Chapter XVII (2)

30. A more steady progress was made in the science of botany, which commemorates, in those living memorials with which she delights to honour her cultivators, several names still respected, and several books that have not lost their utility. Our countryman, Dr. Turner, published the first part of a New Herbal in 1551; the second and third did not appear till 1562 and 1568. “The arrangement,” says Pulteney, “is alphabetical according to the Latin names, and after the description he frequently specifies the places and growth. He is ample in his discrimination of the species, as his great object was to ascertain the Materia Medica of the ancients, and of Dioscorides in particular, throughout the vegetable kingdom. He first gives names to many English plants; and allowing for the time when specifical distinctions were not established, when almost all the small plants were disregarded, and the Cryptogamia almost wholly overlooked, the number he was acquainted with is much beyond what could easily have been imagined in an original writer on his subject.”[1389]

[1389] Pulteney’s Historical Sketch of the Progress of Botany in
England, p. 68.

|Maranta; Botanical Gardens.|

31. The work of Maranta, published in 1559, on the method of understanding medicinal plants, is, in the judgment of a later writer of considerable reputation, nearly at the head of any in that age. The author is independent, though learned, extremely acute in discriminating plants known to the ancients, and has discovered many himself, ridiculing those who dared to add nothing to Dioscorides.[1390] Maranta had studied in the private gardens formed by Pinelli at Naples. But public gardens were common in Italy. Those of Pisa and Padua were the earliest, and perhaps the most celebrated. One established by the Duke of Ferrara, was peculiarly rich in exotic plants procured from Greece and Asia.[1391] And perhaps the generous emulation in all things honourable between the houses of Este and Medici led Ferdinand of Tuscany, sometime afterwards near the end of the century, to enrich the gardens of Pisa with the finest plants of Asia and America. The climate of France was less favourable; the first public garden seems to have been formed at Montpellier, and there was none at Paris in 1558.[1392] Meantime the vegetable productions of newly discovered countries became familiar to Europe. Many are described in the excellent History of the Indies by Hernando d’Oviedo, such as the Cocos, the Cactus, the Guiacum. Another Spanish author, Carate, first describes the Solanum Tuberosum, or potato, under the name of Papas.[1393] It has been said that tobacco is first mentioned, or at least first well described by Benzoni, in Nova Novi Orbis Historia, (Geneva, 1578).[1394] Belon went to the Levant soon after the middle of the century, on purpose to collect plants; several other writers of voyages followed before its close. Among these was Prosper Alpinus, who passed several years in Egypt, but his principal work, De Plantis Exoticis is posthumous, and did not appear till 1627. He is said to be the first European author who has mentioned coffee.[1395]

[1390] Sprengel Historia Rei Herbariæ (1807), i. 345.

[1391] Id. 360.

[1392] Id. 363.

[1393] Id. 378.

[1394] Id. 373.

[1395] Id. 384. Corniani, vi. 25. Biogr. Univ. Yet, in the article on
Rauwolf, a German naturalist, who published an account of his
travels in the Levant as early as 1581, he is mentioned as one of
the first qui ait parlé de l’usage de boire du café, et en ait
décrit la preparation avec exactitude. It is possible that this
book of Rauwolf being written in German, and the author being
obscure in comparison with Prosper Alpinus, his prior claim has
been till lately overlooked.

|Gesner.|

32. The critical examination of the ancients, the establishment of gardens, the travels of botanists thus furnished a great supply of plants; it was now required to compare and arrange them. Gesner first undertook this; he had formed a garden of his own at Zurich, and has the credit of having discovered the true system of classifying plants according to the organs of fructification; which however he does not seem to have made known, nor were his botanical writings published till the last century. Gesner was the first who mentions the Indian Sugarcane and the Tobacco, as well as many indigenous plants. It is said that he was used to chew and smoke tobacco, “by which he rendered himself giddy and in a manner drunk.”[1396] As Gesner died in 1564, this carries back the knowledge of tobacco in Europe several years beyond the above-mentioned treatise of Benzoni.

[1396] Sprengel, 373, 390.

|Dodoens.|

33. Dodoens, or Dodonæus, a Dutch physician, in 1553, translated into his own language the history of plants by Fuchs, to which he added 133 figures. These, instead of using the alphabetical order of his predecessor, he arranged according to a method which he thought more natural. “He explains,” says Sprengel, “well and learnedly the ancient botanists, and described many plants for the first time;” among these are the Ulex Europæus and the Hyacinthus non scriptus. The great aim of rendering the modern Materia Medica conformable to the ancient seems to have made the early botanists rather inattentive to objects before their eyes. Dodoens himself is rather a physician than a botanist, and is more diligent about the uses of plants than their characteristics. He collected all his writings, under the title Stirpium Historiæ Pemptades Sex, at Antwerp in 1583, with 1341 figures, a greater number than had yet been published.

|Lobel.|

34. The Stirpium Adversaria by Pena and Lobel, the latter of whom is best known as a botanist, was published at London in 1570. Lobel indeed, though a native of Lille, having passed most of his life in England, may be fairly counted among our botanists. He had previously travelled much over Europe. “In the execution of this work,” says Pulteney, “there is exhibited, I believe, the first sketch, rude as it is, of a natural method of arrangement, which however extends no further than throwing the plants into large tribes, families, or orders, according to the external appearance or habit of the whole plant or flower, without establishing any definitions or characters. The whole forms forty-four tribes. Some contain the plants of or two modern genera, others many, and some, it must be owned, very incongruous to each other. On the whole they are much superior to Dodoens’s divisions.”[1397] Lobel’s Adversaria contains descriptions of 1200 or 1500 plants with 272 engravings; the former are not clear or well expressed, and in this he is inferior to his contemporaries; the latter are on copper, very small, but neat.[1398] In a later work, the Plantarum Historia, Antwerp, 1576, the number of figures is very considerably greater, but the book has been less esteemed, being a sort of complement to the other. Sprengel speaks more highly of Lobel than the Biographie Universelle.

[1397] Historical Sketch, p. 102.

[1398] Sprengel, 399.

|Clusius.|

35. Clusius or Lecluse, born at Arras, and a traveller, like many other botanists, over Europe, till he settled at Leyden as professor of botany in 1593, is generally reckoned the greatest master of his science whom the age produced. His descriptions are remarkable for their exactness, precision, elegance, and method, though he seems to have had little regard to natural classification. He has added a long list to the plants, already known. Clusius began by a translation of Dodoens into Latin; he published several other works within the century.[1399]

[1399] Sprengel, 407. Biogr. Univ. Pulteney.

|Cæsalpin.|

36. Cæsalpin was not only a botanist, but greater in this than in any other of the sciences he embraced. He was the first (the writings of Gesner, if they go so far, being in his time unpublished) who endeavoured to establish a natural order of classification on philosophical principles. He founded it on the number, figure, and position of the fructifying parts, observing the situation of the calix and flower relatively to the germen, the divisions of the former, and in general what has been regarded in later systems as the basis of arrangement. He treats of trees and of herbs separately, as two grand divisions, but under each follows his own natural system. The distinction of sexes he thought needless in plants, on account of their greater simplicity; though he admits it to exist in some, as in the hemp and the juniper. His treatise on Plants, in 1583, is divided into sixteen books; in the first of which he lays down the principles of vegetable anatomy and physiology. Many ideas, says Du Petit Thouars, are found there of which the truth was long afterwards recognised. He analysed the structure of seeds, which he compares to the eggs of animals; an analogy, however, which had occurred to Empedocles among the ancients. “One page alone,” the same writer observes, “in the dedication of Cæsalpin to the Duke of Tuscany, concentrates the principles of a good botanical system so well that notwithstanding all the labours of later botanists, nothing material could be added to his sketch, and if this one page out of all the writings of Cæsalpin remained, it would be enough to secure him an immortal reputation.”[1400] Cæsalpin unfortunately gave no figures of plants, which may have been among the causes that his system was so long overlooked.

[1400] Biogr. Univ. Sprengel, after giving an analysis of the system
of Cæsalpin, concludes: En primi systematis carpologici specimen,
quod licet imperfectum sit, ingenii tamen summi monumentum et
aliorum omnium ad Gærtnerium usque exemplar est, p. 430.

|Dalechamps; Bauhin.|

37. The Historia Generalis Plantarum by Dalechamps, in 1587, contains 2731 figures, many of which, however, appear to be repetitions. These are divided into eighteen classes according to their form and size, but with no natural method. His work is imperfect and faulty; most of the descriptions are borrowed from his predecessors.[1401] Tabernæmontanus, in a book in the German language, has described 5800 species, and given 2480 figures.[1402] The Phytopinax of Gerard Bauhin (Basle, 1596) is the first important work of one who, in conjunction with his brother John, laboured for forty years in the advancement of botanical knowledge. It is a catalogue of 2460 plants, including, among about 250 others that were new, the first accurate description of the potato, which, as he informs us, was already cultivated in Italy.[1403]

[1401] Sprengel, 432.

[1402] Id. 496.

[1403] Id. 451.

|Gerard’s Herbal.|

38. Gerard’s Herbal, published in 1597, was formed on the basis of Dodoens, taking in much from Lobel and Clusius; the figures are from the blocks used by Tabernæmontanus. It is not now esteemed at all by botanists, at least in this first edition; “but,” says Pulteney, “from its being well timed, from its comprehending almost the whole of the subjects then known, by being written in English, and ornamented with a more numerous set of figures than had ever accompanied any work of the kind in this kingdom, it obtained great repute.”[1404]

[1404] Hist. Sketch, p. 122.

SECT. III.--ON ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.

_Fallopius, Eustachius, and other Anatomists--State of Medicine._

|Anatomy; Fallopius.|

39. Few sciences were so successfully pursued in this period as that of anatomy. If it was impossible to snatch from Vesalius the pre-eminent glory that belongs to him as almost its creator, it might still be said that two men now appeared who, had they lived earlier, would probably have gone as far, and who, by coming later, were enabled to go beyond him. These were Fallopius and Eustachius, both Italians. The former is indeed placed by Sprengel even above Vesalius, and reckoned the first anatomist of the sixteenth century. No one had understood that delicate part of the human structure, the organ of hearing, so well as Fallopius, though even he left much for others. He added several to the list of muscles, and made some discoveries in the intestinal and generative organs.[1405]

[1405] Portal. Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine.

|Eustachius.|

|Coiter.|

40. Eustachius, though on the whole inferior to Fallopius, went beyond him in the anatomy of the ear, in which a canal, as is well known, bears his name. One of his biographers has gone so far as to place him above every anatomist for the number of his discoveries. He has treated very well of the teeth, a subject little understood before, and was the first to trace the vena azygos through all its ramifications. No one before had exhibited the structure of the human kidneys, Vesalius having examined them only in dogs.[1406] The scarcity of human subjects was in fact an irresistible temptation to take upon trust the identity between quadrupeds and man, which misled the great anatomists of the sixteenth century.[1407] Comparative anatomy was therefore not yet promoted to its real dignity, both as an indispensable part of natural history, and as opening the most conclusive and magnificent views of teleology. Coiter, an anatomist born in Holland, but who passed his life in Italy, Germany, and France, was perhaps the first to describe the skeletons of several animals; though Belon, as we have seen, had views far beyond his age in what is strictly comparative anatomy. Coiter’s work bears the date of 1575; in 1566 he had published one on human osteology, where that of the fœtus is said to be first described, though some attribute this merit to Fallopius. Coiter is called in the Biographie Universelle one of the creators of pathological anatomy.

[1406] Portal.

[1407] The church had a repugnance to permit the dissection of dead
bodies, but Fallopius tells us that the Duke of Tuscany was
sometimes obliging enough to send a living criminal to the
anatomists, _quem interficimus nostro modo et anatomisamus_.
Sprengel suggests that “nostro modo” meant by opium; but this seems
to be merely a conjecture. Hist. de la Médecine, iv. 11.

|Columbus.|

|Circulation of the blood.|

41. Columbus (De Re Anatomica, Venice, 1559), the successor of Vesalius at Padua, and afterwards professor at Pisa and Rome, has announced the discovery of several muscles, and given the name of vomer to the small bone which sustains the cartilage of the nose, and which Vesalius had taken for a mere process of the sphenoid. Columbus, though too arrogant in censuring his great predecessor, generally follows him.[1408] Arrantius, in 1571, is among the first who made known the anatomy of the gravid uterus, and the structure of the fœtus.[1409] He was also conversant, as Vidius, a professor at Paris of Italian birth, as early as 1542, had already been, with the anatomy of the brain. But this was much improved by Varoli in his Anatomia, published in 1573, who traced the origin of the optic nerves, and gave a better account than any one before him of the eye and of the voice. Piccolomini (Anatomiæ Prælectiones, 1586) is one of the first who described the cellular tissue, and in other respects has made valuable observations. Ambrose Paré, a French surgeon, is deemed the founder of chirurgic science, at least in that country. His works were first collected in 1561; but his treatise on gunshot wounds is as old as 1545. Several other names are mentioned with respect by the historians of medicine and anatomy; such as those of Alberti, Benivieni, Donatus, and Schank. Never, says Portal, were anatomy and surgery better cultivated, with more emulation or more encouragement, than about the end of the sixteenth century. A long list of minor discoveries in the human frame are recorded by this writer and by Sprengel. It will be readily understood that we give these names, which of itself it is rather an irksome labour to enumerate, with no other object than that none of those who by their ability and diligence carried forward the landmarks of human knowledge, should miss, in a history of general literature, of their meed of remembrance. We reserve to a later chapter those passages in the anatomists of this age, which have seemed to anticipate the great discovery that immortalizes the name of Harvey.

[1408] Portal, i. 541.

[1409] Portal, vol. ii. p. 3.

|Medicinal science.|

42. These continual discoveries in the anatomical structure of man tended to guide and correct the theory of medicine. The observations of this period became more acute and accurate. Those of Plater and Foresti, especially the latter, are still reputed classical in medical literature. Prosper Alpinus may be deemed the father in modern times of diagnostic science.[1410] Plater, in his Praxis Medica, made the first, though an imperfect attempt, at a classification of diseases. Yet the observations made in this age, and the whole practical system, are not exempt from considerable faults; the remedies were too topical, the symptoms of disease were more regarded than its cause; the theory was too simple and general; above all, a great deal of credulity and superstition prevailed in the art.[1411] Many among the first in science believed in demoniacal possessions and sorcery, or in astrology. This was most common in Germany, where the school of Paracelsus, discreditably to the national understanding, exerted much influence. The best physicians of the century were either Italian or French.

[1410] Sprengel, iii. 173.

[1411] Id. 156.

43. Notwithstanding the bigoted veneration for Hippocrates that most avowed, several physicians, not at all adhering to Paracelsus, endeavoured to set up a rational experience against the Greek school, when they thought them at variance. Joubert of Montpelier, in his Paradoxes (1566), was a bold innovator of this class; but many of his paradoxes are now established truths. Botal of Asti, a pupil of Fallopius, introduced the practice of venesection on a scale before unknown, but prudently aimed to show that Hippocrates was on his side. The faculty of medicine, however, at Paris condemned it as erroneous and very dangerous. His method, nevertheless, had great success, especially in Spain.[1412]

[1412] Sprengel, iii. p. 215.

SECT. IV.--ON ORIENTAL LITERATURE.

|Syriac version of New Testament.|

44. This is a subject over which, on account of my total ignorance of eastern languages, I am glad to hasten. The first work that appears after the middle of the century is a grammar of the Syriac, Chaldee and Rabbinical, compared with the Arabic and Ethiopic languages, which Angelo Canini, a man as great in oriental as in Grecian learning, published at Paris in 1554. In the next year Widmanstadt gave, from the press of Vienna, the first edition of the Syriac version of the New Testament.[1413] Several lexicons and grammars of this tongue, which is in fact only a dialect not far removed from the Chaldee, though in a different alphabetical character, will be found in the bibliographical writers. The Syriac may be said to have been now fairly added to the literary domain. The Antwerp Polyglot of Arias Montanus, besides a complete Chaldee paraphrase of the Old Testament, the Complutensian having only contained the Pentateuch, gives the New Testament in Syriac, as well as Pagnini’s Latin translation of the Old.[1414]

[1413] Schelhorn, Amœnitates Literariæ, xiii. 234. Biogr. Universelle.
Andrès, xix. 45. Eichhorn, v. 435. In this edition the Syriac text
alone appeared; Henry Stephens reprinted it with the Greek and with
two Latin translations.

[1414] Andrès, xix. 49. The whole edition is richer in materials than
that of Ximenes.

|Hebrew critics.|

45. The Hebrew language was studied, especially among the German protestants, to a considerable extent, if we may judge from the number of grammatical works published within this period. Among these Morhof selects the Erotemata Linguæ Hebrææ by Neander, printed at Basle in 1567. Tremellius, Chevalier, and Drusius among protestants, Masius and Clarius in the church of Rome, are the most conspicuous names. The first, an Italian refugee, is chiefly known by his translation of the Bible into Latin, in which he was assisted by Francis Junius. The second, a native of France, taught Hebrew at Cambridge, and was there the instructor of Drusius, whose father had emigrated from Flanders on the ground of religion. Drusius himself, afterwards professor of Hebrew at the university of Franeker, has left writings of more permanent reputation than most other Hebraists of the sixteenth century; they relate chiefly to biblical criticism and Jewish antiquity, and several of them have a place in the Critici Sacri and in the collection of Ugolini.[1415] Clarius is supposed to have had some influence on the decree of the council of Trent, asserting the authenticity of the Vulgate.[1416] Calasio was superior probably to them all, but his principal writings do not belong to this period. No large proportion of the treatises published by Ugolini ought, so far as I know their authors, to be referred to the sixteenth century.

[1415] Drusius is extolled by all critics except Scaliger (Scaligerana
Secunda), who seems to have conceived one of his personal
prejudices against the Franeker professor, and depreciates his
moral character. Simon thinks Drusius the most learned and
judicious writer we find in the Critici Sacri. Hist. Critique du V.
T., p. 498. Biogr. Univ. Blount.

[1416] Clarius, according to Simon, knew Hebrew but indifferently,
and does little more than copy Munster, whose observations are too
full of Judaism, as he consulted no interpreters but the rabbinical
writers. Masius, the same author says, is very learned, but has the
like fault of dealing in rabbinical expositions, p. 499.

|Its study in England.|

46. The Hebrew language had been early studied in England, though there has been some controversy as to the extent of the knowledge which the first translators of the Bible possessed. We know that both Chevalier read lectures on Hebrew at Cambridge not long after the queen’s accession, and his disciple Drusius at Oxford, from 1572 to 1576.[1417] Hugh Broughton was a deeply learned rabbinical scholar. I do not know that we could produce any other name of marked reputation; and we find that the first Hebrew types, employed in any considerable number, appear in 1592. These are in a book not relating directly to Hebrew, Rheses Institutiones Linguæ Cambro-Britannicæ. But a few Hebrew characters, very rudely cut in wood, are found in Wakefield’s Oration, printed as early as 1524.[1418]

[1417] Wood’s Hist. and Antiquities. In 1574, he was appointed to read
publicly in Syriac.

[1418] Preface to Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities.

|Arabic begins to be studied.|

47. The Syriac and Chaldee were so closely related to Hebrew, both as languages, and in the theological purposes for which they were studied, that they did not much enlarge the field of oriental literature. The most copious language, and by far the most fertile of books, was the Arabic. A few slight attempts at introducing a knowledge of this had been made before the middle of the century. An Arabic as well as Syriac press at Vienna was first due to the patronage of Ferdinand I. in 1554, but for a considerable time no fruit issued from it. But the increasing zeal of Rome for the propagation of its faith, both among infidels and schismatics, gave a larger sweep to the cultivation of oriental languages. Gregory XIII. founded a Maronite College at Rome in 1584, for those Syrian Christians of Libanus who had united themselves to the catholic church; the cardinal Medici, afterwards grand Duke of Florence, established an oriental press in the city about 1580 under the superintendence of John Baptista Raimondi; and Sixtus V. in 1588 that of the Vatican, which, though principally designed for early Christian literature, was possessed of types for the chief eastern languages. Hence the Arabic, hitherto almost neglected, began to attract more attention; the gospels in that language were published at Rome in 1590 or 1591; some works of Euclid and Avicenna had preceded; one or two elementary books on grammar appeared in Germany; and several other publications belong to the last years of the century.[1419] Scaliger now entered upon the study of Arabic with all his indefatigable activity. Yet, at the end of the century, few had penetrated far into a region so novel and extensive, and in which the subsidiary means of knowledge were so imperfect. The early grammars are represented by Eichhorn as being very indifferent, and in fact very few Arabic books had been printed. The edition of the Koran by Pagninus in 1529 was unfortunately suppressed, as we have before mentioned, by the zeal of the court of Rome. Casaubon, writing to Scaliger in 1597, declares that no one within his recollection had even touched with the tips of his fingers that language, except Postel in a few rhapsodies; and that neither he nor any one else had written anything on the Persic.[1420] Gesner however in his Mithridates, 1558, had given the Lord’s Prayer in twenty-two languages; to which Rocca at Rome, in 1591, added three more; and Megiser increased the number, in a book published next year at Frankfort, to forty.[1421]

[1419] Eichhorn, v. 641, et alibi. Tiraboschi, viii. 195. Ginguéné,
vol. vii. p. 258.

[1420] Nostra autem memoria, qui eas linguas vel ακρῳ [akrô], quod
aiunt, δακτυλῳ [daktulô], attigerit, novi neminem, nisi quod
Postellum nescio quid muginatum esse de lingua Arabica memini. Sed
illa quam tenuia, quam exilia! de Persicâ, quod equidem memini,
neque ille, neque alius quisquam vel γρὺ το λεγομενον [grhu to
legomenon]. Epist. ciii.

[1421] Biogr. Univ. arts. Megiser and Rocca.

SECT. V.--ON GEOGRAPHY.

_Voyages in the Indies--Those of the English--Of Ortelius and others._

|Collection of Voyages by Ramusio.|

48. A more important accession to the knowledge of Europe as to the rest of the world, than had hitherto been made through the press, is due to Ramusio, a Venetian who had filled respectable offices under the republic. He published in 1550 the first volume of his well-known collection of Travels; the second appeared in 1559, and the third in 1565. They have been reprinted several times, and all the editions are not equally complete. No general collection of travels had hitherto been published, except the Novus Orbis of Grynæus, and though the greater part perhaps of those included in Ramusio’s three volumes had appeared separately, others came forth for the first time. The Africa of Leo Africanus, a baptized Moor, with which Ramusio begins, is among these; and it is upon this work that such knowledge as we possessed, till very recent times, as to the interior of that continent, was almost entirely founded. Ramusio in the remainder of this volume gives many voyages in Africa, the East Indies, and Indian Archipelago, including two accounts of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, and one of Japan, which had very lately been discovered. The second volume is dedicated to travels through northern Europe and Asia, beginning with that of Marco Polo, including also the curious, though very questionable voyage of the Zeni brothers, about 1400, to some unknown region north of Scotland. In the third volume we find the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, with all that had already been printed of the excellent work of Hernando d’Oviedo on the western world. Few subsequent collections of voyages are more esteemed for the new matter they contain than that of Ramusio.[1422]

[1422] Biog. Univ.

|Curiosity they awakened.|

49. The importance of such publications as that of Ramusio was soon perceived, not only in the stimulus they gave to curiosity or cupidity towards following up the paths of discovery, but in calling the attention of reflecting minds, such as Bodin and Montaigne, to so copious a harvest of new facts, illustrating the physical and social character of the human species. But from the want of a rigid investigation, or more culpable reasons, these early narratives are mingled with much falsehood, and misled some of the more credulous philosophers almost as often as they enlarged their knowledge.

|Other Voyages.|

50. The story of the Portuguese conquests in the east, more varied and almost as wonderful as romance, was recounted in the Asia of Joam de Barros (1552), and in that of Castanheda in the same and two ensuing years; these have never been translated. The great voyage of Magellan had been written by one of his companions, Pigafetta. This was first published in Italian in 1556. The History of the Indies by Acosta, 1590, may perhaps belong more strictly to other departments of literature than to geography.

|Accounts of China.|

|India and Russia.|

51. The Romish missionaries, especially the Jesuits, spread themselves with intrepid zeal during this period over infidel nations. Things strange to European prejudice, the books, the laws, the rites, the manners, the dresses of those remote people, were related by them on their return, for the most part orally, but sometimes through the press. The vast empire of China, the Cathay of Marco Polo, over which an air of fabulous mystery had hung, and which is delineated in the old maps with much ignorance of its position and extent, now first was brought within the sphere of European knowledge. The Portuguese had some traffic to Canton, but the relations they gave were uncertain, till, in 1577, two Augustin friars persuaded a Chinese officer to take them into the country. After a residence of four months they returned to Manilla, and in consequence of their reports, Phillip II. sent, in 1580, an embassy to the court of Pekin. The History of China by Mendoza, as it is called, contains all the knowledge that the Spaniards were able to collect by these means; and it may be said, on comparison with later books on the same subject, to be as full and ample an account of China as could have been given in such circumstances. This book was published in 1585, and from that time, but no earlier, do we date our acquaintance with that empire.[1423] Maffei, in his History of India, threw all the graces of a pure Latin style over his description of the east. The first part of a scarce and curious collection of voyages to the two Indies, with the names of De Bry and Merian as its editors, appeared at Frankfort in 1590. Six other volumes were published at intervals down to 1634. Possevin, meantime, told us more of a much nearer state, Muscovy, than was before familiar to western Europe, though the first information had been due to England.

[1423] Biogr. Univ. This was translated into English by R. Parke in
1588; at least I believe it to be the same work, but have never
seen the original.

|English discoveries in the Northern Seas.|

52. The spirit of lucre vied with that of religion in penetrating unknown regions. In this the English have most to boast: they were the first to pass the Icy Cape and anchor their ships in the White Sea. This was in the famous voyage of Chancellor in 1553. Anthony Jenkinson soon afterwards, through the heart of Russia, found his way to Bokhara and Persia. They followed up the discoveries of Cabot in North America; and, before the end of the century, had ascertained much of the coasts about Labrador and Hudson’s Bay, as well as those of Virginia, the first colony. These English voyages were recorded in the three parts of the Collection of Voyages, by Hakluyt, published in 1598, 1599, and 1600. Drake, second to Magellan in that bold enterprise, traversed the circumference of the world; and the reign of Elizabeth, quite as much as any later age, bears witness to the intrepidity and skill, if not strictly to the science, of our sailors. For these undaunted navigators traversing the unexplored wilderness of ocean in small ill-built vessels, had neither any effectual assistance from charts, nor the means of making observations themselves, or of profiting by those of others. Hence, when we come to geographical knowledge, in the proper sense of the word, we find it surprisingly scanty, even at the close of the sixteenth century.

|Geographical Books; Ortelius.|

53. It had not, however, been neglected, so far as a multiplicity of books could prove a regard to it. Ortelius, in his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (the first edition of which was in 1570, augmented afterwards by several maps of later dates), gives a list of about 150 geographical treatises, most of them subsequent to 1560. His own work is the first general atlas since the revival of letters, and has been justly reckoned to make an epoch in geography, being the basis of all collections of maps since formed, and deserving, it is said, even yet to be consulted, notwithstanding the vast progress of our knowledge of the earth.[1424] The maps in the later editions of the sixteenth century bear various dates. That of Africa is of 1590; and though the outline is tolerably given, we do not find the Mauritius Isles, while the Nile is carried almost to the Cape of Good Hope, and made to issue from a great lake. In the map of America, dated 1587, the outline on the N. E. side contains New France, with the _city_ of Canada; the St. Lawrence traverses the country, but without lakes; Florida is sufficiently distinguished, but the intervening coast is loosely laid down. Estotiland, the supposed discovery of the Zeni, appears to the north, and Greenland beyond. The outline of South America is worse, the southern parts covering nearly as much longitude as the northern, an error which was in some measure diminished in a map of 1603. An immense solid land, as in all the older maps, connects Terra del Fuego with New Guinea. The delineation of the southern coasts of Asia is not very bad, even in the earlier maps of Ortelius, but some improvement is perceived in his knowledge of China and the adjacent seas in that of the world, given in the edition of 1588. The maps of Europe in Ortelius are chiefly defective as to the countries on the Baltic Sea and Russia; but there is a general incorrectness of delineation which must strike the eye at once of any person slightly experienced in geography.

[1424] Biog. Univ.

54. Gerard Mercator, a native of the duchy of Juliers, where he passed the greater part of his life, was perhaps superior to Ortelius. His fame is most diffused by the invention of a well-known mode of delineating hydrographical charts, in which the parallels and meridians intersect each other at right angles. The first of these was published in 1569; but the principle of the method was not understood till Edward Wright, in 1599, explained it in his Correction of Errors in Navigation.[1425] The Atlas of Mercator, in an edition of 1598, which contains only part of Europe, is superior to that of Ortelius; and as to England, of which there had been maps published by Lluyd in 1569, and by Saxton in 1580, it may be reckoned very tolerably correct. Lluyd’s map indeed is published in the Atlas of Ortelius. But, in the northern regions of Europe we still find a mass of arbitrary erroneous conjecture.

[1425] Montucla, ii. 651. Biogr. Univ. art. Mercator.

55. Botero, the Piedmontese Jesuit, mentioned in another place, has given us a cosmography, or general description of as much of the world as was then known, entitled Relazioni Universali; the edition I have seen is undated, but he mentions the discovery of Nova Zembla in 1594. His knowledge of Asia is very limited, and chiefly derived from Marco Polo. China, he says, extends from 17° to 52° of latitude, and has 22° of longitude. Japan is sixty leagues from China and 150 from America. The coasts, Botero observes, from Bengal to China are so dangerous, that two or three are lost out of every four ships, but the master who succeeds in escaping these perils is sure to make his fortune.

56. But the best map of the sixteenth century is one of uncommon rarity, which is found in a very few copies of the first edition of Hakluyt’s Voyages. This contains Davis’s Straits (Fretum Davis), Virginia by name, and the lake Ontario. The coasts of Chili is placed more correctly than the prior maps of Ortelius; and it is noticed in the margin that this trending of the coast less westerly than had been supposed was discovered by Drake in 1577, and confirmed by Sarmiento and Cavendish. The huge Terra Australis of the old geography is left out. Corea is represented near its place, and China with some degree of correctness; even the north coast of New Holland is partially traced. The Strait of Anian, which had been presumed to divide Asia from America, has disappeared, while a marginal note states that the distance between those two continents in latitude 38° is not less than 1200 leagues. The Ultra-Indian region is inaccurate; the sea of Aral is still unknown, and little pains have been taken with central and northern Asia. But upon the whole it represents the utmost limit of geographical knowledge at the close of the sixteenth century, and far excels the maps in the edition of Ortelius at Antwerp in 1588.

SECT. VI.--ON HISTORY.

|Guicciardini.|

57. The history of Italy by Guicciardini, though it is more properly a work of the first part of the century, was not published till 1564. It is well known for the solidity of the reflections, the gravity and impartiality with which it is written, and the prolixity of the narration; a fault, however, frequent and not unpardonable in historians contemporary and familiar with the events they relate. If the siege of Pisa in 1508 appeared so uninteresting a hundred years afterwards, as to be the theme of ridicule with Boccalini, it was far otherwise as to the citizens of Florence soon after the time. Guicciardini has generally held the first place among Italian historians, though he is by no means equal in literary merit to Machiavel. Adriani, whose continuation of Guicciardini extends to 1574, is little read, nor does he seem to be much recommended by style. No other historian of that country need be mentioned as having been published within the sixteenth century.

|French Memoirs.|

58. The French have ever been distinguished for those personal memoirs of men more or less conversant with public life, to which Philip de Comines led the way. Several that fell within this period are deserving of being read, nor only for their relation of events, with which we do not here much concern ourselves, but for a lively style, and occasionally for good sense and acute thinking. Those of Montluc may be praised for the former. Spain had a considerable historian in Mariana, twenty books of whose history were published in Latin in 1592, and five more in 1595; the concluding five books do not fall within the century. The style is vigorous and classical, the thoughts judicious. Buchanan’s history of Scotland has already been praised for the purity of its language. Few modern histories are more redolent of an antique air. We have nothing to boast in England; our historical works of the Elizabethan age are mere chronicles, and hardly good even as such. Nor do I know any Latin historians of Germany or the Low Countries who, as writers, deserve our attention.

SECT. VII.--GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE.

|Universities in Italy.|

59. The great Italian universities of Bologna, Padua, Pisa, and Pavia, seem to have lost nothing of their lustre throughout the century. New colleges, new buildings in that stately and sumptuous architecture which distinguishes this period, bore witness to a continual patronage, and a public demand for knowledge. It is true that the best days of classical literature had passed away in Italy. But the revival of theological zeal, and of those particular studies which it fostered, might perhaps more than compensate in keeping up a learned class for this decline of philology. The sciences also of medicine and mathematics attracted many more students than before. The Jesuit colleges, and those founded by Gregory XIII., have been mentioned in a former part of this volume. They were endowed at a large expense in that palmy state of the Roman see.

|In other countries.|

60. Universities were founded at Altdorf and Leyden in 1575, at Helmstadt in 1576. Others of less importance began to exist in the same age. The University of Edinburgh derives its origin from the charter of James in 1582. Those of Oxford and Cambridge, reviving as we have seen after a severe shock at the accession of Elizabeth, continued through her reign to be the seats of a progressive and solid erudition. A few colleges were founded in this age. I should have wished to give some sketch of the mode of instruction pursued in these two universities. But sufficient materials have not fallen in my way; what I have been able to glean, has already been given to the reader in former pages of this volume. It was the common practice at Oxford, observed in form down to this century, that every candidate for the degree of bachelor of arts, independently of other exercises, should undergo an examination (become absolutely nominal), in the five sciences of grammar, logic, rhetoric, ethics, and geometry; every one for that of master of arts, in the additional sciences of physics, metaphysics, Hebrew, and some more. These were probably the ancient trivium and quadrivium; enlarged, perhaps after the sixteenth century, according to the increase of learning, and the apparent necessity of higher qualifications. But it would be, I conceive, a great mistake to imagine that the requisitions for academical degrees were ever much insisted upon. The universities sent forth abundance of illiterate graduates in every age. And as they had little influence, at least of a favourable sort, either on philosophy or polite literature, we are not to overrate their importance in the history of the intellectual progress of mankind.[1426]

[1426] Lord Bacon animadverts (De Cogitatis et Visis) on the fetters
which the universities imposed on the investigation of truth; and
Morhof ascribes the establishment of the academies in Italy to the
narrow and pedantic spirit of the universities, l. i. c. 14.

|Libraries.|

61. Public libraries were considerably enlarged during this period. Those of Rome, Ferrara, and Florence in Italy, of Vienna and Heidelberg in Germany, stood much above any others. Sixtus V. erected the splendid repository of the Vatican. Philip II. founded that of the Escurial, perhaps after 1580, and collected books with great labour and expense; all who courted the favour of Spain contributing also by presents of rarities.[1427] Ximenes had established the library of Alcala; and that of Salamanca is likewise more ancient than this of the Escurial. Every king of France took a pride in adding to the royal library of Paris. By an ordinance of 1556, a copy of every book printed with privilege was to be deposited in this library. It was kept at Fontainebleau, but transferred to Paris in 1595. During the civil wars its progress was slow.[1428] The first prince of Orange founded the public library of Leyden, which shortly became one of the best in Europe. The catalogue was published in 1597. That bequeathed by Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to the university of Oxford, was dispersed in the general havoc made under Edward VI. At the close of the century, the university had no public library. But Sir Thomas Bodley had already, in 1597, made the generous offer of presenting his own, which was carried into effect in the first years of the ensuing age.[1429] In the colleges there were generally libraries. If we could believe Scaliger these were good; but he had never been in England, and there is no reason, I believe, to estimate them highly.[1430] Archbishop Parker had founded, or at least greatly enlarged, the public library of Cambridge. Many private persons of learning and opulence had formed libraries in England under Elizabeth; some of which still subsist in the mansions of ancient families. I incline to believe that there was at least as competent a stock of what is generally called learning among our gentry as in any continental kingdom; their education was more literary, their habits more peaceable, their religion more argumentative. Perhaps we should make an exception for Italy, in which the spirit of collecting libraries was more prevalent.

[1427] Mariana, in a long passage wherein he describes the Escurial
palace, gives this account of the library; Vestibulo bibliotheca
imposita, majori longitudine omnino pedum centum octoginta quinque,
lata pedes triginta duos, libros servat præsertim Græcos
manuscriptos, præcipuæ plerosque vetustatis; qui ex omnibus Europæ
partibus ad famam novi operis magno numero confluxerunt: auro
pretiosiores thesauri, _digni quorum evolvendorum major eruditis
hominibus facultas contingeret_. _Quod enim ex captivis et
majestate revinctis literis emolumentum?_ De rege et regis
institutione, l. iii. c. 10. The noble freedom of Mariana breaks
out, we see, in the midst of his praise of royal magnificence. Few,
if any, libraries, except those of the universities, were
accessible to men of studious habits; a reproach that has been very
slowly effaced. I have often been astonished, in considering this,
that so much learning was really acquired.

[1428] Jugler’s Hist. Literaria, c. iii. s. 5. This very laborious work
of the middle of the last century, contains the most ample account
of public libraries throughout Europe that I have been able to
find. The German libraries, with the two exceptions of Vienna and
Heidelberg, do not seem to have become of much importance in the
sixteenth century.

[1429] Wood’s Hist. and Ant. p. 922.

[1430] Scalig. Secunda, p. 236. De mon temps, he says in the same place,
il y avoit à Londres douze bibliothèques _complètes_, et à Paris
quatre-vingt. I do not profess to understand this epithet.

|Collections of Antiquities in Italy.|

62. The last forty years of the sixteenth century, were a period of uninterrupted peace in Italy. Notwithstanding the pressure of governments always jealous, and sometimes tyrannical, it is manifest that at least the states of Venice and Tuscany had grown in wealth, and in the arts that attend it. Those who had been accustomed to endure the license of armies, found a security in the rule of law which compensated for many abuses. Hence that sort of property, which is most exposed to pillage, became again a favourite acquisition; and, among the costly works of art, which adorned the houses of the wealthy, every relic of antiquity found its place. Gems and medals, which the books of Vico and Erizzo had taught the owners to arrange and to appreciate, were sought so eagerly, that, according to Hubert Goltzius, as quoted by Pinkerton, there were in Italy 380 of such collections. The marbles and bronzes, the inscriptions of antiquity, were not less in request, and the well known word, _virtuosi_, applied to these lovers of what was rare and beautiful in art or nature, bespoke the honour in which their pursuits were held. The luxury of literature displayed itself in scarce books, elegant impressions, and sumptuous bindings.

|Pinelli.|

63. Among the refined gentlemen, who devoted to these graceful occupations their leisure and their riches, none was more celebrated than Gian Vincenzio Pinelli. He was born of a good family at Naples in 1538. A strong thirst for knowledge, and the consciousness that his birth exposed him to difficulties and temptations at home which might obstruct his progress, induced him to seek, at the age of twenty-four, the university of Padua, at that time the renowned scene of learning and of philosophy.[1431] In this city he spent forty-three years, the remainder of his life. His father was desirous that he should practise the law; but after a short study of this Pinelli resumed his favourite pursuits. His fortune indeed was sufficiently large to render any sacrifice of them unreasonable; and it may have been out of dislike of his compulsory reading, that in forming his vast library he excluded works of jurisprudence. This library was collected by the labour of many years. The catalogues of the Frankfort fairs, and those of the principal booksellers in Italy, were diligently perused by Pinelli; nor did any work of value appear from the press on either side of the Alps which he did not instantly add to his shelves. This great library was regularly arranged, and though he did not willingly display its stores to the curious and ignorant, they were always accessible to scholars. He had also a considerable museum of globes, maps, mathematical instruments, and fossils; but he only collected the scarcer coins. In his manners, Pinelli was a finely polished gentleman, but of weak health, and for this cause devoted to books, and seldom mingling with gay society, nor even belonging to the literary academies of the city, but carrying on an extensive correspondence, and continually employed in writing extracts or annotations. Yet he has left nothing that has been published. His own house was as it were a perpetual academy, frequented by the learned of all nations. If Pinelli was not a man of great genius, nor born to be of much service to any science, we may still respect him for a love of learning, and a nobleness of spirit, which has preserved his memory.[1432]

[1431] Animadverterat autem hic noster, domi, inter amplexus parentum
et familiarium obsequia, in urbe deliciarum plena, militaribus et
equestribus, quam musarum studiis aptiore, non perventurum sese ad
eam gloriæ metam quam sibi destinaverat, ideo gymnasii Patavini
fama permotus, &c. Gualdi, Vita Pinelli. This life by a
contemporary, or nearly such, is republished in the Vitæ Illustrium
Virorum by Bates.

[1432] Gualdi. Tiraboschi, vi. 214. The library of Pinelli was
dispersed, and in great part destroyed by pirates not long
afterwards. That long since formed by one of his family is well
known to book collectors.

|Italian academies.|

64. The literary academies of Italy continued to flourish even more than before; many new societies of the same kind were founded. Several existed at Florence, but all others have been eclipsed by the Della Crusca, established in 1582. Those of another Tuscan city, which had taken the lead in such literary associations, did not long survive its political independence; the jealous spirit of Cosmo extinguished the Rozzi of Siena in 1568. In governments as suspicious as those of Italy, the sort of secrecy belonging to these meetings, and the encouragement they gave to a sentiment of mutual union, were at least sufficient reasons for watchfulness. We have seen how the academy of Modena was broken up on the score of religion. That of Venice, perhaps for the same reason, was dissolved by the senate in 1561, and did not revive till 1593. These, however, were exceptions to the rule; and it was the general policy of governments to cherish in the nobility a love of harmless amusements. All Lombardy and Romagna were full of academies; they were frequent in the kingdom of Naples, and in the ecclesiastical states.[1433] They are a remarkable feature in the social condition of Italy, and could not have existed perhaps in any other country. They were the encouragers of a numismatic and lapidary erudition, elegant in itself, and throwing for ever its little sparks of light on the still ocean of the past, but not very favourable to comprehensive observation, and tending to bestow on an unprofitable pedantry the honours of real learning. This, indeed, is the inherent vice of all literary societies, accessible too frequently to those who, for amusement or fashion’s sake, love as much knowledge as can be reached with facility, and from the nature of their transactions, seldom capable of affording scope for any extensive research.

[1433] Tiraboschi, viii. 125-179, is so full on this subject, that I
have not had recourse to other writers who have, sometimes with
great prolixity, investigated a subject more interesting in its
details to the Italians than to us. Ginguéné adds very little to
what he found in his predecessor.

|Society of Antiquaries in England.|

65. No academy or similar institution can be traced at this time, as far as I know, in France or Germany. But it is deserving of remark, that one sprung up in England, not indeed of the classical and polite character that belonged to the Infiammati of Padua, or the Della Crusca of Florence, yet useful in its objects, and honourable alike to its members and to the country. This was the Society of Antiquaries, founded by Archbishop Parker in 1572. Their object was the preservation of ancient documents, illustrative of history, which the recent dissolution of religious houses, and the shameful devastation attending it, had exposed to great peril. They intended also, by the reading of papers at their meetings, to keep alive the love and knowledge of English antiquity. In the second of these objects this society was more successful than in the first; several short dissertations, chiefly by Arthur Agard, their most active member, have been afterwards published. The Society comprised very reputable names, chiefly lawyers, and continued to meet till early in the reign of James, who, from some jealousy, thought fit to dissolve it.[1434]

[1434] See life of Agard, in Biogr. Brit. and in Chalmers. But the best
account is in the Introduction to the first volume of the
Archæologia. The present society of Antiquaries is the
representative, but after long intermission, of this Elizabethan
progenitor.

|New books and catalogues of them.|