Chapter IV (1)

ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1500 TO 1520.

SECT. I. 1501-1510.

_Classical Learning of Italy in this Period--Of France, Germany, and England--Works of Polite Literature in Languages of Italy, Spain, and England._

|Decline of learning in Italy.|

1. The new century did not begin very auspiciously for the literary credit of Italy. We may, indeed, consider the whole period between the death of Lorenzo in 1492, and the pontificate of his son in 1513, as less brilliant than the two ages which we connect with their names. But when measured by the labours of the press, the last ten years of the fifteenth century were considerably more productive than any which had gone before. In the present decade a striking decline was perceptible. Thus, in comparing the numbers of books printed in the chief towns of Italy, we find--

1491-1500 1501-1510
Florence 179 47
Rome 460 41
Milan 228 99
Venice 1491 536[522]

Such were the fruits of the ambition of Ferdinand and of Louis XII., and the first interference of strangers with the liberties of Italy. Wars so protracted within the bosom of a country, if they do not prevent the growth of original genius, must yet be unfavourable to that secondary, but more diffused excellence, which is nourished by the wealth of patrons and the tranquillity of universities. Thus the gymnasium of Rome, founded by Eugenius IV., but lately endowed and regulated by Alexander VI., who had established it in a handsome edifice on the Quirinal hill, was despoiled of its revenues by Julius II., who, with some liberality towards painters, had no regard for learning; and this will greatly account for the remarkable decline in the typography of Rome. Thus, too, the Platonic school at Florence soon went to decay after the fall of the Medici, who had fostered it; and even the rival philosophy which rose upon its ruins, and was taught at the beginning of this century with much success at Padua by Pomponatius, according to the original principles of Aristotle, and by two other professors of great eminence in their time, Nifo and Achillini, according to the system of Averroes, could not resist the calamities of war: the students of that university were dispersed in 1509, after the unfortunate defeat of Ghiaradadda.

[522] Panzer.

|Press of Aldus.|

2. Aldus himself left Venice in 1506, his effects in the territory having been plundered, and did not open his press again till 1512, when he entered into partnership with his father-in-law, Andrew Asola. He had been actively employed during the first years of the century. He published Sophocles, Herodotus, and Thucydides in 1502, Euripides and Herodian in 1503, Demosthenes in 1504. These were important accessions to Greek learning, though so much remained behind. A circumstance may be here mentioned, which had so much influence in facilitating the acquisition of knowledge, that it renders the year 1501 a sort of epoch in literary history. He that year not only introduced a new Italic character, called Aldine, more easily read perhaps than his Roman letters, which are somewhat rude; but, what was of more importance, began to print in a small octavo or duodecimo form, instead of the cumbrous and expensive folios that had been principally in use. Whatever the great of ages past might seem to lose by this indignity, was more than compensated in the diffused love and admiration of their writings. “With what pleasure,” says M. Renouard, “must the studious man, the lover of letters, have beheld these benevolent octavos, these Virgils and Horaces contained in one little volume, which he might carry in his pocket while travelling or in a walk; which besides cost him hardly more than two of our francs, so that he could get a dozen of them for the price of one of those folios, that had hitherto been the sole furniture of his library. The appearance of these correct and well printed octavos ought to be as much remarked as the substitution of printed books for manuscripts itself.”[523] We have seen above, that not only quartos, nearly as portable perhaps as octavos, but the latter form also, had been coming into use towards the close of the fifteenth century, though, I believe, it was sparingly employed for classical authors.

[523] Renouard, Hist. de l’Imprimerie des Aldes. Roscoe’s Leo. X.
ch. ii.

|His academy.|

3. It was about 1500, that Aldus drew together a few scholars into a literary association, called Aldi Neacademia. Not only amicable discussions, but the choice of books to be printed, of manuscripts and various readings, occupied their time, so that they may be considered as literary partners of the noble-minded printer. This academy was dispersed by the retirement of Aldus from Venice, and never met again.[524]

[524] Tiraboschi. Roscoe. Renouard. Scipio Forteguerra, who latinized
his name into Carteromachus, was secretary to this society, and
among its most distinguished members. He was celebrated in his time
for a discourse, De Laudibus Literarum Græcarum, reprinted by Henry
Stephens in his Thesaurus. Biogr. Univ., Forteguerra.

|Dictionary of Calepio.|

4. The first edition of Calepio’s Latin Dictionary, which, though far better than one or two obscure books that preceded it, and enriched by plundering the stores of Valla and Perotti, was very defective, appeared at Reggio in 1502.[525] It was so greatly augmented by subsequent improvers, that calepin has become a name in French for any voluminous compilation. This dictionary was not only of Latin and Italian, but several other languages; and these were extended in the Basle edition of 1581 to eleven. It is still, if not the best, the most complete polyglott lexicon for the European languages. Calepio, however moderate might be his erudition, has just claim to be esteemed one of the most effective instruments in the restoration of the Latin language in its purity to general use; for though some had by great acuteness and diligence attained a good style in the fifteenth century, that age was looked upon in Italy itself as far below the subsequent period.[526]

[525] Brunet. Tiraboschi (x. 383) gives some reason to suspect that
there may have been an earlier edition.

[526] Calepio is said by Morhof and Baillet to have copied Perotti’s
Cornucopia almost entire. Sir John Elyot long before had remarked:
“Calepin nothing amended, but rather appaired that which Perottus
had studiously gathered.” But the Cornucopia was not a complete
dictionary. It is generally agreed, that Calepio was an indifferent
scholar, and that the first editions of his dictionary are of no
great value. Nor have those who have enlarged it done so with
exactness, or with selection of good latinity. Even Passerat, the
most learned of them, has not extirpated the unauthorised words of
Calepio. Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 44.

Several bad dictionaries, abridged from the Catholicon, appeared
near the end of the fifteenth century, and at the beginning of the
next. Du Cange, præfat in Glossar, p. 47.

|Books printed in Germany.|

5. We may read in Panzer the titles of 325 books printed during these ten years at Leipsic, 60 of which are classical, but chiefly, as before, small school-books; 14 out of 214 at Cologne; 10 out of 208 at Strasburg; 1 out of 84 at Basle; but scarcely any books whatever appear at Louvain. One printed at Erfurt in 1501 deserves some attention. The title runs “Εισαγωγη προς των γραμματων Ελληνων [Eisagôgê pros tôn grammatôn Ellênôn], Elementale Introductorium in idioma Græcanicum,” with some more words. Panzer observes: “This Greek grammar, published by some unknown person, is undoubtedly the first which was published in Germany since the invention of printing.” In this, however, as has already been shown, he is mistaken; unless we deny to the book printed at Deventer the name of a grammar. But Panzer was not acquainted with it. This seems to be the only attempt at Greek that occurs in Germany during this decade; and it is unnecessary to comment on the ignorance, which the gross solecism in the title displays.[527]

[527] Panzer, vi. 494. We find, however, a tract by Hegius, De
Utilitate Linguæ Græcæ printed at Deventer in 1501; but whether it
contains Greek characters or not, must be left to conjecture.
Lambinet says, that Martens, a Flemish printer, employed Greek
types in quotations as early as 1501 or 1502.

|First Greek press at Paris.|

6. Paris contributed in ten years 430 editions, thirty-two being of Latin classics. And in 1507 Giles Gourmont, a printer of that city, assisted by the purse of Francis Tissard, had the honour of introducing the Greek language on this side, as we may say, of the Alps; for the trifling exceptions we have mentioned scarcely affect his priority. Greek types had been used in a few words by Badius Ascensius, a learned and meritorious Parisian printer, whose publications began about 1498. They occur in his edition (1505) of Villa’s Annotations on the Greek Testament.[528] Four little books, namely, a small miscellaneous volume preceded by an alphabet, the Works and Days of Hesiod, the Frogs and Mice of Homer, and the Erotemata or Greek grammar of Chrysoloras, to which four a late writer has added an edition of Musæus, were the first fruits of Gourmont’s press. Aleander, a learned Italian, who played afterwards no inconsiderable part in the earlier period of the Reformation, came to Paris in 1508, and received a pension from Louis XII.[529] He taught Greek there, and perhaps Hebrew. Through his care, besides a Hebrew and Greek alphabet in 1508, Gourmont printed some of the moral works of Plutarch in 1509.

[528] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 246. Greswell’s
View of early Parisian Greek Press, i. 15. Panzer, according to Mr.
Greswell, has recorded nearly 400 editions from the press of
Badius. They include almost every Latin classic, usually with
notes. He also printed a few Greek authors. See also Bayle and
Biogr. Univ. The latter refers the first works from the Parisian
press of Badius to 1511, but probably by misprint. Badius had
learned Greek at Ferrara. If Bayle is correct, he taught it at
Lyons before he set up his press at Paris, which is worthy of
notice; but he gives no authority, except for the fact of his
teaching in the former city, which might not be the Greek language.
It is said, however, that he came to Paris in order to give
instruction in Greek about 1499. Bayle, art. Badius, note H. It is
said in the Biographie Universelle, that Denys le Fevre taught
Greek at Paris in 1504, when only sixteen years old; but the story
seems apocryphal.

[529] Aleander was no favourite with Erasmus, and Luther utters many
invectives against him. He was a strenuous supporter of all things
as they were in the church, and would have presided in the council
of Trent, as legate of Paul III., who had given him a cardinal’s
hat, if he had not been prevented by death. His epitaph on himself
may be mentioned, as the best Greek verses by a Frank that I
remember to have read before the middle of the eighteenth century,
though the reader may not think much of them.

κάτθανον οὐκ ἀέκων, ὅτι πάυσομαι ὣν ἐπιμάρτθς
πόλλων, ὥνπερ ἰδεῖν ἀλγίον ἤν θανάτου.
[katthanon ouk aekôn, hoti pausomai hôn epimartus
pollôn, hônper idein algion ên thanatou.]

It is fair to say of Aleander, that he was the friend of Sadolet.
In a letter of that excellent person to Paul III., he praises
Aleander very highly, and requests for him the hat, which the Pope
in consequence bestowed. Sadolet. Epist. l. xii. See, for Aleander,
Bayle; Sleidan, Hist. de la Réformation, l. ii. and iii.; Roscoe’s
Leo X., ch. xxi.; Jortin’s Erasmus, passim.

|Early studies of Melanchthon.|

7. We learn from a writer of the most respectable authority, Camerarius, that the elements of Greek were already taught to some boys in parts of Germany.[530] About 1508, Reuchlin, on a visit to George Simler, a schoolmaster in Hesse, found a relation of his own, little more than ten years old, who, uniting extraordinary quickness with thirst for learning, had already acquired the rudiments of that language; and presenting him with a lexicon and grammar, precious gifts in those times, changed his German name, Schwartzerd, to one of equivalent meaning and more classical sound, Melanchthon. He had himself set the example of assuming a name of Greek derivation, being almost as much known by the name of Capnio as by his own. And this pedantry, which continued to prevail for a century and a half afterwards, might be excused by the great uncouthness of many German, not to say French and English, surnames in their latinised forms. Melanchthon, the precocity of his youth being followed by a splendid maturity, became not only one of the greatest lights of the Reformation, but, far above all others, the founder of general learning in Germany.[531]

[530] Jam enim pluribus in locis melius quam dudum pueritia institui
et doctrina in scholis usurpari politior, quod et bonorum autorum
scripta in manus tenerentur, et elementa quoque linguæ Græcæ
alicubi proponerentur ad discendum, cum seniorum admiratione
maxima, et ardentissima cupiditate juniorum, cujus utriusque tum
non tam judicium quam novitas causa fuit. Similerus, qui postea ex
primario grammatico eximius jurisconsultus factus est, initio hanc
doctrinam non vulgandam aliquantisper, arbitrabatur. Itaque
Græcarum literarum scholam explicabat aliquot discipulis suis
privatim, quibus debat hanc operam peculiarem, ut quos summopere
diligeret. Camerarius, Vita Melanchthonis. I find also in one of
Melanchthon’s own epistles, that he learned the Greek grammar from
George Simler. Epist. Melanchthon, p. 351 (edit. 1647.)

[531] Camerarius. Meiners, i. 73. The Biographie Universelle, art.
Melanchthon, calls him nephew of Reuchlin: but this seems not to be
the case; Camerarius only says, that their families were connected
quadam cognationis necessitudine.

|Learning in England.|

8. England seems to have been nearly stationary in academical learning during the unpropitious reign of Henry VII.[532] But just hopes were entertained from the accession of his son in 1509, who had received in some degree a learned education. And the small knot of excellent men, united by zeal for improvement, Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, Fisher, Colet, More, succeeded in bringing over their friend Erasmus to teach Greek at Cambridge in 1510. The students, he says, were too poor to pay him anything; nor had he many scholars.[533] His instruction was confined to the grammar. In the same year, Colet, dean of St. Paul’s, founded there a school, and published a Latin grammar; five or six little works of the kind had already appeared in England.[534] These trifling things are mentioned to let the reader take notice that there is nothing more worthy to be named. Twenty-six books were printed at London during this decade; among these Terence in 1504; but no other Latin author of classical name. The difference in point of learning between Italy and England was at least that of a century; that is, the former was more advanced in knowledge of ancient literature in 1400 than the latter was in 1500.

[532] “The schools were much frequented with quirks and sophistry. All
things, whether taught or written, seemed to be trite and inane. No
pleasant streams of humanity or mythology were gliding among us,
and the Greek language, from whence the greater part of knowledge
is derived, was at a very low ebb, or in a manner forgotten.”
Wood’s Annals of Oxford, A.D. 1508. The word “forgotten” is
improperly applied to Greek, which had never been known. In this
reign, but in what part of it does not appear, the university of
Oxford hired an Italian, one Caius Auberinus, to compose the public
orations and epistles, and to explain Terence in the schools.
Warton, ii. 420, from MS. authority.

[533] Hactenus prælegimus Chrysoloræ grammaticam, sed paucis; fortassis
frequentiori auditorio Theodori grammaticam auspicabimur. Ep.
cxxiii. (16th Oct. 1511.)

[534] Wood talks of Holt’s Lac Puerorum, published in 1497, as if it
had made an epoch in literature. It might be superior to any
grammar we already possessed.

|Erasmus and Budæus.|

9. It is plain, however, that on the continent of Europe, though no very remarkable advances were made in these ten years, learning was slowly progressive, and the men were living who were to bear fruit in due season. Erasmus republished his Adages with such great additions as rendered them almost a new work; while Budæus, in his Observations upon the Pandects, gave the first example of applying philological and historical literature to the illustration of Roman law, by which others, with more knowledge of jurisprudence than he possessed, were in the next generation signally to change the face of that science.

|Study of eastern languages.|

10. The eastern languages began now to be studied, though with very imperfect means. Hebrew had been cultivated in the Franciscan monasteries of Tubingen and Basle before the end of the last century. The first grammar was published by Conrad Pellican in 1503. Eichhorn calls it an evidence of the deficiencies of his knowledge, though it cost him incredible pains. Reuchlin gave a better, with a dictionary, in 1506; which, enlarged by Munster, long continued to be a standard book. A Hebrew psalter, with three Latin translations, and one French, was published in 1509 by Henry Stephens, the progenitor of a race illustrious in typographical and literary history. Petrus de Alcala, in 1506, attempted an Arabic vocabulary, printing the words in Roman letter.[535]

[535] Eichhorn, ii. 562, 563; v. 609. Meiners’s Life of Reuchlin, in
Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, i. 68. A very few instances
of Hebrew scholars in the fifteenth century might be found, besides
Reuchlin and Picus of Mirandola. Tiraboschi gives the chief place
among these to Giannozzo Manetti, vii. 123.

|Dramatic works.|

|Calisto and Melibœa.|

11. If we could trust an article in the Biographie Universelle, a Portuguese, Gil Vicente, deserves the high praise of having introduced the regular drama into Europe; the first of his pieces having been represented at Lisbon in 1504.[536] But, according to the much superior authority of Bouterwek, Gil Vicente was a writer in the old national style of Spain and Portugal; and his early compositions are Autos, or spiritual dramas, totally unlike any regular plays, and rude both in design and execution. He became, however, a comic writer of great reputation among his countrymen at a later period, but in the same vein of uncultivated genius, and not before Machiavel and Ariosto had established their dramatic renown. The Calandra of Bibbiena, afterwards a cardinal, was represented at Venice in 1508, though not published till 1524. An analysis of this play will be found in Ginguéné; it bears only a general resemblance to the Menæchmi of Plautus. Perhaps the Calandra may be considered as the earliest modern comedy, or at least the earliest that is known to be extant; for its five acts and intricate plot exclude the competition of Maitre Patelin.[537] But there is a more celebrated piece in the Spanish language, of which it is probably impossible to determine the date; the tragi-comedy, as it has been called, of Calisto and Melibœa. This is the work of two authors; one generally supposed to be Rodrigo Cota, who planned the story, and wrote the first act; the other, Fernando de Rojas, who added twenty more acts to complete the drama. This alarming number does not render the play altogether so prolix as might be supposed, the acts being only what with us are commonly denominated scenes. It is, however, much beyond the limits of representation. Some have supposed Calisto and Melibœa to have been commenced by Juan de la Mena before the middle of the fifteenth century. But this, Antonio tells us, shows ignorance of the style belonging to that author and to his age. It is far more probably of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella; and as an Italian translation appears to have been published in 1514, we may presume that it was finished and printed in Spain about the present decade.[538]

[536] Biogr. Univ., art. Gil Vicente. Another Life of the same
dramatist in a later volume, under the title Vicente, seems
designed to retract this claim. Bouterwek adverts to this supposed
drama of 1504, which is an Auto on the festival of Corpus Christi,
and of the simplest kind.

[537] Ginguéné, vi. 171. An earlier writer on the Italian theatre is in
raptures with this play. “The Greeks, Latins, and moderns have
never made, and perhaps never will make, so perfect a comedy as the
Calandra. It is, in my opinion, the model of good comedy.”
Riccoboni, Hist. du Théátre Italien, i. 148. This is much to say,
and shows an odd taste, for the Calandra neither displays character
nor excites interest.

[538] Antonio. Bibl. Hisp. Nova. Andrès, v. 125. La Celestina, says the
later, certo contiene un fatto bene svolto, e spiegato con episodj
verisimili e naturali, dipinge con verità i caratteri, ed esprime
talora con calore gli affetti; e tutto questo à mio giudizio potrà
bastare per darli il vanto d’essere stata la prima composizione
teatrale scritta con eleganza e regolarità.

|Its character.|

12. Bouterwek and Sismondi have given some account of this rather remarkable dramatic work. But they hardly do it justice, especially the former, who would lead the reader to expect something very anomalous and extravagant. It appears to me, that it is as regular and well-contrived as the old comedies generally were: the action is simple and uninterrupted; nor can it be reckoned very extraordinary, that what Bouterwek calls the unities of time and place should be transgressed, when for the next two centuries they were never observed. Calisto and Melibœa was at least deemed so original and important an accession to literature, that it was naturalised in several languages. A very early imitation, rather than version, in English, appears to have been printed in 1530.[539] A real translation, with the title Celestina (the name of a procuress who plays the chief part in the drama, and by which it has been frequently known), is mentioned by Herbert under the year 1598. And there is another translation, or second edition, in 1631, with the same title, from which all my acquaintance with this play is derived. Gaspar Barthius gave it in Latin, 1624, with the title, Pornobosco-didascalus.[540] It was extolled by some as a salutary exposition of the effects of vice--

Quo modo adolescentulæ
Lenarum ingenia et mores possent noscere,--

and condemned by others as too open a display of it. Bouterwek has rather exaggerated the indecency of this drama, which is much less offensive, unless softened in the translation, than in most of our old comedies. The style of the first author is said to be more elegant than that of his continuator; but this is not very apparent in the English version. The chief characters throughout are pretty well drawn, and there is a vein of humour in some of the comic parts.

[539] Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities. Mr. Collier (Hist. of Dramatic
Poetry, ii. 408) has given a short account of this production,
which he says “is not long enough for play, and could only have
been acted as an interlude.” It must therefore be very different
from the original.

[540] Clement, Bibliothèque Curieuse. This translation is sometimes
erroneously named Pornodidascalus; the title of a very different
book.

|Juan de la Enzina.|

13. The first edition of the works of a Spanish poet, Juan de la Enzina, appeared in 1501, though they were probably written in the preceding century. Some of these are comedies, as one biographer calls them, or rather, perhaps, as Bouterwek expresses it, “sacred and profane eclogues, in the form of dialogues, represented before distinguished persons on festivals.” Enzina wrote also a treatise on Castilian poetry, which, according to Bouterwek, is but a short essay on the rules of metre.[541]

[541] Bouterwek, Biogr. Univ., art. Enzina. The latter praises this
work of Enzina more highly, but whether from equal knowledge I
cannot say. The dramatic compositions above mentioned are most
scarce.

|Arcadia of Sannazzaro.|

14. The pastoral romance, as was before mentioned, began a little before this time in Portugal. An Italian writer of fine genius, Sannazzaro, adopted it in his Arcadia, of which the first edition was in 1502. Harmonious prose intermingled with graceful poetry, and with a fable just capable of keeping awake the attention, though it could never excite emotion, communicate a tone of pleasing sweetness to this volume. But we have been so much used to fictions of more passionate interest, that we hardly know how to accommodate ourselves to the mild languor of these early romances. A recent writer places the Arcadia at the head of Italian prose in that age. “With a less embarrassed construction,” he says, “than Boccaccio, and less of a servile mannerism than Bembo, the style of Sannazzaro is simple, flowing, rapid, harmonious; if it should seem now and then too florid and diffuse, this may be pardoned in a romance. It is to him, in short, rather than to Bembo, that we owe the revival of correctness and elegance in the Italian prose of the sixteenth century; and his style in the Arcadia would have been far more relished than that of the Asolani, if the originality of his poetry had not engrossed our attention.” He was the first who employed in any considerable degree the sdrucciolo verse, though it occurs before; but the difficulty of finding rhymes for it drives him frequently upon unauthorised phrases. He may also be reckoned the first who restored the polished style of Petrarch, which no writer of the fifteenth century had successfully emulated.[542]

[542] Salfi, Continuation de Ginguéné, x. 92. Corniani, iv. 12. Roscoe
speaks of the Arcadia with less admiration, but perhaps more
according to the feelings of the general reader. But I cannot
altogether concur in his sweeping denunciation of poetical prose,
“that hermaphrodite of literature.” In many styles of composition,
and none more than such as the Arcadia, it may be read with
delight, and without wounding a rational taste. The French
language, which is not well adapted to poetry, would have lost some
of its most imaginative passages, with which Buffon, St. Pierre,
and others now living have enriched it, if a highly ornamented
prose had been wholly proscribed; and we may say the same with
equal truth of our own. It is another thing to condemn the peculiar
style of poetry in writings that from their subject demand a very
different tone.

|Asolani of Bembo.|

15. The Asolani of Peter Bembo, a dialogue, the scene of which is laid at Asola in the Venetian territory, were published in 1505. They are disquisitions on love, tedious enough to our present apprehension, but in a style so pure and polite, that they became the favourite reading among the superior ranks in Italy, where the coldness and pedantry of such dissertations were forgiven for their classical dignity and moral truth. The Asolani has been thought to make an epoch in Italian literature, though the Arcadia is certainly a more original and striking work of genius.

|Dunbar.|

16. I do not find at what time the poems in the Scottish dialect by William Dunbar were published; but the Thistle and the Rose, on the marriage of James IV. with Margaret of England in 1503, must be presumed to have been written very little after that time. Dunbar, therefore, has the honour of leading the vanguard of British poetry in the sixteenth century. His allegorical poem, The Golden Targe, is of a more extended range, and displays more creative power. The versification of Dunbar is remarkably harmonious and exact for his age; and his descriptions are often very lively and picturesque. But it must be confessed that there is too much of sunrise and singing-birds in all our mediæval poetry; a note caught from the French and Provençal writers, and repeated to satiety by our own. The allegorical characters of Dunbar are derived from the same source. He belongs, as a poet, to the school of Chaucer and Lydgate.[543]

[543] Warton, iii. 90. Ellis (Specimens, i. 377) strangely calls Dunbar
“the greatest poet that Scotland has produced.” Pinkerton places
him above Chaucer and Lydgate. Chalmers’s Biogr. Dict.

|Anatomy of Zerbi.|

17. The first book upon anatomy, since that of Mundinus, was by Zerbi of Verona, who taught in the university of Padua in 1495. The title is, Liber Anatomiæ Corporis Humani et singulorum Membrorum illius, 1503. He follows in general the plan of Mundinus; and his language is obscure, as well as full of inconvenient abbreviations; yet the germ of discoveries that have crowned later anatomists with glory is sometimes perceptible in Zerbi; among others that of the Fallopian tubes.[544]

[544] Portal, Hist. de l’Anatomie. Biogr. Univ., art. Zerbi.

|Voyages of Cadamosto.|

18. We now, for the first time, take relations of voyages into our literary catalogue. During the fifteenth century, though the old travels of Marco Polo had been printed several times, and in different languages, and even those of Sir John Mandeville once; though the Cosmography of Ptolemy had appeared in not less than seven editions, and generally with maps, few, if any, original descriptions of the kingdoms of the world had gratified the curiosity of modern Europe. But the stupendous discoveries that signalised the last years of that age could not long remain untold. We may, however, give perhaps the first place to the voyages of Cadamosto, a Venetian, who, in 1455, under the protection of prince Henry of Portugal, explored the western coast of Africa, and bore a part in discovering its two great rivers, as well as the Cape de Verde islands. “The relation of his voyages,” says a late writer, “the earliest of modern travels, is truly a model, and would lose nothing by comparison with those of our best navigators. Its arrangement is admirable, its details are interesting, its descriptions clear and precise.”[545] These voyages of Cadamosto do not occupy more than thirty pages in the collection of Ramusio, where they are reprinted. They are said to have first appeared at Vicenza in 1507, with the title Prima Navigazione per l’Oceano alle Terre de’ Negri della Bassa Ethiopia di Luigi Cadamosto. It is asserted, however, by Brunet, that no edition exists earlier than 1519, and that this of 1507 is a confusion with the next book. This was a still more important production, announcing the great discoveries that Americo Vespucci was suffered to wrest, at least in name, from a more illustrious though ill-requited Italian: Mondo Nuovo, e Paeso nuovamente ritrovati da Alberico Vesputio Florentino intitolati. Vicenza, 1507. It does not appear that any earlier work on America had been published; but an epistle of Columbus himself, de Insulis Indiæ nuper inventis, was twice printed about 1493 in Germany, and probably in other countries; and a few other brief notices of the recent discovery are to be traced. We find also in 1508 an account of the Portuguese in the East, which, being announced as a translation from the native language into Latin, may be presumed to have appeared before.[546]

[545] Biogr. Univ., art. Cadamosto.

[546] See Brunet, art. Itinerarium, &c.

SECT. II. 1511-1520.

_Age of Leo X.--Italian Dramatic Poetry--Classical Learning, especially Greek, in France, Germany, and England--Utopia of More--Erasmus--His Adages--Political Satire contained in them-- Opposition of the Monks to Learning--Antipathy of Erasmus to them--Their attack on Reuchlin--Origin of Reformation--Luther-- Ariosto--Character of the Orlando Furioso--Various Works of Amusement in modern Languages--English Poetry--Pomponatius--Raymond Lully._

|Leo X., his patronage of letters.|

19. Leo X. became pope in 1513. His chief distinction, no doubt, is owing to his encouragement of the arts, or, more strictly, to the completion of those splendid labours of Raffaelle, under his pontificate, which had been commenced by his predecessor. We have here only to do with literature; and in the promotion of this he certainly deserves a much higher name than any former pope, except Nicolas V., who, considering the difference of the times, and the greater solidity of his own character, as certainly stands far above him. Leo began by placing men of letters in the most honourable stations of his court. There were two, Bembo and Sadolet, who had by common confession reached a consummate elegance of style, in comparison of which the best productions of the last age seemed very imperfect. They were made apostolical secretaries. Beroaldo, second of the name, whose father, though a more fertile author, was inferior to him in taste, was intrusted with the Vatican library. John Lascaris and Marcus Musurus were invited to reside at Rome;[547] and the pope, considering it, he says, no small part of his pontifical duty to promote the Latin literature, caused search to be made everywhere for manuscripts. This expression sounds rather oddly in his mouth; and the less religious character of transalpine literature is visible in this as in everything else.

[547] John Lascaris, who is not to be confounded with Constantine
Lascaris, by some thought to be his father, and to whom we owe a
Greek Grammar, after continuing for several years under the
patronage of Lorenzo at Florence, where he was editor of the
Anthologia, or collection of epigrams, printed in 1494, on the fall
of the Medici family entered the service of Charles VIII., and
lived many years at Paris. He was afterwards employed by Louis XII.
as minister at Venice. After a residence of some duration at Rome,
he was induced by Francis I., in 1518, to organise the literary
institutions designed by the king to be established at Paris. But
these being postponed, Lascaris spent the remainder of his life
partly in Paris, partly in Rome, and died in the latter city in
1535. Hody de Græcis Illustribus.

|Roman gymnasium.|

20. The personal taste of Leo was almost entirely directed towards poetry and the beauties of style. This, Tiraboschi seems to hint, might cause the more serious learning of antiquity to be rather neglected. But there does not seem to be much ground for this charge. We owe to Leo the publication, by Beroaldo, of the first five books of the Annals of Tacitus, which had lately been found in a German monastery. It appears that in 1514 above one hundred professors received salaries in the Roman university, or gymnasium, restored by the pope to its alienated revenues.[548] Leo seems to have founded a seminary distinct from the former, under the superintendence of Lascaris, for the sole study of Greek, and to have brought over young men as teachers from Greece. In this academy a Greek press was established, where the scholiasts on Homer were printed in 1517.[549]

[548] We are indebted to Roscoe for publishing this list. But as the
number of one hundred professors might lead us to expect a most
comprehensive scheme, it may be mentioned that they consisted of
four for theology, eleven for canon law, twenty for civil law,
sixteen for medicine, two for metaphysics, five for philosophy
(probably physics), two for ethics, four for logic, one for
astrology (probably astronomy), two for mathematics, eighteen for
rhetoric, three for Greek, and thirteen for grammar, in all a
hundred and one. The salaries are subjoined in every instance; the
highest are among the medical professors; the Greek are also high.
Roscoe, ii. 333, and Append. No. 89.

Roscoe remarks that medical botany was one of the sciences taught,
and that it was the earliest instance. If this be right, Bonafede
of Padua cannot have been the first botanical professor in Europe,
as we read that he died in 1533. But in the roll of these Roman
professors we only find that one was appointed ad declarationem
simplicium medicinæ. I do not think this means more than the
materia medica; we cannot infer that he lectured upon the plants
themselves.

[549] Tiraboschi. Hody, p. 247. Roscoe, ch. 11. Leo was anticipated in
his Greek editions by Chigi, a private Roman, who, with the
assistance of Cornelio Benigno, and with Calliergus, a Cretan, for
his printer, gave to the world two good editions of Pindar and
Theocritus in 1515 and 1516.

|Latin Poetry.|

21. Leo was a great admirer of Latin poetry; and in his time the chief poets of Italy seem to have written several of their works, though not published till afterwards. The poems of Pontanus, which naturally belong to the fifteenth century, were first printed in 1513 and 1518; and those of Mantuan, in a collective form, about the same time.

|Italian tragedy.|

|Sophonisba of Trissino.|

22. The Rosmunda of Rucellai, a tragedy in the Italian language, on the ancient regular model, was represented before Leo at Florence in 1515. It was the earliest known trial of blank verse; but it is acknowledged by Rucellai himself, that the Sophonisba of his friend Trissino, which is dedicated to Leo in the same year, though not published till 1524, preceded and suggested his own tragedy.[550] The Sophonisba is strictly on the Greek model, divided only by the odes of the chorus, but not into five portions or acts. The speeches in this tragedy are sometimes too long, the style unadorned, the descriptions now and then trivial. But in general there is a classical dignity about the sentiments, which are natural, though not novel; and the latter part, which we should call the fifth act, is truly noble, simple, and pathetic. Trissino was thoroughly conversant with the Greek drama, and had imbibed its spirit; seldom has Euripides written with more tenderness, or chosen a subject more fitted to his genius; for that of Sophonisba, in which many have followed Trissino with inferior success, is wholly for the Greek school; it admits, with no great difficulty, of the chorus, and consequently of the unities of time and place. It must, however, always chiefly depend on Sophonisba herself; for it is not easy to make Masinissa respectable, nor has Trissino succeeded in attempting it. The long continuance of alternate speeches in single lines, frequent in this tragedy, will not displease those to whom old associations are recalled by it.

[550] This dedication, with a sort of apology for writing tragedies in
Italian, will be found in Roscoe’s Appendix, vol. vi. Roscoe quotes
a few words from Rucellai’s dedication of his poem, L’Api, to
Trissino, acknowledging the latter as the inventor of blank verse.
Voi foste il primo, che questo modo di scrivere, in versi materni,
liberi delle rime, poneste in luce. Life of Leo X. ch. 16. See also
Ginguéné, vol. vi. and Walker’s Memoir on Italian Tragedy, as well
as Tiraboschi. The earliest Italian tragedy, which is also on the
subject of Sophonisba, by Galeotto del Carretto, was presented to
the Marchioness of Mantua in 1502. But we do not find that it was
brought on the stage; nor is it clear that it was printed so early
as the present decade. But an edition of the Pamphila, a tragedy on
the story of Sigismunda, by Antonio da Pistoja, was printed at
Venice in 1508. Walker, p. 11. Ginguéné has been ignorant of this
very curious piece, from which Walker had given a few extracts, in
rhymed measures of different kinds. Ginguéné indeed had never seen
Walker’s book, and his own is the worse for it. Walker was not a
man of much vigour of mind, but had some taste, and great knowledge
of his subject. This tragedy is mentioned by Quadrio, iv. 58, with
the title Il Filostrato e Panfila, due Amanti.

It may be observed, that, notwithstanding the testimony of Rucellai
himself above quoted, it is shown by Walker (Appendix, No. 3), that
blank verse had been occasionally employed before Trissino.

|Rosmunda of Rucellai.|

23. The Rosmunda falls in my opinion below the Sophonisba, though it is the work of a better poet; and perhaps, in language and description it is superior. What is told in narration, according to the ancient inartificial form of tragedy, is finely told; but the emotions are less represented than in the Sophonisba; the principal character is less interesting, and the story is unpleasing. Rucellai led the way to those accumulations of horrible and disgusting circumstances which deformed the European stage for a century afterwards. The Rosmunda is divided into five acts, but preserves the chorus. It contains imitations of the Greek tragedies, especially the Antigone, as the Sophonisba does of the Ajax and the Medea. Some lines in the latter, extolled by modern critics, are simply translated from the ancient tragedians.

|Comedies of Ariosto.|

24. Two comedies by Ariosto seem to have been acted about 1512, and were written as early as 1495, when he was but twenty-one years old, which entitles him to the praise of having first conceived and carried into effect the idea of regular comedies, in imitation of the ancient, though Bibbiena had the advantage of first occupying the stage with his Calandra. The Cassaria and Suppositi of Ariosto are, like the Calandra, free imitations of the manner of Plautus, in a spirited and natural dialogue, and with that graceful flow of language which appears spontaneous in all his writings.[551]

[551] Ginguéné, vi. 183, 218, has given a full analysis of these
celebrated comedies. They are placed next to those of Machiavel by
most Italian critics.

|Books printed in Italy.|

|Cælius Rhodiginus.|

25. The north of Italy still endured the warfare of stranger armies: Ravenna, Novara, Marignan, attest the well-fought contention. Aldus, however, returning to Venice in 1512, published many editions before his death in 1516. Pindar, Plato, and Lysias first appeared in 1513, Athenæus in 1514, Xenophon, Strabo, and Pausanias in 1516, Plutarch’s Lives in 1517. The Aldine press then continued under his father-in-law, Andrew Asola, but with rather diminished credit. It appears that the works printed during this period, from 1511 to 1520, were, at Rome 116, at Milan 91, at Florence 133, and at Venice 511. This is, perhaps, less than from the general renown of Leo’s age we should have expected. We may select, among the original publications, the Lectiones Antiquæ of Cælius Rhodiginus (1516), and a little treatise on Italian grammar by Fortunio, which has no claim to notice but as the earliest book on the subject.[552] The former, though not the first, appears to have been by far the best and most extensive collection hitherto made from the stores of antiquity. It is now hardly remembered; but obtained almost universal praise, even from severe critics, for the deep erudition of its author, who, in a somewhat rude style, pours forth explanations of obscure, and emendations of corrupted passages, with profuse display of knowledge in the customs and even philosophy of the ancients, but more especially in medicine and botany. Yet he seems to have inserted much without discrimination of its value, and often without authority. A more perfect edition was published in 1550, extending to thirty books instead of sixteen.[553]

[552] Regole Grammaticali delle Volgar Lingua. (Ancona, 1516.) Questo
libro fuor di dubbio è stato il primo che si videsse stampato, a
darne insegnamenti d’Italiana, eon già eloquenza, ma lingua.
Fontanini dell’Eloquenza Italiana, p. 5. Fifteen editions were
printed within six years; a decisive proof of the importance
attached to the subject.

[553] Blount. Biogr. Univ., art. Rhodiginus.

|Greek printed in France and Germany.|

26. It may be seen, that Italy, with all the lustre of Leo’s reputation, was not distinguished by any very remarkable advance in learning during his pontificate; and I believe it is generally admitted, that the elegant biography of Roscoe, in making the public more familiar with the subject, did not raise the previous estimation of its hero and of its times. Meanwhile the cisalpine regions were gaining ground upon their brilliant neighbour. From the Parisian press issued in these ten years eight hundred books; among which were a Greek Lexicon by Aleander, in 1512, and four more little grammatical works, with a short romance in Greek. This is trifling indeed; but in the cities on the Rhine something more was done in that language. A Greek grammar, probably quite elementary, was published at Wittenberg in 1511; one at Strasburg in 1512,--thrice reprinted in the next three years. These were succeeded by a translation of Theodore Gaza’s grammar by Erasmus in 1516, by the Progymnasmata Græcæ Literaturæ of Luscinius, in 1517, and by the Introductiones in Linguam Græcam of Croke, in 1520. Isocrates and Lucian appeared at Strasburg in 1515; the first book of the Iliad next year, besides four smaller tracts;[554] several more followed before the end of the decade. At Basle the excellent printer Frobenius, an intimate friend of Erasmus, had established himself as early as 1491.[555] Besides the great edition of the New Testament by Erasmus, which issued from his press, we find, before the close of 1520, the Works and Days of Hesiod, the Greek Lexicon of Aldus, the Rhetoric and Poetics of Aristotle, the first two books of the Odyssey, and several grammatical treatises. At Cologne two or three small Greek pieces were printed in 1517. And Louvain, besides the Plutus of Aristophanes in 1518, and three or four others about the same time, sent forth in the year 1520 six Greek editions, among which were Lucian, Theocritus, and two tragedies of Euripides.[556] We may hence perceive, that the Greek language now first became generally known and taught in Germany and in the Low Countries.

[554] These were published by Luscinius (Nachtigall), a native of
Strasburg, and one of the chief members of the literary academy,
established by Wimpheling in that city. Biogr. Univ.

[555] Biogr. Univ.

[556] The whole number of books, according to Panzer printed from
1511 to 1520 at Strasburg, was 373; at Basle, 289; at Cologne, 120;
at Leipsic, 462; at Louvain, 57. It may be worth while to remind
the reader once more that these lists must be very defective as to
the slighter class of publications, which have often perished to a
single copy. Panzer is reckoned more imperfect after 1500 than
before. Biogr. Universelle. In England, we find thirty-six by
Pynson, and sixty-six by Wynkyn de Worde within these ten years.

|Greek scholars in these countries.|

27. It is evident that these works were chiefly designed for students in the universities. But it is to be observed, that Greek literature was now much more cultivated than before. In France there were, indeed, not many names that could be brought forward; but Lefevre of Etaples, commonly called Faber Stapulensis, was equal to writing criticism on the Greek Testament of Erasmus. He bears a high character among contemporary critics for his other writings, which are chiefly on theological and philosophical subjects; but it appears by his age that he must have come late to the study of Greek.[557] That difficult language was more easily mastered by younger men. Germany had already produced some deserving of remembrance. A correspondent of Erasmus, in 1515, writes to recommend Œcolampadius as “not unlearned in Greek literature.”[558] Melanchthon was, even in his early youth, deemed competent to criticise Erasmus himself. At the age of sixteen, he lectured on the Greek and Latin authors of antiquity. He was the first who printed Terence as verse.[559] The library of this great scholar was in 1835 sold in London, and was proved to be his own by innumerable marginal notes of illustration and correction. Beatus Rhenanus stands perhaps next to him as a scholar; and we may add the names of Luscinius, of Bilibald Pirckheimer, a learned senator of Nuremberg, who made several translations, and of Petrus Mosellanus, who became about 1518 lecturer in Greek at Leipsic.[560] He succeeded our distinguished countryman, Richard Croke, a pupil of Grocyn, who had been invited to Leipsic in 1514, with the petty salary of 15 guilders, but with the privilege of receiving other remuneration from his scholars, and had the signal honour of first imbuing the students of northern Germany with a knowledge of that language.[561] One or two trifling works on Greek grammar were published by Croke during this decennium. Ceratinus, who took his name, in the fanciful style of the times, from his birthplace, Horn in Holland, was now professor of Greek at Louvain; and in 1525, on the recommendation of Erasmus, became the successor of Mosellanus at Leipsic.[562] William Cop, a native of Basle, and physician to Francis I., published in this period some translations from Hippocrates and Galen.

[557] Jortin’s Erasmus, i. 92. Bayle, Fevre d’Etaples. Blount. Biogr.
Univ., Febure d’Etaples.

[558] Erasmus himself says afterwards, Œcolampadius satis novit Græcè,
Latini sermonis rudior; quanquam ille magis peccat indiligentia
quam imperitia.

[559] Cox’s Life of Melanchthon, p. 19. Melanchthon wrote Greek verse
indifferently and incorrectly, but Latin with spirit and elegance:
specimens of both are given in Dr. Cox’s valuable biography.

[560] The lives and characters of Rhenanus, Pirckheimer, and Mosellanus,
will be found in Blount, Niceron, and the Biographie Universelle;
also in Gerdes’s Historia Evangel. Renov., Melchior Adam, and other
less common books.

[561] Crocus regnat in Academia Lipsiensi, publicitus Græcas docens
litteras. Erasm. Epist. clvii. 5th June 1514. Eichhorn says, that
Conrad Celtes and others had taught Latin only, iii. 272.
Camerarius, who studied for three years under Croke, gives him a
very high character; qui primus putabatur ita docuisse Græcam
linguam in Germania, ut plane perdisci illam posse, et quid momenti
ad omnem doctrinæ eruditionem atque cultum hujus cognitio allatura
esse videretur, nostri homines sese intelligere arbitrarentur. Vita
Melanchthonis, p. 27; and Vita Eobani Hessi, p. 4. He was received
at Leipsic “like a heavenly messenger:” every one was proud of
knowing him, of paying whatever he demanded, of attending him at
any hour of the day or night. Melanchthon apud Meiners, i. 165. A
pretty good life of Croke is in Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary.
Bayle does not mention him. Croke was educated at King’s College,
Cambridge, to which he went from Eton in 1506 and is said to have
learned Greek at Oxford from Grocyn, while still a scholar of
King’s.

[562] Erasmus gives a very high character of Ceratinus. Græcæ linguæ
peritia superat vel tres Mosellanos, nec inferior ut arbitror,
Romanæ linguæ facundia. Epist. Dccxxxvii. Ceratinus Græcanicæ
literaturæs tam exacte callens, ut vix unum aut alteram habeat
Italia quicum dubitem hanc committere. Magnæ doctrinæ erat
Mosellanus, spei majoris, et amaban unicè hominis ingenium, nec
falso dicunt odiosas esse comparationes; sed hoc ipsa causa me
compellit dicere, longe alia res est. Epist. Dccxxxviii.

|Colleges at Alcala and Louvain.|

28. Cardinal Ximenes, about the beginning of the century, founded a college at Alcala, his favourite university, for the three learned languages. This example was followed by Jerome Busleiden, who by his last testament, in 1516 or 1517, established a similar foundation at Louvain.[563] From this source proceeded many men of conspicuous erudition and ability; and Louvain, through its Collegium trilingue, became in a still higher degree than Deventer had been in the fifteenth century not only the chief seat of Belgian learning, but the means of diffusing it over parts of Germany. Its institution was resisted by the monks and theologians, unyielding though beaten adversaries of literature.[564]

[563] Bayle, Busleiden.

[564] Von der Hardt, Hist. Litt. Reformat.

|Latin style in France.|

29. It cannot be said, that many yet on this side of the Alps wrote Latin well. Budæus is harsh and unpolished; Erasmus fluent, spirited, and never at a loss to express his meaning; nor is his style much defaced by barbarous words, though by no means exempt from them; yet it seldom reaches a point of classical elegance. Francis Sylvius (probably Dubois), brother of a celebrated physician, endeavoured to inspire a taste for purity of style in the university of Paris. He had, however, acquired it himself late, for some of his writings are barbarous. The favourable influence of Sylvius was hardly earlier than 1520.[565] The writer most solicitous about his diction was Longolius (Christopher de Longueil), a native of Malines, the only true Ciceronian out of Italy; in which country, however, he passed so much time, that he is hardly to be accounted a mere cisalpine. Like others of that denomination, he was more ambitious of saying common things well, than of producing what was well worthy of being remembered.

[565] Bayle, art. Sylvius.

|Greek scholars in England.|