebrem
oppidi Daventriensis moderabatur, in quo nos olim admodum pueri
utriusque linguæ prima didicimus elementa. Adag. Chil. 1, cent. iv.
39. In another place he says of Hegius, ne hic quidem Græcarum
literarum omnino ignarus est. Epist. 411, in Appendice. Erasmus
left Deventer at the age of fourteen; consequently in 1479 or 1480,
as he tells us in an epistle, dated 17th Apr. 1519.

[384] This very rare book, unnoticed by most bibliographers, is of some
importance in the history of literature. It is a small quarto
tract, entitled, Conjugations verborum Græcæ, Daventriæ noviter
extremo labore et impressæ. No date or printer’s name appears. A
copy is in the British Museum, and another in Lord Spencer’s
library. It contains nothing but the word τυπτω [typtô] in all its
voices and tenses, with Latin explanations in Gothic letters. The
Greek types are very rude, and the characters sometimes misplaced.
It must, I should presume, seem probable to every one who considers
this book, that it is of the fifteenth century, and consequently
older than any known Greek on this side of the Alps; which of
itself should render it interesting in the eyes of bibliographers
and of every one else. But fully disclaiming all such acquaintance
with the technical science of typographical antiquity, as to
venture any judgment founded on the appearance of a particular
book, or on a comparison of it with others, I would, on other
grounds, suggest the probability that this little attempt at Greek
Grammar issued from the Deventer press about 1480. It appears clear
that whoever “collected with extreme labour” these forms of the
verb τυπτω [typtô], had never been possessed of a Greek and Latin
grammar. For would it not be absurd to use such expressions about a
simple transcription? Besides which, the word is not only given in
an arrangement different from any I have ever seen, but with a
nonexistent form of participle, τετυψαμενος [tetypsamenos] for
τυψαμενος [typsamenos], which could not surely have been found in
any prior grammar. Now the grammar of Lascaris was published with a
Latin translation by Craston in 1480. It is indeed highly probable
that this book would not reach Deventer immediately after its
impression; but it does seem as if there could not long have been
any extreme difficulty in obtaining a correct synopsis of the verb
τυπτω [typtô].

We have seen that Erasmus, about 1477, acquired a very slight
tincture of Greek under Alexander Hegius at Deventer. And here, as
he tells us, he saw Agricola, returning probably from Italy to
Groningen. Quem mihi puero, ferme duodecim annos nato, Daventriæ
videre contigit, nec aliud contigit. (Jortin, ii. 416.) No one
could be so likely as Hegius to attempt a Greek grammar; nor do we
find that his successors in that college were men as distinguished
for learning as himself. But in fact at a later time it could not
have been so extraordinarily imperfect. We might perhaps conjecture
that he took down these Greek tenses from the mouth of Agricola,
since we must presume oral communication rather than the use of
books. Agricola, repeating from memory, and not thoroughly
conversant with the language, might have given the false tense
τετυψαμενος [tetypsamenos]. The tract was probably printed by
Pafroet, some of whose editions bear as early a date as 1477. It
has long been extremely scarce; for Revius does not include it in
the list of Pafroet’s publications he has given in Deventria
Illustrata, nor will it be found in Panzer. Beloe was the first to
mention it in his Anecdotes of scarce books; and it is referred by
him to the fifteenth century; but apparently without his being
aware there was anything remarkable in that antiquity. Dr. Dibdin,
in Bibliotheca Spenceriana, has given a fuller account; and from
him Brunet has inserted it in the Manuel du Libraire. Neither Beloe
nor Dibdin seems to have known that there is a copy in the Museum;
they speak only of that belonging to Lord Spencer.

If it were true that Reuchlin, during his residence at Orleans, had
published, as well as compiled, a Greek grammar, we should not need
to have recourse to the hypothesis of this note, in order to give
the antiquity of the present decade to Greek typography. Such a
grammar is asserted by Meiners, in his Life of Reuchlin, to have
been printed at Poitiers: and Eichhorn positively says, without
reference to the place of publication, that Reuchlin was the first
German who published a Greek grammar. (Gesch. der Litt. iii. 275.)
Meiners, however, in a subsequent volume (iii. 10), retracts this
assertion, and says it has been proved that the Greek grammar of
Reuchlin was never printed. Yet I find in the Bibliotheca
Universalis of Gesner: Joh. Capnio [Reuchlin] scripsit de
diversitate quatuor idiomatum Græcæ linguæ, lib. i. No such book
appears in the list of Reuchlin’s works in Niceron, vol. xxv., nor
in any of the bibliographies. If it ever existed, we may place it
with more probability at the very close of this century, or at the
beginning of the next.

[385] Eichhorn, iii. 231. Meiners, ii. 369. Eichhorn carelessly follows
a bad authority in counting Reuchlin among these pupils of the
Schelstadt school.

[386] See Meiners, vol. ii., Eichhorn, and Heeren, for the revival of
learning in Germany; or something may be found in Brucker.

|Study of Greek at Paris.|

66. Meantime a slight impulse seems to have been given to the university of Paris by the lessons of George Tifernas; for from some disciples of his Reuchlin, a young German of great talents and celebrity, acquired, probably about the year 1470, the first elements of the Greek language. This knowledge he improved by the lessons of a native Greek, Andronicus Cartoblacas, at Basle. In that city he had the good fortune, rare on this side of the Alps, to find a collection of Greek manuscripts, left there at the time of the council by a cardinal Nicolas of Ragusa. By the advice of Cartoblacas, he taught Greek himself at Basle. After the lapse of some years, Reuchlin went again to Paris, and found a new teacher, George Hermonymus of Sparta, who had settled there about 1472. From Paris he removed to Orleans and Poitiers; he is said to have taught, perhaps not the Greek language, in the former city, and to have written a Greek grammar in the second. It seems, however, now to be ascertained, that this grammar was never printed.[387]

[387] Meiners, i. 46. Besides Meiners, Brucker, iv. 358, as well as
Heeren, have given pretty full accounts of Reuchlin; and a good
life of him will be found in the 25th volume of Niceron: but the
Epistolæ ad Reuchlinum throw still more light on the man and his
contemporaries.

|Controversy of Realists and Nominalists.|

|Scotus.|

67. The classical literature which delighted Reuchlin and Agricola was disregarded as frivolous by the wise of that day in the university of Paris; but they were much more keenly opposed to innovation and heterodoxy in their own peculiar line, the scholastic metaphysics. Most have heard of the long controversies between the Realists and Nominalists concerning the nature of universals, or the genera and species of things. The first, with Plato and Aristotle, maintained their objective or external reality; either, as it was called, _ante rem_, as eternal archetypes in the Divine Intelligence, or _in re_, as forms inherent in matter; the second, with Zeno, gave them only a subjective existence as ideas conceived by the mind, and have hence in later times acquired the name of Conceptualists.[388] Roscelin, the first of the modern Nominalists, went farther than this, and denied, as Hobbes and Berkeley, with many others, have since done, all universality except to words and propositions. Abelard, who inveighs against the doctrine of Roscelin as false logic and false theology, and endeavours to confound it with the denial of any objective reality even in singular things,[389] may be esteemed the restorer of the Conceptualist school. We do not know his doctrines, however, by his own writings, but by the testimony of John of Salisbury, who seems not well to have understood the subject. The words Realist and Nominalist came into use about the end of the twelfth century. But in the next, the latter party by degrees disappeared; and the great schoolmen, Aquinas and Scotus, in whatever else they might disagree, were united on the Realist side. In the fourteenth century William Ockham revived the opposite hypothesis with considerable success. Scotus and his disciples were the great maintainers of Realism. If there were no substantial forms, he argued, that is, nothing real, which determines the mode of being in each individual, men and brutes would be of the same substance; for they do not differ as to matter, nor can extrinsic accidents make a substantive difference. There must be a substantial form of a horse, another of a lion, another of a man. He seems to have held the immateriality of the soul, that is, the substantial form of man. But no other form, he maintained, can exist without matter naturally, though it may, supernaturally, by the power of God. Socrates and Plato agree more than Socrates and an ass. They have, therefore, something in common, which an ass has not. But this is not numerically the same; it must, therefore, be something universal, namely, human nature.[390]

[388] I am chiefly indebted for the facts in the following paragraphs
to a dissertation by Meiners, in the transactions of the Göttingen
Academy, vol. xii.

[389] Hic sicut pseudo-dialecticus, ita pseudo-christianus--ut eo loco
quo dicitur Dominus partem piscis assi comedisse, partem hujus
vocis, quæ est piscis assi, non partem rei intelligere cogatur.
Meiners, p. 27. This may serve to show the cavilling tone of
scholastic disputes; and Meiners may well say: Quicquid Roscelinus
peccavit, non adeo tamen insanisse pronuntiandum est, ut Abelardus
ilium fecisse invidiose fingere sustinuit.

[390] Id. p. 89.