Chapter VI: Third Period of Humanism (2)

The fame of this great undertaking attracted universal attention to Poliziano. It is probable that Ficino first introduced him to Lorenzo de' Medici, who received the young student into his own household, and made himself responsible for his future fortunes. 'The liberality of Lorenzo de' Medici, that great and wise man,' wrote Poliziano in after years, 'raised me from the obscure and humble station where my birth had placed me, to that degree of dignity and distinction I now enjoy, with no other recommendation than my literary abilities.' Before he had reached the age of thirty, Poliziano professed the Greek and Latin literatures in the University of Florence, and received the care of Lorenzo's children. If Lorenzo represents the statecraft of his age, Poliziano is no less emphatically the representative of its highest achievements in scholarship. He was the first Italian to combine perfect mastery over Latin and a correct sense of Greek with a splendid genius for his native literature. Filelfo boasted that he could write both classic languages with equal ease, and exercised his prosy muse in _terza rima_. But Filelfo had no fire of poetry, no sense of style. Poliziano, on the contrary, was a born poet, a _sacer vates_ in the truest sense of the word. I shall have to speak elsewhere of his Italian verses: those who have studied them know that the 'Orfeo,' the 'Stanze,' and the 'Rime' justify Poliziano's claim to the middle place of honour between Petrarch and Ariosto. Italian poetry took a new direction from his genius, and everything he penned was fruitful of results for the succeeding generation. Of his Latin poetry, in like manner, I propose to treat at greater length in the following chapter.

The spirit of Roman literature lived again in Poliziano. If he cannot be compared with the Augustan authors, he will pass muster at least with the poets of the silver age. Neither Statius nor Ausonius produced more musical hexameters, or expressed their feeling for natural beauty in phrases marked with more spontaneous grace. Of his Greek elegiacs only a few specimens survive. These, in spite of certain licenses not justified by pure Greek prosody, might claim a place in the 'Anthology,' among the epigrams of Agathias and Paulus Silentiarius.[325] The Doric couplets on two beautiful boys, and the love sonnet to the youth Chrysocomus, read like extracts from the [Greek: Mousa paidikê].[326] What is remarkable about the Greek and Latin poetry of Poliziano is that the flavour of the author's Italian style transpires in them. They are no mere imitations of the classics. The 'roseate fluency' of the 'Rime' reappears in these _prolusiones_, making it manifest that the three languages were used with equal facility, and that on each of them the poet set the seal of his own genius.

[Footnote 325: Julius Cæsar Scaliger wrote thus about them in the _Hypercriticus_:--'Græcis vero, quæ puerum se conscripsisse dicit, ætatem minus prudenter apposuit suam; tam enim bona sunt ut ne virum quidem Latina æque bene scripsisse putem.']

[Footnote 326: _Quinque Illustrium Poetarum Carmina_, pp. 299, 301. These epigrams, as well as two on pp. 303, 307, are significant in their illustration of the poet's morality. Giovio's account of Poliziano's death was certainly accepted by contemporaries:--'_Ferunt eum ingenui adolescentis insano amore percitum facile in letalem morbum incidisse._' The whole _Elogium_, however, is a covert libel, like many of Giovio's sketches.]

What has been said about his verse, applies with no less force to his prose composition. Poliziano wrote Latin, as though it were a living language, not culling phrases from Cicero or reproducing the periods of Livy, but trusting to his instinct and his ear, with the facility of conscious power. The humanism of the first and second periods attained to the freedom of fine art in Poliziano. Through him, as through a lens, the rays of previous culture were transmitted in a column of pure light. He realised what the Italians had been striving after--the new birth of antiquity in a living man of the modern world. By way of modifying this high panegyric, it may be conceded that Poliziano had the defects of his qualities. Using Latin with the freedom of a master, he was not careful to purge his style of obsolete words and far-fetched phrases, or to maintain the diction of one period in each composition. His fluency betrayed him into verbiage, and his descriptions are often more diffuse than vigorous. Nor will he bear comparison with some more modern scholars on the point of accuracy. The merit, however, remains to him of having been the most copious and least slavish interpreter of the ancient to the modern world. His very imperfections, when judged by the standard of Bembo, place him above the purists, inasmuch as he possessed the power and courage to express himself in his own idiom, instead of treading cautiously in none but Ciceronian or Virgilian footprints.

As a professor, none of the humanists achieved more brilliant successes than Poliziano. Among his pupils could be numbered the chief students of Europe. Not to mention Italians, it will suffice to record the names of Reuchlin, Grocin, Linacre, and the Portuguese Tessiras, who carried each to his own country the culture they had gained in Florence. The first appearance of Poliziano in the lecture-room was not calculated to win admiration. Ill-formed, with eyes that had something of a squint in them, and a nose of disproportionate size, he seemed more fit to be a solitary scholar than the Orpheus of the classic literature.[327] Yet no sooner had he opened his lips and begun to speak, with the exquisite and varied intonations of a singularly beautiful voice, than his listeners were chained to their seats. The ungainliness of the teacher was forgotten; charmed through their ears and their intellect, they eagerly drank in his eloquence, applauding the improvisations wherewith he illustrated the spirit and intention of his authors, and silently absorbing the vast and well-ordered stores of knowledge he so prodigally scattered. It would not be profitable to narrate here at any length what is known about the topics of these lectures. Poliziano not only covered the whole ground of classic literature during the years of his professorship, but also published the notes of courses upon Ovid, Suetonius, Statius, the younger Pliny, the writers of Augustan histories, and Quintilian. Some of his best Latin poems were written by way of preface to the authors he explained in public. Virgil was celebrated in the 'Manto,' and Homer in the 'Ambra;' the 'Rusticus' served as prelude to the 'Georgics,' while the 'Nutricia' formed an introduction to the study of ancient and modern poetry. Nor did he confine his attention to fine literature. The curious prælection in prose called 'Lamia' was intended as a prelude to the prior 'Analytics' of Aristotle. Among his translations must be mentioned Epictetus, Herodian, Hippocrates, Galen, Plutarch's 'Eroticus,' and the 'Charmides' of Plato. His greatest achievement, however, was the edition of the 'Pandects' of Justinian from the famous MS. of which Florence had robbed Pisa, as the Pisans had previously taken it from Amalfi. It must not be forgotten that all these undertakings involved severe labours of correction and criticism. MSS. had to be compared and texts settled, when as yet the apparatus for this higher form of scholarship was miserably scanty. Though students before Poliziano had understood the necessity of collating codices, determining their relative ages, and tracing them, if possible, to their authoritative sources, he was the first to do this systematically and with judgment. To emendation he only had recourse when the text seemed hopeless. His work upon the 'Pandects' alone implies the expenditure of enormous toil.

[Footnote 327: 'Erat distortis sæpe moribus, uti facie nequaquam ingenuâ et liberali ab enormi præsertim naso, subluscoque oculo perabsurdâ.' Giovio, _Elogia_. Cf. Poliziano's own verses to Mabilius, beginning:--

Quod nasum mihi, quod reflexa colla
Demens objicis.

_Carmina Quinque Poetarum_, p. 277.]

The results of Poliziano's more fugitive studies, and some notes of conversations on literary topics with Lorenzo, were published in 1489 under the title of 'Miscellanea.'[328] The form was borrowed from the 'Noctes Atticæ' of Aulus Gellius; in matter this collection anticipated the genial criticisms of Erasmus. The excitement caused by its appearance is vividly depicted in the following letter of Jacopus Antiquarius, secretary to the Duke of Milan:[329]--'Going lately, according to my custom, into one of the public offices, I found a number of the young clerks neglecting their prince's business, and lost in the study of a book which had been distributed in sheets among them. When I asked what new book had appeared, they answered, Politian's "Miscellanies." I mounted their desk, sat down among them, and began to read with equal eagerness. But, as I could not spend much time there, I sent at once to the bookseller's stall for a copy of the work.' By this time Poliziano's fame had eclipsed that of all his contemporaries. He corresponded familiarly with native and foreign princes, and held a kind of court at Florence among men of learning who came from all parts of Italy to converse with him. This popularity grew even burdensome, or at any rate he affected to find it so. 'Does a man want a motto for his sword's hilt or a posy for a ring,' he writes,[330] 'an inscription for his bedroom or a device for his plate, or even for his pots and pans, he runs like all the world to Politian. There is hardly a wall I have not besmeared, like a snail, with the effusions of my brain. One teazes me for catches and drinking-songs, another for a grave discourse, a third for a serenade, a fourth for a Carnival ballad.' In executing these commissions he is said to have shown great courtesy; nor did they probably cost him much trouble, for in all his work he was no less rapid than elegant. He boasted that he had dictated the translation of Herodian while walking up and down his room, within the space of a day or two; and the chief fault of his verses is their fluency.

[Footnote 328: The first words of the dedication run as follows:--'Cum tibi superioribus diebus Laurenti Medices, nostra hæc Miscellanea _inter equitandum_ recitaremus.']

[Footnote 329: _Angeli Politiani Epistolæ_, lib. iii. ed. Ald. 1498. The letter is dated Nov. 1488.]

[Footnote 330: In a letter to Hieronymus Donatus, dated Florence, May 1480, _Angeli Politiani Epistolæ_, lib. ii.]

It still remains to speak of Poliziano's personal relations to the Medicean family. When he first entered the household of Lorenzo, he undertook the tuition of his patron's sons, and continued to superintend their education until their mother Clarice saw reason to mistrust his personal influence. There were, no doubt, many points in the great scholar's character that justified her thinking him unfit to be the constant companion of young men. Whatever may be the truth about the cause of his last illness, enough remains of his Greek and Italian verses to prove that his morality was lax, and his conception of life rather Pagan than Christian.[331] Clarice contrived that he should not remain under the same roof with her children; and though his friendly intercourse with the Medicean family continued uninterrupted, it would seem that after 1480 he only gave lessons in the classics to his former pupils.

[Footnote 331: The well-known scandal about Poliziano's death is traceable to the _Elogia_ of Paulus Jovius--very suspicious authority. See above, p. 252, note 2.]

Poliziano, proud as he was of his attainments, lacked the nobler quality of self-respect. He condescended to flatter Lorenzo, and to beg for presents, in phrases that remind us of Filelfo's prosiest epigrams.[332] That a scholar should vaunt his own achievements[333] and extol his patron to the skies, that he should ask for money and set off his panegyrics against payment, seemed not derogatory to a man of genius in the fifteenth century. Yet these habits of literary mendicancy and toad-eating proved a most pernicious influence. Italian literature never lost the superlatives and exaggerations imported by the humanists, and Pietro Aretino may be called the lineal descendant of Filelfo and Poliziano.

[Footnote 332: The most curious of these elegiac poems are given in _Carmina Quinque Illustrium Poetarum_, p. 234. It is possible that their language ought not to be taken literally, and that they concealed a joke now lost.]

[Footnote 333: Poliziano's letter to Matthias Corvinus is a good example of his self-laudation.]

It must be allowed that to overpraise Lorenzo from a scholar's point of view would have been difficult, while the affection that bound the student to his patron was genuine. Poliziano, who watched Lorenzo in his last moments, described the scene of his death in a letter marked by touching sorrow which he addressed to Antiquari, and proved by the Latin monody which he composed and left unfinished, that grief for his dead master could inspire his muse with loftier strains than any expectation of future favours while he lived had done.

Two years after Lorenzo's death Poliziano died himself, dishonoured and suspected by the Piagnoni. Savonarola had swept the Carnival chariots and masks and gimcracks of Lorenzo's holiday reign into the dust-heap. Instead of _rispetti_ and _ballate_, the refrain of Misereres filled the city, and the Dominican's prophecy of blood and ruin drowned with its thundrous reverberations the scholarlike disquisitions of Greek professors. Poliziano's lament for Lorenzo was therefore, as it were, a prophecy of his own fate:

Quis dabit capiti meo
Aquam? quis oculis meis
Fontem lachrymarum dabit?
Ut nocte fleam,
Ut luce fleam.
Sic turtur viduus solet,
Sic cygnus moriens solet,
Sic luscinia conqueri.

'Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night! So mourns the widowed turtle dove; so mourns the dying swan; so mourns the nightingale.' Into these passionate words of wailing, unique in the literature of humanism by their form alike and feeling, breaks the threnody of the abandoned scholar. 'Ah, woe! Ah, woe is me! O grief! O grief! Lightning hath struck our laurel tree, our laurel dear to all the Muses and the dances of the Nymphs, beneath whose spreading boughs the God of Song himself more sweetly harped and sang. Now all around is dumb; now all is mute, and there is none to hear. Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears!'

This at least of grace the gods allowed Poliziano, that he should die in the same year as his friend Pico della Mirandola, a few weeks before the deluge prophesied by Savonarola burst over Italy. Upon his tomb in S. Marco a burlesque epitaph was inscribed--

Politianus
in hoc tumulo jacet
Angelus unum
qui caput et linguas
res nova tres habuit.
Obiit an. MCCCCLXXXXIV
Sep. XXIV. Ætatis
XL.[334]

[Footnote 334: 'Poliziano lies in this grave, the angel who had one head and, what is new, three tongues. He died September 24, 1494, aged 40.']

Bembo, who succeeded him in the dictatorship of Italian letters, composed a not unworthy elegy upon the man whom he justly apostrophised as 'Poliziano, master of the Ausonian lyre.'

The fortunes of Roman scholarship kept varying with the personal tastes of each successive Pope. Calixtus III. differed wholly from his predecessor, Nicholas V. Learned in theology and mediæval science, he was dead to the interests of humanistic literature. Vespasiano assures us that, when he entered the Vatican library and saw its Greek and Latin authors in their red and silver bindings, instead of praising the munificence of Nicholas, he exclaimed, 'Vedi in che egli ha consumato la robba della Chiesa di Dio!'[335] Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini ranked high among the humanists. As an orator, courtier, state secretary, and man of letters, he shared the general qualities of the class to which he belonged. While a fellow-student of Beccadelli at Siena, he freely enjoyed the pleasures of youth, and thought it no harm to compose novels in the style of Longus and Achilles Tatius. These stories, together with his familiar letters, histories, cosmographical treatises, rhetorical disquisitions, apophthegms, and commentaries, written in a fluent and picturesque Latin style, distinguished him for wit and talent from the merely laborious students of his age.[336] A change, however, came over him when he assumed the title of Pius II. with the tiara.[337] Learning in Italy owed but little to his patronage, and though he strengthened the position of the humanists at Rome by founding the College of Abbreviators, he was more eager to defend Christendom against the Turk than to make his See the capital of culture. For this it would be narrow-minded to blame Pius. The experience of European politics had extended his view beyond the narrower circle of Italian interests; and there is something noble as well as piteous in his attempt to lead the forlorn hope of a cosmopolitan cause. Paul II. was chiefly famous for his persecution of the Roman Platonists;[338] and Sixtus IV., though he deserves to be remembered as the Pontiff who opened the Vatican library to the public, plays no prominent part in the history of scholarship. Tiraboschi may be consulted for his refusal to pay the professors of the Roman Sapienza. Of Innocent VIII. nothing need be said; nor will any student of history expect to find it recorded that Alexander VI. wasted money on the patronage of learning. To the Borgia, indeed, the world owes that curse of Catholicism, that continued crime of high treason against truth and liberal culture, the subjection of the press to ecclesiastical control.

[Footnote 335: 'Behold whereon he spent the substance of the Church of God!' Vespasiano adds that he gave away several hundred volumes to one of the cardinals, whose servants sold them for an old song. Vesp. p. 216. Assemani, the historian of the Vatican Library, on the contrary, asserts that Calixtus spent 40,000 ducats on books. It is not likely, however, that Vespasiano was wholly in error about a matter he understood so well, and had so much at heart.]

[Footnote 336: See the Basle edition of his collected works, 1571.]

[Footnote 337: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 299.]

[Footnote 338: Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, pp. 302-303.]

Under these Popes humanism had to flourish, as it best could, in the society of private individuals. Accordingly, we find the Roman scholars forming among themselves academies and learned circles. Of these the most eminent took its name from its founder, Julius Pomponius Lætus. He was a bastard of the princely House of the Sanseverini, to whom, when he became famous and they were anxious for his friendship, he penned the celebrated epistle: '_Pomponius Lætus cognatis et propinquis suis salutem. Quod petitis fieri non potest. Valete._'[339] Pomponius derived his scholarship from Valla, and devoted all his energies to Latin literature, refusing, it is even said, to learn Greek, lest it should distract him from his favourite studies. He made it the object of his most serious endeavours not only to restore a knowledge of the ancients, but also to assimilate his life and manners to their standard. Men praised in him a second Cato for sobriety of conduct, frugal diet, and rural industry. He tilled his own ground after the methods of Varro and Columella, went a-fishing and a-fowling on holidays, and ate his sparing meal like a Roman Stoic beneath the spreading branches of an oak on the Campagna. The grand mansions of the prelates had no attractions for him. He preferred his own modest house upon the Esquiline, his garden on the Quirinal. It was here that his favourite scholars conversed with him at leisure; and to these retreats of the philosopher came strangers of importance, eager to behold a Roman living in all points like an antique sage. The high school of Rome owed much to his indefatigable industry. Through a long series of years he lectured upon the chief Latin authors, examining their text with critical accuracy, and preparing new editions of their works. Before daybreak he would light his lantern, take his staff, and wend his way from the Esquiline to the lecture-room, where, however early the hour and however inclement the season, he was sure to find an overflowing audience. Yet it was not as a professor that Pomponius Lætus acquired his great celebrity, and left a lasting impress on the society of Rome. This he did by forming an academy for the avowed purpose of prosecuting the study of Latin antiquities and promoting the adoption of antique customs into modern life. The members assumed classical names, exchanging their Italian patronymics for fancy titles like Callimachus Experiens, Asclepiades, Glaucus, Volscus, and Petrejus. They yearly kept the birthday feast of Rome, celebrating the Palilia with Pagan solemnities, playing comedies of Plautus, and striving to revive the humours of the old Atellan farces. Of this circle Pontanus and Sannazzaro, Platina, Sabellicus and Molza, Janus Parrhasius, and the future Paul III. were proud to call themselves the members. It is only from the language in which such men refer to Lætus that we gain a due notion of his influence; for he left but little behind him as an author, and used himself to boast that, like Socrates and Christ, he hoped to be remembered through his pupils. In the year 1468 this Roman academy acquired fresh celebrity by the persecution of Paul II., who partly suspected a political object in its meetings, and partly resented the open heathenism of its leaders. I need not here repeat the tale of his crusade against the scholars. It is enough to mention that Lætus was imprisoned for a short while, and that in prison he wrote an apology for his life, defending himself against a charge of misplaced passion for a young Venetian pupil, and professing the sincerity of his belief in Christianity. After his release from the Castle of S. Angelo he was obliged to discontinue the meetings of his academy, which were not resumed until the reign of Sixtus. Pomponius Lætus lived on into the Papacy of Alexander, and died in 1498 at the age of seventy. His corpse was crowned with a laurel wreath in the Church of Araceli. Forty bishops, together with the foreign ambassadors in Rome and the representatives of the Borgia, who were specially deputed for that purpose, witnessed the ceremony and listened to the funeral oration. Lætus had desired that his body should be placed in a sarcophagus upon the Appian Way. This wish was not complied with. He was conveyed from Araceli to S. Salvatore in Lauro, and there buried like a Christian.

[Footnote 339: 'P.L. to his kinsmen and relatives, greeting. What you ask cannot be. Farewell.']

While the academy of Pomponius Lætus flourished at Rome, that of Naples was no less active under the presidency of Jovianus Pontanus. It appears to have originated in social gatherings assembled by Beccadelli, and to have held its meetings in a building called after its founder the _Porticus Antonianus_. When death had broken up the brilliant circle surrounding Alfonso the Magnanimous, Pontanus assumed the leadership of learned men in Naples, and gave the formality of a club to what had previously been a mere reunion of cultivated scholars. The members Latinised their names; many of them became better known by their assumed titles than by their Italian cognomens. Sannazzaro, for instance, acquired a wide celebrity as Accius Syncerus. Pontanus was himself a native of Cereto in the Spoletano. Born in 1426, he settled in his early manhood at Naples, where Beccadelli introduced him to his royal patrons. During the reigns of Ferdinand I., Alfonso II., and Ferdinand II. Pontanus held the post of secretary, tutor, and ambassador, accompanying his masters on their military expeditions and negotiating their affairs at the Papal Court. When Charles VIII. entered Naples as a conqueror, Pontanus greeted him with a panegyrical oration, proving himself more courtly and self-seeking than loyal to the princes he had served so long. Guicciardini observes that this act of ingratitude stained the fair fame of Pontanus. Yet it may be pleaded in his defence that no moralist of the period had more boldly denounced the crimes and vices of Italian princes; and it is possible that Pontanus really hoped Charles might inaugurate a better age for Naples.

He was distinguished among the scholars of his time for the purity of his Latin style; to him belongs the merit of having written verse that might compete with good models of antiquity. His hexameters on stars and meteors, called 'Urania,' won the enthusiastic praise of his own generation, and subsequently served as model to Fracastoro for his own didactic poem. His amatory elegiacs have an exuberance of colouring and sensuous force of phrase that seem peculiarly appropriate to the Bay of Naples, where they were inspired. As a prose-writer it is particularly by his moral treatises that Pontanus deserves to be remembered. Unlike the mass of contemporary dialogues on ethical subjects, they abound in illustrations drawn from recent history, so that even now they may be advantageously consulted by students anxious to gather characteristic details and to form a just opinion of Renaissance morality. Throughout his writings Pontanus shows himself to have been an original and vigorous thinker, a complete master of Latin scholarship, unwilling to abide contented with bare imitation, and bent upon expressing the facts of modern life, the actualities of personal emotion, in a style of accurate Latinity. When he died in 1503, he left at Naples one of the most flourishing schools of neopagan poets to be found in Italy; Lilius Gyraldus employs the old metaphor of the Trojan horse to describe the number and the vigour of the scholars who issued from it.

In the Church of Monte Oliveto at Naples there may be seen a group in terra cotta painted to imitate life. Alfonso II., Pontanus, and Sannazzaro are kneeling in adoration before the body of the dead Christ. Pontanus, who represents Nicodemus, is a stern, hard-featured, long-faced man, of powerful bone and fibrous sinews, built for serious labour in the study or the field. Sannazzaro, who stands for Joseph of Arimathea, is bald, fat-faced, with bushy eyebrows and a heavy cast of countenance. The physical characteristics of these men and their act of faith are in curious contradiction with the conception we form of them after reading the 'Elegies' and the 'Arcadia.'

The Roman Academy of Pomponius Læetus and the Neapolitan Academy of Pontanus continued to exist after the death of their founders, while similar institutions sprang up in every town of Italy. To speak of these in detail would be quite impossible. With the commencement of the sixteenth century they lost their classical character, and assumed fantastic Italian titles. Thus the Roman coterie of wits and scholars called itself _I Vignaiuoli_. The members, among whom were Berni, La Casa, Firenzuola, Mauro, Molza, assumed titles like _L'Agreste_, _Il Mosto_, _Il Cotogno_, and so forth. The Cardinal Ippolito de' Medici founded a club in Rome for the study of Vitruvius. It met twice in the week, and was known as _Le Virtù_. At Bologna the _Viridario_ devoted its energies to the correction of printed texts; the _Sitibondi_ studied law, the _Desti_ cultivated extinct chivalry. Besides these, the one town of Bologna produced _Sonnacchiosi_, _Oziosi_, _Desiosi_, _Storditi_, _Confusi_, _Politici_, _Instabili_, _Gelati_, _Umorosi_. As the century advanced, academies multiplied in Italy, and their titles became more absurd. Ravenna had its _Informi_, Faenza its _Smarriti_, Macerata its _Catenati_, Fabriano its _Disuniti_, Perugia its _Insensati_, Urbino its _Assorditi_, Naples its _Sereni_, _Ardenti_, and _Incogniti_--and so on _ad infinitum_. At Florence the Platonic Academy continued to flourish under the auspices of the Rucellai family, in whose gardens assembled the company described by Filippo de' Nerli,[340] until the year 1522, when it was suppressed on the occasion of the conspiracy against Giulio de' Medici. Duke Cosimo revived it under the name of the Florentine Academy in 1540, when its labours were wholly devoted to Petrarch and the Italian language. In 1572 appeared the famous academy called _Della Crusca_, the only one among these later societies which acquired an European reputation.

[Footnote 340: See Vol. I., _Age of the Despots_, p. 220, note.]

Those who are curious to follow the history of the academies, may be referred to the comprehensive notices of Tiraboschi. From the date of their Italianisation they cease to belong to the history of humanism; what justifies the mention of them here is the fact that they owed their first existence to the scholars of the third period. The worst faults of Italian erudition--pedantry and stylistic affectations--were perpetuated by coteries worshipping Petrarch and peddling with the idlest of all literary problems, where so great a writer as Annibale Caro thought it in good taste to write a dissertation on the nose of a president, and where the industry of sensible men was absorbed in the concoction of sonnets by the myriad and childish puns on their own titles. During the following age of political stagnation and ecclesiastical oppression the academies were the playthings of a nation fast degenerating into intellectual hebetude. Not without amazement do we read the eulogies pronounced by Milton on the 'learned and affable meeting of frequent academies, and the procurement of wise and artful recitations, sweetened with eloquent and graceful incitements to the love and practice of justice, temperance, and fortitude.' What he had observed with admiration in Italy, he would fain have seen imitated in England, undeterred apparently by the impotence and sterility of academic dissertations.[341]

[Footnote 341: See the _Reason of Church Government urged against Prelaty_, and the _Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth_.]

It remains to speak of the establishment of printing in Italy, an event no less important for the preservation and diffusion of classical learning than the previous discovery of MSS. had been indispensable for its revival. What has to be said about the erudite society of Venice may appropriately be introduced in this connection; while the final honours of the third period will be seen to belong of right to one of Italy's most noble-minded scholars, Aldus Manutius.

In 1462 Adolph of Nassau pillaged Maintz and dispersed its printers over Europe. Three years later two Germans, by name Sweynheim and Pannartz, who had worked under Fust, set up a press in Subbiaco, a little village of the Sabine mountains. Here, in October 1465, the first edition of Lactantius saw the light. The German printers soon afterwards removed from Subbiaco, and settled, under the protection of the Massimi, in Rome, where they continued to issue Latin authors from their press.[342] In 1646 John of Spires established himself at Venice. He was soon afterwards joined by his brother Vindelino (so the Italians write the name) and by Nicholas Jenson, the Frenchman. Florence had no press till 1471, when Bernardo Cennini printed the commentary of Servius on Virgil's 'Bucolics.' The 'Georgics' and 'Æneid' appeared in the following year. To Cennini, however, belongs the honour of having been the first Italian to cast his own type. Like many other illustrious artificers, he was by trade a goldsmith; in his address to the reader he styles himself _aurifex omnium judicio præstantissimus_, adding, with reference to the typography, _expressis ante calide caracteribus ac deinde fusis literis volumen hoc primum impresserunt_. The last sentence of the address should also be quoted: _Florentinis ingeniis nil ardui est_. Other printers opened workshops in Florence within the course of a few years--John of Maintz in 1472, Nicholas of Breslau in 1477, Antonio Miscomini in 1481, and Lorenzo Alopa of Venice, who gave Homer with Greek type to the world in 1488. Still, Florence had been anticipated by many other cities; for when once the new art took root in Italy, it spread like wild fire. Omitting smaller places from the calculation, it has been reckoned that, before the year 1500, 4,987 books were printed in Italy, of which 298 are claimed by Bologna, 300 by Florence, 629 by Milan, 929 by Rome, and 2,835 by Venice. The disproportion between the activity of Florence and of Venice in the book trade deserves to be noticed, though how it should be explained I hardly know. Fifty towns and numbers of insignificant burghs--Pinerolo, Savona, Pieve di Sacco, Cividale, Soncino, Chivasso, Scandiano, for example--could boast of local presses. Ambulant printers established their machinery for half a year or so in a remote village, printed what came to hand there, and moved on.

[Footnote 342: From a memorial presented by these printers to Sixtus IV. in 1472 we ascertain some facts about their industry. They had at that date printed in all 12,495 volumes. It was their custom to issue 265 copies each edition; the double of that number for Virgil, Cicero's separate works, and theological books in request. Cantù, _Lett. It._ p. 112. See Cantù, p. 110, for details of the earliest Latin books.]

While scholars rejoiced in the art that, to quote the word of one of them, 'had saved the labour of their aching joints,' the copyists complained that their occupation would be taken from them. The whistle of the locomotive at the beginning of this century was not more afflicting to stage-coachmen than the creaking of the wooden printing press to those poor scribes. Yet, however quickly a labour-saving invention may spread, there is generally time for the superseded industry to die an easy death, and for artisans to find employment in the new trade. Vespasiano, who during twenty-six years survived the first book printed in Florence, could even afford to despise the press.[343] The great nobles, on whose patronage he depended, did not suddenly transfer their custom from the scribe to the compositor; nor was it to be expected that so essentially a democratic art as printing should find immediate favour with the aristocracy. A prince with a library of MSS. worth 40,000 ducats hated the machine that put an equal number of more readable volumes within the reach of moderate competency. Moreover, a certain suspicion of subversiveness and license clung about the press. This was to some extent justified by fact, since the press was destined to be the most formidable engine of the modern reason. Ecclesiastics, again, questioned whether the promiscuous multiplication of books were pious; and Alexander VI. stretched his hand out to coerce the printer's devil. To check the spread of printing would, however, have overtaxed the powers of any human tyranny. All that the Church could do was to place its productions under episcopal control.

[Footnote 343: See above, p. 220.]

Though the copyists of MSS. were thrown out of work by the printing press, it gave important stimulus to other industries in Italy. The paper mills of Fabriano and of Colle in the Val d'Elsa became valuable properties;[344] compositors and readers began to form a separate class of artisans, while needy scholars found a market for their talents in the houses of the publishers. When we consider the amount of literary work that had to be performed before Greek, Latin, and Hebrew texts could be prepared for the press, the difficulty of procuring correct copies of authoritative codices, and the scrupulous attention expended upon proof sheets, we are able to understand that men who lived by learning found the new art profitable.

[Footnote 344: It is supposed that the earliest paper factory established in Italy was at Fabriano. Colle, a little town near Volterra, made paper from a remote period; by a deed, dated March 6, 1377, now preserved in the Florentine Archivio Diplomatico, one Colo da Colle rented a fall of water there _et gualcheriam ad faciendas cartas_ for twenty years. Both places are still celebrated for their paper mills.]

Instead of having previous editions to work upon, the publishers were obliged, in the first instance, to collect MSS. For this purpose they either travelled themselves from city to city, or employed competent amanuenses. Next, it was necessary to study the philosophers, poets, historians, mathematicians, and mystics, whose works they intended to print, in order that no mistake in the sense of the words should be made. Orthography and punctuation had to be fixed; and between many readings only one could be adopted. Giving a first edition to the world involved far more anxiety on these points than the reproduction of a book already often printed. No one man could accomplish such tasks alone. Therefore we find that scores of learned men were associated together for the purpose, living under the same roof, revising the copy for the compositor, overlooking the men at work, reading the text aloud, and correcting the proofs with a vigilance that is but little needed nowadays. All this labour, moreover, was accomplished without the aid of grammars, lexicons, and other aids. Truly we may say without exaggeration that the Aldi of Venice and the Stephani of Paris are more worthy of commemoration for services rendered through scholarship to humanity than those modern castigators of ancient texts, the Porsons and the Lachmanns, whose names are on every lip. The enthusiasm of discovery, and the rich field for original industry offered to those early editors, may be reckoned as compensation for their otherwise overwhelming toil.

Teobaldo Mannucci, better known as Aldo Manuzio, was born in 1450 at Sermoneta, near Velletri. After residing as a client in the princely house of Carpi, he added the name Pio to his patronymic, and signed his publications with the full description, _Aldus Pius Manutius Romanus et Philhellen_, [Greek: Aldos ho Manoutios Rômaios kai Philellên]. He studied Latin at Rome under Gasparino da Verona, and Greek at Ferrara under Guarino da Verona, to whom he dedicated his Theocritus in 1495. Having qualified himself for undertaking the work of tutor or professor, according to the custom of the century, and having made friends with many of the principal Italian scholars, he went in 1482 to reside at Mirandola with his old friend and fellow student, Giovanni Pico. There he stayed two years, enjoying the society of the Phoenix of his age, and continuing his Greek studies in concert with Emmanuel Adramyttenos, a learned Cretan. Before Pico removed to Florence he procured for Aldo the post of tutor to his nephews Alberto and Lionello Pio. Carpi had owned the family of Pio for its masters since the thirteenth century, when they rose to power, like many of the Lombard nobles, by adroit use of Imperial privileges.[345] This little city, placed midway between Correggio, Mirandola, and Modena, is so insignificant that its name has been omitted from the index to Murray's handbook; nor is there indeed much but the memory of Aldo and Alberto Pio, and a church built by Baldassare Peruzzi, to recommend it to the notice of a traveller. Under the tuition of Aldo the two young princes became excellent scholars. Alberto in particular proved, by his aptitude for philosophical studies, that he had inherited from his mother, the sister of Giovanni Pico, something of the spirit of Mirandola. When Aldus published his great edition of Aristotle, he inscribed it to his former pupil with a Greek dedication, in which he styled him [Greek: tô tôn ontôn erastê]. There can be no doubt that Alberto's knowledge of Greek language and philosophy was far more thorough than that of many more belauded princes of the age. Yet he had but little opportunity for the quiet prosecution of classical studies, or for the patronage of learned men at Carpi. Driven from his patrimony by the Imperialists, he died at Paris in 1530, after a life spent in foreign service and diplomatic offices of trust. The bronze monument for his tomb may still be seen[346] in the Gallery of the Louvre. The princely scholar, clad in rich Renaissance armour, is reclining with his head supported by his right hand; the left holds an open book. The attitude of melancholy meditation, the ornamental but useless cuirass, and the volume open while the scabbard of the sword is shut, add to the portrait of this prince in exile the value of an allegory. Such symbols suited the genius of Italy during the age of foreign invaders.

[Footnote 345: Sansovino, in his _Famiglie Illustri_, after giving a fabulous pedigree of the Pio family, dates their signorial importance from the reign of Frederick II.]

[Footnote 346: Executed for the Church of the Cordeliers by Paulus Pontius.]

To Alberto Pio the world owes a debt of gratitude, inasmuch as he supplied Aldo with the funds necessary for starting his printing press, and gave him lands at Carpi, where his family were educated. When Aldo conceived the ambitious project of printing the whole literature of Greece, four Italian towns could already claim the honours of Greek publications. Milan takes the lead. In 1476 the Grammar of Lascaris was printed there by Dionysius Paravisini, with the aid of Demetrius of Crete.[347] In 1480 Esop and Theocritus appeared, with no publisher's name. In 1486 two Cretans, Alexander and Laonicenus, edited a Greek psalter. In 1493 Isocrates, prepared by Demetrius Chalcondylas, was issued by Henry the German and Sebastian of Pontremolo. Next comes Venice, where, as early as 1484, the 'Erotemata' of Chrysoloras had been produced by a certain Peregrinus Bononiensis. Vicenza followed in 1488 with a reprint of Lascaris's Grammar due to Leonard Achates of Basle, and in 1490 with a reprint of the 'Erotemata.' Florence, as we have already seen, gave Homer to the world in 1488. Demetrius Chalcondylas revised the text; Demetrius the Cretan supplied the models for the types; Alopa of Venice was the publisher. It will be remarked that, with the exception of Homer and Theocritus, no true classic of the first magnitude had appeared before the foundation of the Aldine Press. I may also add that the Milanese Isocrates was really contemporaneous with the Musæus, Galeomyomachia, and Psalter issued by Aldo as precursors of his Greek library--[Greek: Prodromoi tês Hellênikês bibliothêkês]. This fact makes his thirty-three first editions of all the greatest and most voluminous Greek authors between 1494 and 1515 all the more remarkable.

[Footnote 347: Poliziano's epigram addressed to these earliest Greek printers may be quoted here:

Qui colis Aonidas, Grajos quoque volve libellos;
Namque illas genuit Græcia, non Latium.
En Paravisinus quantâ hos Dionysius arte
Imprimit, en quanto cernitis ingenio!
Te quoque, Demetri, ponto circumsona Crete
Tanti operis nobis edidit artificem.
Turce, quid insultas? tu Græca volumina perdis;
Hi pariunt: hydræ nunc age colla seca!]

It was at Carpi in 1490 that Aldo finally matured his project of establishing a Greek press. His patrons desired him to found it in their castle of Novi; but Aldo judged rightly that at Venice he would be more secure from the disturbances of warfare, as well as more conveniently situated for engaging the assistance of Greek scholars and compositors. Accordingly, he took a house, and settled near S. Agostino. This house speedily became a Greek colony. It may be inferred from Aldo's directions to the printers that his trade was carried on almost entirely by Greeks, and that Greek was the language of his household. The instructions to the binders as to the order of the sheets and mode of stitching were given in Greek; and many curious Greek phrases appear to have sprung up to meet the exigencies of the new industry. Thus we find [Greek: hina hellênisti syndethêsetai] for 'Greek stitching,' and [Greek: kattiterinê cheiri] for 'the type;' while Aldo himself is described as [Greek: epheuretê toutôn grammatôn charaktêros hôs eirêtai]. The prefaces, almost always composed in Greek, prove that this language was read currently in Italy, since Aldo relied on numerous purchasers of his large and costly issues. The Greek type, for the casting of which he provided machinery in his own house, was formed upon the model supplied by Marcus Musurus, a Cretan, who had taken Latin orders and settled at Carpi, and from whom Aldo received important assistance in the preparation of editions for the press. The compositors, in like manner, were mostly Cretans. We hear of one of them, by name Aristoboulos Apostolios, while John Gregoropoulos, another Cretan, the brother-in-law of Musurus, performed the part of reader. The ink used by Aldo was made in his own house, where he had, besides, a subordinate establishment for binding. The paper, excelled by none that has been since produced, came from the mills of Fabriano. It may easily be imagined that this beehive of Greek industry often numbered over thirty persons, not including the craftsmen employed in lesser offices by the day.

The superintendence of this large establishment, added to the anxieties attending the production of so many books as yet not edited, sorely taxed the health and powers of Aldo. For years together he seems to have had no minute he could call his own. Continual demands were made by visitors and strangers upon his hours of leisure; and in order to secure time for the conduct of his business, he was forced to placard his door with a prohibitory notice.[348] Besides the more ordinary interruptions, to which every man of eminence is subjected, he had to struggle with peculiar difficulties due to the novelty of his undertaking. The prefaces to many of his publications contain allusions to strikes among his workmen,[349] to the piracies of rival booksellers,[350] to the difficulty of procuring authentic MSS.,[351] and to the interruptions caused by war. Twice was the work of printing suspended, first in 1506, and then again in 1510. For two whole years at the latter period the industries of Venice were paralysed by the allied forces of the League of Cambray. The dedication of the first edition of Plato, 1513, to Leo X. concludes with a prayer, splendid in the earnestness and simplicity of its eloquence, wherein Aldo compares the miseries of warfare and the woes of Italy with the sublime and peaceful objects of the student. All the terrible experiences of that wasteful campaign, from the effects of which the Republic of Venice never wholly recovered, seem to find expression in the passionate but reverent, address of the great printer to the scholar Pope. For two years previously the press of Aldo had been idle, while the French were deluging Brescia with blood, and the plains of Ravenna were heaped with dead Italians, Spaniards, Gauls, and Germans, met in passionate but fruitless conflict by the Ronco. Now, from the midst of her desolated palaces and silenced lagoons, Venice stretched forth to Europe the peace-gift of Plato. The student who had toiled to make it perfect, appealed before Christ and His vicar, from the arms that brutalise to the arts that humanise the nations.

[Footnote 348: See Didot's _Alde Manuce_, p. 417, the passage beginning 'Vix credas.' In the Latin preface to the _Thesaurus Cornucopiæ et Horti Adonidis_, 1495, Aldo complains that he has not been able to rest for one hour during seven years.]

[Footnote 349: 'Tot illico oborta sunt impedimenta malorumque invidiâ et domesticorum [Greek: kai tais tôn kataratôn kai drapeteuontôn doulôn epiboulais].' Preface to the _Poetæ Christiani Veteres_, 1501. Again in the 'monitum' of the same, 'quater jam in ædibus nostris ab operariis et stipendiariis in me conspiratum et duce malorum omnium matre avaritiâ quos Deo adjuvante sic fregi ut valde omnes poeniteat suæ perfidiæ.']

[Footnote 350: The French publishers of Lyons, the Giunti of Rome, and Soncino of Fano, were particularly troublesome. Didot has extracted some curious information about their tricks as well as Aldo's exposure of them. Pp. 167, 482-486.]

[Footnote 351: See especially the preface to Aristotle, vol. i. 1495; vol. v. 1498.]

In the midst of these occupations, disappointments, and distractions, Aldo, sustained by the enthusiasm of his great undertaking, never flagged. Some of his prefaces, after setting forth the impediments he had to combat, burst into a cry of triumph. What joy, he exclaims, it is to see these volumes of the ancients rescued from book-buriers ([Greek: bibliotaphoi]) and given freely to the world![352] No man could have been more generously anxious than he was to serve the cause of scholarship by the widest possible diffusion of books at a moderate price. No artist was ever more scrupulously bent on giving the best possible form, the utmost accuracy, to every detail of his work. When we consider the beauty of the Aldine volumes, and the critical excellence of their texts, we may fairly be astonished at their prices. The Musæus was sold for something under one shilling of our money, the Theocritus for something under two shillings. The five volumes which contained the whole of Aristotle, might be purchased for a sum not certainly exceeding 8_l._ Each volume of the pocket series, headed in 1501 by the 8vo. Virgil, and comprising Greek, Latin, and Italian authors, fetched about two shillings. For this library the celebrated Italic type, known as Aldine, was adapted from the handwriting of Petrarch, and cut by Francesco da Bologna.[353] It appears that, as his trade increased, Aldo formed a company, who shared the risks and profits of the business.[354] Yet the expenses of publishing were so heavy, the insecurity of the book market so great, and the privileges of copyright granted by the Pope or the Venetian Senate so imperfect,[355] that Aldo, after giving his life to this work, and bequeathing to the world Greek literature, died comparatively poor. Erasmus, always somewhat snarling, accused him of avarice; yet it was his liberality to his collaborators, his openhandedness in buying the expensive apparatus for critical editions, that forced him to be economical.

[Footnote 352: See Preface to _Thesaurus Cornucopiæ_, quoted by Didot, p. 80; and cf. pp. 210, 221, 521, for further hints about selfish bibliomaniacs, who tried to hoard their treasures from the public and refused them to the press. Aldo, as a genuine lover of free learning, and also as a publisher, detests this class of men.]

[Footnote 353: See Pannizzi's tract on 'Francesco da Bologna,' published by Pickering, 1873. He was probably Francia the painter.]

[Footnote 354: In a letter to Marcello Virgilio Adriani, the teacher of Machiavelli, he mentions some books 'Cum aliis quibusdam communes,' as distinguished from others which were his private property. Didot, p. 233.]

[Footnote 355: On the subject of patents, privileges, and monopolies see Didot, pp. 79, 166, 189, 371, 479-481.]

The first editions of Greek books published by Aldo deserve to be separately noticed. In 1493, or earlier, appeared the 'Hero and Leander' of Musæus, a poem that passed, in that uncritical age, for the work of Homer's mythical predecessor.[356] In 1495 the first volume of Aristotle saw the light, accompanied by numerous Greek epigrams and a Greek letter of Scipione Fortiguerra, who deplores in it the deaths of Pico, Poliziano, and Ermolao Barbaro. The remaining four volumes followed in 1497 and 1498. In the latter of these years Aldo, aided by his friend Musurus, produced nine comedies of Aristophanes; the MSS. of the 'Lysistrata' and 'Thesmophoriazusæ' were afterwards discovered at Urbino, and published by Giunta in 1515. In 1502, Thucydides, Sophocles, and Herodotus appeared, followed in 1503 by Xenophon's 'Hellenics' and Euripides,[357] and in 1504 by Demosthenes. After this occurs a lull, occasioned in part by the disturbances ensuing on the League of Blois. In 1508 the list is recontinued with the Greek orators; while 1509 has to show the minor works of Plutarch. Then follows another stoppage due to war. In 1513 Plato was published, and in 1514 Pindar, Hesychius, and Athenæus.

[Footnote 356: [Greek: Mousaion ton palaiotaton poiêtên êthelêsa prooimiazein tô te Aristotelei kai tôn sophôn tois heterois autika di' emou entypêsomenois]. This [Greek: prodromos], or precursor, appeared without a date; but it must have come out earlier than 1494.]

[Footnote 357: John Lascaris had edited four plays of Euripides for Alopa in 1496. This Aldine edition contained eighteen, one of which, the _Hercules Furens_, turned up while vol. ii. was in the press. The _Electra_, not discovered till later on, was printed at Rome, 1545.]

From the preceding account I have omitted the notice of minor editions as well as reprints. In order to complete the history of the Aldine issue of Greek books, it should be mentioned that Aldo's successors continued his work by giving Pausanias, Strabo, Æschylus, Galen, Hippocrates, and Longinus to the world; so that when the Estiennes of Paris came to glean in the field of the Italian publishers, they only found Anacreon, Maximus Tyrius, and Diodorus Siculus as yet unedited.

We must not forget that, while the Greek authors were being printed thus assiduously by Aldo, he continued to send forth Latin and Italian publications from his press. Thus we find that the 'Etna' and the 'Asolani' of Bembo, the collected writings of Poliziano, the 'Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,' the 'Divine Comedy,' the 'Cose Volgari' of Petrarch, the 'Poetæ Christiani Veteres,' including Prudentius, the poems of Pontanus, the letters of the younger Pliny, the 'Arcadia' of Sannazzaro, Quintilian, Valerius Maximus, and the 'Adagia' of Erasmus were printed, either in first editions or with a beauty of type and paper never reached before, between the years 1495 and 1514.