Chapter IV (3)

52. Erasmus was soon in a state of war with the monks; and in his second edition of the New Testament printed in 1518, the notes, it is said, are full of invectives against them. It must be confessed that he had begun the attack, without any motive of provocation, unless zeal for learning and religion is to count for such, which the parties assailed could not be expected to admit, and they could hardly thank him for “spitting on their gaberdine.” No one, however, knew better how to pay his court; and he wrote to Leo X. in a style rather too adulatory, which in truth was his custom in addressing the great, and contrasts with his free language in writing about them. The custom of the time affords some excuse for this panegyrical tone of correspondence, as well as for the opposite extreme of severity.

|Their contention with Reuchlin.|

53. The famous contention between Reuchlin and the German monks, though it began in the preceding decennial period, belongs chiefly to the present. In the year 1509, one Pfeffercorn, a converted Jew, induced the inquisition at Cologne to obtain an order from the emperor for burning all Hebrew books except the Bible, upon the pretext of their being full of blasphemies against the Christian religion. The Jews made complaints of this injury; but before it could take place, Reuchlin, who had been consulted by the emperor, remonstrated against the destruction of works so curious and important, which, from his partiality to Cabbalistic theories, he rated above their real value. The order was accordingly superseded, to the great indignation of the Cologne inquisitors, and of all that party throughout Germany which resisted the intellectual and religious progress of mankind. Reuchlin had offended the monks by satirising them in a comedy which he permitted to be printed in 1506. But the struggle was soon perceived to be a general one; a struggle between what had been and what was to be. Meiners has gone so far as to suppose a real confederacy to have been formed by the friends of truth and learning through Germany and France, to support Reuchlin against the mendicant orders, and to overthrow, by means of this controversy, the embattled legions of ignorance.[593] But perhaps the passages he adduces do not prove more than their unanimity and zeal in the cause. The attention of the world was first called to it about 1513; that is, it assumed about that time the character of a war of opinions, extending, in its principle and consequences, beyond the immediate dispute.[594] Several books were published on both sides; and the party in power employed its usual argument of burning what was written by its adversaries. One of these writings is still known, the Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum; the production, it is said, of three authors, the principal of whom was Ulric von Hutten, a turbulent hotheaded man, of noble birth and quick parts, and a certain degree of learning, whose early death seems more likely to have spared the reformers some degree of shame, than to have deprived them of a useful supporter.[595] Few books have been more eagerly received than these epistles at their first appearance in 1516,[596] which surely proceeded rather from their suitableness to the time, than from much intrinsic merit; though it must be owned that the spirit of many temporary allusions, which delighted or offended that age, is now lost in a mass of vapid nonsense and bad grammar, which the imaginary writers pour out. Erasmus, though not intimately acquainted with Reuchlin, could not but sympathise in a quarrel with their common enemies in a common cause. In the end the controversy was referred to the pope; but the pope was Leo; and it was hoped that a proposal to burn books, or to disgrace an illustrious scholar, would not sound well in his ears. But Reuchlin was disappointed, when he expected acquittal, by a mandate to supersede, or suspend, the process commenced against him by the inquisition of Cologne, which might be taken up at a more favourable time.[597] This dispute has always been reckoned of high importance; the victory in public opinion, though not in judicature, over the adherents to the old system, prostrated them so utterly, that from this time the study of Greek and Hebrew became general among the German youth; and the cause of the Reformation was identified in their minds with that of classical literature.[598]

[593] Lebensbeschreib. i. 144. et seq.

[594] Meiners brings many proofs of the interest taken in Reuchlin, as
the champion, if not the martyr, of the good cause.

[595] Herder, in his Zerstreute Blätter, v. 329, speaks with
unreasonable partiality of Ulric von Hutten; and Meiners has
written his life with an enthusiasm which seems to me quite
extravagant. Seckendorf, p. 130, more judiciously observes that he
was of little use to the Reformation. And Luther wrote about him in
June, 1521: Quid Huttenus petat vides. Nollem vi et cæde pro
evangelio certari, ita scripsi ad hominem. Melanchthon of course
disliked such friends. Epist. Melanchth., p. 45 (1647), and
Camerarius, Vita Melanchth. Erasmus could not endure Hutten; and
Hutten, when he found this out, wrote virulently against Erasmus.
Jortin, as biographer of Erasmus, treats Hutten perhaps with too
much contempt; but this is nearer justice than the veneration of
the modern Germans. Hutten wrote Latin pretty well, and had a good
deal of wit; his satirical libels, consequently, had great
circulation and popularity, which, in respect of such writings, is
apt, in all ages, to produce an exaggeration of their real
influence. In the mighty movement of the Reformation, the Epistolæ
Obscurorum Virorum had about as much effect as the Mariage de
Figaro in the French Revolution. A dialogue severely reflecting on
pope Julius II., called Julius exclusus, of which Jortin suspects
Erasmus, in spite of his denial, ii. 595, is given by Meiners to
Hutten.

[596] Meiners, in his Life of Hutten, Lebensbesch. iii. 73, inclines to
fix the publication of the first part of the Epistles in the
beginning of 1517; though he admits an earlier date to be not
impossible.

[597] Meiners, i. 197.

[598] Sleidan, Hist. de la Réformat. l. ii. Brucker, iv. 366. Mosheim.
Eichhorn, iii. 238, vi. 16. Bayle, art. Hochstrat. None of these
authorities are equal in fulness to Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen
berühmter Männer, i. 98-212; which I did not consult so early as
the rest. But there is also a very copious account of the
Reuchlinian controversy, including many original documents, in the
second part of Von der Hardt’s Historia Litteraria Reformationis.

|Origin of the Reformation.|

54. We are now brought, insensibly perhaps, but by necessary steps, to the great religious revolution which has just been named. I approach this subject with some hesitation, well aware that impartiality is no protection against unreasonable cavilling; but neither the history of literature, nor of human opinion upon the most important subjects, can dispense altogether with so extensive a portion of its materials. It is not required, however, in a work of this nature, to do much more than state shortly the grounds of dispute, and the changes wrought in the public mind.

55. The proximate cause of the Reformation is well known. Indulgences, or dispensations granted by the pope from the heavy penances imposed on penitents after absolution by the old canons, and also, at least in later ages, from the pains of purgatory, were sold by the papal retailers with the most indecent extortion, and eagerly purchased by the superstitious multitude, for their own sake, or that of their deceased friends. Luther, in his celebrated theses, propounded at Wittenberg, in November 1517, inveighed against the erroneous views inculcated as to the efficacy of indulgences, and especially against the notion of the pope’s power over souls in purgatory. He seems to have believed, that the dealers had exceeded their commission, and would be disavowed by the pope. This, however, was very far from being the case; and the determination of Leo to persevere in defending all the abusive prerogatives of his see, drew Luther on to levy war against many other prevailing usages of the church, against several tenets maintained by the most celebrated doctors, against the divine right of the papal supremacy, and finally to renounce all communion with a power which he now deemed an antichristian tyranny. This absolute separation did not take place till he publicly burned the pope’s bull against him, and the volumes of the canon law, at Wittenberg, in November 1520.

|Popularity of Luther.|

56. In all this dispute Luther was sustained by a prodigious force of popular opinion. It was perhaps in the power of his sovereign, Frederic elector of Saxony, to have sent him to Rome, in the summer of 1518, according to the pope’s direction. But it would have been an odious step in the people’s eyes, and a little later would have been impossible. Miltitz, an envoy despatched by Leo in 1519, upon a conciliatory errand, told Luther that 25,000 armed men would not suffice to make him a prisoner, so favourable was the impression of his doctrine upon Germany. And Frederic himself, not long afterwards, wrote plainly to Rome, that a change had taken place in his country; the German people were not what they had been; there were many men of great talents and considerable learning among them, and the laity were beginning to be anxious about a knowledge of Scripture; so that unless Luther’s doctrine, which had already taken root in the minds of a great many both in Germany and other countries, could be refuted by better argument than mere ecclesiastical fulminations, the consequence must be so much disturbance in the empire, as would by no means redound to the benefit of the Holy See.[599] In fact, the university of Wittenberg was crowded with students and others, who came to hear Luther and Melanchthon. The latter had at the very beginning embraced his new master’s opinions with a conviction he did not in all respects afterwards preserve. And though no overt attempts to innovate on the established ceremonies had begun in this period, before the end of 1520 several preached against them, and the whole north of Germany was full of expectation.

[599] Seckendorf. This remarkable letter will be found also in Roscoe’s
Leo X., Appendix No. 185. It bears date April 1520. See also a
letter of Petrus Mosellanus, in Jortin’s Erasmus, ii. 353; and
Luther’s own letter to Leo, of March 1519.

|Simultaneous reform by Zwingle.|

57. A counterpart to the reformation that Luther was thus effecting in Saxony might be found at the same instant in Switzerland, under the guidance of Zwingle. It has been disputed between the advocates of these leaders, to which the priority in the race of reform belongs. Zwingle himself declares, that in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began to preach the gospel at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying upon human authority.[600] But that is rather ambiguous, and hardly enough to substantiate his claim. In 1518, which of course is after Luther’s appearance on the scene, the Swiss reformer was engaged in combating the venders of indulgences, though with less attention from the court of Rome. Like Luther, he had the support of the temporal magistrate, the council of Zurich. Upon the whole, they proceeded so nearly with equal steps, and were so little connected with each other, that it seems difficult to award either any honour of precedence.[601]

[600] Zwingle apud Gerdes, i. 103.

[601] Milner, who is extremely partial in the whole of this history,
labours to extenuate the claims of Zwingle to independence in the
preaching of reformation; and even pretends that he had not
separated from the church of Rome in 1523, when Adrian VI. sent him
a civil letter. But Gerdes shows at length that the rupture was
complete in 1520. See also the article Zwingle in Biogr.
Universelle.

The prejudice of Milner against Zwingle throughout is striking, and
leads him into much unfairness. Thus he asserts him, v. 510, to
have been consenting to the capital punishment of some Anabaptists
at Zurich. But, not to mention that their case was not one of mere
religious dissidence, it does not by any means appear that he
approved their punishment, which he merely relates as a fact. A
still more gross misrepresentation occurs in p. 526.

|Reformation prepared beforehand.|

58. The German nation was, in fact, so fully awakened to the abuses of the church, the disclaimer of papal sovereignty in the councils of Constance and Basle had been so effectual in its influence on the public mind, though not on the external policy of church and state, that, if neither Luther nor Zwingle had ever been born, there can be little question that a great religious schism was near at hand. These councils were to the Reformation what the parliament of Paris was to the French Revolution. Their leaders never meant to sacrifice one article of received faith; but the little success they had in redressing what they denounced as abuses, convinced the laity that they must go much farther for themselves. What effect the invention of printing, which in Italy was not much felt in this direction, exerted upon the serious minds of the Teutonic nations, has been already intimated, and must appear to every reflecting person. And when this was followed by a more extensive acquaintance with the New Testament in the Greek language, nothing could be more natural than that inquisitive men should throw away much of what seemed the novel superstructure of religion, and, what in other times such men had rarely ventured should be encouraged by the obvious change in the temper of the multitude to declare themselves. We find that Pellican and Capito, two of the most learned scholars in western Germany, had come, as early as 1512, to reject altogether the doctrine of the real presence. We find also that Œcolampadius had begun to preach some of the protestant doctrines in 1514.[602] And Erasmus, who had so manifestly prepared the way for the new Reformers, continued, as it is easy to show from the uniform current of his letters, beyond the year 1520, favourable to their cause. His enemies were theirs, and he concurred in much that they preached, especially as to the exterior practices of religion. Some, however, of Luther’s tenets he did not and could not approve; and he was already disgusted by that intemperance of language and conduct, which, not long afterwards, led him to recede entirely from the Protestant side.[603]

[602] Gerdes, i. 117, 124, et post. In fact the precursors of the
Reformation were very numerous, and are collected by Gerdes in his
first and third volumes, though he has greatly exaggerated the
truth, by reckoning as such Dante and Petrarch, and all opponents
of the temporal power of the papacy. Wessel may, upon the whole, be
fairly reckoned among the Reformers.

[603] In 1519 and 1520, even in his letters to Albert archbishop of
Mentz, and others by no means partial to Luther, he speaks of him
very handsomely, and with little or no disapprobation, except on
account of his intemperance, though professing only a slight
acquaintance with his writings. The proofs are too numerous to be
cited. He says, in a letter to Zwingle, as late as 1521, Videor
mihi fere omnia docuisse, quæ docet Lutherus, nisi quod non tam
atrociter, quodque abstinui a quibusdam ænigmatis et paradoxis.
This is quoted by Gerdes, i. 153, from a collection of letters of
Erasmus, published by Hottinger, but not contained in the Leyden
edition. Jortin seems not to have seen them.

|Dangerous tenets of Luther.|

59. It would not be just, probably, to give Bossuet credit in every part of that powerful delineation of Luther’s theological tenets, with which he begins the History of the Variations of Protestant churches. Nothing, perhaps, in polemical eloquence is so splendid as this chapter. The eagle of Meaux is there truly seen, lordly of form, fierce of eye, terrible in his beak and claws. But he is too determined a partizan to be trusted by those who seek the truth without regard to persons and denominations. His quotations from Luther are short, and in French; I have failed in several attempts to verify the references. Yet we are not to follow the Reformer’s partizans in dissembling altogether, like Isaac Milner, or in slightly censuring, as others have done, the enormous paradoxes which deform his writings, especially such as fall within the present period. In maintaining salvation to depend on faith as a single condition, he not only denied the importance, in a religious sense, of a virtuous life, but asserted that every one who felt within himself a full assurance that his sins were remitted (which, according to Luther, is the proper meaning of Christian faith), became incapable of sinning at all, or at least of forfeiting the favour of God, so long, but so long only, as that assurance should continue. Such expressions are sometimes said by Seckendorf and Mosheim to have been thrown out hastily, and without precision; but I fear it will be found on examination that they are very definite and clear, the want of precision and perspicuity being rather in those which are alleged as inconsistent with them, and as more consonant to the general doctrine of the Christian church.[604] It must not be supposed for a moment that Luther, whose soul was penetrated with a fervent piety, and whose integrity as well as purity of life are unquestioned, could mean to give any encouragement to a licentious disregard of moral virtue; which he valued, as in itself lovely before God as well as man, though in the technical style of his theology, he might deny its proper obligation. But his temper led him to follow up any proposition of Scripture to every consequence that might seem to result from its literal meaning; and he fancied that to represent a future state as the motive of virtuous action, or as any way connected with human conduct, for better or worse, was derogatory to the free grace of God, and the omnipotent agency of the Spirit in converting the soul.[605]

[604] See in proof of this Luther’s works, vol. i. passim (edit. 1554).
The first work of Melanchthon, his Loci Communes, published in
1521, when he followed Luther more obsequiously in his opinions
than he did in after-life, is equally replete with the strongest
Calvinism. This word is a little awkward in this place; but I am
compelled to use it, as most intelligible to the reader; and I
conceive that these two reformers went much beyond the language of
Augustin, which the schoolmen thought themselves bound to recognise
as authority, though they might elude its spirit. I find the first
edition of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes in Von der Hardt, Historia
Litteraria Reformationis, a work which contains a great deal of
curious matter. It is called by him, opus rarissimum, not being in
the edition of Melanchthon’s theological works; which some have
ascribed to the art of Peucer, whose tenets were widely different.

[605] I am unwilling to give these pages too theological a cast by
proving this statement, as I have the means of doing, by extracts
from Luther’s own early writings. Milner’s very prolix history of
this period is rendered less valuable by his disingenuous trick of
suppressing all passages in these treatises of Luther, which
display his Antinomian paradoxes in a strong light. Whoever has
read the writings of Luther up to the year 1520 inclusive, must
find it impossible to contradict my assertion. In treating of an
author so full of unlimited propositions as Luther, no positive
proof as to his tenets can be refuted by the production of
inconsistent passages.

60. Whatever may be the bias of our minds as to the truth of Luther’s doctrines, we should be careful, in considering the Reformation as a part of the history of mankind, not to be misled by the superficial and ungrounded representations which we sometimes find in modern writers. Such is this, that Luther, struck by the absurdity of the prevailing superstitions, was desirous of introducing a more rational system of religion; or, that he contended for freedom of inquiry, and the boundless privileges of individual judgment; or, what others have been pleased to suggest, that his zeal for learning and ancient philosophy led him to attack the ignorance of the monks, and the crafty policy of the church, which withstood all liberal studies.

|Real explanation of them.|

61. These notions are merely fallacious refinements, as every man of plain understanding, who is acquainted with the writings of the early reformers, or has considered their history, must acknowledge. The doctrines of Luther, taken altogether, are not more rational, that is, more conformable to what men, à priori, would expect to find in religion, than those of the church of Rome; nor did he ever pretend that they were so. As to the privilege of free inquiry, it was of course exercised by those who deserted their ancient altars, but certainly not upon any latitudinarian theory of a right to judge amiss. Nor, again, is there any foundation for imagining that Luther was concerned for the interests of literature. None had he himself, save theological; nor are there, as I apprehend, many allusions to profane studies, or any proof of his regard to them, in all his works. On the contrary, it is probable that both the principles of this great founder of the Reformation, and the natural tendency of so intense an application to theological controversy, checked for a time the progress of philological and philosophical literature on this side of the Alps.[606] Every solution of the conduct of the reformers must be nugatory, except one, that they were men absorbed by the conviction that they were fighting the battle of God. But among the population of Germany or Switzerland, there was undoubtedly another predominant feeling; the sense of ecclesiastical oppression, and scorn for the worthless swarm of monks and friars. This may be said to have divided the propagators of the Reformation into such as merely pulled down, and such as built upon the ruins. Ulric von Hutten may pass for the type of the one, and Luther himself of the other. And yet it is hardly correct to say of Luther, that he erected his system on the ruins of popery. For it was rather the growth and expansion in his mind of one positive dogma, justification by faith, in the sense he took it (which can be easily shown to have preceded the dispute about indulgences[607]), that broke down and crushed successively the various doctrines of the Romish church; not because he had originally much objection to them, but because there was no longer room for them in a consistent system of theology.[608]

[606] Erasmus, after he had become exasperated with the reformers,
repeatedly charges them with ruining literature. Ubicunque regnat
Lutheranismus, ibi literarum est interitus. Epist. Mvi. (1528).
Evangelicos istos, cum multis aliis, tum hoc nomine præcipue odi,
quod per eos ubique languent, frigent, jacent, intereunt bonæ
literæ, sine quibus quid est hominum vita? Amant viaticum et
uxorem, cætera pili non faciunt. Hos fucos longissime arcendos
censeo a vestro contubernio. Ep. Dccccxlvi. (eod. an.) There were
however at this time, as well as afterwards, more learned men on
the side of the Reformation than on that of the church.

[607] See his disputations at Wittenberg, 1516; and the sermons
preached in the same and the subsequent year.

[608] The best authorities for the early history of the Reformation
are Seckendorf, Hist. Lutheranismi, and Sleidan, Hist. de la
Réformation, in Courayer’s French translation; the former being
chiefly useful for the ecclesiastical, the latter for political
history. But as these confine themselves to Germany, Gerdes (Hist.
Evangel. Reformat.) is necessary for the Zuinglian history, as well
as for that of the northern kingdoms. The first sections of Father
Paul’s History of the Council of Trent are also valuable. Schmidt,
Histoire des Allemands, vols. vi. and vii., has told the story on
the side of Rome speciously and with some fairness; and Roscoe has
vindicated Leo X. from the imputation of unnecessary violence in
his proceeding against Luther. Mosheim is always good, but concise;
Milner far from concise, but highly prejudiced, and in the habit of
giving his quotations in English, which is not quite satisfactory
to a lover of truth.

The essay on the influence of the Reformation by Villers, which
obtained a prize from the French Institute, and has been extolled
by a very friendly, but better-informed writer in the Biographie
Universelle, appears to me the work of a man who had not taken the
pains to read any one contemporary work, or even any compilation
which contains many extracts. No wonder that it does not represent,
in the slightest degree, the real spirit of the times, or the
tenets of the reformers. Thus, e. gr., “Luther,” he says, “exposed
the abuse of the traffic of indulgences, and the danger of
believing that heaven and the remission of all crimes could be
bought with money; while a sincere repentance and an amended life
were the only means of appeasing the divine justice.” (p. 65 Engl.
Transl.) This at least is not very like Luther’s antinomian
contempt for repentance and amendment of life; it might come near
to the notions of Erasmus.

|Orlando Furioso.|

62. The laws of synchronism, which we have hitherto obeyed, bring strange partners together, and we may pass at once from Luther to Ariosto. The Orlando Furioso was first printed at Ferrara in 1516. This edition contained forty cantos, to which the last six were added in 1532. Many stanzas, chiefly of circumstance, were interpolated by the author from time to time.

|Its popularity.|

63. Ariosto has been, after Homer, the favourite poet of Europe. His grace and facility, his clear and rapid stream of language, his variety and beauty of invention, his very transitions of subject, so frequently censured by critics, but artfully devised to spare the tediousness that hangs on a protracted story, left him no rival in general popularity. Above sixty editions of the Orlando Furioso were published in the sixteenth century. There was not one, says Bernardo Tasso, of any age, or sex, or rank, who was satisfied after more than a single perusal. If the change of manners and sentiments have already in some degree impaired this attraction, if we cease to take interest in the prowess of Paladins, and find their combats a little monotonous, this is perhaps the necessary lot of all poetry, which, as it can only reach posterity through the medium of contemporary reputation, must accommodate itself to the fleeting character of its own time. This character is strongly impressed on the Orlando Furioso; it well suited an age of war and pomp, and gallantry; an age when chivalry was still recent in actual life, and was reflected in concentrated brightness from the mirror of romance.

|Want of seriousness.|

64. It has been sometimes hinted as an objection to Ariosto, that he is not sufficiently in earnest, and leaves a little suspicion of laughing at his subject. I do not perceive that he does this in a greater degree than good sense and taste permit. The poets of knight-errantry might in this respect be arranged in a scale, of which Pulci and Spenser would stand at the extreme points; the one mocking the absurdities he coolly invents, the other, by intense strength of conception, full of love and faith in his own creations. Between these Boiardo, Ariosto, and Berni take successively their places; none so deeply serious as Spenser, none so ironical as Pulci. It was not easy in Italy, especially after the Morgante Maggiore had roused the sense of ridicule, to keep up at every moment the solemn tone which Spain endured in the romances of the sixteenth century; nor was this consonant to the gaiety of Ariosto. It is the light carelessness of his manner which constitutes a great part of its charm.

|A continuation of Boiardo.|

65. Castelvetro has blamed Ariosto for building on the foundations of Boiardo.[609] He seems to have had originally no other design than to carry onward, a little better than Agostini, that very attractive story; having written, it is said, at first, only a few cantos to please his friends.[610] Certainly it is rather singular that so great and renowned a poet should have been little more than the continuator of one who had so lately preceded him; though Salviati defends him by the example of Homer; and other critics, with whom we shall perhaps not agree, have thought this the best apology for writing a romantic instead of an heroic poem. The story of the Orlando Innamorato must be known before we can well understand that of the Furioso. But this is nearly what we find in Homer; for who can reckon the Iliad anything but a fragment of the tale of Troy? It was indeed less felt by the compatriots of Homer, already familiar with that legendary cyclus of heroic song, than it is by the readers of Ariosto, who are not in general very well acquainted with the poem of his precursor. Yet experience has even here shown that the popular voice does not echo the complaint of the critic. This is chiefly owing to the want of a predominant unity in the Orlando Furioso, which we commonly read in detached parcels. The unity it does possess, distinct from the story of Boiardo, consists in the loves and announced nuptials of Rogero and Bradamante, the imaginary progenitors of the house of Este; but Ariosto does not gain by this condescension to the vanity of a petty sovereign.

[609] Poetica d’Aristotele (1570). It violates, he says, the rule of
Aristotle, αρχη εστιν, ὁ εξ αναγκης μη μετ' αλλο εστι [archê estin,
ho ex anankês mê met' allo esti]. Camillo Pellegrini, in his famous
controversy with the Academicians of Florence, repeats the same
censure. Salviati, under the disguised name l’Infarinato (Opere di
Tasso, ii. 130), defends Ariosto by the example of Homer, which
Castelvetro had already observed to be inapplicable.

[610] Quadrio, Storia d’ogni Poesia, vi. 606.

|In some points inferior.|

66. The inventions of Ariosto are less original than those of Boiardo, but they are more pleasing and various. The tales of old mythology and of modern romance furnished him with those delightful episodes we all admire, with his Olimpia and Bireno, his Ariodante and Geneura, his Cloridan and Medoro, his Zerbino and Isabella. He is more conversant with the Latin poets, or has turned them to better account, than his predecessor. For the sudden transitions in the middle of a canto or even a stanza, with which every reader of Ariosto is familiar, he is indebted to Boiardo, who had himself imitated in them the metrical romancers of the preceding age. From them also, that justice may be rendered to those nameless rhymers, Boiardo drew the individuality of character, by which their heroes were distinguished, and which Ariosto has not been so careful to preserve. His Orlando has less of the honest simplicity, and his Astolfo less of the gay boastfulness, that had been assigned to them in the cyclus.

|Beauties of its style.|

67. Corniani observes of the style of Ariosto, what we may all perceive on attending to it to be true, that he is sparing in the use of metaphors, contenting himself generally with the plainest expression; by which, if he loses something in dignity, he gains in perspicuity. It may be added, that he is not very successful in figurative language, which is sometimes forced and exaggerated. Doubtless this transparency of phrase, so eminent in Ariosto, is the cause that he is read and delighted in by the multitude, as well as by the few; and it seems also to be the cause that he can never be satisfactorily rendered into any language less musical, and consequently less independent upon an ornamental dress in poetry, than his own, or one which wants the peculiar advantages, by which conventional variances in the form of words, and the liberty of inversion, as well as the frequent recurrence of the richest and most euphonious rhymes, elevate the simplest expression in Italian verse above the level of discourse. Galileo, being asked by what means he had acquired the remarkable talent of giving perspicuity and grace to his philosophical writings, referred it to the continual study of Ariosto. His similes are conspicuous for their elaborate beauty; they are familiar to every reader of this great poet; imitated, as they usually are, from the ancients, they maintain an equal strife with their models, and occasionally surpass them. But even the general strain of Ariosto, natural as it seems, was not unpremeditated, or left to its own felicity; his manuscript at Ferrara, part of which is shown to strangers, bears numerous alterations, the _pentimenti_, if I may borrow a word from a kindred art, of creative genius.

|Accompanied with faults.|

68. The Italian critics love to expatiate in his praise, though they are often keenly sensible to his defects. The variety of style and of rhythm in Ariosto, it is remarked by Gravina, is convenient to that of his subject. His rhymes, the same author observes, seem to spring from the thoughts, and not from the necessities of metre. He describes minutely, but with much felicity, and gives a clear idea of every part; like the Farnesian Hercules, which seems greater by the distinctness of every vein and muscle.[611] Quadrio praises the correspondence of the sound to the sense. Yet neither of these critics is blindly partial. It is acknowledged indeed by his warmest advocates, that he falls sometimes below his subject, and that trifling and feeble lines intrude too frequently in the Orlando Furioso. I can hardly regret, however, that in the passages of flattery towards the house of Este, such as that long genealogy which he deduces in the third canto, his genius has deserted him, and he degenerates, as it were wilfully, into prosaic tediousness. In other allusions to contemporary history, he is little better. I am hazarding a deviation from the judgment of good critics when I add, that in the opening stanzas of each canto, where the poet appears in his own person, I find generally a deficiency of vigour and originality, a poverty of thought and of emotion, which is also very far from unusual in the speeches of his characters. But these introductions have been greatly admired.

[611] Ragion Poetica, p. 104.

|Its place as a poem.|

69. Many faults of language in Ariosto are observed by his countrymen. They justly blame also his inobservance of propriety, his hyperbolical extravagance, his harsh metaphors, his affected thoughts. These are sufficiently obvious to a reader of reflecting taste; but the enchantment of his pencil redeems every failing, and his rapidity, like that of Homer, leaves us little time to censure before we are hurried forward to admire. The Orlando Furioso, as a great single poem, has been very rarely surpassed in the living records of poetry. He must yield to three, and only three, of his predecessors. He has not the force, simplicity, and truth to nature of Homer, the exquisite style and sustained majesty of Virgil, nor the originality and boldness of Dante. The most obvious parallel is Ovid, whose Metamorphoses, however, are far excelled by the Orlando Furioso, not in fertility of invention, or variety of images and sentiments, but in purity of taste, in grace of language, and harmony of versification.

|Amadis de Gaul.|

70. No edition of Amadis de Gaul has been proved to exist before that printed at Seville in 1519, which yet is suspected of not being the first.[612] This famous romance, which in its day was almost as popular as the Orlando Furioso itself, was translated into French by Herberay between 1540 and 1557, and into English by Munday in 1619. The four books by Vasco de Lobeyra grew to twenty by successive additions, which have been held by lovers of romance far inferior to the original. They deserve at least the blame, or praise, of making the entire work unreadable by the most patient or the most idle of mankind. Amadis de Gaul can still perhaps impart pleasure to the susceptible imagination of youth; but the want of deep or permanent sympathy leaves a naked sense of unprofitableness in the perusal, which must, it should seem, alienate a reader of mature years. Amadis at least obtained the laurel at the hands of Cervantes, speaking through the barber and curate, while so many of Lobeyra’s unworthy imitators were condemned to the flames.

[612] Brunet, Man. du Libraire.

|Gringore.|

71. A curious dramatic performance, if it may deserve such an appellation, was represented at Paris in 1511, and published in 1516. It is entitled Le Prince des Sots et la Mère sotte, by one Peter Gringore, who had before produced some other pieces of less note, and bordering more closely on the moralities. In the general idea there was nothing original. A prince of fools had long ruled his many-coloured subjects on the theatre of a joyous company, les Enfans sans souci, who had diverted the citizens of Paris with their buffoonery, under the name, perhaps, of moralities, while their graver brethren represented the mysteries of scripture and legend. But the chief aim of La Mère sotte was to turn the pope and court of Rome into ridicule during the sharp contest of Louis XII. with Julius II. It consists of four parts, all in verse. The first of these is called The Cry, and serves as a sort of prologue, summoning all fools of both sexes to see the prince of fools play on Shrove Tuesday. The second is The Folly. This is an irregular dramatic piece, full of poignant satire on the clergy, but especially on the pope. A third part is entitled The Morality of the Obstinate Man; a dialogue in allusion to the same dispute. Finally comes an indecent farce, unconnected with the preceding subject. Gringore, who represented the character of La Mère sotte, was generally known by that name, and assumed it in his subsequent publications.[613]

[613] Beauchamps, Recherches sur le Théâtre Français. Goujet, Bibl.
Française, xi. 212. Niceron, vol. xxxiv. Bouterwek, Gesch. der
Französen Poesie, v. 113. Biogr. Univers. The works of Gringore,
says the last authority, are rare, and sought by the lovers of our
old poetry, because they display the state of manners at the
beginning of the sixteenth century.

|Hans Sachs.|

72. Gringore was certainly at a great distance from the Italian stage, which had successfully adapted the plots of Latin comedies to modern stories. But, among the _barbarians_, a dramatic writer, somewhat younger than he, was now beginning to earn a respectable celebrity, though limited to a yet uncultivated language, and to the inferior class of society. Hans Sachs, a shoemaker of Nuremberg, born in 1494, is said to have produced his first carnival play (Fast nacht spiel) in 1517. He belonged to the fraternity of poetical artizans, the meister-singers of Germany, who, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, had a succession of mechanical (in every sense of the word) rhymers to boast, to whom their countrymen attached as much reverence as might have sufficed for more genuine bards. In a spirit which might naturally be expected from artizans, they required a punctual observance of certain arbitrary canons, the by-laws of the corporation Muses, to which the poet must conform. These, however, did not diminish the fecundity, if they repressed the excursiveness, of our meister-singers, and least of all that of Hans Sachs himself, who poured forth, in about forty years, fifty-three sacred and seventy-eight profane plays, sixty-four farces, fifty-nine fables, and a large assortment of other poetry. These dramatic works are now scarce, even in Germany; they appear to be ranged in the same class as the early fruits of the French and English theatres. We shall mention Hans Sachs again in another chapter.[614]

[614] Biogr. Univ. Eichhorn, iii. 948. Bouterwek, ix. 381. Heinsius,
iv. 150. Retrospective Review, vol. x.

|Stephen Hawes.|

73. No English poet, since the death of Lydgate, had arisen whom it could be thought worth while to mention.[615] Many, perhaps, will not admit that Stephen Hawes, who now meets us, should be reckoned in that honourable list. His “Pastime of Pleasure, or the Historie of Graunde Amour and La bel Pucel,” finished in 1506, was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1517. From this title we might hardly expect a moral and learned allegory, in which the seven sciences of the trivium and quadrivium, besides a host of abstract virtues and qualities, play their parts in living personality, through a poem of about six thousand lines. Those who require the ardent words or the harmonious grace of poetical diction, will not frequently be content with Hawes. Unlike many of our older versifiers, he would be judged more unfavourably by extracts than by a general view of his long work. He is rude, obscure, full of pedantic latinisms, and probably has been disfigured in the press; but learned and philosophical, reminding us frequently of the school of James I. The best, though probably an unexpected, parallel for Hawes is John Bunyan; their inventions are of the same class, various and novel, though with no remarkable pertinence to the leading subject, or naturally consecutive order; their characters, though abstract in name, have a personal truth about them, in which Phineas Fletcher, a century after Hawes, fell much below him; they render the general allegory subservient to inculcating a system, the one of philosophy, the other of religion. I do not mean that the Pastime of Pleasure is equal in merit, as it certainly has not been in success, to the Pilgrim’s Progress. Bunyan is powerful and picturesque from his concise simplicity; Hawes has the common failings of our old writers, a tedious and languid diffuseness, an expatiating on themes of pedantry in which the reader takes no interest, a weakening of every feature and every reflection by ignorance of the touches that give effect. But if we consider the Historie of Graunde Amour less as a poem to be read than as a measure of the author’s mental power, we shall not look down upon so long and well-sustained an allegory. In this style of poetry much was required, that no mind ill stored with reflection, or incapable of novel combination, could supply; a clear conception of abstract modes, a familiarity with the human mind, and with the effects of its qualities on human life, a power of justly perceiving and vividly representing the analogies of sensible and rational objects. Few that preceded Hawes have possessed more of these gifts than himself.

[615] I have adverted in another place to Alexander Barclay’s
translation of the Ship of Fools from Sebastian Brandt; and I may
here observe, that he has added many original strokes on his own
countrymen, especially on the clergy.

74. This poem has been little known till Mr. Southey reprinted it in 1831; the original edition is very rare. Warton had given several extracts, which, as I have observed, are disadvantageous to Hawes, and an analysis of the whole;[616] but though he praises the author for imagination, and admits that the poem has been unjustly neglected, he has not dwelt enough on the erudition and reflection it displays. Hawes appears to have been educated at Oxford, and to have travelled much on the Continent. He held also an office in the court of Henry VII. We may reckon him therefore among the earliest of our learned and accomplished gentlemen; and his poem is the first-fruits of that gradual ripening of the English mind, which must have been the process of the laboratory of time, in the silence and darkness of the fifteenth century. It augured a generation of grave and stern thinkers, and the omen was not vain.

[616] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 54.

|Change in English language.|

75. Another poem, the Temple of Glass, which Warton had given to Hawes, is now by general consent restored to Lydgate. Independently of external proof, which is decisive,[617] it will appear that the Temple of Glass is not written in the English of Henry VII.’s reign. I mention this only for the sake of observing, that in following the line of our writers in verse and prose, we find the old obsolete English to have gone out of use about the accession of Edward IV. Lydgate and bishop Pecock, especially the latter, are not easily understood by a reader not habituated to their language; he requires a glossary, or must help himself out by conjecture. In the Paston Letters, on the contrary, in Harding, the metrical chronicler, or in Sir John Fortescue’s discourse on the difference between an absolute and limited monarchy, he finds scarce any difficulty; antiquated words and forms of termination frequently occur; but he is hardly sensible that he reads these books much less fluently than those of modern times. These were written about 1470. But in Sir Thomas More’s History of Edward V., written about 1509, or in the beautiful ballad of the Nut-brown Maid, which we cannot place very far from the year 1500, but which, if nothing can be brought to contradict the internal evidence, I should incline to refer to this decennium, there is not only a diminution of obsolete phraseology, but a certain modern turn and structure, both in the verse and prose, which denotes the commencement of a new æra, and the establishment of new rules of taste and polite literature. Every one will understand, that a broad line cannot be traced for the beginning of this change: Hawes, though his English is very different from that of Lydgate, seems to have had a great veneration for him, and has imitated the manner of that school, to which, in a marshalling of our poets, he unquestionably belongs. Skelton, on the contrary, though ready enough to coin words, has comparatively few that are obsolete.

[617] See note in Price’s edition of Warton, ubi suprà: to which I add,
that the Temple of Glass is mentioned in the Paston Letters, ii.
90, long before the time of Hawes.

|Skelton.|

76. The strange writer, whom we have just mentioned, seems to fall well enough within this decade; though his poetical life was long, if it be true that he received the laureate crown at Oxford in 1483, and was also the author of a libel on Sir Thomas More, ascribed to him by Ellis, which, alluding to the Nun of Kent, could hardly be written before 1533.[618] But though this piece is somewhat in Skelton’s manner, we find it said that he died in 1529, and it is probably the work of an imitator. Skelton is certainly not a poet, unless some degree of comic humour, and a torrent-like volubility of words in doggrel rhyme, can make one; but this uncommon fertility, in a language so little copious as ours was at that time, bespeaks a mind of some original vigour. Few English writers come nearer in this respect to Rabelais, whom Skelton preceded. His attempts in serious poetry are utterly contemptible; but the satirical lines on Cardinal Wolsey were probably not ineffective. It is impossible to determine whether they were written before 1520. Though these are better known than any poem of Skelton’s, his dirge on Philip Sparrow is the most comic and imaginative.[619]

[618] Ellis’s Specimens, vol. ii.

[619] This last poem is reprinted in Southey’s Selections from the
older Poets. Extracts from Skelton occur also in Warton, and one in
the first volume of the Somers Tracts. Mr. Dyce has it, I believe,
in contemplation to publish a collective edition.

|Oriental languages.|

77. We must now take a short survey of some other departments of literature during this second decade of the sixteenth century. The oriental languages become a little more visible in bibliography than before. An Æthiopic, that is, Abyssinian grammar, with the Psalms in the same language, was published at Rome by Potken in 1513; a short treatise in Arabic at Fanno in 1514, being the first time those characters had been used in type; a psalter in 1516, by Giustiniani at Genoa, in Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and Greek;[620] and a Hebrew Bible, with the Chaldee paraphrase and other aids, by Felice di Prato, at Venice in 1519. The book of Job in Hebrew appeared at Paris in 1516. Meantime the magnificent polyglott Bible of Alcala proceeded under the patronage of Cardinal Ximenes, and was published in five volumes folio, between the years 1514 and 1517. It contains in triple columns the Hebrew, the Septuagint Greek, and Latin Vulgate; the Chaldee paraphrase of the Pentateuch by Onkelos being also printed at the foot of the page.[621] Spain, therefore, had found men equal to superintend this arduous labour. Lebrixa was still living, though much advanced in years; Stunica and a few other now obscure names were his coadjutors. But that of Demetrius Cretensis appears among these in the title-page, to whom the principal care of the Greek was doubtless intrusted; and it is highly probable, that all the early Hebrew and Chaldee publications demanded the assistance of Jewish rabbis.

[620] It is printed in eight columns, which Gesner, apud Bayle,
Justiniani, Note D., thus describes; Quarum prima habet Hebræam
editionem, secunda Latinam interpretationem respondentem Hebrææ de
verbo in verbum, tertia Latinam communem, quarta Græcam, quinta
Arabicam, sexta paraphrasim, sermone quidem Chaldæo, sed literis
Hebraicis conscriptam; septima Latinam respondentem Chaldeæ, ultima
vero, id est octava, continet scholia, hoc est, annotationes
sparsas et intercisas.

[621] Andrès, xix. 35. An observation in the preface to the
Complutensian edition has been often animadverted upon, that
they print the Vulgate between the Hebrew and the Greek, like
Christ between two thieves. The expression, however it may have
been introduced, is not to be wholly defended; but at that time it
was generally believed, that the Hebrew text had been corrupted by
the Jews.

|Pomponatius.|

78. The school of Padua, renowned already for its medical science, as well as for the cultivation of the Aristotelian philosophy, laboured under a suspicion of infidelity, which was considerably heightened by the work of Pomponatius, its most renowned professor, on the immortality of the soul, published in 1516. This book met with several answerers, and was publicly burned at Venice; but the patronage of Bembo sustained Pomponatius at the court of Leo; and he was permitted by the inquisition to reprint his treatise with some corrections. He defended himself by declaring that he merely denied the validity of philosophical arguments for the soul’s immortality, without doubting in the least the authority of revelation, to which, and to that of the church, he had expressly submitted. This, however, is the current language of philosophy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which must be judged by other presumptions. Brucker and Ginguéné are clear as to the real disbelief of Pomponatius in the doctrine, and bring some proofs from his other writings, which seem more unequivocal than any that the treatise De Immortalitate affords. It is certainly possible, and not uncommon, for men to deem the arguments on that subject inconclusive, so far as derived from reason, while they assent to those that rest on revelation. It is on the other hand impossible for a man to believe inconsistent propositions when he perceives them to be so. The question therefore can only be, as Buhle seems to have seen, whether Pomponatius maintained the rational arguments for a future state to be repugnant to known truths, or merely insufficient for conviction; and this a superficial perusal of his treatise hardly enables me to determine; though there is a presumption, on the whole, that he had no more religion than the philosophers of Padua generally kept for a cloak. That university was for more than a century the focus of atheism in Italy.[622]

[622] Tiraboschi, vol. viii. Corniani. Ginguéné. Brucker. Buhle.
Niceron. Biogr. Universelle. The two last of these are more
favourable than the rest to the intentions of the Paduan
philosopher.

Pomponatius, or Peretto, as he was sometimes called, on account of
his diminutive stature, which he had in common with his predecessor
in philosophy, Marsilius Ficinus, was ignorant of Greek, though he
read lectures on Aristotle. In one of Sperone’s dialogues (p. 120
edit. 1596) he is made to argue, that if all books were read in
translations, the time now consumed in learning languages might be
better employed.

|Raymond Lully.|

|His method.|