Chapter III (4)

97. If, leaving the genial city of Florence, we are to judge of the state of knowledge in our Cisalpine regions, and look at the books it was thought worth while to publish, which seems no bad criterion, we shall rate but lowly their proficiency in the classical literature so much valued in Italy. Four editions, and those chiefly of short works, were printed at Deventer, one at Cologne, one at Louvain, five perhaps at Paris, two at Lyons.[424] But a few undated books might, probably, be added. Either, therefore, the love of ancient learning had grown colder, which was certainly not the case, or it had never been strong enough to reward the labour of the too sanguine printers. Yet it was now striking root in Germany. The excellent schools of Munster and Schelstadt were established in some part of this decade; they trained those who were themselves to become instructors; and the liberal zeal of Langius extending beyond his immediate disciples, scarce any Latin author was published in Germany in which he did not correct the text.[425] The opportunities he had of doing so were not, as has been just seen, so numerous in this period as they became in the next. He had to withstand a potent and obstinate faction. The mendicant friars of Cologne, the head-quarters of barbarous superstition, clamoured against his rejection of the old school-books, and the entire reform of education. But Agricola addresses his friend in sanguine language: “I entertain the greatest hope from your exertions, that we shall one day wrest from this insolent Italy her vaunted glory of pre-eminent eloquence; and redeeming ourselves from the opprobrium of ignorance, barbarism, and incapacity of expression which she is ever casting upon us, may show our Germany so deeply learned, that Latium itself shall not be more Latin than she will appear.”[426] About 1482, Agricola was invited to the court of the elector palatine at Heidelberg. He seems not to have been engaged in public instruction, but passed the remainder of his life, unfortunately too short, for he died in 1485, in diffusing and promoting a taste for literature among his contemporaries. No German wrote in so pure a style, or possessed so large a portion of classical learning. Vives places him in dignity and grace of language even above Politian and Hermolaus.[427] The praises of Erasmus, as well as of the later critics, if not so marked, are very freely bestowed. His letters are frequently written in Greek; a fashion of those who could; and as far as I have attended to them, seem equal in correctness to some from men of higher name in the next age.

[424] Panzer.

[425] Meiners, Lebensbesch. ii. 328. Eichhorn, iii. 231-239.

[426] Unum hoc tibi affirmo, ingentem de te concipio fiduciam,
summamque in spem adducor, fore aliquando, ut priscam insolenti
Italiæ, et propemodum occupatam bene dicendi gloriam extorqueamus;
vindicemusque nos, et ab ignavia, qua nos barbaros, indoctosque et
elingues, et si quid est his incultius, esse nos jactitant,
exsolvamus, futuramque tam doctam et literatam Germaniam nostram,
ut non Latinius vel ipsum sit Latium. This is quoted by Heeren, p.
154, and Meiners, ii. 329.

[427] Vix et hac nostra et patrum memoria fuit unus atque alter dignior,
qui multum legeretur, multumque in manibus haberetur, quam
Radulphus Agricola Frisius; tantum est in ejus operibus ingenii,
artis, gravitatis, dulcedinis, eloquentiæ, eruditionis; at is
paucissimis noscitur, vir non minus, qui ab hominibus
cognosceretur, dignus quam Politianus, vel Hermolaus Barbarus, quos
mea quidem sententia, et majestate et suavitate dictionis non æquat
modo, sed etiam vincit. Vives, Comment. in Augustin. (apud Blount,
Censura Auctorum, sub nomine Agricola.)

Agnosco virum divini pectoris, eruditionis reconditæ, stylo minime
vulgari, solidum, nervosum elaboratum, compositum. In Italia summus
esse poterat, nisi Germanium prætulisset. Erasmus in Ciceroniano.
He speaks as strongly in many other places. Testimonies to the
merits of Agricola from Huet, Vossius, and others, are collected by
Bayle, Blount, Baillet, and Niceron. Meiners has written his life,
ii. pp. 332-363; and several of his letters will be found among
those addressed to Reuchlin, Epistolæ ad Reuchlinum; a collection
of great importance for this portion of literary history.

|Rhenish academy.|

98. The immediate patron of Agricola, through whom he was invited to Heidelberg, was John Camerarius, of the house of Dalberg, bishop of Worms, and chancellor of the Palatinate. He contributed much himself to the cause of letters in Germany; especially if he is to be deemed the founder, as probably he should be, of an early academy, the Rhenish Society, which, we are told, devoted its time to Latin, Greek, and Hebrew criticism, astronomy, music, and poetry; not scorning to relax their minds with dances and feasts, nor forgetting the ancient German attachment to the flowing cup.[428] The chief seat of the Rhenish Society was at Heidelberg; but it had associate branches in other parts of Germany, and obtained imperial privileges. No member of this academy was more conspicuous than Conrad Celtes, who has sometimes been reckoned its founder, which, from his youth, is hardly probable, and was, at least, the chief instrument of its subsequent extension. He was indefatigable in the vineyard of literature, and, travelling to different parts of Germany, exerted a more general influence than Agricola himself. Celtes was the first from whom Saxony derived some taste for learning. His Latin poetry was far superior to any that had been produced in the empire; and for this, in 1487, he received the laurel crown from Frederic III.[429]

[428] Studebant eximia hæc ingenia Latinorum, Græcorum, Ebræorumque
scriptorum lectioni, cumprimis criticæ; astronomiam et artem
musicam excolebant. Poesin atque jurisprudentiam sibi habebant
commendatam; imo et interdum gaudia curis interponebant. Nocturno
nimirum tempore, defessi laboribus, ludere solebant, saltare,
jocari cum mulierculis, epulari, ac more Germanorum inveterato
strenue potare. Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, p. 1993 (vol. iii.). The
passage seems to be taken from Ruprecht, Oratio de Societate
Litteraria Rhenana, Jenæ, 1752, which I have not seen.

[429] Jugler, ubi suprà. Eichhorn, ii. 557. Heeren, p. 100. Biogr.
Universelle, art. Celtes, Dalberg, Trithemius.

|Reuchlin.|

99. Reuchlin, in 1482, accompanied the duke of Wirtemberg on a visit to Rome. He thus became acquainted with the illustrious men of Italy, and convinced them of his own pretensions to the name of a scholar. The old Constantinopolitan Argyropulus, on hearing him translate a passage of Thucydides, exclaimed, “Our banished Greece has now flown beyond the Alps.” Yet Reuchlin, though from some other circumstances of his life a more celebrated, was not probably so learned or so accomplished a man as Agricola; he was withdrawn from public tuition by the favour of several princes, in whose courts he filled honourable offices; and after some years more, he fell unfortunately into the same seducing error as Picus of Mirandola, and sacrificed his classical pursuits for the Cabbalistic philosophy.

|French language and poetry.|

100. Though France contributed little to the philologer, several books were now published in French. In the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, 1486, a slight improvement in polish of language is said to be discernible.[430] The poems of Villon are rather of more importance. They were first published in 1489; but many of them had been written thirty years before. Boileau has given Villon credit for being the first who cleared his style from the rudeness and redundancy of the old romancers.[431] But this praise, as some have observed, is more justly due to the duke of Orleans, a man of full as much talent as Villon, with a finer taste. The poetry of the latter, as might be expected from a life of dissoluteness and roguery, is often low and coarse; but he seems by no means incapable of a moral strain, not destitute of terseness and spirit. Martial d’Auvergne, in his Vigiles de la Mort de Charles VII., which, from its subject, must have been written soon after 1460, though not printed till 1490, displays, to judge from the extracts in Goujet, some compass of imagination.[432] The French poetry of this age was still full of allegorical morality, and had lost a part of its original raciness. Those who desire an acquaintance with it may have recourse to the author just mentioned, or to Bouterwek; and extracts, though not so copious as the title promises, will be found in the Recueil des Anciens Poètes Français.

[430] Essai du C. François de Neufchâteau sur les meilleurs ouvrages
en prose; prefixed to Œuvres de Pascal (1819), i. p. cxx.

[431] Villon fut le primer dans des siècles grossiers
Debrouiller l’art confus de nos vieux romanciers.
Art Poétique, l. i. v. 117.

[432] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, vol. x.

|European drama.|

|Latin.|

101. The modern drama of Europe is derived, like its poetry, from two sources, the one ancient or classical, the other mediæval; the one an imitation of Plautus and Seneca, the other a gradual refinement of the rude scenic performances, denominated miracles, mysteries, or moralities. Latin plays upon the former model, a few of which are extant, were written in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and sometimes represented, either in the universities, or before an audience of ecclesiastics and others who could understand them.[433] One of these, the Catinia of Secco Polentone, written about the middle of the fifteenth century, and translated by a son of the author into the Venetian dialect, was printed in 1482. This piece, however, was confined to the press.[434] Sabellicus, as quoted by Tiraboschi, has given to Pomponius Lætus the credit of having re-established the theatre at Rome, and caused the plays of Plautus Terence, as well as some more modern, which we may presume to have been in Latin, to be performed before the pope, probably Sixtus IV. And James of Volterra, in a diary published by Muratori, expressly mentions a History of Constantine represented in the papal palace during the carnival of 1484.[435] In imitation of Italy, but, perhaps, a little after the present decennial period, Reuchlin brought Latin plays of his own composition before a German audience. They were represented by students of Heidelberg. An edition of his Progymnasmata Scenica, containing some of these comedies, was printed in 1498. It has been said that one of them is taken from the French farce Maitre Patelin[436]; while another, entitled Sergius, according to Warton, flies a much higher pitch, and is a satire on bad kings and bad ministers; though, from the account of Meiners, it seems rather to fall on the fraudulent arts of the monks.[437] The book is very scarce, and I have never seen it. Conrad Celtes, not long after Reuchlin, produced his own tragedies and comedies in the public halls of German cities. It is to be remembered, that the oral Latin language might at that time be tolerably familiar to a considerable audience in Germany.

[433] Tiraboschi, vii. 200.

[434] Id. p. 201.

[435] Id. p. 204.

[436] Greswell’s Early Parisian Press, p. 124; quoting la Monnoye. This
seems to be confirmed by Meiners, i. 63.

[437] Warton, iii. 203. Meiners, i. 62. The Sergius was represented at
Heidelberg about 1497.

|Orfeo of Politian.|

102. The Orfeo of Politian has claimed precedence as the earliest represented drama, not of a religious nature, in a modern language. This was written by him in two days, and acted before the court of Mantua in 1483. Roscoe has called it the first example of the musical drama, or Italian opera; but though he speaks of this as agreed by general consent, it is certain that the Orfeo was not designed for musical accompaniment, except, probably, in the songs and choruses.[438] According to the analysis of the fable in Ginguéné, the Orfeo differs only from a legendary mystery by substituting one set of characters for another; and it is surely by an arbitrary definition that we pay it the compliment upon which the modern historians of literature seem to have agreed. Several absurdities which appear in the first edition are said not to exist in the original manuscripts from which the Orfeo has been reprinted.[439] We must give the next place to a translation of the Menæchmi of Plautus, acted at Ferrara in 1486, by order of Ercole I., and, as some have thought, his own production, or to some original plays said to have been performed at the same brilliant court in the following years.[440]

[438] Burney (Hist. of Music, iv. 17) seems to countenance this; but
Tiraboschi does not speak of musical accompaniment to the Orfeo;
and Corniani only says, alcuni di essi sembrano dall’autor
destinati ad accoppiarsi colla musica. Tali sono i canzoni e i cori
alla Greca. Probably Roscoe did not mean all that his words imply;
for the origin of recitative, in which the essence of the Italian
opera consists, more than a century afterwards, is matter of
notoriety.

[439] Tiraboschi, vii. 216. Ginguéné, iii. 514. Andrès (v. 125),
discussing the history of the Italian and Spanish theatres,
gives the precedence to the Orfeo as a represented play, though he
conceives the first act of the Celestina to have been written and
well known not later than the middle of the fifteenth century.

[440] Tiraboschi, vii. 203, et post. Roscoe, Leo X., ch. ii. Ginguéné,
vi. 18.

|Origin of dramatic mysteries.|

103. The less regular, though in their day not less interesting, class of scenical stories, commonly called mysteries, all of which related to religious subjects, were never in more reputation than at this time. It is impossible to fix their first appearance at any single æra, and the inquiry into the origin of dramatic representation must be very limited in its subject, or perfectly futile in its scope. All nations, probably, have at all times, to a certain extent, amused themselves both with pantomimic and oral representation of a feigned story; the sports of children are seldom without both; and the exclusive employment of the former, instead of being a first stage of the drama, as has sometimes been assumed, is rather a variety in the course of its progress.

|Their early stage.|

104. The Christian drama arose on the ruins of the heathen theatre: it was a natural substitute of real sympathies for those which were effaced and condemned. Hence we find Greek tragedies on sacred subjects almost as early as the establishment of the church, and we have testimonies to their representation at Constantinople. Nothing of this kind being proved with respect to the west of Europe in the dark ages, it has been conjectured, not improbably, though without necessity, that the pilgrims, of whom great numbers repaired to the East in the eleventh century, might have obtained notions of scenical dialogue, with a succession of characters, and with an ornamental apparatus, in which theatrical representation properly consists. The earliest mention of them, it has been said, is in England. Geoffrey, afterwards abbot of St. Albans, while teaching a school at Dunstable, caused one of the shows, vulgarly called miracles, on the story of St. Catherine, to be represented in that town. Such is the account of Matthew Paris, who mentions the circumstance incidentally, in consequence of a fire that ensued. This must have been within the first twenty years of the twelfth century.[441] It is not to be questioned, that Geoffrey, a native of France, had some earlier models in his own country. Le Bœuf gives an account of a mystery written in the middle of the preceding century, wherein Virgil is introduced among the prophets that come to adore the Saviour; doubtless in allusion to the fourth eclogue.

[441] Matt. Paris, p. 1007 (edit. 1684). See Warton’s 34th section
(iii. 193-233), for the early drama, and Beauchamps, Hist. du
Théâtre Français, vol. i., or Bouterwek, v. 95-117, for the French
in particular; Tiraboschi, ubi suprà, or Riccoboni, Hist. du
Théâtre Italien, for that of Italy.

|Extant English mysteries.|

105. Fitz-Stephen, in the reign of Henry II., dwells on the sacred plays acted in London, representing the miracles or passions of martyrs. They became very common by the names of mysteries or miracles, both in England and on the Continent, and were not only exhibited within the walls of convents, but upon public occasions and festivals for the amusement of the people. It is probable, however, that the performers for a long time were always ecclesiastics. The earlier of those religious dramas were in Latin. A Latin farce exists on St. Nicholas, older than the thirteenth century.[442] It was slowly that the modern languages were employed; and perhaps it might hence be presumed, that the greater part of the story was told through pantomime. But as this was unsatisfactory, and the spectators could not always follow the fable, there was an obvious inducement to make use of the vernacular language. The most ancient specimens appear to be those which Le Grand d’Aussy found among the compositions of the Trouveurs. He has published extracts from three; two of which are in the nature of legendary mysteries, while the third, which is far more remarkable, and may possibly be of the following century, is a pleasing pastoral drama, of which there seem to be no other instances in the mediæval period.[443] Bouterwek mentions a fragment of a German mystery, near the end of the thirteenth century.[444] Next to this it seems that we should place an English mystery called The Harrowing of Hell. “This,” its editor observes, “is believed to be the most ancient production in a dramatic form in our language. The manuscript from which it is now printed is on vellum, and is certainly as old as the reign of Edward III., if not older. It probably formed one of a series of performances of the same kind, founded upon Scripture history.” It consists of a prologue, epilogue, and intermediate dialogue of nine persons, Dominus, Sathan, Adam, Eve, &c. Independently of the alleged age of the manuscript itself, the language will hardly be thought later than 1350.[445] This, however, seems to stand at no small distance from any extant work of the kind. Warton having referred the Chester mysteries to 1327, when he supposes them to have been written by Ranulph Higden, a learned monk of that city, best known as the author of the Polychronicon, Roscoe positively contradicts him, and denies that any dramatic composition can be found in England anterior to the year 1500.[446] Two of these Chester mysteries have been since printed; but notwithstanding the very respectable authorities which assign them to the fourteenth century, I cannot but consider the language in which we now read them not earlier, to say the least, than the middle of the next. It is possible that they have in some degree been modernised. Mr. Collier has given an analysis of our own extant mysteries, or, as he prefers to call them, Miracle-plays.[447] There does not seem to be much dramatic merit, even with copious indulgence, in any of them; and some, such as the two Chester mysteries, are in the lowest style of buffoonery; yet they are of some importance in the absolute sterility of English literature during the age in which we presume them to have been written, the reigns of Henry VI. and Edward IV.

[442] Journal des Savans, 1828, p. 297. These farces, according to
M. Raynouard, were the earliest dramatic representations, and gave
rise to the mysteries.

[443] Fabliaux, ii. 119.

[444] ix. 265. The Tragedy of the Ten Virgins was acted at Eisenach
in 1322. This is evidently nothing but a mystery. Weber’s
Illustrations of Northern Poetry, p. 19.

[445] Mr. Collier has printed twenty-five copies (why veteris tam parcus
aceti?) of this very curious record of the ancient drama. I do not
know that any other in Europe of that early age has yet been given
to the press.

[446] Lorenzo de’ Medici, i. 399. Roscoe thinks the few extracts in
Bouterwek, is rather there is reason to conjecture that the
Miracle-play acted at Dunstable was in dumb show; and assumes the
same of the “grotesque exhibitions” known by the name of The
Harrowing of Hell. In this we have just seen that he was mistaken,
and probably in the former.

[447] Hist. of English Dramatic Poetry, vol. ii. The Chester mysteries
were printed for the Roxburgh Club, by my friend Mr. Markland; and
what are called the Townley mysteries are announced for publication.

|First French theatre.|

106. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were fertile of these religious dramas in many parts of Europe. They were frequently represented in Germany, but more in Latin than in the mother-tongue. The French scriptural theatre, whatever may have been previously exhibited, seems not to be traced in permanent existence beyond the last years of the fourteenth century. It was about 1400, according to Beauchamps, or some years before, as the authorities quoted by Bouterwek imply, that the Confrairie de la Passion de N. S. was established as a regular body of actors at Paris.[448] They are said to have taken their name from the mystery of the passion, which in fact represented the whole life of our Lord from his baptism, and was divided into several days. In pomp of show they far excelled our English mysteries, in which few persons appeared, and the scenery was simple. But in the mystery of the passion, eighty-seven characters were introduced in the first day; heaven, earth, and hell combined to people the stage; several scenes were written for singing, and some for choruses. The dialogue, of which I have only seen similar to that of our own mysteries, though less rude, and with more efforts at a tragic tone.[449]

[448] Beauchamps, Recherches sur le Théâtre Français. Bouterwek, v. 96.

[449] Bouterwek, p. 100.

|Theatrical machinery.|

107. The mysteries, not confined to scriptural themes, embraced those which were hardly less sacred and trustworthy in the eyes of the people, the legends of saints. These afforded ample scope for the gratification which great part of mankind seem to take in witnessing the endurance of pain. Thus, in one of these Parisian mysteries, St. Barbara is hung up by the heels on the stage, and after uttering her remonstrances in that unpleasant situation, is torn with pincers and scorched with lamps before the audience. The decorations of this theatre must have appeared splendid. A large scaffolding at the back of the stage displayed heaven above and hell below, between which extended the world, with representations of the spot where the scene lay. Nor was the machinist’s art unknown. An immense dragon, with eyes of polished steel, sprung out from hell, in a mystery exhibited at Metz in the year 1437, and spread his wings so near to the spectators that they were all in consternation.[450] Many French mysteries, chiefly without date of the year, are in print, and probably belong, typographically speaking, to the present century.[451] One bears, according to Brunet, the date of 1484. These may, however, have been written long before their publication. Beauchamps has given a list of early mysteries and moralities in the French language, beginning near the end of the fourteenth century.

[450] Bouterwek, pp. 103-106.

[451] Brunet, Manuel du Libraire.

|Italian religious dramas.|

108. The religious drama was doubtless full as ancient in Italy as in any other country; it was very congenial to people whose delight in sensible objects is so intense. It did not supersede the extemporaneous performances, the mimi and histriones, who had probably never intermitted their sportive license since the days of their Oscan fathers, and of whom we find mention, sometimes with severity, sometimes with toleration, in ecclesiastical writers;[452] but it came into competition with them; and thus may be said to have commenced in the thirteenth century a war of regular comedy against the lawless savages of the stage, which has only been terminated in Italy within very recent recollection. We find a society del Gonfalone established at Rome in 1264, the statutes of which declare, that it is designed to represent the passion of Jesus Christ.[453] Lorenzo de’ Medici condescended to publish a drama of this kind on the martyrdom of two saints; and a considerable collection of similar productions during the fifteenth century was in the possession of Mr. Roscoe.[454]

[452] Thomas Aquinas mentions the histrionatûs ars, as lawful if not
abused. St. Antonin does the same. Riccoboni, i. 23.

[453] Riccoboni. Tiraboschi, however, v. 376, disputes the antiquity
of any scenical representations truly dramatic, in Italy; in which
he seems to be mistaken.

[454] Life of Lorenzo, i. 402.

|Moralities.|

|Farces.|

109. Next to the mysteries came the kindred class, styled moralities. But as these belong more peculiarly to the next century, both in England and France, though they began about the present time, we may better reserve them for that period. There is still another species of dramatic composition, what may be called the farce, not always very distinguishable from comedy, but much shorter, admitting more buffoonery without reproach, and more destitute of any serious or practical end. It may be reckoned a middle link between the extemporaneous effusions of the mimes and the legitimate drama. The French have a diverting piece of this kind, Maitre Patelin, ascribed to Pierre Blanchet, and first printed in 1490. It was restored to the stage with much alteration, under the name of l’Avocat Patelin, about the beginning of the last century; and contains strokes of humour, which Molière would not have disdained.[455] Of these productions there were not a few in Germany, called Fastnachts-spiele, or Carnival plays, written in the license which that season has generally permitted. They are scarce and of little value. The most remarkable is the Apotheosis of Pope Joan, a tragi-comic legend, written about 1480.[456]

[455] The proverbial expression for quitting a digression, Revenons à
nos moutons, is taken from this farce; which is at least short, and
as laughable as most farces are. It seems to have been written not
long before its publication. See Pasquier, Recherches de la France,
l. viii. c. 59; Biogr. Univ., Blanchet; and Bouterwek, v. 118.

[456] Bouterwek, Gesch. der deutschen Poesie, ix. 357-367. Heinsius,
Lehrbuch der Sprachtwissenschaft, iv. 125.

|Mathematical works.|

110. Euclid was printed for the first time at Venice in 1482; the diagrams in this edition are engraved on copper, and remarkably clear and neat.[457] The translation is that of Campanus from the Arabic. The cosmography of Ptolemy, which had been already twice published in Italy, appeared the same year at Ulm, with maps by Donis, some of them traced after the plans drawn by Agathodæmon, some modern; and it was reprinted, as well as Euclid, at the same place in 1486. The tables of Regiomontanus were printed both at Augsburg and Venice in 1490. We may take this occasion of introducing two names, which do not exclusively belong to the exact sciences, nor to the present period.

[457] A beautiful copy of this edition, presented to Mocenigo, doge
of Venice, is in the British Museum. The diagrams, especially those
which represent solids, are better than in our modern editions of
Euclid. I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that the
earliest book, in which engravings are found, is the edition of
Dante by Landino, published at Florence in 1481. See Brunet, Manuel
du Libraire, Dibdin’s Bibl. Spencer, &c.

|Leo Baptista Alberti.|

111. Leo Baptista Alberti was a man, who, if measured by the universality of his genius, may claim a place in the temple of glory he has not filled; the author of a Latin comedy, entitled Philodoxios, which the younger Aldus Manutius afterwards published as the genuine work of a certain ancient Lepidus; a moral writer in the various forms of dialogue, dissertation, fable, and light humour; a poet, extolled by some, though not free from the rudeness of his age; a philosopher of the Platonic school of Lorenzo; a mathematician and inventor of optical instruments; a painter, and the author of the earliest modern treatise on painting; a sculptor, and the first who wrote about sculpture; a musician, whose compositions excited the applause of his contemporaries; an architect of profound skill, not only displayed in many works, of which the church of Saint Francis at Rimini is the most admired, but in a theoretical treatise, De Re Ædificatoriâ, published posthumously in 1485. It has been called the only work on architecture which we can place on a level with that of Vitruvius, and by some has been preferred to it. Alberti had deeply meditated the remains of Roman antiquity, and endeavoured to derive from them general theorems of beauty, variously applicable to each description of buildings.[458]

[458] Corniani, ii. 160. Tiraboschi, vii. 360.

112. This great man seems to have had two impediments to his permanent glory: one, that he came a few years too soon into the world, before his own language was become polished, and before the principles of taste in art had been wholly developed; the other, that, splendid as was his own genius, there were yet two men a little behind, in the presence of whom his star has paled; men, not superior to Alberti in universality of mental powers, but in their transcendency and command over immortal fame. Many readers will have perceived to whom I allude,--Lionardo da Vinci, and Michael Angelo.

|Lionardo da Vinci.|

113. None of the writings of Lionardo were published till more than a century after his death; and, indeed, the most remarkable of them are still in manuscript. We cannot, therefore, give him a determinate place under this rather than any other decennium; but as he was born in 1452, we may presume his mind to have been in full expansion before 1490. His Treatise on Painting is known as a very early disquisition on the rules of the art. But his greatest literary distinction is derived from those short fragments of his unpublished writings that appeared not many years since; and which, according, at least, to our common estimate of the age in which he lived, are more like revelations of physical truths vouchsafed to a single mind, than the superstructure of its reasoning upon any established basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, and Kepler, and Mæstlin, and Maurolycus, and Castelli, and other names illustrious, the system of Copernicus, the very theories of recent geologers, are anticipated by Da Vinci, within the compass of a few pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the most conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe of præternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism, he first laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of nature. If any doubt could be harboured, not as to the right of Lionardo da Vinci to stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which, probably, no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis, not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record. The extraordinary works of ecclesiastical architecture in the middle ages, especially in the fifteenth century, as well as those of Toscanelli and Fioravanti, which we have mentioned, lend some countenance to this opinion; and it is said to be confirmed by the notes of Fra Mauro, a lay brother of a convent near Venice, on a planisphere constructed by him, and still extant. Lionardo himself speaks of the earth’s annual motion, in a treatise that appears to have been written about 1510, as the opinion of many philosophers in his age.[459]

[459] The manuscripts of Lionardo da Vinci, now at Paris, are the
justification of what has been said in the text. A short account of
them was given by Venturi, who designed to have published a part;
but, having relinquished that intention, the fragments he has made
known are the more important. As they are very remarkable, and not,
I believe, very generally known, I shall extract a few passages
from his Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-mathématiques de Léonard de
Vinci. Paris, 1797.

En mécanique Vinci connaissait, entr’autres choses: 1. La théorie
des forces appliquées obliquement au bras du levier; 2. La
résistance respective des poutres; 3. Les lois du frottement
données ensuite par Amontons; 4. L’influence du centre de gravité
sur les corps en repos ou en mouvement; 5. L’application du
principe des vitesses virtuelles à plusieurs cas que la sublime
analyse a porté de nos jours a sa plus grande généralité. Dans
l’optique il décrivit la chambre obscure avant Porta, il expliqua
avant Maurolycus la figure de l’image du soleil dans un trou de
forme anguleuse; il nous apprend la perspective aerienne, la nature
des ombres colorées, les mouvemens de l’iris, les effets de la
durée de l’impression visible, et plusieurs autres phénomènes de
l’œil qu’on ne rencontre point dans Vitellion. Enfin non seulement
Vinci avait remarqué tout ce que Castelli a dit un siècle après lui
sur le mouvement des eaux; le premier me parait même dans cette
partie supérieur de beaucoup à l’autre, que l’Italie cependant a
regardé comme le fondateur de l’hydraulique.

Il faut donc placer Léonard à la tête de ceux qui se sont occupés
des sciences physico-mathématiques, et de la vraie méthode
d’étudier parmi les modernes, p. 5.

The first extract Venturi gives is entitled, On the descent of
heavy bodies combined with the rotation of the earth. He here
assumes the latter, and conceives that a body falling to the earth
from the top of a tower would have a compound motion in consequence
of the terrestrial rotation. Venturi thinks that the writings of
Nicolas de Cusa had set men on speculating concerning this before
the time of Copernicus.

Vinci had very extraordinary lights as to mechanical motions. He
says plainly, that the time of descent on inclined planes of equal
height is as their length; that a body descends along the arc of a
circle sooner than down the chord, and that a body descending an
inclined plane will re-ascend with the same velocity as if it had
fallen down the height. He frequently repeats, that every body
weighs in the direction of its movement, and weighs the more in the
ratio of its velocity; by weight evidently meaning what we call
force. He applies this to the centrifugal force of bodies in
rotation: Pendant tout ce temps elle pèse sur la direction de son
mouvement.

Lorsqu’on employe une machine quelconque pour mouvoir un corps
grave, toutes les parties de la machine qui ont un mouvement égal à
celui du corps grave ont une charge égale au poids entier du même
corps. Si la partie qui est le moteur a, dans le même temps, plus
de mouvement que le corps mobile, elle aura plus de puissance que
le mobile; et celà d’Autant plus qu’elle se mouvra plus vite que le
corps même. Si la partie qui est le moteur a moins de vitesse que
le mobile, elle aura d’Autant moins de puissance que ce mobile. If
in this passage there is not the perfect luminousness of expression
we should find in the best modern books, it seems to contain the
philosophical theory of motion as unequivocally as any of them.

Vinci had a better notion of geology than most of his
contemporaries, and saw that the sea had covered the mountains
which contain shells: Ces coquillages ont vécu dans le même endroit
lorsque l’eau de la mer le recouvrait. Les bancs, par la suite des
temps, ont été recouverts par d’Autres couches de limon de
différentes hauteurs; ainsi, les coquilles ont été enclavées sous
le bourbier amoncelé au dessus, jusqu’à sortir de l’eau. He seems
even to have had an idea of the elevation of the continents, though
he gives an unintelligible reason for it.

He explained the obscure light of the unilluminated part of the
moon by the reflection of the earth, as Mœstlin did long after.
He understood the camera obscura, and describes its effect. He
perceived that respirable air must support flame: Lorsque l’air
n’est pas dans un état propre à recevoir la flamme, il n’y peut
vivre ni flamme ni aucun animal terrestre ou aerien. Aucun animal
ne peut vivre dans un endroit ou la flamme ne vit pas.

Vinci’s observations on the conduct of the understanding are also
very much beyond his time. I extract a few of them.

Il est toujours bon pour l’entendement d’Acquérir des connaissances
quelles qu’elles soient; on pourra ensuite choisir les bonnes et
écarter les inutiles.

L’interprète des artifices de la nature, c’est l’expérience. Elle
ne se trompe jamais; c’est notre jugement qui quelquefois se trompe
lui-même, parcequ’il s’attend à des effets auxquels l’expérience se
refuse. Il faut consulter l’expérience, en varier les circonstances
jusqu’à ce que nous en ayons tiré des règles générales; car c’est
elle qui fournit les vraies règles. Mais à quoi bon ces règles, me
direz-vous? Je réponds qu’elles nous dirigent dans les recherches
de la nature et les opérations de l’art. Elles empêchent que nous
ne nous abusions nous-mêmes ou les autres, en nous promettant des
résultats que nous ne saurions obtenir.

Il n’y a point de certitude dans les sciences où on ne peut pas
appliquer quelque partie des mathématiques, ou qui n’en dépendent
pas de quelque manière.

Dans l’étude des sciences qui tiennent aux mathématiques, ceux qui
ne consultent pas la nature, mais les auteurs, ne sont pas les
enfans de la nature; je dirais qu’ils n’en sont que les petits
fils: elle seule, en effet, est le maitre des vrais génies. Mais
voyez la sottise! on se moque d’un homme qui aimera mieux apprendre
de la nature elle-même, que des auteurs, qui n’en sont que les
clercs. Is not this the precise tone of Lord Bacon?

Vinci says, in another place: Mon dessein est de citer d’Abord
l’expérience, et de démontrer ensuite pourquoi les corps sont
contraints d’Agir de telle manière. C’est la méthode qu’on doit
observer dans les recherches des phénomènes de la nature. Il est
bien vrai que la nature commence par le raisonnement, et finit par
l’expérience; mais n’importe, il nous faut prendre la route
opposée: comme j’ai dit, nous devons commencer par l’expérience, et
tâcher par son moyen d’en découvrir la raison.

He ascribes the elevation of the equatorial waters above the polar
to the heat of the sun: Elles entrent en mouvement de tous les
côtés de cette éminence aqueuse pour rétablir leur sphéricité
parfaite. This is not the true cause of their elevation, but by
what means could he know the fact?

Vinci understood fortification well, and wrote upon it. Since in
our time, he says, artillery has four times the power it used to
have, it is necessary that the fortification of towns should be
strengthened in the same proportion. He was employed on several
great works of engineering. So wonderful was the variety of power
in this miracle of nature. For we have not mentioned that his Last
Supper at Milan is the earliest of the great pictures in Italy, and
that some productions of his easel vie with those of Raphael. His
only published work, the Treatise on Painting, does him injustice;
it is an ill-arranged compilation from several of his manuscripts.
That the extraordinary works, of which this note contains an
account, have not been published entire, and in their original
language, is much to be regretted by all who know how to venerate
so great a genius as Lionardo da Vinci.

SECT. VI. 1491-1500.

_State of Learning in Italy--Latin and Italian Poets--Learning in France and England--Erasmus--Popular Literature and Poetry--Other kinds of Literature--General Literary Character of Fifteenth Century--Book-trade, its Privileges and Restraints._

|Aldine Greek editions.|

114. The year 1494 is distinguished by an edition of Musæus, generally thought the first work from the press established at Venice by Aldus Manutius, who had settled there in 1489.[460]

In the course of about twenty years, with some interruption, he gave to the world several of the principal Greek authors; and though, as we have seen, not absolutely the earliest printer in that language, he so far excelled all others in the number of his editions, that he may be justly said to stand at the head of the list. It is right, however, to mention, that Zarot had printed Hesiod and Theocritus in one volume, and also Isocrates, at Milan, in 1493; that the Anthologia appeared at Florence in 1494; Lucian and Apollonius Rhodius in 1496; the lexicon of Suidas, at Milan, in 1499. About fifteen editions of Greek works, without reckoning Craston’s lexicon and several grammars, had been published before the close of the century.[461] The most remarkable of the Aldine editions are the Aristotle, in five volumes, the first bearing date of 1495, the last of 1498, and nine plays of Aristophanes in the latter year. In this Aristophanes, and perhaps in other editions of this time, Aldus had fortunately the assistance of Marcus Musurus, one of the last, but by no means the least eminent, of the Greeks who transported their language to Italy. Musurus was now a public teacher at Padua. John Lascaris, son, perhaps, of Constantine, edited the Anthologia at Florence. It may be doubted whether Italy had as yet produced any scholar, unless it were Varino, more often called Phavorinus, singly equal to the task of superintending a Greek edition. His Thesaurus Cornucopiæ, a collection of thirty-four grammatical tracts in Greek, printed 1496, may be an exception. The Etymologicum Magnum, Venice, 1499, being a lexicon with only Greek explanations, is supposed to be chiefly due to Musurus. Aldus had printed Craston’s lexicon, in 1497, with the addition of an index; this has often been mistaken for an original work.[462]

[460] The Erotemata of Constantino Lascaris, printed by Aldus, bears
date Feb. 1494, which Menu to mean 1495. But the Musæus has no
date, nor the Galeomyomachia, a Greek poem by one Theodoras
Prodromus. Renouard, Hist. de I’Imprimerie des Aldes.

[461] The grammar of Urbano Valeriano was first printed in 1497. It is
in Greek and Latin, and of extreme rarity. Roscoe (Leo X., ch. xi.)
says, “it was received with such avidity that Erasmus, on inquiring
for it in the year 1499, found that not a copy of this impression
remained unsold.” I have given, a little below, a different
construction to these words of Erasmus.

[462] Renouard. Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. xi.

|Decline of learning in Italy.|

115. The state of Italy was not so favourable as it had been to the advancement of philosophy. After the expulsion of the Medici from Florence, in 1494, the Platonic academy was broken up; and that philosophy never found again a friendly soil in Italy, though Ficinus had endeavoured to keep it up by a Latin translation of Plotinus. Aristotle and his followers began now to regain the ascendant. Perhaps it may be thought that even polite letters were not so flourishing as they had been; no one, at least, yet appeared to fill the place of Hermolaus Barbarus, who died in 1493, or Politian, who followed him the next year.

|Hermolaus Barbarus.|

116. Hermolaus Barbarus was a noble Venetian, whom Europe agreed to place next to Politian in critical learning, and to draw a line between them and any third name. “No time, no accident, no destiny,” says an enthusiastic scholar of the next age, “will ever efface their remembrance from the hearts of the learned.”[463] Erasmus calls him a truly great and divine man. He filled many honourable offices for the republic; but lamented that they drew him away from that learning for which he says he was born, and to which alone he was devoted.[464] Yet Hermolaus is but faintly kept in mind at the present day. In his Latin style, with the same fault as Politian, an affectation of obsolete words, he is less flexible and elegant. But his chief merit was in the restoration of the text of ancient writers. He boasts that he had corrected about five thousand passages in Pliny’s natural history, and more than three hundred in the very brief geography of Pomponius Mela. Hardouin, however, charges him with extreme rashness in altering passages he did not understand. The pope had nominated Hermolaus to the greatest post in the Venetian church, the patriarchate of Aquileia; but his mortification at finding that the senate refused to concur in the appointment is said to have hastened his death.[465]

[463] Habuit nostra hæc ætas bonarum literarum proceres duos,
Hermolaum Barbarum atque Angelum Politianum: Deum immortalem!
quam acri judicio, quanta facundia, quanta linguarum, quanta
disciplinarum omnium scientia præditos! Hi Latinam linguam
jampridem squalentem et multa barbariei rubigine exesam, ad
pristinum revocare nitorem conati sunt, atque illis suus profecto
conatus non infeliciter cessit, suntque illi de Latina lingua tam
bene meriti, quam qui ante cos optimi meriti fuere. Itaque
immortalem sibi gloriam, immortale decus paraverunt, manebitque
semper in omnium eruditorum pectoribus consecrata Hermolai et
Politiani memoria, nullo ævo, nullo casu, nullo fato abolenda.
Brixeus Erasmo in Erasm. Epist. ccxii.

[464] Meiners, ii. 200.

[465] Bayle. Niceron, vol. xiv. Tiraboschi, vii. 152. Corniani, iii.
197. Heeren, p. 274.

|Mantuan.|

117. A Latin poet once of great celebrity, Baptista Mantuan, seems to fall within this period as fitly as any other, though several of his poems had been separately printed before, and their collective publication was not till 1513. Editions recur very frequently in the bibliography of Italy and Germany. He was, and long continued to be, the poet of school-rooms. Erasmus says that he would be placed by posterity not much below Virgil;[466] and the marquis of Mantua, anticipating this suffrage, erected their statues side by side. Such is the security of contemporary compliments! Mantuan has long been utterly neglected, and does not find a place in most selections of Latin poetry. His Eclogues and Silvæ are said to be the least bad of his numerous works. He was among the many assailants of the church, or at least the court of Rome; and this animosity inspired him with some bitter, or rather vigorous, invectives. But he became afterwards a Carmelite friar.[467] Marullus, a Greek by birth, has obtained a certain reputation for his Latin poems, which are of no great value.

[466] Et nisi me fallit augurium, erit, erit aliquando Baptista suo
concive gloriâ celebritateque non ita multo inferior, simul
invidiam anni detraxerint. Append. ad Erasm. Epist. cccxcv. (edit.
Lugd.) It is not conceivable that Erasmus meant this literally; but
the drift of the letter is to encourage the reading of Christian
poets.

[467] Corniani, iii. 148. Niceron, vol. xxvii. Such of Mantuan’s
eclogues as are printed in Carmina Illustrium Poetarum Italorum,
Florent. 1719, are but indifferent. I doubt, however, whether that
voluminous collection has been made with much taste; and his satire
on the see of Rome would certainly be excluded, whatever might be
its merit. Corniani has given an extract, better than what I had
seen of Mantuan.

|Pontanus.|

118. A far superior name is that of Pontanus, to whom, if we attend to some critics, we must award the palm, above all Latin poets of the fifteenth century. If I might venture to set my own taste against theirs, I should not agree to his superiority over Politian. His hexameters are by no means deficient in harmony, and may, perhaps, be more correct than those of his rival, but appears to me less pleasing and poetical. His lyric poems are like too much modern Latin, in a tone of languid voluptuousness, and ring changes on the various beauties of his mistress, and the sweetness of her kisses. The few elegies of Pontanus, among which that addressed to his wife, on the prospect of peace, is the best known, fall very short of the admirable lines of Politian on the death of Ovid. Pontanus wrote some moral and political essays in prose, which are said to be full of just observations and sharp satire on the court of Rome, and written in a style which his contemporaries regarded with admiration. They were published in 1490. Erasmus, though a parsimonious distributor of praise to the Italians, has acknowledged their merit in the Ciceronianus.[468]

[468] Roscoe, Leo X., ch. ii. and xx. Niceron, vol. viii. Corniani.
Tiraboschi. Pantanus cum illa quatuor complecti summa cura conatus
sit nervum dico, numeros, candorem, venustatem, profecto est omnia
consecutus. Quintum autem illud quod est horum omnium veluti vita
quædam, modum intelligo, penitus ignoravit. Aiunt Virgilium cum
multos versus matutino calore effudisset, pomeridianis horis novo
judicio solitum ad paucorum numerum revocare. Contra quidem Pontano
evenisse arbitror. Quæ prima quaque inventione arrisissent, isis
plura postea, dum recognosceret, addita atque ipsis potius
carminibus, quam sibi pepercisse. Scaliger de Re Poetica (apud
Blount).

|Neapolitan academy.|

119. Pontanus presided at this time over the Neapolitan Academy, a dignity which he had attained upon the death of Beccatelli, in 1471. This was after the decline of the Roman and the Florentine, by far the most eminent reunion of literary men in Italy; and though it was long conspicuous, seems to have reached its highest point in the last years of this century, under the patronage of the mild Frederic of Aragon, and during that transient calm which Naples was permitted to enjoy between the invasions of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. That city and kingdom afforded many lovers of learning and poetry; some of them in the class of its nobles; each district being, as it were, represented in this academy by one or more of its distinguished residents. But other members were associated from different parts of Italy; and the whole constellation of names is still brilliant, though some have grown dim by time. The house of Este, at Ferrara, were still the liberal patrons of genius; none more eminently than their reigning marquis, Hercules I. And not less praise is due to the families who held the principalities of Urbino and Mantua.[469]

[469] Roscoe’s Leo. X., ch. ii. This contains an excellent account of
the state of literature in Italy about the close of the century.

|Boiardo.|

120. A poem now appeared in Italy, well deserving of attention for its own sake, but still more so on account of the excitement and direction it gave to one of the most famous poets that ever lived. Matteo Maria Boiardo, count of Scandiano, a man esteemed and trusted at the court of Ferrara, amused his leisure in the publication of a romantic poem, for which the stories of Charlemagne and his paladins, related by one who assumed the name of Turpin, and already woven into long metrical narrations, current at the end of the fourteenth and during the fifteenth century in Italy, supplied materials, which are almost lost in the original inventions of the author. The first edition of this poem is without date, but probably in 1495. The author, who died the year before, left it unfinished at the ninth canto of the third book. Agostini, in 1516, published a continuation, indifferently executed, in three more books; but the real complement of the Innamorato is the Furioso.[470] The Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo has hitherto not received that share of renown which seems to be its due; overpowered by the splendour of Ariosto’s poem, and almost set aside in its original form by the improved edition or remaking (rifaccimento), which Berni afterwards gave, it has rarely been sought or quoted, even in Italy.[471]

The style is uncouth and hard; but without style, which is the source of perpetual delight, no long poem will be read; and it has been observed by Ginguéné with some justice, that Boiardo’s name is better remembered, though his original poem may have been more completely neglected, through the process to which Berni has subjected it. In point of novel invention and just keeping of character, especially the latter, he has not been surpassed by his illustrious follower Ariosto; and whatever of this we find in the Orlando Innamorato, is due to Boiardo alone; for Berni has preserved the sense of almost every stanza. The imposing appearance of Angelica at the court of Charlemagne, in the first canto, opens the poem with a splendour rarely equalled, with a luxuriant fertility of invention, and with admirable art; judiciously presenting the subject in so much singleness, that amidst all the intricacies and episodes of the story, the reader never forgets the incomparable princess of Albracca. The latter city, placed in that remote Cathay which Marco Polo had laid open to the range of fancy, and its siege by Agrican’s innumerable cavalry, are creations of Boiardo’s most inventive mind. Nothing in Ariosto is conceived so nobly, or so much in the true genius of romance. Castelvetro asserts that the names Gradasso, Mandricardo, Sobrino, and others which Boiardo has given to his imaginary characters, belonged to his own peasants of Scandiano; and some have improved upon this by assuring us, that those who take the pains to ascertain the fact may still find the representatives of these sonorous heroes at the plough, which, if the story were true, ought to be the case.[472] But we may give him credit for talent enough to invent those appellations; he hardly found an Albracca on his domains; and those who grudge him the rest acknowledge that, in a moment of inspiration, while hunting, the name of Rodomont occurred to his mind. We know how finely Milton, whose ear pursued, almost to excess, the pleasure of harmonious names, and who loved to expatiate in these imaginary regions, has alluded to Boiardo’s poem in the Paradise Regained. The lines are perhaps the most musical he has ever produced.