0\ VV\ "5^ Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://archive.org/details/cu31924095908889 In compliance with current copyright law, Cornell University Library produced this replacement volume on paper that meets the ANSI Standard Z39.48-1992 to replace the irreparably deteriorated original. 2002 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY HARVARD LECTURES ON THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE, C. F. CLAY, Manager. EaniDlt: AVE MARIA LANE, E.C. Elassoto: 5°, WELLINGTON STREET. HupMS: F. A. BROCKHAUS. $cfn gurk: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. Bcmtmij unD dalrutta: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. {All Rights reserved] HARVARD LECTURES ON THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING BY JOHN EDWIN SANDYS, Litt.D., FELLOW AND LECTURER OF ST JOHN'S COLLEGE, AND PUBLIC ORATOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, HON. LITT.D. DUBLIN CAMBRIDGE AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS I905 De Italiae Poetis Trauspadanis ' Vos, et carmina vestra, sempiterno Urbes Italiae colent honore. Vos et Gallus, Iberque bellicosus, Et Germania docta, Sarmataeque, Mirabuntur, et ultimi Britanni ; Erit dum Latiis honor Camoenis. Quin ultra Oceanum, alteroque in orbe Vos discent populi, quibus redit lux Aurora exoriente, cum nigrescit Aer jam tenebris sub axe nostro ; Nam (mirabile dictu) in iis quoque oris Nunc linguae studium viget Latinae.' FLAMINIO, Carmina V I, c. 1549 (p. 82 f infra). x ~\\UAjL-'< ■■ J - PREFACE. In an admirable volume, entitled Harvard College by an Oxonian, the late Dr George Birkbeck Hill has spoken of the ' never- failing stream of benefactions by which the love of Harvard men is shown for Harvard.' 1 Among these benefactions is a fund for the endowment of special courses of Classical Lectures, for which Harvard is indebted to the munificence of a member of the Class of 1881, Mr Gardiner Martin Lane, of Boston. Mr Lane has a hereditary interest in the Classics. He is the son of the late George Martin Lane, for forty-three years Professor of Latin at Harvard. From 1847 to 1 851, his father sat at the feet of some of the foremost Classical Scholars in Germany, and preserved memorials of their teaching, and of their personality, in the form ' Macmillan and Co., New York, 1894, p. 20. vi PREFACE of elaborate notes of their lectures, and skilful water-colour portraits of his lecturers. Appointed Professor immediately on his return to Harvard, he subsequently devoted his ever-extending in- fluence to the successful introduction of a reformed pronunciation of Latin throughout the Schools and Colleges of the United States of America. His kindly and generous features, and the main outlines of his interesting career, are familiar to all who have seen the Memoir contributed to the ninth volume of the Harvard Studies in Classical Philology by the editor of his Latin Grammar, his former pupil, Professor Morgan. In connexion with his son's foundation at Harvard, I had the honour of being invited to give a course of six Public Lectures on some subject connected with Latin Literature, such Lectures to be ' adapted to any cultivated audience, and not specially addressed to advanced students of the Latin language.' The present volume is the result of that invitation. It includes six Lectures on certain aspects of the Revival of Learning in Italy, mainly in relation to the recovery of the Latin Classics, and the renewed interest in their study. The subjects of these Lectures are Petrarch and Boccaccio, the Age of Discoveries, the Theory and Practice of Education, the Italian Academies, PREFACE vii the Homes of Humanism, and the History of Ciceronianism. As the interests of that Age were far from being confined to Latin alone, it has been found desirable to add a seventh Lecture on the Study of Greek, concluding with a very brief sketch of the transmission of the New Learning from Italy to France, Germany, the Netherlands, and England. The Lectures were delivered at Harvard during the last fortnight of March and the first week of April, 1905. My visit to the United States for this purpose was attended by many acts of kindness and consideration on the part of my hosts in Boston and Cambridge and elsewhere, and by repeated indications of interest in the subject on the part of Classical students and the general public who attended the Lectures. The course, as a whole, was delivered at Harvard alone; but, with the sanction of the authorities of that University, isolated Lectures were subsequently given, by re- quest, at Columbia University in the City of New York, at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, at Haverford College, and Bryn Mawr, and Vassar, and, finally, at the Cornell University in Ithaca. I shall ever retain a grateful recollection of the welcome I received at all these places, and also at viii PREFACE other seats of learning, which I had the pleasure of seeing for the first time during a brief visit to the Eastern States. The original audience at Harvard was supplied with an outline of all the Lectures, including the dates of the principal persons and events therein mentioned. Many of the dates, inserted in their proper places in the text, were accordingly omitted in delivery, though they are here retained for the convenience of the wider circle of those who may peruse these Lectures in their printed form. In the Lectures, as now published, the dates and other details in the table of Contents are preceded by a Chronological List of the leading humanists and patrons of learning in the Age of the Revival, with the essential dates connected with each ; and the volume closes with an Index, mainly of persons and places. The principal aim of the few Notes that have been added has been simply to give the references for the passages quoted in the text, without going into undue bibliographical detail, or attempting to set forth either the primary or the secondary authorities, or the modern contributions to the extensive literature of the subject. The period covered in these Lectures im- mediately follows that which has been treated by the same writer, but on a different scale, in the PREFACE ix History of Classical Scholarship to the end of the Middle Ages, published in 1903. The author trusts that the present volume may serve as a convenient sequel to the earlier work, and he hopes that it may be followed at some future date by a History of Scholarship from the dawn of the Revival of Learning to the present day. Mean- while, this little volume may be regarded as a link between the two larger works, and also as one more of the many links that unite the Old Cambridge and the New. It is submitted to the kindly consideration of the many friends of the Greek and the Latin Classics, and of the Humanities in general, on both sides of the Atlantic. J. E. SANDYS. Merton House, Cambridge. May, 1905. CORRIGENDA. Page 3, line 13. Professor Morgan is now ' Professor of Classical Philology ' at Harvard. Page 36, line 16. For ' Servatus Lupus' read ' Walafrid Strabo.' Page 49, line 11. For 'Aldine' (Vitruvius) read 'Venetian.' CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. BORN DIED i 3°4- i 374 I3I3-I375 1 330-1406 1349-1445 1350-1415 1356-1450 1 363-1437 1369-1444 I370-H3 1 1370-1459 1 370-1460 1 378-1446 1380-1459 1385-1458 1386-1439 1388-1463 1389-1464 1391-1450 1 396-1484 1398-1455 1398-1481 1400-1475 1403-1472 1 405-1464 1406-1458 1407-1457 1416-14S6 1417-1475 1422-1482 1424-1504 1424-1511 1425-1498 1 426-1 503 I 433-i499 1434-1501 1442-1519 1443-1485 1445-1535 1448-1492 1449-15 15 1454-1494 1455-1522 1458-1530 1460-1524 1461-1510 1 463- 1494 1466-1536 1467-1540 1470-1517 1470-1547 •I475- T 52i 1477-1547 1478-1529 H7S-I552 148 3-1552 i49° _I 522 1497-1560 1499-1584 1526-1585 Petrarch discovers Cicero, ad Atticum 1345 Boccaccio studies Greek under Pilatus 1360-63 Salutati discovers Cicero, ad Earn i Hares 1389 Vergerio, De Iugeuuis Moi-tbus J 39 2 Chrysoloras teaches Greek in Florence 1396-1400 Plethon disputes on Plato and Aristotle T 439 Niccoli leaves 800 mss to Medicean Library 1437 Lionardo Bruni, De Studiis et Litteris 1405 Barzizza, Efiistolantm Liber, printed, Paris 1470 Aurispa brings 238 mss from Constantinople 1422 Guarino da Verona teaches at Ferrara 1429-60 Vittorino da Feltre teaches at Mantua 1423-46 Poggio discovers Latin mss at St Gailen &c 1415-17 Alfonso I, king of Naples 1442-58 Traversari translates Diogenes Laertius c. 1438 Flavio Biondo, Italia Illustrata 1453 Cosimo dei Medici in power in Florence 1434-64 Ciriaco d' Ancona, collector of inscriptions 1 4 2 5> J 434 f> I 443 Georgius Trapezumius translates Plato's Laws 1451 Tomaso Parentucelli, Pope Nicolas V 1447-55 Filelfo brings more than 48 mss from Constantinople ... 1427 Theodorus Gaza, professor of philosophy in Rome 1450 Bessarion presents his Greek mss to Venice 1468 Aeneas Sylvius, De Lib. Educ 1450, Pope Pius II 145S-64 Maffeo Vegio, Pe Edncatiotic Liberorum before 1458 Laurentius Vaila, Elegantiae Latini Sermoiiis 1440-50 Argyropoulos lectures in Florence, 1456, and Rome 1471-86 Giov. Andrea de' Bussi, Bp of Aleria, 8 cdd. princ. (p. 75) 1465-71 Federigo di Montefeltro, Duke of Urbino 1474-82 Cristoforo Landino, Quacstioues Camaldutenses 1480 Chalcondyles, ed. pr. Homer, 1488; Isocrates, Suidas... 1493 Pomponius Laetus, ed. Curtius.Varro, Pliny Ep/>. } Sallust 1470-Q0 Pontano, Dialogi, 1491 ; De Tumults, Urania 1505 Ficino translates Plato, 1482, and Plotinus 1492 Constantine Lascaris, Gram mat ica Graeca 1476 Grocyn teaches Greek at Oxford 1491 Agricola lectures on Aristotle at Heidelberg 1483 Janus Lascaris, 5 cditioues priucipes (p. 193) 1494-6 Lorenzo dei Medici in power in Florence 1469-92 Aldus Manutius, 24 Greek cditioues priucipes 1494-1515 Politian, Sylvae, 1482-6; Miscellanea 1489 Reuchlin, Synopsis Grammatical' Graecae 1506 Sannazaro, Arcadia^ 1504; De Partu Virgiuis 1527 Linacre, De Emendata Structnra Latini Sermonis ... 1514 Paolo Cortesi, De Hominibus Doctis 1490 PicodellaMirandola,^zW0£7«, 14B4; Adv. Astrologiam 1495 Erasmus, Greek Testament, 1516; Cicero7iiauus 1528 Budaeus, Commcntarii Linguae Graecae 1529 Musurus edits 5 cditioues priucipes (p. 194) I 498-r5i5 Bembo, On Terence, 1530; Epp. Lconis X 1535 Giovanni dei Medici, Pope Leo X 1513-21 Sadoleto, Dc Libens Recte Institucndis 1534 Baldassare Castiglione, II Cortcgiaiio 1528 Lilio Giraldi, Dc Poc'tis Nostrorum Temporum 1551 Paolo Giovio, Elogia Doctorum Virorum 1556 Longolius, Orationes et Epistolae, Florence 1524 Melanchthon, Inst. Linguae Gr., 1518; Gram. Lat. ... 1525 Victorius, Var. Led. 1553-68; Soph. 1547; Aeschylus. 1557 Aristotle, Eth. Rhet. Poet. Pol 1547-84 Muretus, Cic. in Cat. 1556L, Phil. 1562; Var. Lectiones 1559, 1580 CONTENTS. I. Petrarch and Boccaccio. Emmanuel and Harvard. The Old Cambridge and the New. The Middle Ages and the Revival of Learning. Petrarch (1304 — 74), his coronation on the Capitol (1341), his life at Vaucluse (1337 — 53) and Arqua (1370 — 4). Petrarch, 'the first modern man,' a link between the mediaeval and the modern world; his ascent of Mont Ventoux ; his study of the Latin Classics ; his admiration for Virgil and other Latin poets, and for Cicero ; his discovery of Cicero, pro Archia (1333), and the Letters to Atticits ( r 34o) 5 his interest in Livy and the elder Pliny; his library and his tomb. His influence on Boccaccio (13 13 — 75). Boccaccio's visit to the tomb of Virgil; his conversion (1361); his Latin works on Mythology and Geography ; his interest in Livy and Tacitus ; his visit to Monte Cassino. His lectures on Dante in Florence (1373) ; his death and burial at Certaldo (1375). . . . 1 — 27 II. The Age of Discoveries. ' The Discovery of the World and of Man.' The Discovery of Latin Manuscripts by Petrarch, Salutati (1330— 1406), Niccoli (1363 — 1437), and Poggio (1380 — 1459). Poggio's discoveries at St Gallen (1415 — 17), Cluni and Langres. Discovery of complete MS of Cicero, De Oratore, Brutus, and Orator at Lodi (1422) during Poggio's absence in England. His later discoveries. Aurispa's discoveries at Mainz (1433). Mediaeval and modern libraries; xii CONTENTS recovery of Greek mss. Study of Roman Archaeology, and col- lection of Latin Inscriptions. Ciriaco of Ancona (1391 — 1450), and Flavio Biondo (1388 — 1463). Marcanuova, Felicianus, and Mantegna on the Lago di Garda in 1464 ; the sketch-books of San Gallo ; the manuscript collections of Fra Giocondo and his illustrated Venetian editions of the younger Pliny (1508), Vitruvius (1511), and Caesar (15 r3). His Latin translation (1505) of the Third Voyage of Amerigo Vespzicci. Amerigo's display of his classical learning. Christopher Columbus and the Classics. 28—54 III. Theory and Practice of Education. Niccoli and Aeneas Sylvius on the importance of learning Latin. The humanistic Theory of Education illustrated by Vergerio, De I?igenuis Aforibus (1392); Lionardo Bruni, De Studiis et Litteris (1405); Maffeo Vegio, De Educatione Liberorum (before 1458) ; Aeneas Sylvius, De Liberorum Educatione (1450) ; and Sadoleto, De Liberis Recte Instituendis (1534). The Practice of Education exemplified in the School of Vittorino da Feltre (1378 — 1446), at Mantua (1423 — 46), and in the teaching of Guarino da Verona (1370—1460), at Ferrara (1429 — 60). Battista Guarino, De Ordine Docendi et Studendi (1459). The Education of Women. The Court of Ferrara; Vittoria Colonna (1536 — 8), Olympia Morata (1540 — 7), and Marcantonio Flaminio (d. 1550). Flaminio on the study of Latin in the New World. ...... 55 — 83 IV. The Academies of Florence, Venice, Naples, and Rome. Plato's Academy. The Aeademia of Cicero. Characteristics of later Italian Academies, recitation of poems and performance of plays ; their fantastic names ; the Oziosi, the Lincei, and the Colombaria. The earlier Italian Academies. Georgios Gemistos Plethon (1356 — 1450), at the Council of Florence (1439). The Platonic Academy of Florence founded by Cosimo dei Medici ; CONTENTS xiii Ficino (1433 — 99), Landino (1424 — 1504), Pico (1463 — 94), and Politian (1454 — 94). Politian's Sylvae, his criticisms on the Latin Classics, and on the Pandects of Justinian ; his Miscellanea, and his minor Latin poems. Later Florentine Academies, and Milton's visit (1638). The Greek Academy of Venice founded by Aldus Manutius (1500). The Academy of Naples under Alfonso the Magnanimous (d. 1458) ; Beccadelli (1394 — J47i)> the Latin poems of Pontano (1426 — 1503)) the 'Arcadia' and the Latin poems of Sannazaro (1458 — 1530)- The Academy of Rome, from its founda- tion by Pomponius Laetus (1475 — 98) to the Sack of Rome (1527). The later Vitruvian Academy of Rome. Palladio and the Academy of Vicenza. The completion of the ' Olympic Theatre' of Vicenza, and the foundation of Emmanuel College, Cambridge (15N4). The Oedipus Tyrannus at Vicenza, and at Harvard. . . 84 — 114 V. The Homes of Humanism. Florence, Santa Maria Novella in 1348, San Spirito, Medicean Libraries, the Villa Paradiso degli Alberti, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Medicean Villas, portraits and monuments of humanists. Camaldoli and Landino; Arezzo, the birth-place of Petrarch, Brum and Mar- suppini ; Certaldo and Boccaccio ; Siena and the Piccolomini Library. Venice, visit of Petrarch in 1 362 — 4 ; Bessarion's foundation of the Library of St Mark's in 1468 ; the Aldine Press from 1494 to 1515 ; Venetian humanists, Carlo Zeno, the Giustiniani, Francesco Bar- baro, and Andrea Navagero. Padua, Petrarch in 1367 — 8, and Palla Strozzi in 1434 — 62; the relics of 'Livy' (1413); the University and its foreign students. Verona, mss of Catullus and Cicero ad Atticum ; Guarino da Verona. Como, statues of the two Plinies, and Museum of Paolo Giovio (d. 1552). Milan and the Visconti (1312 — 1447); their patronage of Petrarch, Gasparino, Decembrio, and Filelfo; the dynasty of Sforza (1450 — 1535) and Ludovico il Moro (1480 — 1500). Lodi and the MS of Cicero's principal rhetorical works (1422). Mantua and the statue of Virgil (1397) ; the school of Vittorino (1423 — 46), and the earlier Gonzagas (1329 — 1519). Ferrara, the teaching of Guarino (1429 — 60); the lords of Ferrara from Niccol6 III (1383 — 1441) to Alfonso II xiv CONTENTS (1533 — 97); and the humanists, Calcagnini (1478 — 1541) and Giraldi (1478 — 1552). Bologna, Beroaldo the elder, Codrus Urceus, and Erasmus (1509). Rimini and Sigismondo Malatesta {1411 — 68). Ancona and Ciriaco. Urbino, Federigo (1444 — 82) and his Library; Guidobaldo (14S2 — 1508), and the ' Cortegiano ' of Cas- tiglione. Naples, the tombs of Virgil and Sannazaro ; portraits of Sannazaro, Pontano, and Alfonso II (1494 — 5); Alfonso I (1442 — 58), and the triumphal arch in the Castel Nuovo, his interest in the Classics, and his patronage of Laurentius Valla. Rome under Nicolas V (1447 — 55), his patronage of Valla; Julius II (1503 — 13), visit of Erasmus in 1509, papal patronage of Raphael ; Leo X (15 13 — 21), the Greek Press at the Chigi Palace, and on Monte Cavallo ; the editio princeps of Tacitus, 151 5; Bembo, Sadoleto, and Vida. Adrian VI (1522 — 3) and the 'idols of the ancients.' Clement VII (1523 — 34), and the Sack of Rome, 1527. The lament- ations of Valeriano, Sadoleto, Bembo, and Erasmus. 115 — 144 VI. The History of Ciceronianism. The influence of Cicero on Quintilian and Tacitus; and on St Ambrose, St Jerome and St Augustine. Cicero during the Middle Ages and the Revival of Learning. Latin style of Petrarch, Boccaccio, Salutati (1330 — 1406), Lionardo Bruni (1369 — 1444), Gasparino da Barzizza (1370 — 1431), Guarino (1370 — 1460), Poggio (1380 — 1459), and Valla (1407 — 57). Controversy between Politian and Cortesi (1461 — 1510), and between Gianfrancesco Pico (1469 — 1533) and Bembo (1470 — 1547). Longolius (1490 — 1522) at Rome and Padua. The Ciceronianus of Erasmus (1528), attacked by Julius Caesar Scaliger (1531 and 1536), and by Etienne Dolet ( J 535)- Later phases of the controversy (1547 — 1636). The Cice- ronian Lexicon of Nizolius (1535) and the eclectic Latinity of Muretus ('526 — 85) ; story of the trap laid for the ' Ciceronians,' in the Second Part of his ' Various Readings ' (1580). Preface to the Catilinarian Orations, implying that the reign of Ciceronian form had ended and that of criticism had begun (1556). Eclectic Latin as a universal language. ...... 145 — 173 CONTENTS xv VII. The Study of Greek. Greek in the Middle Ages, and the Revival of Learning. Petrarch and Barlaam (1342); Boccaccio and Leontius Pilatus (1360). Chrysoloras and his pupils, Lionardo Bruni in p'lorence (1396 — 1400) and Guarino in Constantinople (1403 — 8). Greek hiss brought from the East by Guarino (1408), Aurispa (1422), and Filelfo (1427). Controversy on Plato and Aristotle during the Council of Ferrara (1438) and of Florence (1439). Georgios Gemistos Plethon (1356 — 1450). Bessarion (1403 — 72), and the earlier Greek immigrants, Theodoras Gaza (1438), Georgius Tra- pezuntius (1430), Joannes Argyropoulos (1441), and Demetrius Chalcondyles (1447). Greek authors translated under Nicolas V (1447 — 55). The Fall of Constantinople (1453). The later Greek immigrants, Michael Apostolius (1454), Andronicus Callistus (1461), Constantine Lascaris (1434 — 1501), Janus Lascaris (1445 — 1535), Marcus Musurus (1470 — 1517), and Zacharias Callierges (fl. 1499 — 1523). Greek texts printed in Italy between 1476 and 1494; Greek editiones principes of Aldus Manutius from 1494 to 1515 ; decline of Greek in Italy, c. 1525. Study of Greek introduced into France by Gregorio da Citta di Castello (1456), Hermonymus of Sparta (1472), Janus Lascaris (1495), Jerome Aleander (1508), and Budaeus (1467 — 1540). Readerships in Greek founded by Francis I (1530). Greek introduced into Germany by Rudolphus Agricola (1443 — 85) and Reuchlin (1455 — 1522) ; and into England by" William Tilly of Selling (c. 1473), and Linacre (1492), and Grocyn (1490). Greek taught in the Southern Netherlands at the Collegium Trilingue, founded by Busleiden at Louvain (1517), and fostered by Erasmus. Foundation of the two greatest Universities of the Northern Netherlands, Leyden (1575), and Utrecht (1636). The Pilgrim Fathers leave Leyden ; voyage of the Mayflower, and founding of New Plymouth (1620). Third voyage of the Mayflower, founding of Boston (1630), and of Harvard (1636). . 174—204 ' After God had carried us safe to New England, and we had builded our houses, provided necessaries for our livelihood, reared convenient places for God's worship, and settled the civil govern- ment, one of the next things we longed for and looked after was to advance learning and to perpetuate it to posterity And, as we were thinking and consulting how to effect this great work, it pleased God to stir up the heart of one Mr Harvard (a godly gentleman and a lover of teaming there living amongst us) to give the one half of his estate (it being in all about ^1700) towards the erecting of a College, and all his library.... The College was by common consent appointed to be at Cambridge, a place very pleasant and accommodate, and is called (according to the name of its first founder) Harvard College.' New England's First Fruits, London, 1643. John Harvard, born, 1607; B.A., Emmanuel College, Cam- bridge, 1631; M.A., 1635; admitted a Freeman of the colony of Massachusetts Bay, November, 1637; died, September, 1638. PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO. In the days of old, whenever a new Greek colony was sent forth, the. emigrants, prior to their departure, went to the town-hall of the mother- city, and, taking a portion of the sacred fire that burned upon the hearth, carried it across the seas, to kindle therewith the flame that was to burn on the hearth of their future home. In the place, where we are now assembled, that fire was first lighted, when John Harvard, that ' godly man,' that ' lover of learning,' brought from the Puritan College of Emmanuel, and from his own University of Cambridge, the love of learning and of pure religion, that led him to bequeath half of his fortune and the whole of his library, his Homer and his Plutarch, his Terence and his Horace, to the College, which the little colony of Puritans had already resolved on founding at Newtown. In memory of the University of John Harvard, they called their recent settlement by the new name of Cambridge; and, in the New s. L. I /iM.VANl 'El. AND //AA'IAA 1 /' Cambridge as in the Old, the ancient fire has never been quenched. It may even be said In have broken into flame, when, two hundred years later, Judge Story said in 1X36, 'the very name of Cambridge compels us to east our eyes across the Atlantic, bringing up a glowing gratitude for our unspeakable obligations to the parent University, whose name we proudly bear.' It gleamed anew, in 1864, in the song with which a graduate of the Old Cambridge and the New, William Kverelt, concluded one of those lectures, which he delivered in an adjacent home of culture :— ' All hail, thou mother of mir sires ! Hail, home of learning, pure iiml I in- I Thou nltnr, whenee I lit' s.iri fil tires Have leapt to Us aero.ss Hit* sea ! ' It broke into flame once more-, in 1 884, when, at the Tercentenary of Kmmanttcl, Professor Norton said of the widely-extended influence of I larvanl: - 'Tlii; spark from Kiiiuinniirl, which kiinlliil Harvard's toich, lives mi in the transmitted flame. The message ul Ii-jlil, Hashed first across the stormy sua Id Massachusetts, has i:rossrd till' eonli- HL , nl,...anil, sealing 1 lit-' Rocky Mnunliiins, shines ilown upon California, to In' relleelcd in the calm waters of Ihf I'milic,' 1 •And it glowed again in 1S86, at the fifth Jubilee of Harvard, when Lowell 'in the name of the Alumni, gave a warm welcome' to the delegate of Emmanuel and the delegate of Cambridge. 1 Emmanuel Collect I'amuwmumtiitn, p. n. THE OLD CAMBRIDGE AND THE NEW 3 On the other side of the Atlantic, the Senate- House of Cambridge has, ever and anon, been conscious of the ancient flame, when her former Public Orators have lauded in Latin an Everett, a Motley, a YVinthrop, a Longfellow, or a Lowell ; or when the present lecturer has had the privilege of praising those of your famous sons, who have since passed away, such as Professor Cooke, or Asa Gray, or Oliver Wendell Holmes, or those who are, happily, still living, Professor Norton, Professor Goodwin, Mr Agassiz, Professor Bowditch, and Professor White. One of the two Professors of Latin in this University, Professor Morgan, has published a learned paper on the ancient methods of kindling fire 1 ; among the many modern methods of keeping the flame of good-will ever brightly burning on both sides of the Atlantic has been the repeated interchange of lecturers between the Old Cambridge and the Xew. Of the seventeen Colleges of the Cambridge of the Old World, one was founded in the days of Dante ; five in the fourteenth century, the age of Petrarch ; four in the fifteenth, in the time of the Florentine Platonist. Marsilio Ficino : and five in the sixteenth, during the life of the greatest Greek scholar of Italy. Petrus Victorius, who died in 1 5S4 1 Harvard S:ua 'Us in C!assii\i' /:i.',','«, i 1 5-O4.. THE MIDDLE AGES the year of the founding- of Emmanuel. The flame of learning that still lives in the Universities of the New World, as in those of the Old, was primarily kindled by the Revival of Learning in Italy, and, in the present course of lectures, I propose to dwell on certain aspects of that Revival, mainly in connexion with the renewed study of the Latin Classics. In reflecting on the time of transition between the Middle Ages and the Revival of Learning, it may be well for us to remember two points. In the first place, we must resolutely resist the natural temptation to exaggerate the darkness of the Middle Ages with a view to enhancing the bright- ness of the succeeding Age. In the Middle Ages, the dark cloud had a silver lining, and the light of religion was never entirely eclipsed ; while, in the Revival of Learning, the new light was sometimes dimmed and obscured by the mists of paganism. In the second place, we must clearly recognise the fact that the Revival was not a single and sudden event with a fixed and definite date, but a gradual and protracted process resulting from a long series of causes. On the classic soil of Italy the Revival was slowly called into being by the prevailing spirit of intellectual freedom, by the social and political condition of the country, by the continuous THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING tradition of the Latin language, by the constant witness to the existence of Greek in the region once known as Magna Graecia, by the survival of the remains of antique sculpture, and by the abiding presence of the ruins of Rome. It has been finely said by Macaulay, in his Essay on Machiavelli, that 'during the gloomy and disastrous centuries which followed the downfall of the Roman Empire, Italy had preserved, in a far greater degree than any other part of Western Europe, the traces of ancient civilisation. The night which descended upon her was the night of an Arctic summer. The dawn began to reappear before the last reflection of the preceding sunset had faded from the horizon.' But we may fairly add that, although the night was luminous, the sun was absent, and Petrarch was the morning-star of a new day ; yet there were other stars in the sky before the star of Petrarch 1 . In these lectures I do not propose to dwell on any of the precursors of the Renaissance. I must limit myself mainly to the period of two centuries that elapsed between the death of Dante in 132 1 and the death of Leo X in 1521, seldom descend- ing much later than the Sack of Rome in 1527, which marks the close of the Revival in Italy. 1 History of Classical Scholarship to the End of the Middle Ages, p. 587. PETRARCH The present lecture is on Petrarch and Boccaccio in their relation to the Latin Classics. The outlines of the life of Petrarch are familiar to us all. The seventy years of its duration, from 1304 to 1374, closely corresponded to the little more than seventy years of the ' Babylonian Captivity,' which detained the Papacy on the banks of the Rhone. Born in exile at Arezzo, taken at an early age to Avignon, educated mainly at Montpellier and Bologna, Petrarch spent sixteen years in the seclusion of Vaucluse. His early travels in France and Germany were followed by repeated visits to Rome, where, in recognition of his powers as a Latin rather than an Italian poet, he was crowned with the laurel on the Capitol in 1341. Familiar with Parma, and Verona, and Vicenza, he hardly ever saw his ancestral city of Florence ; he spent eight years in Milan, stayed for a time at Venice and Padua, and, twelve miles south of that place, passed the final four years of his life at the quiet village of Arqua. During those seventy years his ambition had prompted him to see something of the outer world, and of the life of courts, in the towns of Italy, and even in Paris and Prague ; but, as a man of letters, and as a student of the Latin Classics, his true home was beside the lonely fountain of the Sorgue OUTLINE OF HIS LIFE and amid the solitudes of the Euganean hills. It is of Petrarch that Byron has said : — ' If from society we learn to live, 'Tis solitude should teach us how to die.' 1 In the year before his death, he wrote to a friend expressing the hope that death might find him reading and writing, or, if it pleased Christ, praying and in tears 2 . Half of that hope was fulfilled when, on a July morning in 1374, death came upon him in his library, where his attendants found him with his head resting upon an open book, and fancied at first that he was only sleeping. There is a well-attested tradition that he died while ' illuminating ' (that is, annotating) his copy of a Latin translation of Homer. His manuscript is now in the National Library of France, and the trembling hand that marks the close of the notes on the Odyssey confirms the tradition that they were his latest work. Half-way up the slope at Arqua, the traveller may still see his little house, and the room in which he died : ' Knock, and enter in. This was his chamber Here he sat and read. This was his chair; and in it, unobserved, Reading, or thinking of his absent friends, He passed away as in a quiet slumber.' 3 1 Childe Hai'old, IV xxxiii. 2 Epp. lierum Seniliuoi, xvi 1, p. 968, ed. 1581. 3 Rogers, Italy, p. 90, ed. 1836. PETRARCH His Letter to Posterity tells us that he had a clear complexion, between light and dark, lively eyes and, for many years, a keenness of sight that did not require the aid of glasses. Of his numerous portraits, probably the most authentic is that in a Paris manuscript of his own Lives of Illustrious Men, a portrait executed for an intimate friend in Padua less than five years after his death. It represents him with a hood covering his ears and a large part of his forehead, a smooth and closely- shaven face, finely chiselled features, a slightly aquiline nose, closely compressed lips, and a keen and steady eye. It was first published in De Nolhac's classic work on Petrarch in his relations to humanism ; and it has been reproduced in an excellent introduction to the study of Petrarch, published in New York in 1898 and bearing the names of Professor Robinson and Professor Rolfe. With the aid of either or both of these books, we may obtain a just impression of the importance of Petrarch's services to the cause of humanism. But the perusal of these books does not exempt us from the duty of studying his works for ourselves. Most of them are included in the three folio editions of the sixteenth century. The folio that I possess happens to bear the autograph of one whose Life of Petrarch attained the honour of a second edition, HIS ASCENT OF MONT VENTOUX g the poet Thomas Campbell. Those who do not care to struggle with any of these ponderous tomes, will find much that is interesting and characteristic in the three volumes of Familiar Letters edited in Latin (and also translated into Italian) by Fracas- setti. Of the Letters written by Petrarch in his old age there is unfortunately no separate edition ; they must either be read in the old folios, or in Fracassetti's Italian translation. In Petrarch we readily recognise a link between the mediaeval and the modern world. He was fully conscious of belonging in a peculiar sense to a transitional time. He describes himself as placed on the confines of two peoples, and as looking back- wards as well as forwards 1 . This intermediate position is well exemplified in the incident of his ascent of Mont Ventoux, a breeze-swept height that rises to an elevation of little more than 6000 feet, North-East of Avignon. His desire to climb this height had been prompted by the perusal of Livy's account of Philip the Fifth's ascent of the highest peak of the Thracian range of Haemus. It was with grave deliberation that he selected, as his companion on this almost unprecedented enter- 1 Rerum Memorandarum, Liber i 2, p. 398, ed. 1581, 'velut in confinio duomm populorum constitutus, ac simul ante retroque pro- spiciens. ' PETRARCH prise, his younger brother, who, six years later, entered a monastery at Marseilles. While he was climbing the steep slopes, he derived new courage from a phrase of Virgil, and he was also struck by an appropriate reminiscence of Ovid. When he stood on the summit, with the clouds beneath him, he thought of Athos and Olympus ; and, while he gazed in rapture at the view around him, he sud- denly recalled with regret the last three of the ten years that had elapsed since he had left the Uni- versity of Bologna. Then, in the spirit of the mediaeval rather than that of the modern world, he bethought him of the copy of the Confessions of St Augustine, which he always had at hand ; and, as he opened it, his eyes fell on the impressive passage : — ' and men go about to gaze with wonder at the heights of the mountains, and the mighty waves of the sea, and the wide sweep of rivers, and the vast expanse of ocean, and the revolutions of the stars, but themselves they abandon.' 1 Both the brothers were abashed, and descended the mountain-slopes in silence 2 . Thus an expedition inspired by Livy, and attended by reminiscences of Virgil and Ovid, culminated in St Augustine ; and we need not 1 X 8 § 15, ed. von Raumer. 2 De Rebus Familiaribus Epp. iv 1. THE FIRST MODERN MAN ' think any the less well of Petrarch on finding all these authors included within the range of his interests. But it has been customary to regard this reversion to a mediaeval mood of mind as of the nature of a relapse. We cannot, however, allow this phase of feeling (disclosed, it must be remembered, in a letter addressed to his confessor) to deprive him of his permanent right to be de- scribed as ' the first modern man.' The phrase has become familiar, but the first to apply it to Pe- trarch was M. Renan in his volume on Averroes 1 . And it is entirely just ; for Petrarch was the first to realise in the new age the supreme importance of the old classical literature, to regard that litera- ture with a fresh and intelligent and critical interest, to appreciate its value as a means of self-culture, and as an exercise for some of the highest faculties of man. In his Latin style he is no slavish imitator of ancient models. In prose he is mainly inspired by the philosophical works of Cicero and by the moral letters of Seneca. In verse his model is Virgil, but so keenly does he realise the importance of catching the spirit of an author, without appro- priating the actual language, that once, when he was laying down this law in the presence of a favourite pupil, he was horrified by that pupil's 1 p. 328, ed. 1882. PETRARCH reminder that in one of his own Latin poems he had himself unconsciously appropriated the Vir- gilian phrase, — atque intonat ore. He even felt bound to confess this fault in a letter addressed to his great contemporary, Boccaccio 1 . He collects classical manuscripts, and coins and inscriptions ; like his friend Rienzi, he is inspired with an interest in history and archaeology by the sight of the ruins of Rome. As a loyal Churchman, he regards the study of the Classics as the handmaid of Christi- anity, and not as hostile to its teaching. At the same time, he cannot merge his individuality in that of the Church in the way that was characteristic of the corporate life of the Christian Middle Ages. He is swayed by a strong individualism, he is keenly alive to his own reputation as a writer, and is smitten with an eager longing for the immortal perpetuation of his personal fame. His mind was mainly moulded by the study of the Latin Classics, to which he was attracted by their perfection of form. Even from his earliest youth, he had a keen ear for the melodies of Latin verse and rhetorical prose. It must have been while he was a student at Montpellier, spending on the perusal of his favourite Latin authors the time that he was supposed to be devoting to the study 1 De Rebus Familiaribus F-pp. xxiii 19. HIS ADMIRATION FOR VIRGIL 13 of law, that his father suddenly appeared on the scene, tore his son's treasures from their place of concealment, and flung them into the fire. When the son burst into tears at the grievous sight, the father relented so far as to snatch from the flames two volumes only ; the one was a copy of Virgil ; the other was the ' Rhetoric ' of Cicero 1 . Cicero and Virgil became the principal text-books of the Revival of Learning. Petrarch describes them in one of his poems as the ' two eyes ' of his discourse 2 . In his very boyhood he had been smitten with the charm of Virgil, and, even in his old age, he was still haunted by the mediaeval tradition of the allegorical significance of the Aeneid. But, unlike the mediaeval admirers of Virgil, he does not regard the Latin poet as a mysteriously distant and super- natural being ; he finds in him a friend, and he is even candid enough to criticise him. Under his influence the Aenez'dwas accepted as the sole model that was worthy of imitation by the epic poets of the succeeding age. A German critic regards this result with regret 3 , a regret that few, if any, will share; nor is it easy to believe that any scholar would really have preferred seeing Petrarch throw 1 Epp. Serum Senilium, xv j, p. 947. 2 Trionfo della Fama, iii 11. 3 Korting, Litteratur Italiens, i 481-6. 14 PETRARCH the weight of his example on to the side of any- other Latin epic poet, such as Lucan. In the ' Familiar Letters ' we find Petrarch quoting Virgil about 120 times, and, in the Ambrosian Library at Milan, we may still see his carefully annotated copy, which includes not only the text of Virgil but also the commentary of Servius, the Achilleis of Statius, and some of the Odes of Horace, with a series of autobiographical notes, and a fine frontis- piece by Simone Martini representing Virgil, Servius, and Aeneas, and quaint personifications of the Eclogues and the Georgics. Next to Virgil in order of admiration he places Horace, to whom he addresses a poetic epistle in no less than 138 lines of lyric verse. In his appre- ciation of the lyrics of Horace, he marks a distinct advance on the mediaeval view, which culminates in Dante. Of the quotations from Horace in the Middle Ages less than one-fifth are from the lyrics, and more than four-fifths from the hexameter poems. But the balance is happily redressed by Petrarch, who quotes with equal interest from both. Ovid is too frivolous for his taste. With the epics of Lucan, Statius, and Claudian he is well acquainted ; and the same is true of Persius, Juvenal, and Martial, with parts of Ausonius. Of HIS ADMIRATION FOR CICERO 15 the plays of Plautus only eight were then known ; Petrarch quotes from two of them, and gives an outline of a third as a proof of the poet's skill in the delineation of character. He is familiar with the comedies of Terence, and the tragedies of Seneca ; he rarely refers to Catullus or Propertius ; it is apparently only in excerpts that he knows Tibullus. All his quotations from Lucretius are clearly derived second-hand from Macrobius. From his study of Latin poetry we turn to his study of prose. In his boyhood, while others were poring over Latin versions of Aesopian fables, he found himself impelled to study Cicero, and though he was only imperfectly conscious of the sense, he was charmed by the marvellous harmonies of sound 1 . This in itself is nothing new. Even the author of the Stabat Mater, who died two years after the birth of Petrarch, mentions the 'melody' of Cicero; but Jacopone da Todi renounced that ' melody ' as one of the vanities of the world 2 , while Petrarch was true to his first love, and the master, whose style once charmed his unconscious boyhood, prompts him to say in his old age that the ' eloquence of this heavenly being was absolutely inimitable.' 3 1 Epp. Rei-um Semlium, xv 1, p. 946. 2 Rinanzia del Mondo, sir. 10. 3 Epp. Rerum Scnilitim, xv 1, p. 948. 16 PETRARCH He was familiar with all the philosophic books of Cicero then extant, with the mutilated text of the principal rhetorical works, and with many of the Speeches. Those of Cicero's writings, that were known to be lost, were the constant theme of his eager quest. Whenever, in his travels in foreign lands, he caught a distant glimpse of some secluded monastery, he hastened to the spot in the hope of finding the object of his search 1 . In 1333 he had his first experience of the joys of discovery, when he found two Speeches of Cicero at Liege. The only ink that could be obtained in that large town was of the colour of saffron ; however, one of the Speeches was copied promptly by his companion, and the other by himself 2 . The second of these was probably none other than the Speech in defence of the poet Archias, with those glowing praises of the pleasures of literature, that must have gladdened the heart of its discoverer. But a far greater joy was still awaiting him. The Letters of Cicero had for ages been lost to view ; but, at Verona, in 1345, he found a manuscript containing all the Letters to Atticus and Quintus, and the correspondence with Brutus. He immediately transcribed the whole, but his transcript has been 1 ibid. 2 De Rebus Familiaribus Epp. xiii 6 (II 23S Fracassetti). BIS DISCOVERY OF CICERO AD ATTIC UM &°c. 17 unhappily lost. The copy in the Laurentian Library at Florence, long supposed to be Petrarch's, is really a transcript made eighteen years after Petrarch's death for a Latin Secretary of Florence, Coluccio Salutati, who was the first in modern times to possess copies of both of the great collections of Cicero's Letters. The ' Familiar ' Letters were completely unknown to Petrarch. No sooner had he discovered the manuscript of the Letters to Atticus than he at once indited a letter to Cicero himself apprising him of the fact. This was the first of Petrarch's series of Letters to Dead Authors, the remainder being addressed to Homer, Virgil and Horace, Cicero and Livy, Seneca and Quintilian. Before discovering Cicero's Letters he had already formed his epistolary style on the Letters of Seneca. His favourite Roman historian is Livy. His devotion to Livy, whose pictured page recorded the mighty deeds of ancient Rome, was mainly due to his intense patriotism for Italy. The same historian was, from the same motives, eagerly studied by Petrarch's friend, Rienzi, who solaced his captivity at Avignon by perusing the copy preserved in the papal library. Petrarch is familiar with several other Roman historians, but not with v^Nepos or with Tacitus. He has only an imperfect s. l. 2 iS PETRARCH copy of Quintilian. He is unhappily unacquainted with the tasteful and refined Letters of the younger Pliny, but he is fortunate in possessing the great encyclopaedia of Pliny the elder. His copy is now in the Paris Library, and, in the margin of the passage describing the fountain of the Sorgue, Petrarch has drawn from memory a sketch of the valley of Vaucluse, with the steep slope leading up to the little church, the stream rushing out of the dark cave in the rocks, the bulrushes beside the stream, and the heron with the captured fish in the foreground. It is the only drawing by Petrarch that has come down to us. On Petrarch's death, his friend Boccaccio wrote eagerly to inquire after the fate of his manuscripts. Five years later they were still at Padua ; but the remnant of the little library of this man of peace passed as part of the spoils of war to Pavia, and afterwards to Blois and to Fontainebleau, and ultimately to Paris. Of the less than fort)- volumes that can still be identified, twenty-five are now in Paris, including his Latin Homer, his Livy, his Pliny and his Quintilian ; and about eight in Rome. His Horace is in Florence., his Virgil in Milan, and his Cicero at Troyes on the upper Seine. Like Dante, he lived as an exile from his ancestral Florence, and this very fact happily pre- HIS LIBRARY AND HIS TOMB vented his being entirely bound up in the affairs of a single city, and led to the influence of his personal presence, as well as his widely diffused correspondence, pervading many parts of Italy, and extending even into France and Germany. ' Ungrateful Florence ! Dante sleeps afar,' and ' Arqua, too, her store Of tuneful relics proudly claims and keeps.' ' There is a tomb in Arqua ; — reared in air, Pillared in their sarcophagus, repose The bones of Laura's lover ; here repair Many familiar with his well-sung woes, The pilgrims of his genius.' ' He is ' the Columbus of a new spiritual hemi- sphere,' 2 and his efforts to return to the Old World of the Latin Classics led to his discovery of the New World of the Italian Renaissance. His Italian poetry, of which he recked but little, is part of universal literature. His Latin prose, which loomed far larger in his own eyes, lived to be criticised by severer Latinists among his own countrymen, as well as by Erasmus. His epic poem on Scipio Africanus, which he hoped might prove immortal, is now but little read. Yet the purport of the prophecy enshrined in its final pages has been amply fulfilled : — 1 Byron, Ckilde Harold, IV, lvii, lix, xxx. 2 Symonds, Revival of Learning, p; 81. BOCCACCIO If thou survive me long, as I presage, There waits for thee, I ween, a nobler age. Oblivion's slumber shall not last for aye ; Haply our sons, when shadows flee away, Shall hail the brightness of a new-born day 1 . In the dawn of the Revival of Learning Petrarch does not stand alone : close beside him is his friend, Boccaccio. It was owing to Petrarch's influence that his great contemporary began to read the Latin Classics. His early education had unfortunately been left unfinished ; his father had purposed to make him, if possible, a merchant, or, failing that, a lawyer ; and his knowledge of Latin remained imperfect to the last. A legend told by Filippo Villani ascribes his earliest love of poetry to a visit paid to the tomb of Virgil at Naples. The sight of the poet's tomb made him long for the poet's fame ; smitten with a sudden love of the Muses, he abandoned business and began to study poetry, and soon made marvellous progress 2 . A devoted student of Dante, he sent his own tran- script of Dante's immortal poem, and of certain works of Cicero and Varro, as a gift to Petrarch, 1 ' At tibi fortassis, si, quod mens sperat et optat, Es post me victura cliu, meliora supersunt Secula; non omnes veniet lethaeus in annos Iste sopor ; poterunt, discussis forte tenebris Ad purum priscumque jubar remeare nepotes.' 2 De Civitatis Florentine Famosis Civibus, ed. Galletti, p. i -. BIS LATIN WORKS whom he had long admired, but had not met until he saw him in Florence in 1350. He was the link between Petrarch and the city of Petrarch's ancestors. It was through Boccaccio that Petrarch's influence first made itself felt in Florence, and it was at Petrarch's prompting that Boccaccio learnt Greek, and thus became the earliest of the Greek scholars of the modern world. Both are equally- eager for literary fame, and both of them hope to attain immortality by their Latin rather than by their Italian works. But Boccaccio's Latin prose lacks the freshness of that of Petrarch, and is notably inferior to all that he wrote, whether in prose or verse, in his native tongue. While Petrarch is interested in the spirit of the ancient Classics, Boccaccio is absorbed in trivial items of subject-matter, and busies himself in the collection of a multitude of minor memoranda from their pages. Petrarch's Latin work ' On Illustrious Men' prompted Boccaccio to write in Latin ' On Famous Women.' His principal Latin work is a small folio on Mythology, claiming to be founded on ancient authorities alone. It is the earliest modern handbook of the subject, and its allegorical treat- ment of the old legends must have given it a peculiar interest in the eyes of the author's contemporaries. His less important work on BOCCACCIO ' Mountains, Woods and Waters,' written to aid the study of the Latin poets, is simply an alpha- betical dictionary of ancient geography ; but, even in this dry dictionary, it is pleasant to note that the author's patriotism for Florence prompts him to begin with the river Arno, while his friendship for Petrarch leads him to overflow with information on the fountain of the Sorgue. Both of these works, the volume on Ancient Mythology, and that on ' Mountains, Woods, and Waters,' deserve recogni- tion as the precursors of our modern Dictionaries of Ancient Mythology and of Geography. Boccaccio's Latin eclogues are not unworthy of Petrarch, and, in some little-known verses on his friend's Africa, he actually anticipates a time when that poem will be appreciated even by ' the back- ward Briton,' — studiis tardus Brilannus 1 - He had a wide knowledge of the Latin poets, and with his own hand he made himself a complete copy of Terence, which is still preserved in the Laurentian Library. He is specially attracted to the two Latin historians, Livy and Tacitus. His appreciation of Livy is proved not only by abundant quotations from that historian, but also by a manuscript in the Laurentian Library, which has on the fly-leaf some introductory notes by Boccaccio, first published 1 Letterc, p. 250 Corazzini. AT MONTE CASSINO 23 from another source by the antiquary Hearne at Oxford in 1708, and not identified until long after as the actual work of Boccaccio 1 . His interest in the preservation of ancient manu- scripts in general, perhaps even his interest in Tacitus in particular, is illustrated by the story of his visit to Monte Cassino, as told by his pupil Benvenuto in expounding the twenty-second canto of the Paradiso : — Being eager to see the library, which, he had heard, was very noble, he himself besought one of the monks to do him the favour of opening it. Pointing to a lofty staircase, the monk answered stiffly : 'Go up; it is already open.' Boccaccio stepped up the staircase with delight, only to find the treasure-house of learning destitute of door or any kind of fastening, while the grass was growing on the window-sills and the dust reposing on the books and bookshelves. Turning over the manuscripts, he found many rare and ancient works, with whole sheets torn out, or with the margins ruthlessly clipped. As he left the room, he burst into tears, and, on asking a monk, whom he met in the cloister, to explain the neglect, was told that some of the inmates of the monastery, wishing to gain a few soldi, had torn out whole handfulls of leaves and made them into psalters, which they sold to boys, and had cut off strips of parchment, which they turned into amulets, to sell to women. • The story, not unnaturally, meets with some protest on the part of the learned historian of Monte Cassino, Luigi Tosti 2 , who reminds one of 1 Hortis, Cenni di Giovanni Boccaccio intorno u Tito Livio, Trieste, 1877; and Studi sidle opere latine del Boccaccio, Trieste, 1879, P- 4'6 _ 4 J 4- 2 Sloria della Badia di Monte Cassino, 1843, iii 97-99. 24 BOCCACCIO the ' urbane librarian ' of Longfellow's poem on Monte Cassino and its founder, Saint Benedict : — " He founded there his Convent and his Rule Of prayer and work, and counted work as prayer; The pen became a clarion, and his school Flamed like a beacon in the midnight air. What though Boccaccio, in his reckless way, Mocking the lazy brotherhood, deplores The illuminated manuscripts, that lay Torn and neglected on the dusty floors? ' Boccaccio was a novelist, a child Of fancy and of fiction at the best ! ' This the urbane librarian said, and smiled Incredulous, as at some idle jest." In connexion with this story of the desolate state of the library at the time of Boccaccio's visit, — a story which, notwithstanding the protest of the ' urbane librarian,' must have had some foundation in fact, it has been suggested that the well-known manuscript of the Histories and the latter part of the Annals of Tacitus, which, in some mysterious manner, came into the possession of Niccoli in Florence before 1427, and passed after his death into the Medicean Library, was perhaps originally obtained by Boccaccio from Monte Cassino 1 . It is written in a ' Lombard ' hand, and this very manuscript may conceivably have come from that 1 Voigt, Wicderbelebiing des dassischcn Altcrthums, ed. 3, 1893, i 249 f. HIS FAMILIARITY WITH TACITUS 25 monastery. What is certain is that Boccaccio pos- sessed a copy of Tacitus, possibly transcribed by himself from the manuscript which ultimately found its way into the Medicean collection. He is undoubtedly the first of the humanists, who is at all familiar with Tacitus. In his commentary on Dante he quotes the substance of that historian's account of the death of Seneca, and in his work ' On Famous Women ' he borrows descriptions of certain notable personages from the thirteenth to the sixteenth books of the Annals and from the second and third books of the Histories. After the date of his conversion in 1361, the author of the Decameron ceases to be a poet, either in prose or verse, but he never ceases to be a scholar. As a scholar he was content to remain poor rather than sacrifice his independence. Apart from a few diplomatic missions, the only office he ever held was that of being the first to hold the lectureship on Dante, which was founded in Florence in 1373. Throughout life he remained a layman, and it was mainly among the laymen of Florence that his influence survived. Like Browning's 'Gram- marian ' he was not prevented by the trials and tortures of old age 1 from remaining a brave and arduous scholar to the last. Towards the end of 1 Ep. ad Brossanum, p. 378 Corazzini. 26 BOCCACCIO his life he withdrew to his birthplace, Certaldo, a little town, halfway between Florence and Siena, which commands the view described by himself in a letter to a friend : — ' I see fields, hills, and trees clothed with green foliage and with varied flowers ; I listen to the song of nightingales and other birds ; I can here believe that I am having a foretaste of the eternal felicity.' 1 A lofty citadel crowns the summit of the hill and other hills arise around. It was there that he was buried. Few, if any, places, few, if any, persons, correspond more closely to the description in the Grammarian 's Funeral : — 'All the peaks soar, but one the rest excels; Clouds overcome it; No, yonder sparkle is the citadel's Circling its summit. Thither our path lies; wind we up the heights; Wait ye the warning? Our low life was the level's and the night's; He's for the morning.' Here, in the dawn of the New Learning, we leave the earliest modern student of Tacitus. We will remember him as the friend of Petrarch, the friend of the discoverer of half the letters of Cicero. In looking on Latin literature in a new spirit, and in resuming the long-intermitted interest in Greek, Petrarch and Boccaccio stand side by side as the discoverers of a New World : — 1 Lettere, p. 96 Corazzini. AT CERTALDO In the dim light of learning's dawn they stand, Flushed with the first glimpse of a long-lost land. On a future occasion I shall invite you to visit the Lake of Constance and the Lago di Garda, and some of the homes of learning in Italy; and I trust we shall return across the Atlantic in the company of Columbus. II. THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES. THE Revival of Learning in Italy, according to the epigrammatic phrase of Michelet in his History of France, was attended by two great achievements, the discovery of the world and the discovery of man 1 . The discovery of the world may be illustrated by the memorable exploration of the distant East by Marco Polo of Venice, who died in 1323, and by the at least equally memorable exploration of the Western Seas by the bold mariners of Genoa, beginning with those who first found the Canary Islands, and culminating, in 1492, with the great name of Christopher Columbus. It may also be illustrated by the increasing interest in geography exemplified in the fact that the first modern map of Italy is said to have been drawn under the direction of Petrarch 2 ; by the new attention to 1 Michelet, vol. VII p. ii. - Flavio Bionclo, Italia Illustrata, p. 352 f, ed. 1559, 'Pictura Italiae, quam imprimis sequimur, Roberti regis Siciliae et Francisci Petrarcae ejus amici opus' (cp. Voigt, i 155, ed. 1893). ' THE DISCO VER Y OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN' 29 natural history, which led to the creation of botanical and zoological gardens; by the keener susceptibility to the beauties of nature, which may readily be traced in Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, in Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, and in that many-sided man, Leo Baptista Alberti, who could not bear to look on noble trees and waving corn-fields without bursting into tears. The discovery of man is illustrated in the same age by the awakening of a stronger sense of human individuality, by the steady growth of a separate individualism in the republics of Italy, by the proud consciousness with which great exiles feel that they are citizens of a larger world, by a new longing for an immortal fame, by the repeated examples of many-sided or, as they were called, ' universal ' men of genius, by the poet's clearer recognition of a distinct personality in the heroes of his verse, by a marked discrimi- nation in the descriptions of the several cities of Italy or the different nations of Europe, by the fresh and vivid portrayal of the lives of famous men and women, and by that constant education of the eye that made it quick to seize the charac- teristic features of the face, and even to look on bodily beauty as a sure sign of beauty of soul. Above all, it may be illustrated by the re-awakening THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES of the human spirit from the trance, or the half- broken slumber, of the Middle Ages ; by the acceptance of the old classical literature, and primarily (in point of time) the old Latin litera- ture, as the litterae humaniores — the studies that, in comparison with all others, were regarded as distinctively humane, distinctively humanising ; and, lastly, by the recognition of the essence of humanism as consisting in a new and vital percep- tion of the dignity of man 1 . But the Revival of Learning was not only concerned with the ' discovery of man.' It was also concerned with the discovery of manuscripts. Petrarch in 1345 had recovered half the Letters of Cicero ; the other half were recovered by Coluccio Salutati, the eloquent Secretary of Florence, a single Latin letter from whose pen was more alarming to the lord of Milan than a thousand horsemen. On learning in 1389 that two manuscripts of Cicero's Letters, one from Verona and another from Vercelli, were then at Milan, Salutati caused copies to be made of both ; and, as soon as he received the transcript of the volume from Vercelli, he found to his joy that it contained the Letters to Cicero's ' Familiar 1 Cp., in general, Burckhardt's Civilisation of the Renaissance, Parts II and iv. PETRARCH, SALUTATI, AND NICCOLI 31 Friends,' which had been unknown to Petrarch. Thus, after the lapse of centuries, the two volumes of Cicero's Letters stood side by side at last in the two ancient manuscripts at Milan, and in the two modern transcripts at Florence. These two transcripts are now in the Laurentian Library, together with the original volume from Vercelli. That from Verona has vanished. The influence of Petrarch and Boccaccio sur- vived in Florence not only in the person of Salutati, but also in that of another member of the circle of San Spirito, who' was born in 1363, exactly a generation later, namely Niccolo Niccoli. Famous for his beautiful penmanship, he was much more than a copyist. He collected manuscripts, com- pared and collated their various readings, struck out the more obvious corruptions, restored the true text, broke it up into convenient paragraphs, added suitable summaries at the head of each, and did much towards laying the foundation of textual criticism. The last three years of his life were the first three of the thirty years during which Cosimo dei Medici, ' the father of his country,' was in the plenitude of his power in Florence. It was Niccoli who directed the operations of the numerous agents of Cosimo in acquiring ancient manuscripts in foreign lands, and, when he died, THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES his 800 manuscripts, mainly copied in his own hand, found a home in the Medicean Library. Long before that event he had been the valued correspondent of all the scholars of Italy, who were as eager as himself in the quest of the written memorials of ancient literature. Foremost among his younger correspondents was Poggio Bracciolini, whose main activity as a collector of manuscripts is comprised within the years 1414 and 1418, which mark the beginning and the end of the Council of Constance. That famous Council witnessed not only the death of the first great teacher of Greek in Italy, Manuel Chrysoloras, but also the discovery of not a few of the old Latin Classics. Thus far the quest of Latin manuscripts had been confined to Italy and France. It was now extended to Switzerland and Germany. In this wider quest by far the most successful explorer was Poggio. Born in the neighbourhood of Arezzo, and educated under Chrysoloras and others in Florence, where he met with much encouragement from Salutati, he had for the last eleven years held office as one of the Papal Secretaries, and it was in that capacity that he attended the Council. But, from a day in May, 1415, when his master, John XXIII, was deposed, to a day in November, 1417, when POGGIO BRACCIOLINI Martin V was elected, although there were two pretenders to the Papacy, the apostolic see was virtually vacant. Thus, for those two years and more, the Papal Secretary had no official duties to discharge, and it was during this interval of time that Poggio's principal discoveries were made. The scene of the Council was the Dominican convent on an island near the point where the river Rhine leaves the large Lake of Constance for the little lake of the Untersee. On an island in the Untersee there was a celebrated Bene- dictine abbey founded in 724 under the name of Reichenau. Beyond the northern shore of the Lake of Constance, and less than sixteen miles from the haven on that shore, rose the three towers of a second and later Benedictine abbey, that of Weingarten ; while, some twenty miles South-East of Constance, at an elevation of nearly 900 feet above the level of the lake, stood a third Benedictine abbey, the famous home of mediaeval learning founded in 614 by the Irish monk from whom it derived its name of St Gallen. For con- sultation at the Council many a fine manuscript was doubtless borrowed from the abbeys of Reichenau and Weingarten. But the principal goal of the hopes of the Papal Secretary was the still more celebrated abbey of St Gallen. During the vacancy s. l. 3 34 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES in the apostolic see, neither the inclemency of the weather nor the wretched condition of the roads, prevented Poggio and his two friends, Cenci and Bartolommeo, both of them former pupils of Chrysoloras, from sallying forth from Constance and breasting the steep slopes that led upward to St Gallen. That ancient seat of learning had apparently fallen on evil days. On reaching the abbey (as we are assured by Poggio) they found the abbot and his monks absolutely uninterested in literature. In one of the towers of the abbey- church they saw many a precious manuscript lying amid the dust and damp and darkness of a noisome cell, in which even malefactors con- demned to death would never have been confined 1 . Cenci, who was deeply moved at the sight, declared that, if those scrolls could have found a voice, they would have exclaimed : ' O ye, who love the Latin tongue, suffer us not to perish here ; release us from our prison.' 2 Poggio's first dis- covery was a complete copy of the Institutio Oratorio, of Quintilian, a work that Petrarch had never known except in an imperfect and mutilated form. The discoverer hastened to send the good news to his friends in Florence, carried off the 1 Epp. i 5 ; 15 Dec. 1416. - Cenci in Quirinus, ad Franc. Barbari Epp. p. 8. POGGIO AT ST G ALLEN 35 manuscript to Constance, and copied it in fifty- three days. At the same time and place he discovered a manuscript of Valerius Flaccus, containing part of the Epic of the Argonautic expedition. Of the two copies then made, one is at Madrid, and the other at Oxford. The third of Poggio's finds was a manuscript containing the learned commen- tary of Asconius on five of Cicero's Speeches. Of the three transcripts of Asconius, one is in Florence, another at Pistoia, and the third in Madrid, bound up in the same volume as the Valerius Flaccus. More than this, he discovered the miscellaneous poems of varied charm and interest known as the Silvae of Statius ; the transcript made under Poggio's direction is now at Madrid, and is the only source of our knowledge of the text. A copy of the architectural work of Vitruvius was also found at St Gallen, but this was not unique, as we know of another at Reichenau, still nearer to Constance, and of a third in the papal library at Avignon. The abbey of St Gallen was not the only place that was explored during the Council of Constance. The manuscripts found in unnamed homes of mediaeval learning, probably within the German frontier, included, firstly, an imperfect copy of the hitherto unknown historian, 3—2 36 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES Ammianus Marcellinus ; secondly, a complete Lucretius, Poggio's transcript of which -was sent to his friend Niccoli at Florence and kept by him for fourteen years, in the course of which he made the exquisitely beautiful copy now in the Lauren tian library, — the foremost representative of a whole family of Lucretian manuscripts ; thirdly, the epic poem of Silius on the Punic Wars, a work unnamed in the Middle Ages ; fourthly, the astronomical poem of Manilius ; and lastly, the work on gardening by Columella. This manu- script I should be disposed to trace to the neigh- bouring island of Reichenau, where Columella was certainly imitated in an extant poem on the plants in the monastic garden, composed by Servatus Lupus, abbot of Reichenau in the first half of the ninth century. The discoveries of Poggio extended even beyond the limits of Switzerland and Germany. In quest of manuscripts he made excursions to the remoter monasteries of France. Before the beginning of 1415 he had passed beyond the furthest spurs of the range of Jura, and, at the abbey of Cluni, near to Macon, had rescued from the risk of destruction an ancient manuscript including three of Cicero's Speeches, those in defence of Murena, Cluentius, and Roscius Amerinus. Two years later, probably POGGIO AT CLUN1. LANDRIANI AT LODI 37 at Langres near the source of the Marne, beyond the mountains of the Vosges, and at other mon- asteries in France, or Germany, he discovered eight new Speeches, and it is only through Poggio's transcripts of the Speeches found in the North, or through copies of the same, that the text of four of Cicero's Speeches has survived, — namely those in defence of Murena and Roscius Amerinus, and the two persons named Rabirius. The Council of Constance broke up in May, 1418, and Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of Winchester, who had lately visited Constance, invited Poggio to England. It has been suggested by Poggio's English biographer that hardly anything 'except the prospect of considerable emolument could have induced Poggio to fix his residence in Britain, a country regarded by the Italians as the remotest corner of the globe.' 1 He lingered for several years, without preferment, in a land where he failed to find any ancient manuscripts. In 1422, during his absence in England, he was tantalised with the news of an important literary discovery made near Milan. In the Cathedral Church of Lodi, the bishop, Gerardo Landriani, while engaged in looking for some ancient charters in a chest that had long remained unopened, lighted on a manuscript of 1 Shepherd's Life of Poggio Bracciolini, p. 124. THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES Cicero, written in old ' Lombardic ' characters, and including a complete copy of the three principal rhetorical works of Cicero, the De Oratore, the Brutus, and the Orator. The Brutus was abso- lutely new, while, up to that time, the De Oratore and the Orator had only been known in imperfect and mutilated manuscripts. News of this great discovery was swiftly sent to what were then the furthest limits of the civilised world, reaching Poggio in London and Aurispa at Constantinople. All the three works were rapidly transcribed, but, in or after 1428, the original was unhappily lost to view, though the monument of its fortunate discoverer, who became a Cardinal before his death in 1445, may still be seen in the Cathedral of Viterbo, the latest stage in the old northern road to Rome. On his way back from England, Poggio found in Paris a copy of the Latin lexicographer, Nonius Marcellus, and at Cologne an imperfect manuscript of the comic romance of Petronius. From the monasteries of Northern Europe rumours of the existence of a complete manuscript of Livy reached Poggio in Rome in and after 1424, but these rumours led to no result. The Histories and the latter part of the A nnals of Tacitus had been known to Boccaccio at Florence 1 , 1 See p. 24. POGGIO AT MONTE CASSINO 39 and in 1426 a mysterious manuscript of the same books of the Roman historian was in the hands of Niccoli, who lent it to Poggio under promises of strict secrecy. The existence of this manuscript, which is now in the Laurentian Library, was known to very few before it was printed at Venice in 1470. The manuscript of the first few books of the Annals in the same Library did not reach Italy from the Westphalian monastery of Corvey until 1509, and was not published until 1515, in the time of Leo X. Rumours of the existence in Germany of a manuscript of the minor works of Tacitus had reached a bishop of Milan during Poggio's absence in England, and, after his return, he succeeded in 1429 in obtaining the manuscript from a monk at Hersfeld. In the same year he received from Germany a list of manuscripts, together with the titles of twenty plays of Plautus, twelve of which were then unknown. By the end of the year the actual manuscript had reached Rome. It was found to contain sixteen plays, four of them included in the eight already known, while the other twelve were entirely new. The same eventful year found Poggio visiting Monte Cassino. He had learnt that in the library of that famous Benedictine abbey there was a unique manuscript of the work of Frontinus 40 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES on the Roman Aqueducts. The manuscript was carried off to Rome and copied, and was faithfully returned to Monte Cassino, where it is still pre- served. In 1899 a complete facsimile of this manuscript was produced at Boston by one who is professionally interested in Frontinus, an engineer of New York, Mr Clemens Herschel. We have now seen that Poggio was associated in different degrees with the recovery and preser- vation of the whole or part of no less than fifteen ancient authors, the six poets Plautus, Lucretius, Manilius, Statius, Silius, and Valerius Flaccus, and the nine writers of prose, Cicero and Asconius, Vitruvius, Petronius and Columella, Quintilian and Frontinus, Nonius Marcellus and Ammianus Mar- cellinus. We are immediately struck by his ex- traordinary success in the recovery of lost Classics. Certainly others (such as his contemporary Am- brogio Traversari), who had equal or even greater advantages, were less fortunate in their finds. Poggio at the Council of Constance found many more manuscripts than Aurispa, seventeen years later, during the Council of Basel. In 1433, Aurispa's visit to Mainz led, however, to the dis- covery of the commentary of Donatus on the comedies of Terence, and the Panegyric of Pliny on the Emperor Trajan. THE RECOVERY OF GREEK MANUSCRIPTS 41 In the century that had elapsed between Pe- trarch's discovery of Cicero's Defence of Archias in 1333, and Aurispa's discovery of Pliny's Panegyric in 1433, the principal accessions to the Latin Classics had been made, and there was little left to be found. But the eager enthusiasm that naturally welcomed each new discovery in that century must not be allowed to blind us to the fact that the total amount of the new finds, interesting and important as they were, was small in comparison with the great bulk of the Latin Classics that had safely descended through the Middle Ages to the time of Petrarch. During that part of the fifteenth century which succeeded the recovery of so many of the Latin Classics, the old monastic libraries of the Middle Ages were succeeded by the new libraries that were associated with the Revival of Learning, the Medicean Library in Florence, the Ducal Library at Urbino, the Vatican Library in Rome, and the Library of St Mark's in Venice. Much might be said on the recovery of Greek manuscripts from the East by Aurispa in 1423, and by Filelfo in 1427, also on Bessarion's gift of his Greek manu- scripts to Venice in 146S, and on the many manuscripts brought to Florence in 1492 by Janus Lascaris as the emissary of Lorenzo. The Ravenna 42 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES manuscript of Aristophanes was once at Urbino ; Bessarion's manuscript of the same poet is still at Venice, and a facsimile of the same has been produced, with a preface by Professor White, thanks to the cordial cooperation of the Archaeo- logical Institute of America and the Hellenic Society of London. The Hellenic Society has also published the facsimile of the Laurentian manuscript of Sophocles, while Florence has re- produced, from the same volume, the famous manuscript of Aeschylus, I have, however, been invited to lecture primarily on Latin, and I must therefore say no more at present on the subject of Greek. Meanwhile, I may be permitted to say some- thing on the early stages in the study of Roman Archaeology, and in the collection of Latin in- scriptions. The age of discovery saw the awakening of a new interest in the study of Archaeology. The ruins of Rome had been regarded with a peculiar veneration by Petrarch, and by his friends Rienzi and Giovanni Dondi, the learned physician of Padua ; and both of those friends had even recorded some of her ancient inscriptions. A marked advance was made by Poggio, who carried off, either from St Gallen or (more probably) from Reichenau, a small treatise, of which a copy is CIRIACO OF ANCONA 43 preserved at Einsiedeln. The unnamed pilgrim, who wrote that treatise, recorded in its pages a plan of Rome, together with a number of Latin inscriptions 1 . Poggio himself collected Roman inscriptions, and his own ' Description of the ruins of the city of Rome' is to be found in the first book of his work ' On the Changes of P"ortune.' But the leading representative of Archaeological research in this age is Ciriaco of Ancona, who was born about 1391, and died about 1450. He was the Schliemann of his time. A self-taught student, he spent all his life in travelling, not only for the purposes of trade, but also for the collec- tion of objects of archaeological interest. The study of Dante had led him to that of Virgil ; and the study of Virgil to that of Homer. At his birthplace of Ancona he had begun his archaeo- logical career by making a careful copy of the Latin inscription, which is still visible on the triumphal arch of Trajan. He continued that work in Rome, where he first became conscious of the historic value of the evidence from inscrip- tions, as compared with that derived from ordinary literature. He explored the archaeological remains of many places in Italy, and, in the course of his 1 Jordan, Topographic der St ad/ Rom, ii 330, 646 f ; Corpus Iiiscriptionum Latinaritm, VI i pp. ix-xv. 44 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES repeated travels in the East, he visited Constan- tinople and Ephesus, the islands of the central Aegean with Thasos, and Crete and Cyprus, the pyramids of Memphis, and even the distant Damascus. It was one of the dreams of his life that he would one day explore the furthest fore- lands of the Western Ocean, and the far-off isle of Thule. The dream was unfulfilled, and Ciriaco has no share in the laurels won from the explora- tion of the Atlantic. He is remembered mainly as an industrious and a trustworthy collector and recorder of ancient inscriptions. These were originally comprised in three vast volumes, only fragmentary portions of which have been preserved. It is true that he was wanting in critical faculty, and that much of his undoubted learning was ill- digested. In fact his friend Bruni, of Florence, had the candour to tell him that he would be much the better for knowing less'. But he was an honest man, and the doubts once thrown on the accuracy of his transcripts have been trium- phantly dispelled. In his unwearied endeavour to resuscitate the memorials of the past, he was fully conscious that his mission in life was 'to awake the dead.' He took a peculiar pleasure in recalling 1 Epp. vi 9, ' melius erat, o Cyriace, non tantum sapere, quan- tum sapis.' FLAVIO BIONDO 45 an incident that once occurred while he was looking for antiques in a Church at Vercelli. An inquisi- tive priest, who, on seeing him prowling about the Church, ventured to ask him on what business he was bent, was completely mystified by the solemn reply : 'It is sometimes my business to awaken the dead from their graves ; it is an art that I have learnt from the Pythian oracle of Apollo.' His drawings of ancient sculptures have vanished, but, before their disappearance, some of them were fortunately copied at Padua about 1460 by the Nuremberg humanist, Hartmann Schedel, and it was these copies that inspired the drawings of Mercury and Arion from the pencil of Albert Diirer in the collection at Vienna 1 - Among the contemporaries of Ciriaco was Flavio Biondo of Forli, who, in 1422, was the first to make a copy of the newly discovered Bruttis of Cicero. He also deserves a place of honour among the founders of Classical Archaeology. He was the author of four great works on the Antiquities and the History of Rome and Italy. The first of these, entitled Roma Triumphans, gives a full account of the religious, constitutional, and military Antiquities of Rome ; the second, Roma 1 Otto Jahn, Cyriacas von Ancona und Albrecht Diirer, in Populare Aufs'atze, 333— SS^- 46 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES Instaurata, describes the city of Rome, and en- deavours to restore its ancient monuments ; the third, Italia Illitstrata, deals with the topography and antiquities of the whole of Italy ; the title of the fourth, Historiarum ab Inclinatione Romani Imperii, obviously anticipates that of the History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Flavio Biondo was Papal Secretary to four Popes in succession, and he dedicated one of his great works to the Venetian Pope, Eugenius IV, who was the first to befriend him, and another to Nicolas V, who showed him little favour owing to his being unable to aid that Pope in the vast scheme for rendering the principal Greek Classics into Latin. His prospects were also impaired by the fact that he was too serious a student to mingle freely in the frivolous society of the humanists of his day, while his position as a married layman was a bar to ecclesiastical prefer- ment. But the last of the four Popes whom he loyally served, Pope Pius II, amid some misgivings as to the historian's style, pays a feeling tribute to his worth as a man, and to the high merit of his works, and posterity has been even more just to his undoubted deserts. Flavio Biondo died in 1463. In the following year we have an interesting indication of the ON THE LA GO DI GARDA 47 abiding influence of his contemporary, Ciriaco of Ancona. On a pleasant day in the autumn of 1464 a merry company from Verona, Padua and Mantua met among the lemon-groves of Toscolano, on the western shore of the Lago di Garda. They crowned themselves with ivy and with myrtle, and sallied forth to visit all the remains of Roman antiquities that they could find amid the ruins of the temple of Diana and elsewhere, and to make copies of all the Roman inscriptions they could discover on or near the South- West shore of the lake. When they left the shore for the islands, their barque was dressed with laurel, and the notes of the lyre floated over the waters as they sailed southward for Sirmione. There they devoutly entered the little Church of San Pietro to give thanks for a happy and successful day. No less than two and twenty inscriptions had been copied by this joyous and grateful company, all of whom were members of an antiquarian confraternity, which had an ' imperator,' or President, in the person of Samuele da Tradate of Mantua ; he it was who had made music on his lyre, as they sailed across the lake. The confraternity also had two officials bearing the name of ' consuls,' one of whom was none other than the great antiquary and artist Andrea Mantegna, while the second has been THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES identified as Giovanni Marcanuova of Padua. Finally, there was the ' procurator ' or Secretary, that fortunate possessor of a name of happy omen, Felix Felicianus of Verona, whose jubilant memorial of this antiquarian excursion is one of the brightest pages in the early history of classical archaeology in Italy 1 - Of this merry company Marcanuova, a physician and philosopher of Padua and Bologna, was the first to follow the example of Ciriaco as a collector of inscriptions. More was accomplished by Felix Felicianus, poet, printer, publisher, and antiquarian in one, whose collection of inscriptions was dedi- cated to Mantegna. Mantegna himself has given ample proof of his antiquarian tastes, not only in the reminiscences of works of ancient sculpture and architecture, but also in the careful copies of Latin inscriptions, which he has introduced into his pictures. Thus, in the frescoes from the life of St James in the Eremitani chapel at Padua, he has placed upon the arches two ancient inscriptions, which, partly on the authority of this artist, have been included in the Corpus Inscriptionum Latin- arum' 2 '. Similar examples have been preserved in 1 Complete text first published in Kristeller's Andrea Mantegna, ed. 1901, p. 523. Only the beginning of the Jtibilatio is printed in Corp. Inscr. Lat. V i p. 427 a, 2 v ii p. 1072 (no. 2528) and p. 1073 (no. 2989). MANTEGNA, SAN GALLO, AND FRA GIOCONDO 49 the sketch-book of his father-in-law, Jacopo Bellini, who has thus recorded eight inscriptions, from Padua, Este, Ferrara, Verona, and Brescia 1 . The influence of Ciriaco may also be traced in the ancient monuments and inscriptions reproduced by two famous architects, firstly, in the sketch- books of Giuliano da San Gallo, and, secondly, in the manuscript collections of Fra Giovanni del Giocondo of Verona. A new era in the history of classical architecture is marked by Fra Giocondo's Aldine edition of Vitruvius in 1511, with its rude woodcuts, including the first modern plan of a Roman house. Similarly, the villas of the ancients are elucidated in his Aldine edition of the Letters of the younger Pliny, published in 1508, and founded on an important manuscript, which he had himself discovered in Paris. Finally, his Aldine Caesar of 1513 includes the earliest of all modern drawings of Caesar's bridge across the Rhine. Fra Giocondo is in fact the true father of the illustrated Classic 2 . The fame of Fra Giocondo had already extended into France, where he entered the King's service in 1 v i, nos. 2428, 2542, 2553, 2623, 2669, 3464 1 , and 4653 (Ziebarth in Neue Jahrbiicher, 1903, 483 f). * Cp. in general E. Ziebarth, in Neue Jahrbiicher fur das kl. Allertum, 1903, pp. 480-493. S. L. 4 50 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES 1497 and designed one at least (if not two) of the noble bridges that span the Seine. Before the first of those bridges was begun in 1500, a far ampler breadth of water, the Atlantic Ocean itself, had been spanned by the enterprise of two of Fra Giocondo's countrymen. In 1499 (as we are all aware) a son of Florence, Amerigo Vespucci, took part in the discovery of Venezuela. But it is not perhaps so widely known that his graphic descrip- tion of the third and most famous of his four voyages was translated into Latin by none other than Fra Giocondo himself 1 . This translation was printed by Martin Waltzemuller at Strassburg in 1505, and also reprinted with the narrative of the three other voyages in 1507, and it is in this reprint that we find the first suggestion that the newly discovered continent should receive the name of America 2 . In this volume Amerigo makes a vain- glorious display of his classical learning in the form of quotations from Pliny, Virgil, and Aristotle. 1 Sophus Ruge, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, p. 338, note 2. " Hylacomylus, Cosmographiae Introductio c. 9, published with the Quattuor Avierici Vespiicii navigalioues (1507), ' Nunc vero et hae partes sunt latius lustratae / et alia quarta pars per Americu Vesputiii (ut in sequentibus audietur) inventa est /qua non video cur quis iure vetet ab Americo inventore sagacis ingenii viio Amerigen quasi Americi terra /sive Americam dicenda (1507).' Facsimile in Sophus Ruge, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, 339. AMERIGO VESPUCCI, AND COLUMBUS 51 But, as all the world knows, seven years before Amerigo ever saw the coast of Venezuela, the Atlantic had been crossed and the islands of the West Indies had been reached by the greatest representative of the Age of Discovery, Christopher Columbus. In connexion with the history of the Revival of Learning it is natural to inquire whether there was any point of contact between Columbus and the Classics, and whether he was in any way inspired by the Classics to make his great discovery. It is easy to conjecture that he may have owed part of his inspiration to the magnificent descrip- tion of the last voyage of Ulysses, in the twenty- sixth canto of Dante's Inferno, where the Greek mariners, ' who through a hundred thousand perils were come unto the West,' are described as impelled by the glowing language of their heroic leader to pass beyond the pillars of Hercules, and, turning their backs to the morning, to follow the sun for the space of seven moons until they find themselves under a new sky and unfamiliar stars. But, so far as I am aware, Dante's description has no ancient classical origin. Again, part of the inspiration of Columbus may have been due to the old story of Plato's Atlantis. The influence of Plato and Ulysses are combined in Lowell's poem on the boyhood of Columbus : — 4—2 52 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES ' I heard Ulysses tell of mountain-chains Whose adamantine links, his manacles, The western main shook growling, and still gnawed ; I brooded on the wise Athenian's tale Of happy Atlantis.'... ' For I believed the poets. ' We, on our part, would gladly believe Lowell. There is a greater definiteness, however, in the story that Columbus was convinced of the possi- bility of finding a new route across the Ocean by the study of Strabo and Ptolemy at the University of Pavia 1 . The authority for ' Pavia ' is the Life of Columbus, the Vida del Almirante, of 1571, pur- porting to have been written by his son, though this authorship is now denied 2 . But it so happens, that Columbus went to sea before he attained the age of fourteen, and, so far from studying at the University of Pavia, it is probable that he derived all his early knowledge from the school of his- native city of Genoa. It is probable also that in the Vida del Almirante, a work abounding in mis- prints, Pavia is simply a printer's error for patria 3 . Columbus really derived his knowledge of Ptolemy 1 Symonds, Revival of Learning, 20. 2 Harrisse, D. Fernando Colon, Historiador de su padre, Seville 1871. 3 c. 3, ' aprendio las letras y estudio en Pavia, lo que Ie basto para entender los cosmografos, a cuya leccion fue muy aficionado ' (reprinted in ColecciSn de Libros Raros...que tratan de America, Madrid, 1892, vol. v, p. 15). Cp. Sophus Ruge, I.e. p. 120 note 3, and Biblioteca Colombiana, vol. in, parte ii (1894), p. ia. COLUMBUS AND THE CLASSICS 53 and of other classical texts, not from any studies at the University of Pavia, but from the Imago Mundi produced in 1410 by Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly, Bishop of Cambray, a work from which Columbus obtained the citations from classical authors in support of his plan for finding the Indies by sailing to the West. As early as 1410, the Cosmography of Ptolemy had been translated at Florence by a pupil of Chrysoloras; and it was through Cardinal Bessarion that the Greek text of Ptolemy came to the know- ledge of the celebrated astronomer Regiomontanus, the Archbishop of Ratisbon, who died in 1476, and is sometimes regarded as ' an intellectual precursor' of Columbus 1 . But the most important impulse came from the letter addressed in 1474 to a Canon of Lisbon by the Florentine scholar and physicist, Toscanelli, who died in 1482. The letter was brought to the knowledge of Columbus ; his tran- script of the same is still preserved at Seville ; and, early in 1480, he was already in correspondence with the writer. Besides the Latin and Greek passages in the Imago Mundi, Columbus used a collection of such passages specially made on his behalf by a Car- thusian monk of Seville, named Father Gorricio. 1 A. Ziegler, Regiomontanus, ei7i geistiger Vorlaufer des Colum- bus (Dresden, 1874). 54 THE AGE OF DISCOVERIES His correspondence with Columbus, which includes quotations from Seneca and Pliny, is preserved in the library founded at Seville by the great ex- plorer's son, Ferdinand. The most famous of those texts is from a Latin Classic, a prophetic passage in a chorus of Seneca's tragedy of Medea, and in the copy of Seneca preserved at Seville, Ferdinand states in the margin of this passage that this prophecy had been fulfilled by his father 1 . The Latin text is familiar to us all, owing partly to its appearing as the motto of the Life of Columbus by Washington Irving. But I cannot resist the temptation of recalling the Latin, and of adding in conclusion a rendering of the same in the mother-tongue of the two nations that are united by a common language on both sides of the Atlantic : — ' Venient annis saecula seris, Quibus Oceanus vincula rerum Laxet, et ingens pateat tellus, Tethysque novos detegat orbes, Nee sit terris ultima Thule.' In distant days the circling Main At length shall loosen Nature's chain, And a vast continent unseal ; Old Ocean shall New Worlds reveal, And far-off Thule shall be found To be no more earth's utmost bound. 1 On Columbus and the Classics, cp. Sophus Ruge, Zeitalter der Entdeckungen, 220, 223, 236, 319. III. THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDUCATION. The Biographies of the Florentine bookseller, Vespasiano da Bisticci, who, as an old-world dealer in manuscripts, had a fine professional scorn for the newly-invented art of printing, supply us with few pictures that are more attractive than that of the life and character of his friend, the copyist and collector of manuscripts, Niccolo dei Niccoli. A being of beautiful presence, with a quiet smile playing about his lips, he was never happier than in his own home with all his books about him. He had also a fancy for marble statues and for terra- cottas, and to see him seated at his table, with his antique vases and his crystal cups gleaming on the spotless linen, was in itself an education in refine- ment. When he went abroad he always wore a long and handsome robe of roseate hue 1 . On a day in Florence, as he was leaving the palace of the Podesta, now better known as the Bargello, this ' second Socrates,' this ' second Cato,' seeing a 1 Vespasiano, Vile di Uomini Illustri, p. 480, ed. 1859. 56 THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDUCATION noble youth of comely aspect passing by, saluted him, and asked him for his father's name. The youth answered, ' Messer Andrea de' Pazzi.' Nic- col6 questioned the youth as to his pursuits. The youth replied, as young men do : ' Giving myself a good time,' — darmi bnon tempo. Whereupon Nic- col6 gravely said : ' Being the son of such a father, and so handsome too, it is a shameful thing that thou art not giving thyself to the learning of the Latin tongue, which would be unto thee a great adornment; and, if thou learn it not, thou shalt be of no esteem, for so soon as the flower of thy youth hath passed away, thou shalt find thyself without virtue.' ' Virtue,' it may be noticed, which meant manliness in the Roman Age, and goodness in the Middle Ages, in the Revival of Learning meant mainly the knowledge of Latin 1 . Messer Piero de' Pazzi was converted in a moment. Forsaking all his pleasures, he studied day and night, learnt by heart the Aeneid of Virgil and many speeches of Livy, and became a scholar, and the patron of scholars 2 . Such was the educational influence of a strong personality on a youth of high promise. Another impressive instance of the value at- tached to the learning of Latin may be seen in 1 Fioretto, Gli Umanisti, p. 74. Vespasiano, p. 370 f. NICCOLO, AND AENEAS SYLVIUS 57 a letter written by the humanist, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, who, in quaint remembrance of ' pius Aeneas,' on surrendering the name of Aeneas, assumed the papal name of Pius. He writes to his nephew to this effect : — ' Without literature, I do not know what you can be, but a two- legged donkey. For, without learning, what is man, however wealthy, however powerful he may be ? No one, neither nobleman nor king nor general, is of any worth, if he is ignorant of Letters.... Perhaps some maiden fair to see, who is herself attracted by your ' comeliness, has smitten you, and is entangling you in her toils. You may deem yourself happy in your wooing, but you are being deeply deceived. For, while you are doting on her beauty, you are deserting another beautiful form, that is really fairer by far. For neither the star of morning nor the evening-star is fairer than the wisdom that is won by the study of Letters?' 1 This reminiscence of a glowing phrase in the Ethics of Aristotle 2 , comes from one, who, besides addressing to the Archduke Sigismund of Tyrol, in 1443, a letter On the Right Education of a Prince, wrote in 1450 one of the set treatises on Education, which form part of our present subject 3 The theory of education is unfolded for us in those treatises, while its practice may be illustrated by Vittorino and Guarino, who were eminent among the instructors of their time, though they have left 2 V I, (of diKaLoativTj) oti&' 'effirepos 0O8' eyos oiiru Bavfiaarbs. 3 Four of these treatises, those of Vergerius, Lionardo Bruni, Aeneas Sylvius, and Battista Guarino, are translated in Woodward's Vittorino da Feltre (Cambridge University Press, 1897), pp. 93-178. 58 THEORY OF EDUCATION no memorial of their method, save in the pages of their grateful pupils. To Aeneas Sylvius we shall shortly return. Meanwhile, the treatise that comes first in the order of time is that of Pietro Paolo Vergerio, who is primarily associated with Padua. In 1392 he addressed to a prince of Padua the first treatise in which the claims of Latin learning are methodically maintained as an essential part of a liberal edu- cation 1 - Vergerio begins by observing that the prince's grandfather was wont to say that a parent owed to his children three duties, firstly, to give them suitable Christian names, of which they would never be ashamed ; secondly, to have them brought up in some famous city ; and, thirdly, to take care that they were educated in ' grave and liberal ' studies. The author combines an enthusiasm for the Classics with a religious feeling that is reverent without being superstitious. He objects to de- sultory reading, while he emphasises the import- ance of wide reading ' concentrated on one special subject.' Though to the wise man ' nothing is so laborious as doing nothing,' he confesses that we are sometimes in need of a certain repose, for the bowstring, that is always on the stretch, 'will end 1 De Ingenuis Moribus (1392), ed. pr. 1470 (Woodward, 93- VERGER 10 59 by breaking.' 1 He despises people who, like the Emperor Licinius, denounce learning and the Arts ' as dangerous to the State and as hateful in them- selves.' 2 He exults in Cicero's praises of the delights of literature, and himself declares that, without style, even wise sayings will not be likely either to attract much notice or to attain a long life. With a view to aiding the student to make the best use of the flying hours, he makes what appears to be an original suggestion, which has now become commonplace : — ' In every Library let a clock be so placed that it may catch the eye of the reader, and, by recording the flight of time, warn him of the need of diligence ; and, I would add, let the Library be used for no other purpose whatsoever than that for which it is designed.' Vergerio's references to Plato and Aristotle, interesting though they are, could only have been derived from Latin trans- lations, as he had not yet learnt Greek. In con- nexion with Roman history we find him writing : — ' It is hard that no small portion of the history of Rome is only to be known through the labours of one who wrote in the Greek language' (namely Poly- bius). Writing four years before the call of Chry- soloras, ' it is still worse (he adds) that this noble tongue, once the almost daily speech of our race, as 1 Cp. Herodotus, ii 173. 2 Aurel. Victor, Epit. 41 § 8. 60 THEORY OF EDUCATION familiar as the Latin language itself, is on the point of perishing even among its own sons, and to us Italians is already utterly lost, unless we except one or two who in our own time are tardily en- deavouring to rescue something — if it be only a mere echo of it, from oblivion.' The prince of Padua had resolved on being skilled in Arts as well as Arms, and he is informed by his adviser, that the wide range of liberal studies, and of professional activities, here surveyed, ought in all cases to rest on the foundation of Grammar, Logic and Rhetoric, taught through the medium of the Latin language. The writer quotes not merely from the Satires of Horace, but, to prove the importance of being inured to the hardships of military training, he departs from the mediaeval tradition, and follows the example of Petrarch, by citing a passage from the Odes. Five years later his personal interest in the Latin poets prompted him to protest against the destruction of the statue of Virgil at Mantua, and, about the year 1400, at the age of more than fifty, he went to Florence to learn Greek from Chryso- loras. In 1415 he witnessed the death of his Greek teacher at the Council of Constance, and had the honour of writing the Latin epitaph in his memory. The rest of his long life he passed in Hungary, VERGER JO 6 1 where his latest work was a Latin rendering of Arrian's ' Expedition of Alexander the Great.' While he was fading away in a foreign land amid the miseries of old age and poverty, he may well have recalled the fact that, in his treatise on Education written fifty years before, he had assured the young prince of Padua that, ' if we hold it our first duty to live honourably and bravely, whether in peace or war, we shall not over-rate the blessing of long life.' The Greek teacher, who died at Constance in 141 5, was the first to attract his Italian pupils to the study of Plutarch, and, it will be remembered, that, in the year which followed that teacher's death, the complete Quintilian was discovered at St Gallen 1 . This work of Quintilian on the training of the orator, and the treatise on the bringing up of children, ascribed to Plutarch, had the most important influence on the theory and practice of education in the Revival of Learning. It was Vergerio who produced the first modern introduction to the study of Quintilian, while in 14 1 1 the treatise of 'Plutarch' was translated into Latin by Guarino, who will claim our attention in the sequel. But, before the recovery of the complete Quin- tilian in 14 16, and even before the translation of 1 See p. 33. 62 THEORY OF EDUCATION the treatise of 'Plutarch' in 141 1, another pupil of Chrysoloras, and a translator of several of Plutarch's Lives, wrote (about 1405) a short and not uninteresting treatise on Education 1 . During the preceding five years a protest against the revival of ancient learning had been published by Giovanni di Domenico, the Vicar of the Convent of Santa Maria Novella. It was in reply to that protest that Lionardo Bruni, who had recently been made a Papal Secretary, translated into Latin the little work of St Basil on the profit to be derived from pagan literature, and it was apparently in the same year that he wrote what has been described as ' probably the earliest humanist tract upon education expressly dedicated to a lady.' 2 The letter is addressed to Baptista de' Malatesti di Montefeltro, the daughter of the Count of Urbino. During the past year she had been married to the heir of the lordship of Pesaro. In suggesting to his fair correspondent a suitable course of Latin reading, Bruni insists on the supreme importance of all that conduces to morality and religion. He also finds room for philosophy, and for the ' art of clever conversation,' and even 1 Lionardo Bruni d' Arezzo, De Studiis et Uteris (c. 1405), ed. pr. 1472? (Woodward, 119-133). 2 Woodward, 119. LIONARDO BRUNI 63 for a range of Latin literature, that includes the greatest of the Fathers, as well as the best of the Classics. He urges that the foundation of all true learning is a ' sound and thorough knowledge of Latin, which implies study marked by a broad spirit, accurate scholarship, and careful attention to details.' His suggested course of reading comprises, first of all, the Christian writers, such as Lactantius and St Augustine. Among the Classics, history is represented by Livy, Sallust, Curtius and Caesar ; oratory, by Cicero ; and poetry by Virgil. Poetry (he adds) is ' a subject with which every educated lady must show herself thoroughly familiar,' and, in the ancient poets, she may study the noble examples of constancy and devotion in the stories of Penelope and Alcestis. To her knowledge of facts she must add finish of form, and her highest distinction is to be found in breadth of learning combined with grace of style. The writer of this letter afterwards became the Latin Secretary of Florence, and he rests beneath one of the most beautiful of the marble monuments of Santa Croce. The fair student, who received it, afterwards gave proof of an evenly balanced mind amid the strain and stress of severe domestic troubles. Learned in Latin, she was still more noted for her skill in needle- 64 THEORY OF EDUCATION work. Through no fault of her own, her marriage proved unhappy, but she found some consolation in writing Latin letters to her unworthy husband's father; later, in 1433, when she had returned to her old home in the palace of Urbino, she welcomed the Emperor Sigismund with a Latin oration ; and, forty-five years after her receipt of Bruni's letter of good counsel, she died as a devoted sister of the Franciscan Order of Santa Clara. Three years before her death she was gladdened by the birth of a grand-daughter, who became the happy wife of the brave and scholarly Duke Federigo of Urbino. The year that succeeded this learned lady's receipt of the letter from Lionardo Bruni saw the birth, at Lodi, near Milan, of another eminent educationist, Maffeo Vegio. As a boy of twelve at Milan, he was taken by his tutor to hear the eloquent and stirring discourses of Bernardino of Siena, but his early impressions faded away for a time, while he studied Roman law at Pavia, and wrote pagan poetry at Milan. The most popular of his poems was on the theme of the latest exploits and the death of Aeneas, a work which he did not blush to describe as the thirteenth book of the Aeneid. Shortly before 1441 he was made a datarius, or papal registrar, and held that office, MAFFEO VEGIO 65 with a canonry at St Peter's, under several Popes. Meanwhile, a change had been coming over his opinions. While he had hitherto regarded Virgil as an almost divine being, he now found his chief delight in the study of the Confessions of St Augustine, and in the special cult of St Monica, whose relics had recently been removed from Ostia to Rome. His later devotion to the memory of Monica, and his earlier reverence for the Muse of Virgil, have left their mark on the educational treatise, which he wrote some years before his death in 1458 1 . It is not addressed to any par- ticular person ; it is meant for the perusal of parents or teachers in general. Of the six books, the first is on the duties of parents. Here the author protests against boys being baptised under such unsuitable names as Cicero, Brutus, Naso, or Maro ; he also discourses on moral and physical training, and raises his voice against all excess in corporal punishment. The second book deals with study in the widest sense of the term. The practice of public declamations is here recom- mended. The texts to be studied must be care- fully selected ; elegiac and lyric poets set aside, 1 Maffeo Vegio, De Educatione Liberorum (before 1458), ed. Paris 1511, and Basel 1541; German transl. with notes by F. J. Kohler (Gmiind, 1856). S. L. 5 66 THEORY OF EDUCATION and comic poets reserved for a riper age. The classical authors, which are to be read, together with suitable selections from the Bible, include ' Aesop ' and Sallust, the tragedies of Seneca, and the epic poets, especially Virgil, whom the author interprets in an allegorical sense, and whom he defends against all detractors. He is in favour of the early and simultaneous study of a wide variety of subjects, which may be followed later by the special study of one or two. The third book is very varied in its range ; it touches on music, drawing, gymnastics, and games in general, with a passing warning against games of chance, and against dancing. The study of moral philosophy is here urged, and, towards the end of the book, new ground is broken in several chapters on the moral education of girls. They are not to be allowed to converse with fops or dandies, or with strange girls who are fond of foreign perfumes. Singing is regarded with some suspicion, and, un- fortunately, there is a marked absence of details as to intellectual studies ; the writer's ideal woman is clearly St Monica. The remaining three books are entirely on moral training ; the chief virtue of youth is verecundia, including modesty and sub- missive regard for others, and, lastly, self-respect. The work, as a whole, is characterised by a recog- MAFFEO VEGIO 67 nition of the- united claims of religion and learning ; mental culture apart from morality is as much disapproved as mere morality apart from mental culture. The authorities, on which the writer relies, are the Bible and the Fathers and the Classics, as well as his own experience of life. The treatise shows that, in the Revival of Learning, an enthusiasm for the best of the Classical authors did not necessarily lead to paganism. The author's devotion to St Augustine and St Monica ended in his ultimately joining the Augustinian Order. In the Church of Sant' Agostino, North-West of the Pantheon, he re- stored the chapel of St Monica, where his body rests beside the vase of verde antique that en- shrines the relics of the saintly mother of St Augustine. Vegio died in 1458, the second year of the pontificate of Pope Pius II. Eight years previously, that Pope, under his earlier name of Aeneas Sylvius, had composed a short treatise on education. After making his mark as an orator at the Council of Basel, he had become Bishop of Trieste and Secretary to the Emperor Frederic III. His interest in the Emperor's youthful ward, Ladislas, the young King of Bohemia and Hungary, then of the age of ten, led to his inditing a formal letter on 5- 2 68 THEORY OF EDUCATION the proper education of a Prince 1 - The new influence of Plutarch and Ouintilian is manifested in the references to those authors on the opening pages. The young Prince, he continues, must be trained to hardihood and inured to military- exercises. Lessons are to be diversified by games of skill, and ' rest from work is a needful condition of further work.' The Prince is to study Letters, and Philosophy, and Religion. In preparing for the eternal life beyond the tomb, he must study not only the great doctors of the Church, but also the poets and other authors of antiquity, who (as St Basil allows) are ' saturated with the same faith, and for this reason deserve our study.' In com- position he will aim at euphony and grace ; but, first and foremost, he will choose the word that will most exactly express his meaning. He will study etymology, without lapsing into pedantry. In perusing the pagan poets, beginning with Homer and Virgil, he will not be deterred by any ' shallow Churchman,' who denounces it as a waste of precious time. ' Happily there are in Hungary not a few to whom the poets of antiquity are a precious possession.' The Latin poets to be studied, include Virgil, Lucan, Statius, Ovid's 1 Aeneas Sylvius, De Libcrorum Edncationc (1450), ed. pr. Cologne 1. 1495 (Woodward, 134-158). AENEAS SYLVIUS 69 Metamorphoses, and, with certain limitations, Horace, Juvenal, and Persius, who is difficult, while, ' in handling Martial, one cannot gather the roses for the thorns.' The plays of Plautus, Terence and Seneca may be studied, but the elegiac poets are enervating. In prose the authors recom- mended include Cicero, Livy, and Sallust. The art of writing letters must not be neglected by Princes. A Prince need not write often, but he must learn to write legibly. ' It was no credit to the great Alfonso, that his signature was most like the traces of a worm crawling over the paper.' Cicero's praise of a practical life is quoted with approval. ' All ingenious trifling is unworthy of the true Citizen.' The boy of ten, to whom all this good advice was addressed, died at the age of eighteen in I457> and failed to fulfil the prophecy of Aeneas Sylvius, that it would be ' his destiny to defend Christendom against the Turk.' In the year before his death, when the Turks were repulsed by the Hungarians at Belgrade, the youthful king only visited the battle-field, whose glory he had refused to share. But Aeneas Sylvius himself, as Pope Pius II, not only proclaimed a crusade against the Turks, but, in his last illness, actually went on the crusade as far as Ancona, there to die in the endeavour to do his duty. 70 THEORY AND PRACTICE OF EDUCATION Many years afterwards, when Hungary was conquered by the Turks in 1526, a Latin homily on that dire event was delivered in the South of France by Cardinal Sadoleto, the scholarly Bishop of Carpentras. In 1534 the bachelor Bishop sent to his newly-married friend, the French General, Guillaume du Bellay, lord of Langey, a discourse on the proper education of children, in the form of a dialogue between the Bishop and his nephew. The poets passed in review by the nephew are limited to Homer and Virgil, Plautus and Terence. The influence of Quintilian is still apparent, and the only new note is the emphasis laid on the importance of the study of Greek 1 . From these writers on the theory of education we may now turn to two great teachers who exemplify its practice, though they refrained from embodying it in any formal treatise. Of these the more famous in the history of education is Vittorino da Feltre, who died in 1446 at the age of 68 ; while the other, Guarino of Verona, was born eight years before Vittorino, and died fourteen years after him, having attained at his death, in 1460, the great age of ninety. Guarino's method was recorded by his son, who continued his teaching. Let us start with 1 Sadoleto, De Liberis Rectc Instituemiis (1534) ; also in Opera, iii 66-126, Verona, 1738. SADOLETO. VITTORINO DA PELTRE 71 Vittorino, whose work, though begun later, was completed at an earlier date. Vittorino dei Ramboldini was born in 1378 at Feltre, among the hills between Venice and the Eastern Alps. The son of poor, though noble, parents, he went to Padua, where he maintained himself by teaching students younger than himself, and by waiting on the solitary Professor of Mathe- matics, who, however, declined to instruct him, except for payment in money. Vittorino accord- ingly taught himself Euclid, and soon superseded the illiberal Professor. For nearly twenty years he went on learning and teaching in Padua, and then left for Venice, where he learnt Greek from Guarino. Returning to Padua, he opened a students' hostel, for pupils of his own selection. Leaving once more for Venice, he started a school on strict lines, open to students of all classes who were likely to profit by his teaching. It was at Venice that the turning-point of his life came to him at the age of forty-six, when Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, lord of Mantua, invited him to undertake the education of his sons. The invitation was finally accepted, and Mantua thus became the home of Vittorino for the remaining twenty-two years of his life. During those memorable years, in the words of one who has made a special study of his work, ' he estab- 72 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION lished and perfected the first great school of the Renaissance — a school whose spirit, curriculum, and method justify us in regarding it as a land- mark of critical importance in the history of classical education. It was indeed the great typical school of the Humanities.' 1 The impetus given to the enthusiasm and to the educational method of the humanists by the production of Guarino's rendering of 'Plutarch's' treatise On Education in 1411, and by the discovery of the complete Quintilian in 1416, and the De Oratore, Brutus and Orator in 1422, was fully felt by Vittorino, in whom a familiarity with the ' educational apparatus of classical literature ' was combined with ' the spirit of the Christian life' and 'the Greek passion for bodily culture.' 2 At his own request he was armed by the Marquis with full authority over his pupils and their servants, and over the noble youths of Mantua, who were in attendance on the young Princes, and were being educated with them. Most of those noble youths were promptly dismissed, and the two eldest sons at once became the subjects of separate and discriminating treatment. Both of them unhappily had been spoilt ; the elder was so fat that he could hardly walk ; he ' moved as if he 1 Woodward's Vittorino, p. 24. 2 Woodward, pp. 25-27.. VITT0R1N0 AT MANTUA 73 had been made in one piece' 1 ; the younger was attenuated and awkward ; but the skill of Vittorino soon brought both of them to normal proportions. In the ducal school of Mantua, poor boys of special promise were gratuitously educated, together with the sons of wealthy parents, who could afford to pay the usual fees. All alike were under the im- mediate and personal influence of a master, who taught them to regard the school-room as a holy place. The ' Pleasant House ' (as it was called) amid the playing-fields on the slopes above the Mincio, a joyous place with lofty rooms gay with frescoes of frolicsome children, was indeed a palace of delight, where all the sixty or seventy scholars, of whatever rank, were under the self-same dis- cipline, and where their bodies, minds and souls were under the eager and unremitting care of a sympathetic master, who was a Christian no less than a Humanist. His marvellous energy was even equal to the task of training his boys in all manner of martial and athletic exercises. Some- 1 times he would organise a mimic siege, in which ne side held the fort and the other stormed it, and we are told) ' his heart rejoiced when their shouts went up to heaven, and all was filled with dust.' 2 1 Creighton's Historical Essays and Reviews (A Schoolmaster of the Renaissance), p. 115. 2 Creighton, I.e., p. 118. 74 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION' He aroused in his boys a spirit of bravery, and also made them indifferent to heat or cold ; but, in seasons of excessive heat, he sometimes took them off to the Lago di Garda, or to the Alps beyond Verona. The range of his sympathy was remark- able ; he was inspired with a broad and serious interest in every branch of a liberal education. Among the Latin authors studied in his school were Virgil and Lucan, with parts of Horace, Ovid, and Juvenal, besides Cicero and Quintilian, Sallust and Curtius, Caesar and Livy. The Greek authors were Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and the Dramatists, with Herodotus, Xenophon and Plato, Isocrates and Demosthenes, Plutarch and Arrian. In the teaching of Greek he was aided by immigrants from Greece, who, in exchange, learnt their Latin from Vittorino. He wrote no books, and, even of his letters, only six have been published ; he had no son to carry on his work ; but his memory has been made immortal by the gratitude of his pupils. Among the pupils who, in other ways, added to his fame was Federigo, the soldier and scholar, who founded the famous library in his ducal palace at Urbino ; a papal legate, Perotti, the author of the' first large Latin Grammar ; his own successor, Leonicenus, whose smaller Grammar was widely used ; and Giovanni Andrea, a. future Bishop, who GUARINO DA VERONA 75 has the unique distinction of having been, in 1465 to 147 1, the editor of the first printed editions of as many as eight works of the Latin Classics : — Caesar, Gellius, Livy, Lucan, Virgil, Ovid, and the Letters and Speeches of Cicero. In his splendid edition of Livy, he pays a special tribute of gratitude to his master Vittorino. Vittorino was a man of keen and eager temperament, of small stature and of wiry frame, with a ruddy complexion and sharp features, and a frank and genial expression. The medallion, on which his scholarly face has been immortalised by Pisanello, shows us that he had the 'ornament of a meek and quiet' countenance 1 . While Vittorino endeavoured to send forth from the school of Mantua young citizens well equipped for practical life, and prepared, by means of a liberal and varied education, ' to serve God in Church and State,' his great contemporary, Guarino of Verona, with a wider knowledge of Greek and a minuter familiarity with matters of textual criticism in Latin, seems to have concentrated much of his attention on the narrower aim of producing clever and eloquent representatives of pure, as opposed to applied, scholarship 2 . He had learned his Greek 1 Reproduced in Mrs Hamilton's ed. of Fabriczy's Italian- Medals, 1904, plate vii 1 ; and in Woodward's Frontispiece. 2 Woodward, 36 f. 76 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION under Chrysoloras at Constantinople ; he had lectured at Florence and Venice, and, for ten years, at his native city of Verona, when he had the good fortune to be called to Ferrara, where he spent the last thirty years of his long life. For seventeen of those years, Vittorino was still presiding over the school of Mantua, while Guarino was instructing, first the School, and afterwards the University, of Ferrara. It was only for some five years that he superintended the education of Lionello (the eldest of the natural sons of the Marquis of Ferrara), and also of the numerous students, who shared the ad- vantage of that training. His efforts were crowned with complete success. At Lionello's marriage in 1435, Guarino's wedding-present was a singularly fine copy of his own version of two Lives from Plutarch, which is still exhibited in the Laurentian Library at Florence. On the opening page an ex- quisite miniature represents a white-haired scholar robed in a red gown with a girdle round his waist, in the act of kneeling and presenting a volume to a youth in a bright green jacket, attended by two of his young companions. For the last twenty-five years of his life, Guarino was professor of rhetoric at Ferrara. His numerous translations from the Greek included a Latin rendering of the whole of Strabo. In Latin, he had, in his earlier days, dis- GUARINO AT FERRARA 77 covered a manuscript of Pliny's Epistles containing 124 Letters previously unknown. He was also interested in the text of Cicero's principal rhetorical works, and in that of Plautus and Celsus. He produced a recension of Cicero's Speeches and of Caesar, as well as both the Plinies, Gellius, and Servius. In his recension of Caesar, still preserved at Ferrara, he simply aimed at producing a text that would be intelligible to his youthful pupils, but he shows a stricter regard for the manuscript tradition in the text of the two Plinies. The younger Pliny's account of his Tuscan villa is closely imitated in his own description of his villa near Ferrara. His long life of ninety years had begun with no precocious promise, but it had been marked by steady and continuous growth 1 - He showed no antagonism to the authority of the Church, but, in a certain love of personal fame, he was true to the humanistic type, while he deserves to be respectfully remembered as one whose moral character was very nearly equal to his learning. A contemporary medallion represents him with a French type of face, with an elongated nose and with his hair brushed far back, and a general ex- pression resembling that of Victor Hugo 2 . 1 Sabbadini, La Scuola e gli Studi di Guarino, Catania, 1896. 2 Fabriczy's Italian Medals, [904, plate xi 1. 78 PRACTICE OF EDUCATION His school and his method were eulogised in more than one thousand hexameters by his former pupil, the Hungarian Bishop, Janus Pannonius. His English pupils included a Bishop of Ely, and a Bishop of Bath ; a Dean of Wells, and a Dean of Lincoln. Of his Italian pupils, perhaps the most eminent was one who was interested in Homeric and Ciceronian manuscripts, the Venetian scholar and statesman, Francesco Barbara. The method of instruction pursued by Guarino may be gathered from a treatise composed in 1459, in the father's life-time, by his youngest son, who was associated with his father in the tuition of his pupils at Ferrara 1 . It is the earliest treatise in which the claim to be considered an educated gentleman is reserved for one who is familiar with Greek as well as Latin : — ' I have said that ability to write Latin verse is one of the essential marks of an educated person. I wish now to indicate a second, which is of at least equal importance, namely, familiarity with the language and literature of Greece. The time has come when we must speak with no uncertain sound upon this vital requirement of scholarship.... Without a knowledge of Greek, Latin scholarship itself is, in any real 1 Battista Guarino, De Ordine Docendi et Studendi (1459), e ^- 1489 and 1496 (Woodward, 159-178). GUARINO AT FERRARA 79 sense, impossible.' 1 In Greek, the course of study includes Homer and the Dramatists, Plato and the Ethics of Aristotle. In Latin, Cicero's Letters (which are to be learnt by heart), with the De Officiis and the Tusculan Disputations ; and, of the poets, Virgil, Statius, the Metamorphoses and Fasti of Ovid, with Plautus and Terence, Seneca's tragedies and Juvenal, and the Satires and Ars Poetica of Horace. The effect produced on the young mind by the study of highly imaginative poetry is curiously compared to the nightmares caused by feasting on an octopus ; it may be interesting to add that this comparison is borrowed, without acknowledgement, from Plutarch's treatise on the study of the poets 2 . The work closes with a passage on 'the function of Letters as an adornment of leisure.' ' To man alone is given the desire to learn. Hence what the Greeks call TraiSeia, we call studia humanitatis. For learning and training in Virtue are peculiar to man ; there- fore our forefathers called them humanitas, the pursuits, the activities, proper to mankind.' And, finally, he declares that from ' the famous Academy' of his father, ' had proceeded the greater number of those scholars, who had carried learning, not 1 Woodward, 166. 2 De Audiendis Poe'tis, 15 B. 80 EDUCATION OF WOMEN merely throughout Italy, but also far beyond her borders.' 1 Women, as well as men, retained a grateful remembrance of the intellectual training, which they had received from Guarino and Vittorino. Vittorino's pupil, Cecilia Gonzaga, a daughter of the ruling house of Mantua, whose fresh and simple grace may be admired in the medallion of Pisanello 2 , was already learning Greek at the age of seven ; while, among the pupils of Guarino, Isotta Nogarola was skilled in Latin verse and prose, and quoted Greek and Latin authors in the course of those learned letters to her tutor, which were not entirely approved by the public opinion of Verona. In cases such as these, the studious temper was often associated with retiring habits and with strong religious feeling ; and, like Baptista dei Malatesti, the former correspondent of Lionardo Bruni, both of these learned ladies ultimately took the veil. But humanistic culture was represented among the wives, as well as the daughters, of lead - ing families, especially in Florence and Venice. Ferrara itself, the home of Guarino for the last thirty years of his life, was in later years connected with the name of more than one learned lady. 1 Woodward, pp. 176-8. * Fabriczy, plate iv. V1TT0RIA COLONNA AND OLYMPIA MORATA 81 Under the Duchess Renee, the ducal court became a place of refuge for those who were either definitely inclined to protestant opinions, or vaguely drawn to a more primitive type of Christianity. It was there that an excellent Latin scholar and writer of sacred sonnets, who was the grand-daughter of Vittorino's pupil, Federigo, Duke of Urbino, and the widow of the brave Marquis of Pescara, passed two tranquil years from 1536 to 1538, before forming in Rome that famous friendship with the aged Michelangelo, which has added a new nobility even to the name of Vittoria Colonna. Two years later, the Duchess Ren^e received at her court, as the companion of her daughter, a girl of twelve, who was already familiar with Greek and Latin literature ; who, at fourteen, wrote Latin letters, and essayed to imitate the dialogues of Cicero and Plato ; who, at sixteen, lectured in the University of Ferrara on the Ciceronian Paradoxes ; who, at nineteen, was driven from the court by the Duke's mistrust of her protestant opinions ; and who, when reduced to poverty, won the affection of a German of good birth, whose name is little known in com- parison with that of his loyal and devoted wife, Olympia Morata. After much suffering, she died a happy but an early death at the age of twenty- nine, at Heidelberg; and, seven years later, the s. l. 6 82 OLYMPIA MORATA little store of her literary remains was dedicated to one who was reputed the most learned lady of her age, Queen Elizabeth of England 1 . It has been well said of Olympia Morata that, ' to the culture that came from the study of Classical antiquity, she added the seriousness and sincerity of the new religious life.' I quote the words from the volume of Historical Essays and Reviezvs* by the late Bishop Creighton, which includes his brilliant sketch of Vittorino da Feltre, and his happy reminiscences as the envoy of Emmanuel at the fifth Jubilee of Harvard. I will only add that, apart from Olympia Morata and Vittoria Colonna, the court of the Duchess Renee once included the purest of the Latin poets of the age, a friend of Vittoria Colonna, named Marcantonio Flaminio. In send- ing to the Cardinal Alessandro Farnese (before 1550) a volume of Latin poems by the scholars of Northern Italy, Flaminio assures the Cardinal that France and Spain and Germany and distant Britain would do honour to those Latin Muses ; and, finally, he foretells that, even in the New World, the Latin poets of Italy would be studied by those Western nations, ' on whom the light of 1 Ed. Celio Curione, Basel, 1562. 2 p. 171. FLAMINIO AND THE NEW WORLD 83 dawn arises, when the sky of Italy is wrapped in darkness,' — For, strange to tell, e'en on that far-off shore Doth flourish now the love of Latin lore 1 . 1 ' Nam (mirabile dictu) in iis quoque oris Nunc linguae studium viget Latinae.' Carmina, V, I (i 123 ed. 1743). The metre may be mended by writing is for iis ; cp. Neue, Formenlekre, ii 383-6, ed. 1892. IV. THE ACADEMIES OF FLORENCE, VENICE, NAPLES, AND ROME. Six furlongs west of Athens, on the banks of the Cephisus, and between the hill of Colonus and the road that leads from Athens to the pass of Daphni and the plain of Eleusis, there lies amid the olive-trees a plot of land that is a holy place in the History of Philosophy, and in the History of Literature. That plot of land belonged of old to the Attic hero, Academus, and the story runs that, in gratitude for some legendary service rendered by that hero to Castor and Pollux, the Spartans ever spared that spot in their repeated invasions of Attica. It had been surrounded with walls by Hipparchus, the son of Peisistratus ; it had been planted with plane-trees by Cimon ; and under the shade of the sacred olive-trees, in the days of Aristophanes, the youths of Athens might be seen running races, ' breathing of smilax and heartsease too, and of poplar shedding its leafage,.. . and rejoicing in the spring-tide, when- the plane- PLATO'S ACADEMY 85 tree whispers to the elm.' 1 In the spring, the earliest notes of the nightingale might there be heard in the green coverts beside the waters of the Cephisus. The place was known as the Academia ; and, amid the trees, there was a gymnasium furnished with alcoves and seats. The ' gymnasium of the Academy ' was long the favourite resort of Plato, until he left it for the seclusion of his own garden below the hill of Colonus. Thus the ' olive-grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbl'd notes the summer long,' 2 gave its name to the Academic philosophy, and to the successive schools of the Old, the Middle, and the New Academy. The name was used by Cicero to designate the gymnasium, with the busts of Hermes and Athena, immediately below his villa at Tusculum, one of the lawns of which was embellished with a statue of Plato. Finally, it was revived in the Platonic Academy of Florence, the prototype of all the Academies, that, in process of time, sprang into existence in every town of Italy 3 - The meet- 1 Aristophanes, Ntibes, 1006-8. 2 Paradise Regained, iv 244. 3 Tiraboschi, vii 139-202 ; Symonds, Revival of Learning, 365-7- 86 ITALIAN ACADEMIES ings of most of those learned bodies were accom- panied by a banquet, with the discussion of a literary or scientific subject introduced by one of the members, and the recitation of Latin poems, or the performance of ancient or modern Latin plays. Early in the sixteenth century, these learned circles began to lose their classic associations.! Later in the same century, under the influence of j the Counter-Reformation, they ceased to be con- trolled by the humanists ; Italian plays or poems took the place of Latin, and the Academy com- monly assumed some fantastic Italian name. At Naples, those industrious explorers of the arcana of Nature, the brothers della Porta, founded an Academy under the extremely modest and, indeed, misleading name of degli Oziosi, 'the Idlers.' This was also the name of one of the Academies of Bologna. In Florence, four Academies bearing the fanciful names of the ' insipid,' the ' shy,' the ' disheartened,' and the ' stunned,' were suddenly suppressed by the Medici in 1568 1 - It has been suggested by the elder Disraeli that these names were invented with a view to throwing ' a sportive veil over meetings which had alarmed the papal 1 Isaac Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature (Titles of Italian Academies), ii 489, ed. 1866. ITALIAN ACADEMIES 87 and the other petty courts of Italy/ while it has been held by Ugo Foscolo, that they were due to 'a desire of getting rid of the air of pedantry,' and of suggesting that the meetings were merely meant as an amusing relaxation amid the serious business of life 1 . Among associations having a more severely scientific aim, the Roman Academy of the Lincei, or lynxes, founded in 1603, and counting Galileo among its earliest members, still flourishes in a revived and reconstituted form; while, at Florence, the Academy quaintly called the Colombaria from the lonely turret, resembling a dove-cote, where the first meeting was held in one of the Pazzi palaces in 1735, continues to produce papers on Italian history. The present lecture will, however, be mainly confined to the earlier Academies of the classic type, and primarily to those of Florence, Venice, Naples, and Rome, with some notice of the prin- cipal members of each. These earlier Academies had no fantastic titles ; they were chiefly known by the names of their founders. We shall find that the Academy of Florence was founded by a Platonist, that of Venice by a printer, that of Naples by a poet, and that of Rome by a pagan. 1 ib. p. 489 f. ITALIAN ACADEMIES The foundation of the Academy of Florence was one of the incidental and unexpected conse- quences of the Council of Florence, held in 1439. That Council failed in the avowed purpose of uniting the Western and the Eastern portions of the Christian Church, but it succeeded in the unintended result of drawing together the scholars of the East and the West. When one of the clever youths of Florence first saw the long beards and the shaggy hair of the Greeks, who attended the Council, he recalled the stories of the ancient Spartans, and strove in vain to repress his laughter ; but he admitted that some of those Greeks were so learned that they were fully worthy of their ancestors, and were still true to the tradition of the Lyceum and of the Old Academy 1 . At the time of the Council, Cosimo dei Medici had been in power for the first four of the thirty years during which he was supreme in Florence ; and his foundation of the Florentine Academy was due to the influence of one of the Greek envoys present at the Council. That envoy was Georgios Gemistos, a native of Constantinople, who 1 Quoted, from the manuscript of Lapo da Castiglioncio's Tractatus de Curiae Commodis, by Hody, De Graecis lUusiribus, PP- 3i> 136- THE PLATONIC ACADEMY OF FLORENCE 89 had been estranged from Christianity in his youth, and had spent a large part of his life near the site of the ancient Sparta, where he elaborated a singular philosophic system of a Neo-Platonic type. He was already eighty-three years of age, when, in spite of his pagan proclivities, he found himself in the peculiar position of having been selected, on patriotic grounds, as one of the six champions of the Greek Church at the Council of Florence. But (in the happy language of a recent writer) ' instead of attending the Council, he poured forth his Platonic lore, and uttered dark sentences to a circle of eager Florentines. Cosimo de' Medici was delighted with him, and hailed him as a second Plato. Gemistos modestly refused the title, but playfully added to his name, Gemistos, the equiva- lent, Plethon, which approached more nearly to his master's name.' 3 According to one of our primary authorities, 'the lively style of Plethon inspired Cosimo with such enthusiasm that his lofty mind immediately conceived the thought of forming an Academy, as soon as a favourable moment should be found.' Such is the language used many years later by Marsilio Ficino 2 , who was only six years of age, when he was selected 1 Creighton's History of the Papacy, iv 41 f, ed. 1900. 2 Preface to Plotinus (1492). 90 ITALIAN ACADEMIES by Cosimo to be the future translator and expounder of Plato, and thus to become the intellectual centre of the Academy of Florence. Ficino studied Platonism and Neo-Platonism, learnt Greek, and began his translation of Plato. Late in life, Cosimo spent most of his time at Careggi, a villa which, with its long machicolated parapet and its noble loggia, still stands among the pines and cypresses on the slopes of the low hills, little more than two miles north of Florence. It was there that he studied Plato with the aid of Ficino. One of his favourite dialogues was the newly-translated Philebus, and he found delight in listening to Orphic hymns sung to the accom- paniment of Ficino's lyre. We find him writing to his instructor as follows : — 'Yesterday I arrived at Careggi, not so much for the purpose of im- proving my fields as myself. Let me see you, Marsilio, as soon as possible, and forget not to bring with you the book of your favourite Plato, De Summo Bono — which I presume, according to your purpose, you have ere this translated into Latin.... Come, and forget not to bring with you the Orphean lyre.' 1 Ficino had translated ten of Plato's dialogues 1 Ficino, Epp. i i ; Roscoe's Life of Lorenzo de Medici, 69 f, ed. 1847. THE PLATONIC ACADEMY OF FLORENCE 91 before the death of Cosimo. The thirty years of Cosimo's power were succeeded by the brief rule of his son (1464-9). Ten more of the dialogues had been translated before the accession (in 1469) of Cosimo's illustrious grandson, Lorenzo ; and eight years later, in 1477, the manuscript of the Latin translation was completed. It must be remem- bered that there was then no printed copy of the Greek text of Plato. The translation was made from manuscripts supplied by Cosimo and by Amerigo Benci, while, among the experts in Greek and Latin, consulted by the translator, was Giorgio Antonio, the paternal uncle of the explorer of the Atlantic, Amerigo Vespucci, who owed to Giorgio Antonio much of his borrowed Latin lore. The Latin Plato was printed in 1482. The Introduction to the translation of the Symposium in this work is one of our few authorities on the Platonic Academy of Florence. It informs us that the ancient custom of celebrating the memory of Plato by a banquet held on the seventh day of November, the date of his death as well as the date of his birth, had, after an interval of twelve hundred years, been revived by Lorenzo. Nine members of the Academy, including Ficino and his father, the physician, and the Bishop of Fiesole, and Cristoforo Landino, had been invited to the 92 ITALIAN ACADEMIES villa at Careggi. At the conclusion of the banquet (at which Lorenzo himself was not present), Ficino's rendering of all the seven speeches in Plato's Symposium is read aloud by one who is described as the orator. The bishop and the doctor (like the aged Cephalus in the first book of the Republic) withdraw early, to attend to ' the cure of the souls and the bodies ' entrusted to their care, and all the speeches of the Symposium are thereupon ex- pounded in turn by five of the remaining members of the Academy. Ficino professes to be a persona muta; but we may safely assume that the whole of the exposition, no less than the translation, was written by himself. In other words, he avails himself of the occasion of one of the annual banquets, held by some of the choice spirits of the Academy, to make it the dramatic scene of his own exposition of the Symposium. In a letter addressed to the younger Poggio, he informs us of a similar festal evening at the house of Francesco Bandini in Florence, preceded by a discussion on the Immortality of the Soul 1 . We are told that the only image that he kept in his chamber was a bust of Plato with a perpetual lamp burning before it 2 . 1 Epf. i (vol. i p. 640 of Opera, ed. 1641). The same theme is discussed by Ficino, Landino and Vespucci at the Villa of Giov. Cavalcanti at Rignano [Theologia Platonica vi 1, vol. i p. 152). 2 Sieveking, Gesch. der Plat. Akad. zu Elorenz, 1812, p. 42. I THE PLATONIC ACADEMY OF FLORENCE 93 We also learn that Lorenzo took great delight in a bust of Plato brought from Greece and presented to him by Girolamo Rossi of Pistoia. It was reputed to have been found ' amid the ruins of Plato's Academy.' 1 Long afterwards, it was sent to the University of Pisa, and it has since vanished. It is not the marble bust, inscribed with Plato's name, now in the Hall of Inscriptions in the Uffizi 2 . Of the nine members of the Platonic Academy of Florence, that met at Careggi to discuss the Symposium of Plato, the only one now known to fame, apart from Ficino himself, is Cristoforo Landino. A survivor from the age of Cosimo, he was destined to live to the age of eighty, and even to survive the youthful Lorenzo. He had been associated with Ficino as Lorenzo's tutor ; he had already lectured on Petrarch, and, at a later time, he was to expound Dante, to annotate Virgil and Horace, to translate the elder Pliny, and to imitate the Tusculan Disputations of Cicero in a celebrated dialogue, whose scene is laid at Camaldoli, near the source of the Arno. In that dialogue the life find no earlier authority than Bzovius, Annates, 1492 § 27 (1627), quoted in J. Lomeier, De Bibliothecis, ed. 1680, p. 238. 1 Valori, Vita Laurentii Med., p. 168, ed. Galletti. - Dutschke, Antike Bildwcrke in Oberitalien, iii p. 190. 94 FICINO AND PICO of action is lauded by Lorenzo, and that of con- templation by the widely accomplished Leo Battista Alberti, who maintains the allegorical significance of the Aeneid, and finds affinities between the poetry of Virgil and the philosophy of Plato. Ficino, the true centre of the Academy, a diminutive and delicate student, with an inclination to melancholy, which he only dispelled by the cultivation of music, received holy orders at the mature age of forty, and spent the rest of his days in the honest and reverent endeavour to reconcile Platonism and Christianity. In the latter part of his life he translated and expounded Plotinus. After surviving Lorenzo for seven years, he died in 1499, and is commemorated by a marble bust in the Cathedral of Florence, where his keen and eager glance may be seen looking heavenward, while his delicate fingers are resting on the two clasps of a closed folio, doubtless his famous trans- lation of Plato. Among other members of the Academy was that paragon of beauty and genius, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, who first flashed upon Florence shortly before the publication of Ficino's Plato. He was possessed by the great thought of the unity of all knowledge, and, while he was still absorbed POLITIAN 95 in planning a vast work, which was to form a complete system of Platonic, Christian, and Cabbalistic lore, he passed away at the early age of thirty-one, on the very day of 1494 on which the invader of Italy, Charles VIII of France, marched into Florence. In the same year, and at the age of forty, died another notable member of the Academy, Angelo Poliziano, familiarly known as Politian. He had been sent to Florence at the age of ten ; by the age of thirty, he was tutor to Lorenzo's children, and Professor of Greek and Latin literature in Florence. Among those from England, who attended his lectures, were Grocyn and Linacre. The authors professorially expounded by him included Homer and Virgil, Persius and Statius, Quintilian and Suetonius. He was one of the first to pay attention to the Silver Age of Latinity ; and he justified his choice partly on the ground that that Age had been unduly neglected, and partly because it supplied an easy introduction to the authors of the Golden Age. A singular interest was lent to Politian's lectures on Latin and Greek authors by his im- passioned declamation of Latin poems composed by himself in connexion with the general subject of his course. The four extant poems of this type are known by the name of the Sylvae. The first 96 POLITIAN'S SYLVAE in order of time (1482) is connected with the Eclogues of Virgil. It bears the name of Manto in memory of Mantua's bard, and it closes with a glowing peroration on the immortality of Virgil's fame. The next, which is concerned with the Georgics and the corresponding poem of Hesiod, is filled with vivid descriptions of the divini gloria ruris, while, towards the close, the author describes himself as musing on his theme in the cool grotto of one of Lorenzo's villas on the slopes below Fiesole, where the ' holy hill ' looks down on Florence and the long windings of the Arno. The third, in honour of Homer, derives its name of Ambra from a tributary of the Arno near one of the remoter Medicean villas. The last, which belongs to i486 arid is named Nutricia, is an eloquent eulogy of the poetic literature that had nursed the poet's youth. It is suggestive of a general course of lectures on the ancient poets. Virgil is here placed next to Homer, and even fortasse prior, while poetic legends as to the life of Pindar, and dry details as to the death of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, and of Euripides, are followed by a fine passage on Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and by a solemn peroration in honour of the prince and poet, Lorenzo. In the four poems of the Sylvae all these varied themes, of verse are borne along by POLITIAN 'S MISCELLANEA 97 the rushing flow of the poet's exultant and jubilant hexameters. Politian was interested in the textual criticism of many Latin authors, and also in that of the Pandects of Justinian, the celebrated manuscript of which was removed from Pisa to Florence in 141 1, and, as a rule, was only shown under circumstances of peculiar solemnity. By the influence of Lorenzo, Politian was allowed to study this precious volume at his leisure, and was thus enabled to point out mistakes in the later manuscripts, and in the current editions of the work. The most learned of his extant productions is his Miscellanea, described by himself as originating in scholarly conversations held with Lorenzo as they rode out on horseback, and published at Lorenzo's request. Among the many topics dis- cussed in its pages are the use of the aspirate in Latin and Greek, the chronology of Cicero's ' Familiar Letters,' the evidence in favour of the spelling Vergilius in preference to Virgilius, the details of the discovery of purple dye, and the differences between the aorist and the imperfect in the signatures of Greek sculptors. The interest excited by the publication of the first edition of this work in 1489 was so great that at Milan a friend of the author found the young clerks in a s. l. 7 98 POLITIAN'S MINOR POEMS public office setting aside the business of the State and absorbed in the eager perusal of the separate quires of the work, which they had promptly divided up among themselves for this purpose 1 . A copy of this very edition, with the author's auto- graph, is one of the treasures of the Library of Harvard. In Latin, as well as in Italian, Politian was a born poet. The Italian Opera originated in his Orfeo, which, in its first edition, written at an early age, contained, imbedded in the Italian text, an ode in Latin Sapphics to be sung by Orpheus 2 . There is a singular grace and beauty in the long elegiac poem on the violets sent him by the lady of his love. The purport of the whole may readily be gathered from a rendering of a single couplet : — O happy violets, which that hand hath prest, — Hand that robs hapless me of all my rest ! 3 A graver pathos lingers over the lament for Lorenzo with its twice-repeated refrain : — Oh that my head were waters, Mine eyes a. fount of tears ! So might I weep for ever And cease not, day nor night 4 . 1 Politian, Epp. iii 18. 2 Opere Volgari, p. 71 f, ed. 1885. 3 'Felices nimium violae, quas carpserit ilia Dextera quae miserum me mihi subripuit.' Elegiae, v 17, p. 235 of Poesie Latine, ed. 1867. 4 ' Quis dabit capiti meo ' etc, ib. p. 274. LATER FLORENTINE ACADEMIES 99 The death of Lorenzo (1492) probably hastened the end of Politian (1494), and the Academy could hardly survive the death of Ficino in 1499. When it was revived, Plato had ceased to be the sole theme of interest, and the meetings were no longer held under the patronage of the Medicean house. It was to an Academy that met in the gardens of Bernardo Rucellai, between 15 16 and 1 5 19, that the master of state-craft, Machiavelli, read his Discourses on the First Decade of Livy. But the part played by some of its members in the conspiracy against Cardinal Giulio de' Medici led to its suppression in 1522; and, when it was restored in 1540 by Cosimo I, its aim was solely the study of the Italian language. Of the many Florentine Academies of the sixteenth century the only one of wide repute is the Academy called Delia Crusca, the Academy of ' Bran,' whose place of meeting bore the semblance of a flour-mill and a bake-house, and which devoted itself to the sifting of the Italian language 1 . Founded in 1582 as a protest against the exclusive study and imitation of the Italian poems of Petrarch, it has been immortalised by the Vocabulario of 161 3, which was the fruit of its labours. In 1638 two of the meetings of another Florentine Academy were attended by Milton. On 1 Cp. Isaac Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, ii 481, ed. 1866. 7—2 THE ACADEMY OF VENICE one of these occasions the poet recited from memory some of his early Latin verses, described in the minutes of the meeting as molto erudite 1 -, while his other compositions were received (as he tells us) with ' written encomiums, which the Italian ' (as he observes) ' is not forward to bestow on men of this side the Alps.' So impressed is the poet by this recognition that, a few years later, he approves of the application to Englandof such 'festival pastimes,' as ' may civilize, adorn, and make discreet our minds by the learned and affable meeting of frequent Academies.' 2 The Academy of Venice was founded in 1500- by the famous printer, Aldus Manutius. It was an Academy of Hellenists. Greek was the language of its rules ; Greek was spoken at its meetings,, and Greek names were adopted by its Italian members. Thus Scipione Fortiguerra of Pistoia,. the earliest editor of the text of Demosthenes, and Secretary of the Academy, translated his name into Carteromachus. One of the aims of this Academy was to produce in each month an edition of at least one thousand copies of the text of some ' good author.' Its ordinary members included 1 Mark Pattison's Milton, 36. 2 The Reason of Church-Government, i 144, 148 of 'Prose Works,' ed. Mitford. THE ACADEMY OF NAPLES Janus Lascaris, who was the link between the Revival of Learning in Italy and the Revival of Learning in France, and his pupil Marcus Musurus, the editor of the first printed text of Plato. Its honorary foreign members included Linacre, whose Latin rendering of the Sphere of Proclus was published by Aldus in 1499, and Erasmus, who visited Venice in 1508, when he was engaged in seeing through the press a new edition of his Adagia 1 . The Academy of Naples came into being during the reign of Alfonso of Aragon, the 'magnanimous' patron of learning, who was interested in visiting the birth-place of Ovid, in preserving the site of Cicero's villa at Gaeta, and in listening to recitations from Virgil or Terence, and readings from Curtius and Livy. The Academy arose out of social gatherings, the centre of which was the poet and courtier, Antonio of Palermo, better known as Beccadelli. From the name of the founder, the place of meeting was called the 'Antonian Portico.' The scene of the Neapolitan Academy was very different from the ' olive-grove of Academe,' or the secluded Medicean villas in the silvan suburbs of Florence, or the quiet corner in the heart of Venice, where the sea ' is in the broad, the narrow streets.' 1 Didot's Aide Manuce, 147-152, .435-470. THE ACADEMY OF NAPLES It was an open colonnade looking out on the ' Street of the Tribunals,' one of the most crowded thoroughfares of a vast and ever clamorously vociferating city. Antonio himself was always the first to arrive, and the merry old man would sit humming a tune, or cracking jokes with the passers-by, until the arrival of learned and noble members of his ' Senate.' 1 When the death of king Alfonso had broken up the circle of his court, these social gatherings were organised into a club under the influence of the poet Pontano, who lived from 1426 to 1503. The place of meeting still continued to be the 'Antonian Portico.' One of the leading members would open the debate in a set speech on some such topic as the effect of euphony in the verse of Virgil and other poets ; and every member was expected to make some contribution to the debate 2 Pontano himself was distinguished for the purity of his Latin style. His moral treatises in Latin prose were enlivened with illustrations from modern history, and his Latin poems were among the most graceful products of the Italian Muse. They owe their inspiration to the soft scenery of the Bay of Naples and to the gardens of Sorrento, 1 Pontano's Antonius. 2 Pontano's Actius. PONTANO 103 ' With golden oranges burning between Their dark stiff leaves of sombre green.' ' One of his didactic poems deals with the cultivation of the orange; another, with prognostications of the weather; a third, with the science of astronomy. His model in all three was mainly the Metamorphoses of Ovid. The interest of his astronomical poem, Urania, is enhanced by a touching reference to the early death of the poet's daughter : For thee I hung the home with wreaths ; for thee Thy sisters twain bedewed thy bridal bower With Syrian scents. In lieu of scents and wreaths, What hast thou left us? Nights that know no sleep, Days without sun, and nights without a star 2 . Among modern poets he is somewhat excep- tional in, not merely writing, but actually publishing so many sets of verses in honour of his wedded wife 3 . His elegy on her grave has a singular beauty. A passing traveller is there described as holding converse with the Genius of the spot, and with the Hyacinth that grows beside the tomb. The traveller asks whence came the roses and the violets, that are blooming on the grave. The Genius answers : 'Twas Venus and the Graces bade them blow ; The hyacinth too with petals veined with woe. Listen ! and you will hear the hyacinth's sigh. 1 W. W. Story, The Villa. 2 v 835-8. 3 Three Books, De Amore Conjugali. Cp. Gaspary, Hal. Lit. i 3I4-7- io 4 P0NTAN0 The hyacinth is heard softly sighing for the early fate of the mistress that once tended it — the mistress, on whose death its flower had faded away. Thereupon, the traveller asks why the hyacinth has blossomed anew ; the hyacinth answers that it has been watered by the poet's tears : — Lo ! from his tears the rose and violet bloom, And e'en the hyacinth blossoms on her tomb 1 . Pontano's epitaph, which is said to have been written by himself, is a singular combination of self-conceit and dry humour. Its Latin prose may be rendered thus in blank verse : — I am Giovanni Giovian Pontano, Once by the gracious Muse belov'd, esteem'd By good men, honour'd too by lords and kings. Now know'st thou who I am % or, rather, was ; But, Stranger ! in the dark I know not thee ; I only bid thee know thyself! Farewell! 2 His poems are themselves the theme of one of the elegies of the younger poet, Sannazaro, who lived from 1458 to 1530, and was one of the ablest members of the Neapolitan Academy. Sannazaro's first and foremost title to fame is that he not merely discovered, but actually invented, and indeed created, the imaginary 'Arcadia' of 1 Tttmulus Ariadnae Saxonae Neapolitanae, De Tumults, ii 24 (vol. ii 204 of Pontani Carmina, ed. 1902). 2 Paulus Jovius, Elogia, no. 47 ad fin. SANNAZARO 105 modern pastoral and idyllic poetry and modern romance. 1 The Arcadia of real life is a land of lofty mountains, such as Cyllene, 7790 feet in height, with the snows on its summit, and with pines and firs on its slopes ; a land of lakes and marshes, with a level plain toward the East, while on the West there lies a hilly plateau where amid park-like scenery the river Alpheiis flows down to Olympia ; a land of isolated villages, and of strongholds com- manding mountain-passes ; a land that, in primaeval days, was the abode of the bear and the wolf and the wild-boar, and, in historic times, the home of hogs and the 'joy of wild asses ' ; a land of heavy and depressing climate, inhabited mainly by rude boors, who were always ready to take service as mercenary soldiers in the rest of Greece. Flocks of sheep and goats, however, were to be seen here and there in the valleys ; and, happily, one of the Homeric hymns had named, among the haunts of Pan, ' Arcadia with its many fountains, Arcadia the mother of flocks.' 2 Polybius had described the rude inhabitants as softening the harshness of their wild life by means of music, with annual contests of dance and song 3 ; and, finally, Virgil 1 Cp. Mahaffy's Rambles and Studies in Greece, c. 12. 2 Hymn to Pan, xviii 30, 'ApKaStriv woXvirlSaxa, pip-ipa /wjXwk. 3 iv 20, 21. io6 ,. SANNAZARO had placed the shepherds of his Eclogues not in Sicily alone, but also (though very rarely) in Arcadia. Thyrsis and Corydon were Arcades ambo, and his love-lorn Gallus haunts the Arcadian mount of Maenalus, and the Arcadian glades of Parthenium. It is clearly the Gallus of Virgil that inspired Sannazaro in the idyllic composition in Italian prose and verse that bears the name of Arcadia. But, unlike the Arcadia of historic fact, the land is there described as a kind of earthly paradise, the home of innocent and happy shep- herds singing in shady haunts amid the murmurs of liquid fountains. On the summit of Parthenium he places a table-land, where no less than thirteen varieties of trees are growing simultaneously. The mountain is really some 4000 feet above the sea, and, except in fairy-land, these thirteen varieties of trees could never have grown on the same spot. The author of this pastoral romance describes himself as driven from his home at Naples by an unrequited love, and as living for a time in Arcadia. He pictures the varied scenes of pastoral life, and finally (like Aristaeus in the Fourth Georgic) he is led by subterranean paths, past the sources of great rivers, till he reaches his home, there to find the shepherds lamenting the loss of the lady of his love. The work was begun while HIS ARCADIA 107 Sannazaro was still a youth at Salerno ; it appeared in its final form in 1504, and passed through fifty-nine editions in the course of the sixteenth century, was imitated in France, Spain and Portugal, and in England in the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney. In the first book of that idyllic romance Sir Philip Sidney is certainly wrong about the ' sweetness of the air ' of Arcadia, but he is curiously right about the slaying of the Arcadian bear, for bears were to be found in ancient Arcadia, and the ' land of bears ' is the very meaning of its name 1 . The poet Cowper breathes the aspiration : — ' Would I had fall'n upon those happier days And those Arcadian scenes that Maro sings, And Sidney, warbler of poetic prose.' 2 The link between Virgil and Sir Philip Sidney is to be found in the Arcadia of Sannazaro. In 1690, about a century after Sidney, one of the most celebrated of the later Roman Academies derived its name, degli Arcadi, from the fact that, at its first meeting in a meadow by the banks of the Tiber, the recital of an eclogue was warmly 1 ' The oak forest of Soron on the way to Psophis, like the other oak woods of Arcadia, contains wild boars, bears, and huge tortoises.' Pausanias, viii 23 § 9. Cp. Bursian's Geographic des Griechenlands, ii 181 f, and Tozer's Lectures on tke Geography of Greece, 287 f. 2 The Task ( Winter Evening), p. 224, ed. 1857. io8 SANNAZARO welcomed by an enthusiast, who exclaimed : ' I seem at this moment to be in the Arcadia of ancient Greece, listening to the pure and simple strains of its shepherds.' The Academy assumed by acclamation the name of the ' Arcadians ' ; each of its members received a Greek name, with a title derived from a farm in Arcadia or its environs ; and, by the side of Theocritus and Virgil, one of the main models in the compositions of this Academy was the Arcadia of Sannazaro 1 . In Latin verse some of Sannazaro's happiest efforts were the elegiac poems inspired by the ruins of Cumae or the many charms of the Bay of Naples. He claims the invention of a new type of eclogue, in which the parts usually assigned to shepherds are assigned to fishermen, and Ariosto commends him for bidding the Muses descend from the mountain to the shore 3 . Sannazaro had, however, been anticipated in the Galatea and the twenty-first idyll of Theocritus, and also in the Marine Dialogues of Lucian. His masterpiece was a Virgilian poem on the Birth of Christ, a work on which he spent no less than twenty years. But an undue following of classical models 1 Wiese and Percopo, Italienische Litteraturgeschichte, 407 f ; and Isaac Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, ii 481-3. - Orlando, xlvi 17 (Gaspary, Ital. Lit. ii 325 f). THE ACADEMY OF ROME 109 lands the poet in some strange incongruities. In a professedly Christian composition, we have an invocation of the Muses of Helicon, and another passage tempts one to ask : ' Is Proteus also among the Prophets?' Most of the foremost members of the Nea- politan Academy were Latin poets. Valla, who is one of the exceptions to this rule, must be reserved for another occasion 1 , and time does not permit us to linger over the rest, for we must now leave Naples for Rome. The Academy of Rome owed its origin to one whose fondness for classical associations led to his assuming the old Roman name of Pomponius Laetus. The natural son of a noble house at Naples, he was neglected by his proud relations, who, on his rising to fame, made advances for his friendship, and were repelled by the laconic reply : ' Pomponius Laetus to his friends and relations greeting. What you ask, cannot be. Farewell.' Pomponius was a pupil of Valla, whom he succeeded as the leading spirit among the Roman humanists. Greek he declined to learn for the curious reason that he was afraid that it might spoil his Latin style. To Pomponius, as to Rienzi, to Petrarch, and to Poggio, the contemplation of 1 Lecture V, p. 136 f. THE ACADEMY OF ROME the ruins of ancient Rome was a perpetual delight. In his own person he revived the life of the pagan past. He had a small plot of land, which he tilled in strict accordance with the precepts of Varro and Columella, and he was himself regarded as a second Cato. His vineyard on the Quirinal was frequented by his enthusiastic pupils. Before day- break that ' insignificant little figure, with small, quick eyes, and quaint dress,' 1 might be seen descending, lantern in hand, from his home on the Esquiline to the scene of his lectures, where an eager crowd awaited him. He was the ruling spirit of the Roman Academy. The members of that body assumed Latin names, and celebrated the foundation of Rome on the annual return of the festival of the Palilia (a custom still kept up by the German Imperial Archaeological Institute and by other modern Academies in Rome). They also revived the per- formance of plays of Plautus. Among the best- known members of this Academy were Platina, the future Librarian of the Vatican, and Sabellicus, the future praefect of the Library of San Marco in Venice. In 1468 the Academy was suppressed for a time by Paul II, on the ground of its political aims and its pagan spirit. Pomponius 1 Burckhardt, Civilisation of the Renaissance, iyg E. T. POMPONIUS AND PLATINA was (not inappropriately) imprisoned in the pagan Mausoleum of Hadrian, which had not yet been consecrated by its conversion into the Castle of Sant' Angelo. Besides Pomponius, Platina and other members of the Academy were there put to the torture, and (as Platina says) the hollow vault of the prison resounded, like the bull of Phalaris, with the moans of miserable men, ' who were an honour to their age for genius and learning.' 1 Under the next Pope, Sixtus IV, the Academy was revived, and we have a quaint account of all the ceremonies, grave and gay, attending the commemoration, in 1482, of the first anniversary of the death of Platina 2 . Between Pomponius' release from prison and his death, he produced a commentary on the whole of Virgil, and works of various kinds on Varro and Columella, Sallust and Curtius, Pliny's Letters and Quintilian, with the grammarians, Festus and Nonius Marcellus. In complete accord with his pagan view of life, he had desired that, on his death, his body should simply be placed in an ancient Roman sarcophagus on the Appian Way; but, when he actually died 1 Platina, de Vitis Pontificum (Paulus II), p. 338, ed. 1568; cp. Isaac Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, ii 486. 2 Jacopo Volterrano in Muratori, Script. Per. Ital. xxiii 171 (Tiraboschi, vi 322, ed. 1790). THE ACADEMY OF ROME at the age of seventy, his desire was over-ruled by his having a Christian burial in the Church of San Salvatore in Lauro, and his obsequies at the Ara Caeli were attended by as many as forty bishops 1 . The Academy, which he founded, flourished anew under Julius II, when it had its Dictator and its Comitia, which, however, were of a some- what frivolous character. Its palmy days were in the age of Leo X, when it included the most brilliant members of the literary society of Rome, men like the future Cardinals, Bembo and Sadoleto, as well as Paolo Giovio and Castiglione. It held its meetings in the Circus Maximus, or on the Quirinal, or near the temple of Hercules by the bank of the Tiber, or sometimes in the suburban park of some Maecenas of the day, when a simple repast, seasoned with the salt of wit, would be followed by the delivery of Latin speeches and the recitation of Latin poems 2 . It was over- whelmed in the general ruin, which accompanied the Sack of Rome by the Spanish and German troops of the Emperor Charles V in 1527. Some of the surviving members afterwards returned to 1 Sabellicus, vol. Ill, Efp. xi pp. 458-461, ed. Basel. 2 Gregorovius, Rome in the Middle Ages, Book xiv, Chap, .iv (viii 313 f, E.T.). THE VITRUVIAN ACADEMY 113 Rome, and delivered pathetic declamations, in prose or verse, on the fall of the city ; but the Academy slowly expired under the Farnese Pope, Paul III, and the Caraffa Pope, Paul IV. Among the minor Roman Academies of later origin was the Accademia della Virtii, founded by Claudio Tolomei and others under the patronage of the young Cardinal Ippolito dei Medici. The special aim of this Academy was the study of Vitruvius 1 . The patron of the Vitruvian Academy in Rome died as early as 15 35, having scarcely survived his four and twentieth year. But, in Northern Italy, only seventeen years before, a future student of Vitruvius had been born at Vicenza in the person of Andrea Palladio, whose life was to extend from 1 5 1 8 to 1 5 80. Smitten with an early admiration for the remains of ancient Rome, he was inspired to spend the whole of his active life in embodying the precepts of the Roman architect of the Augustan Age in noble Churches at Venice and in stately Palaces at Vicenza. Late in life, he also designed for his native city the celebrated Olympic Theatre, which was built at the expense of the local ' Olympic Academy' While the Academy of Rome, like that of Naples, is represented mainly by Latin 1 Tiraboschi, vii 147. S. L. 8 114 THE ACADEMY OF VICENZA poems, that of Florence by the revival of the study of Plato, and that of Venice by the pro- duction of printed editions of the Greek Classics, the work of the ' Olympic Academy ' of Vicenza is still perpetuated in the substantial fabric of ancient Roman Architecture dedicated 'to Genius and to Virtue,' and inaugurated in 1584 with an Italian performance of the Oedipus Tyrannus of Sophocles 1 . Meanwhile, in England, in the very same year, in 1584, amid Academic surroundings of a far different character, a College, in which Palladian architecture now predominates, was founded at Cambridge, 'to the praise and honour of God,' under the name of Emmanuel, — a College, which the loyal sons of the New Cambridge, the Academic body that was the first to revive the Oedipus Tyrannus in the original Greek, still regard with an ever dutiful devotion as the former home of their founder, John Harvard. 1 Eustace's Classical Tour, i 83, ed. 7, 1841. V. THE HOMES OF HUMANISM. The subject of the present lecture may be briefly described as a classical tour in Italy during the days of the Revival of Learning. In the course of our imaginary travels, we hope to see some of the homes of humanism, and to meet many of the humanists themselves, as well as several of the principal patrons of learning. We shall begin with Florence and some of the neighbouring towns of Tuscany ; we shall then visit Venice, and pass through Padua, Verona and Como to Milan ; we shall next return eastward to Mantua, Ferrara and Bologna, and follow the old Roman road as far as Rimini and Ancona, with an excursion to Urbino ; and we shall end with Naples and Rome. In Florence, let us wend our way first to the Church of Santa Maria Novella. There is perhaps no place in Italy, where we can more vividly realise the transition from the Middle Ages to the modern world. Let us pass through the 'Green Cloister' into the spacious chamber, that was once the 8—2 u6 FLORENCE Chapter-house of the Dominican Church. There, on the lofty wall to the left, we may study ' the most noble piece of pictorial philosophy ' that is to be found in Italy 1 . It is a marvellous fresco of the middle of the fourteenth century, summing up in a single picture the educational and the theological systems of the Middle Ages. Enthroned in the centre we see the great Dominican teacher, St Thomas Aquinas, holding an open volume inscribed with a text from the Book of Wisdom. In the upper air, above the throne, are the angelic forms of the three Christian Virtues of Faith, Hope, and Charity ; and the four Cardinal Virtues of Temperance, Prudence, Justice, and Fortitude. On either side the throne are the seated figures of Prophets and Kings, Apostles and Evangelists, five on either side ; and, below the feet of St Thomas, three heretics, one of whom is Averroes. A lower row of fourteen maidens, each of them enshrined under an exquisitely beautiful canopy, personifies the Seven Liberal Arts and the Seven Earthly and Celestial Sciences, and, at the feet of those fourteen maidens, there is a great representative of each Art or Science, Aristotle or Cicero, Boethius or St Augustine. From this perfect picture of the theological and 1 Ruskin's Mornings in Florence (The Vaulted Book), p. 105. FLORENCE 117 educational systems of the Middle Ages, let us pass into the adjoining Church, the imaginary scene of the prelude to a literary event in the dawn of the modern world. Here, in the Spring of 1348, about the time of the painting of the famous frescoes of the Chapter-house, the still-unfinished Church was the meeting-place of the seven maidens in the early morning, during the appalling Plague of Florence, when they resolved on fleeing from the ill-fated city in the company of three youthful cavaliers, and spending the next ten days on the slopes below Fiesole,- — there to tell the hundred tales of the Decameron. The date of the Plague of Florence, and of the master- piece of Boccaccio, — a date which closely corresponds to that of the pictorial sum- mary of the teaching of the Middle Ages, has been sometimes regarded as marking the line of division between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance 1 . Before leaving the Church, let us turn for one moment to the Choir, where, in the lower left-hand corner of one of the great frescoes of Ghirlandaio, we. may glance at the portraits of three members of the Platonic Academy, Ficino, Landino, and Politian. We must now cross over to the southern bank of the Arno, to find one of the earliest haunts of the New Learning in the quarter of San Spirito. 1 Symonds, Boccaccio, p. 88. u8 FLORENCE In a cell of the Convent bearing that name, the influence of Petrarch and Boccaccio was perpetuated by the learned Augustinian monk, Luigi Marsigli. Among those who frequented that cell, and fell under that influence, was the accomplished Latin scholar and copyist, Niccolo Niccoli, who in his youth bestowed his loving care on the books be- queathed to the Convent by Boccaccio, and was himself buried in the Church of San Spirito. But the Church of that age has perished in the flames ; and, as we cannot find the tomb of the careful copyist of the days of the first Cosimo, we must be content to know that the second chapel to the right, as we enter the apse of the later Church, is the resting-place of the greatest Greek scholar of Italy, who taught in Florence a hundred years after Niccoli and under another Cosimo, namely Petrus Victorius. The cell of Marsigli was also visited by Salutati, long the Latin Secretary of Florence, and by that noble youth, Roberto dei Rossi, the earliest of the Florentine pupils of Chrysoloras. He rejoiced in copying manuscripts of ancient authors, which he bequeathed to his pupils, among whom was that famous patron of learning, Cosimo dei Medici. Cosimo (it will be remembered) was in power from 1434 to 1464; and, just as in Athens under FLORENCE 119 Pericles, the constitution (as described by Thucy- dides 1 ) was 'nominally a democracy, but really the rule of a single man/ so it was in Florence under Cosimo. The government professedly had its seat at the Palace of the Priors, the Palazzo Vecchio, but it really lay in the hands of the keen and shrewd merchant, who lived in that noble building in the 'Via Larga,' now known as the Riccardi Palace. In that Palace we may see a fresco of Benozzo Gozzoli with portraits of the Emperor of the East and the Patriarch of Constantinople, who took part in the memorable Council, which led to Cosimo's foundation of the Platonic Academy. Cosimo had a proclivity, one might almost call it a passion, for building libraries. Even in the year of his exile, he built a library for the Benedictines in Venice. In Florence he formed no less than three libraries ; the first, in the Medicean Palace, which we have just visited ; the second, in the Dominican Convent of San Marco ; and the third, in the Augustinian Monastery at the Badia of Fiesole. Many of the contents of these three libraries afterwards found a home in the Laurentian, which was not finished until more than a century later, in 1571. There is no place in Florence that is richer in Classical manu- scripts, none that is crowded with more memories 1 ii 65 § 6. 120 FLORENCE in the history of scholarship, than that world-famous Library that still stands above the cloisters of San Lorenzo, We may there see memorable manu- scripts of Aeschylus and Sophocles, Lucretius and Virgil, Cicero and Tacitus, and many more besides. Meanwhile, outside the Porta San Niccolo, we may look in vain for the gardens, where scholars of an earlier age, such as Marsigli and Salutati, formed part of the brilliant company in the Villa Paradiso of the Alberti ; while, within the walls, there is little left to mark the site of the Camaldulensian Convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, long the learned retreat of Niccoli's friend, Ambrogio Tra- versari. But the slopes between Florence and Fiesole are still strewn with many visible memorials of the Renaissance. At San Domenico we can still see the former home of Fra Angelico, and, a few hun- dred yards to the West, the Convent of the Badia, rebuilt and furnished with books by Cosimo. As we glance upwards to the crest of Fiesole, we may mark the Villa Medici nestling beneath it, — the Villa built by Cosimo, and, for a time, assigned by Lorenzo to Politian. It was in that cool retreat that, looking down on the long reaches of the Arno, Politian composed some of the finest of his FLORENCE 121 Latin poems. Among the oak-trees hard by, was the silvan haunt of Pico della Mirandola. Further to the West, on far lower ground, was the Medi- cean Villa of Careggi, the suburban home of Cosimo, and the scene of at least one memorable meeting of the Platonic Academy in the time of Lorenzo ; and, near that Villa, the rural resort of Marsilio Ficino 1 . We may see Ficino's marble bust, with its wist- ful gaze, in the Cathedral of Florence, and the quaint epitaphs on Politian and Pico in the Church of San Marco. Among the portraits of the Pitti Palace, we may scan the shrewd countenance of Cosimo, and the broad and generous features of his grand- son, the poet and Platonist, the splendour-loving and 'magnificent' patron of learning, Lorenzo ; and we may note the lineaments of many a scholar in the long gallery that unites the Pitti Palace to the Uffizi. Of the Latin Secretaries of Florence, Salutati rests in the Cathedral, and Poggio in Santa Croce, where the marble effigies of Lionardo Bruni and of his successor, Carlo Marsuppini, re- cline beneath the most magnificent monuments 1 Politian, Epp. viii 13 (Letter to Ficino), 'tu velim, quando Caregianum tuum Sextili mense nimis aestuat, rusculum hoc nos- trum Faesulanum ne fastidias...Saepius e querceto suo me Picus invisit. ' 122 CAMALDOLI, AREZZO, CERTALDO, SIENA that the Renaissance ever raised in memory of any Latin Scholar. On leaving Florence, we may pass through Vallombrosa to the Casentino, there to view, in the surroundings of the ancient abbey of Camaldoli, the scene of the ' Camaldulensian Disputations ' of that accomplished student of Virgil and Dante, Cristoforo Landino. We are now not far from the source of the Arno ; and, if we follow the stream down to Arezzo, we shall find ourselves at the birthplace of Petrarch, and of two other eminent Latinists, Bruni and Marsuppini. On our way from Arezzo and Florence to Siena, we are reminded of Boccaccio, while we pass the little hill-set town of Certaldo ; and, when we are on the point of entering Siena by the road from Florence, we lift up our eyes to note above the Northern gate the generous greeting : — COR MAGIS TIBI SENA PANDIT. In this hospitable town we need not linger long. In the days, of which we are now dreaming, the moral atmosphere of 'fair and soft Siena' was far from healthy. We will only pass through the Cathedral to the Piccolomini Library, with its sculptured group of the Greek Graces, with the beautiful miniatures of its Latin manuscripts, and with the radiant frescoes of Pinturicchio, telling the story of the humanist and VENICE 123 the future Pope, Aeneas Sylvius, from the time of his brilliant oration at Basel to that of his brave death at Ancona. Leaving Tuscany for Venice, we reach the city on the sea, the gate of Northern Italy, the goal of every envoy and every exile from Hellenic lands, the portal through which nearly all the remains of Greek literature passed from the East to the West. We may here picture Petrarch as the honoured guest of the State at that singular festival, when Venice celebrated her conquest of Crete, and when the 'first of modern men' might have been seen seated beside the Doge on the Gallery in front of the bronze horses of St Mark's, looking down on a grand display of horsemanship in the still-unpaved Piazza 1 . Petrarch was then proposing to leave his library to Venice, while Venice, on her part, per- mitted him to reside in a house finely situated on the Riva degli Sckiavoni, since known as the Palazzo delle due Torri ; but the proposed bequest came to nothing, and, a century later, the honour of practically founding the Library of St Mark's fell in 1468 to Cardinal Bessarion. In that Library we may see a volume printed in the very next year by John of Speyer, — a copy of the ' Familiar 1 Epp. Rerum Senillum, iii t, pp. 782-4 ; cp. W. D. Howells, Venetian Life, chap. xvii. 124 VENICE Letters ' of Cicero, the first book printed in Venice (1469). To find the former home of a still more famous printer and scholar, Aldus Manutius, we must thread the intricacies of a part of Venice near the Frari, where, in the Campo of the suppressed Church of Sant' Agostino, we may see a tablet, let into the wall of an ancient house, stating that it was there that Aldo Pio Manuzio founded his printing-press. If we had been able to visit that Press in the year 15 14, and had gone up to the door of the room of Aldus himself, we should have found a quaint notice to this effect : — Whosoever thou art, Aldus straitly chargeth thee, if thou desirest aught of him, to do thy business in briefest wise, and then at once depart, — save haply thou comest, even as Hercules unto the weary Atlas, ready to bear his burden on thy shoulders ; if so, there will ever be enough to do, both for thyself and for as many as bend their steps hitherward 1 . From that Press in the heart of Venice Aldus poured forth from 1494 to 1515 a vast supply of printed texts of Greek and Latin Classics, popu- larising the Roman poets in particular by issuing them in handy volumes printed in the elegant 'Italic' or 'Aldine' type first copied in 1501 from the autograph of Petrarch. The Aldine Press did in fact far more for learning than any private or public patronage in Venice. The strict oligarchy 1 Preface to Cicero, Rhet. IJ14 (Didot, Aide Manuce, 153 f). PADUA 1 25 of that city was, indeed, much less generous in the encouragement of learning than the nominal republic of Florence. But the humanists found a friend in the Grand Admiral, Carlo Zeno, who died in 1418, and in two members of the family of Giustiniani, a father and son, whose lives extended from 1388 to 1489, and whose name is still borne by several of the Palaces of Venice. Among the contemporaries of the elder Giustiniani was the humanist and statesman, Francesco Barbaro, the pupil of Guarino and the correspondent of Poggio, while in a later generation we have one of the purest of Latin poets in the person of Andrea Navagero, who aided the house of Aldus by seeing through the press no less than seven of the Latin Classics. If, from the many islands of Venice, we now cross to the mainland, we shall soon arrive at the stately city of Padua. That city was long under the dominion of the house of the Carraras. With one of those despots Petrarch was familiar, and (as we remember) it was only a few miles to the South, at Arqua in the Euganean hills, that he passed the closing years of his life. Padua was afterwards the place where Palla Strozzi spent in the ' quiet and still air of delightful studies ' those thirty years of exile from Florence, during which his rival Cosimo 126 PADUA won that fame as a patron of learning, which, with fairer fortune, might well have been his own. But, for the ordinary humanist, whose daily bread depended on his powers as a teacher, Padua was a place of transit rather than of permanent abode. The local interest in the old Latin Classics was, however, exemplified in 141 3 by the great sensa- tion produced by the alleged discovery of the bones of Livy. In the absence of the abbot, in whose monastery the bones, were found, his deputy, who doubtless recalled the legend of the burning of the books of Livy by Gregory the Great, and was anxious to prevent any superstitious regard for the historian's bones, immediately seized the skull and smashed it with a hammer into a hundred pieces. But the State of Venice, which had lately annexed Padua, took possession of the supposed remains of the local historian ; and, less than forty years later, graciously presented a portion of the relics to one of Livy's royal admirers, Alfonso the Magnanimous, King of Naples. We must not, however, forget to visit the famous University of the city celebrated by Shake- speare as 'fair Padua, nursery of arts.' Founded as far back as 1222, it long retained its ancient renown. It could only have been a passing eclipse of its fame that led Shelley to compose the couplet : — VERONA AND COMO 127 ' In thy halls the lamp of learning, Padua, is no longer burning.' He does full justice to its olden glory, when he adds : — ' Once remotest nations came To adore the sacred 6ame.' Among the many students from other lands were Reginald Pole and Longolius, as well as William Latimer and Linacre. In the Great Hall and in Sansovino's Colonnades we may mark the painted tablets telling of the English friend of Galileo, Richard Willoughby, and Galileo's pupil, William Harvey, and Dr Caius, the second founder of Harvey's College at Cambridge 1 . From Padua we pass to Verona, the birthplace of Guarino, — Verona with its ancient Amphitheatre, and its memories of the long-lost manuscript of Verona's poet, Catullus, and the equally lost manuscript of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, there recovered for a brief interval by Petrarch. While we pause for a moment at Como, we may see, in the niches on either side of the main entrance to the Cathedral, the seated statues of both the Plinies, arrayed in the garb of scholars of the year 1500; and we know that, near the shores of the Larian lake, is the intermittent spring mentioned 1 Cp. illustrated paper by Prof. G. Darwin, in Cambridge Antiquarian Society's Proceedings, xxxvi 337-347 (1894). 128 MILAN by both, as well as the reputed site of the Villa of the younger Pliny, on which the author of the Elogia, Paolo Giovio, built the Museum that he adorned with the painted portraits of the humanists of his day. From Como we turn southwards to Milan, the vast city of the Visconti, who were the first of the Italian despots who deemed it their duty to act as patrons of literature and art. It was as the guest of the Visconti that Petrarch lived for eight years at Milan ; while Giovanni Galeazzo, the grand- nephew of Petrarch's first patron, Giovanni Visconti, was the founder, not only of the Certosa near Pavia, but also of a library of the best Greek and Latin authors at Pavia itself. Under the patronage of the Visconti the Ciceronian scholar, Gasparino, found a home at Milan, and, during the last thirty years of their rule, Pier Candido Decembrio lived there, as the Latin Secretary to the Duke of Milan. We may still admire the medallion-portrait of Decembrio by Pisanello, on which he is described, before 1450, as studiorum humanitatis decus, one of the earliest examples of the application of the term humanitas to the Latin studies of the Renaissance. Like other humanists, he had his feuds with Filelfo, who wrote a portentous epic on the exploits of the successor of the Visconti, the LODI AND MANTUA 129 enterprising- Condottiere, Francesco Sforza. The hundred and thirty-five years of the rule of the Visconti (1312-1447) were followed by the eighty- five years of the dynasty of Sforza (1450-1535). Next to Francesco, the most conspicuous member of that dynasty was the usurper Ludovico il Moro, who gathered round him an Academy of scholars and of artists, including Bramante and Lionardo da Vinci, and was lauded by Politian for his patronage of learning. It was Ludovico (it may be remembered) who incited the French to invade Italy ; and the Italian despot of Milan paid the penalty for that wrong in 1500, when he died in a dungeon in France. Leaving Milan, we soon pass Lodi, where Cicero's greater rhetorical works were discovered in 1422, and hasten onwards to Mantua on the Mincio, Mantua with its undying memories of Virgil. The poet's portrait appeared on a local medallion as early as 1257 ; his seated statue, set up in the same century, was in 1397 ruthlessly flung into the Mincio by Carlo Malatesta, then in command of the forces of Mantua ; and a design for its restora- tion, ascribed to Mantegna, is among the drawings preserved in the Louvre 1 . Mantua was for centuries under the rule of the Gonzagas. In the first half 1 Reproduced in Kristeller's Mantegna, p. 402, ed. 1901. S. L. 9 130 FERRARA of the fifteenth century, under Giovanni Francesco I, it was adorned by the virtues and the learning of Vittorino ; while, late in the same century and early in the next, the wife of Giovanni Francesco II, Isabella d' Este of Ferrara, was an enthusiastic collector of the choicest specimens of Aldine texts. From her second home at Mantua we pass to her first at Ferrara, — Ferrara with the massive and sombre towers of its moated castle overawing the surrounding streets. A Marquis of Ferrara,. Nicolas III, who had revived the University in 1402, was for many years the patron of Guarino, the devoted preceptor of the next Marquis, the accom- plished Lionello. Lionello's brother and successor, Borso, the first Duke, favoured the introduction of the printing-press, and thenceforth Ferrara became still more famous as a home of letters. Then follow Hercules I, the patron of Ariosto and the father of Isabella d' Este ; Alfonso I, the husband of Lucrezia Borgia, the lady celebrated in Latin verse by Bembo and by the ill-fated Ercole Strozza ; Hercules II, the husband of Renee of France, the Duchess whom we associate with Vittoria Colonna and Olympia Morata 1 ; and, lastly, Alfonso II, the patron and the persecutor of Tasso. Only two Latin scholars need here be 1 See p. 81 f. BOLOGNA noticed in connexion with Ferrara ; both were born in 1478 and both died about 1550. The first of these is Celio Calcagnini, the astronomer and lawyer, who was so devoted to Latin that he would gladly have suppressed the Italian language. The second is Lilio Giraldi, whose critical survey of the Latin poets of his time is a work of permanent value in the history of literature. Bidding farewell to Ferrara, we leave the sunny plain of Lombardy for the shady colonnades of Bologna, that ancient seat of legal learning, which was organised as a University as early as 1200. Many of the humanists, who, like birds of passage, were ever on the wing, rested only for a time at Bologna ; but there are two whose names are more continuously connected with the place : Filippo Beroaldo the elder, who edited a vast number of Latin Classics, a man of learning, who lacked method, a man of eloquence, who was wanting in elegance of style ; and Codrus Urceus, a professor of Greek, who wrote poems in good Latin ; a humanist, who refrained from the censure of others, and cared not for their praise ; a teacher, who was generous to his own pupils, though stiff to strangers ; one, who was so modest that, in writing his own epitaph, he was content with the two words : — Codrus eram. Both of these scholars 9—2 132 RIMINI AND ANCONA had lately passed away, when Bologna was visited in 1509 by Erasmus. He there spent little more than a year, working quietly at Greek, and too shy to lecture in Latin, because of his northern accent. We learn, however, that he attended a lecture by the leading Latinist of the day, Giambattista Pio. As Erasmus left the lecture-room, a friend asked him what he thought of this celebrated lecturer. Erasmus replied : — ' He has surpassed all my expectations.' Pressed for a more precise opinion, he was compelled to answer : ' I already knew that he was a fool ; I have now learnt that he is quite mad.' 1 It was in the November of this year that Erasmus saw at Bologna the triumphal entry of the warrior-pope, Julius II, when the roses of autumn were strewn in the path of a second ' Caesar.' Passing onwards to Rimini, we may there see the pagan pantheon built under the name of a Christian Church by Sigismondo Malatesta, who combined some of the worst vices of a savage with a romantic love of learning, and, on his conquest of the Turks in the Morea, brought the bones of Plethon from the site of Sparta to the land that he had inspired with the love of Plato. If we go on as far as Ancona, we may view the 1 Nolhac, Erasme en Italie, p. 22 note, ed. 1898. URBINO 133 triumphal arch of Trajan, and mark the Latin inscription that started Ciriaco of Ancona on his memorable career as a classical archaeologist. But time is pressing, and we must leave the coast at Pesaro for our visit to Urbino. It was there that Federigo, Count of Montefeltro, the soldier and scholar, whom we remember as a pupil of Vittorino, built his glorious castle ; there that, with the aid of Vespasiano, he formed that famous Library, which descended to his son, Guidobaldo, and was afterwards merged in the Vatican. The court of Guidobaldo and of his wife, Elisabetta Gonzaga, one of the noblest women of her time, is memorable as the scene of Castiglione's celebrated treatise on the Perfect Courtier. For four long evenings was the theme debated, and, on the last, a Platonic discourse on the love of beauty from the lips of Bembo was protracted far into the night, till at the close one of the courtiers suddenly exclaimed, ' The day has broken.' The windows were flung open on that side of the palace which looks toward the lofty peak of Monte Catria, and the roses of dawn were already blushing in the eastern sky, where the only star that was still shining was the Morning Star of Love 1 . 1 Cortegiano, ad fin. Cp. Symonds, Italian Byways, 137. 134 NAPLES. VIRGIL AND SANNAZARO ' The day has broken.' Let us take ' the wings of the morning,' and swiftly pass from the Castle of Urbino to the Bay of Naples. There the centre of classic interest is the tomb of Virgil, visited long ago by Statius and Silius Italicus, by Petrarch and Boccaccio. Petrarch is said to have planted a laurel there, and a branch of that laurel was long retained as a sacred relic, even by that ruthless destroyer of Roman legends, the historian Niebuhr. The traditional tomb lies among the vineyards above the old road to Posilipo ; the laurel has made way for the myrtle, the ivy and the ilex, and the site is no longer accessible. But we may easily visit the neighbouring tomb of one of Virgil's most devoted admirers and imi- tators, the poet Sannazaro. On the site of his villa on the Mergellina, which had been given him by the King of Naples and had been devas- tated by the troops of France, he built the little Church of Santa Maria del Parto, and there we may see the poet's tomb and his laurelled bust, and the sculptured forms of Apollo and Minerva, of Neptune and Pan, with the delicately carved seaweeds telling of idylls of the shore, and the epitaph by Cardinal Bembo describing the poet as very near to Virgil in the inspiration of his verse, as well as the place of his burial. We may ALFONSO THE MAGNANIMOUS 135 also see in the Neapolitan Church of Monte Oliveto the terracotta group of three figures reverently kneeling before the body of Christ, — Joseph of Arimathea, represented by Sannazaro ; Nicodemus, by that earlier Latin poet, Pontano ; and St John, by Alfonso II, whose brief rule was terminated by the entry of Charles VI 1 1 into Naples in 1495. Alfonso II was the grandson of Pontano's great patron, Alfonso the Magnanimous, who, in 1442, entered Naples in a chariot gleaming with gold, like that of a triumphant general of Rome. To see the sculptured representation of his tri- umphal entry, we must go to the Castel Nuovo, and there view the lofty arch that is still regarded as one of the finest monuments of Naples ; and, if we care to scan his features, we may find on a medallion struck in his life-time the profile of his grave and imperturbable face 1 . It may well be doubted whether any monarch ever had a more complete command of countenance. Once, when an envoy from Florence, the accomplished scholar, Manetti, was delivering a long oration in his presence, the King sat calmly on his throne, as still as a brazen statue, and listened with such rapt attention that he even refrained from flicking off a fly that, at the beginning of the oration, had 1 Fabriczy's Italian Medals, plate V, ed. 1904. 136 VALLA AT NAPLES settled on the royal nose 1 . Such was his interest in the Classics, that he even threw off an illness by listening to a recitation from the Life of Alexander the Great by Quintus Curtius, — a remedy administered in three doses a day by the court-poet and historian, Beccadelli. His favourite authors were Seneca and Livy ; he restored his castle under the guidance of Vitruvius, and, in that castle, the room that he liked best was the well-furnished library, where he would delight in sitting at a window overlooking the Bay of Naples. At his court he had Greek and Latin scholars, such as Theodorus Gaza and Manetti, and Latin poets, such as Beccadelli and Pontano, who were also (like Fazio) masters of Latin prose. But the ablest of all the scholars at that court was Laurentius Valla, who, in his early days at Rome, had given proof of his independence by preferring Quintilian to Cicero, and who now expounded to the inquisitive King of Naples the precise meaning of the phrases of Livy, and embodied his contro- versies with inferior scholars of the court in a volume of emendations on the first six books of the Second Punic War, many of which are accepted in the current texts. The preparation of his cele- brated work .on the Elegancies of the Latin language 1 Naldi, Vita Manetti, in Muratori,. Scr. Ital. xx 550 E. ROME UNDER NICOLAS V 137 was continued even amid the interruptions caused by his following in the train of the military expedi- tions of his patron, such as the siege of Gaeta, and the battle of Ischia. It was in that patron's interest that he attacked the temporal power of the Pope, and denounced the ' Donation of Con- stantine,' which has since disappeared from the Roman Breviary. The tone of his attack was quite enough to make it impossible for Euge- nius IV to grant him permission to return to Rome, but the bar was removed by that Pope's enlightened successor, Nicolas V. Let us follow Valla to Rome. We there see his new patron, Nicolas V, the little man with weak legs, a small mouth and heavy lips, and a face of ashen paleness relieved by the flashing brightness of his black eyes. In the person of the new Pope, the visible embodiment of the spirit of humanism had now ascended the papal throne. At Florence, as Tomaso Parentucelli, he had dis- tinguished himself as a copyist, and had advised Cosimo in the formation of the Library of San Marco. At Rome, as Pope, he gathered manu- scripts from all lands and thus laid the foundation of the great collection in the Vatican Library. He also carried out a vast scheme for trans- lating into Latin all the principal, classical writers 138 VALLA AT ROME in Greek prose, and it was in connexion with this scheme that he invited Valla to translate Thucy- dides and Herodotus. Valla, who, under the shadow of Vesuvius, had been a redoubtable opponent of papal claims, had now become an extinct volcano. It is true that there were occasional eruptions and explosions in the form of feuds with rival scholars, but he ended his days at peace with Rome ; and the denouncer of the Constantinian donation of the Lateran Palace died as a Canon of the Lateran Church, and was buried within its walls. During a restoration of that Church his marble tomb was destroyed, and, for a time, its tablet formed part of the pavement of the adjoining street, until the memorial of this early representative of modern historical criticism was happily noticed and preserved from destruc- tion by the influence of Niebuhr. It may now be seen in the North Transept near the organ. Nicolas V died two years before Valla, and, on his death-bed, he was able to say with perfect truth : — ' In all things I was liberal, in building, in the purchase of books, in the constant transcription of Greek and Latin manuscripts, and in the rewarding of learned men.' But, in the fifty-eight years that elapsed between his death in 1455, and the accession of Leo X in 1513, Latin and Greek ROME UNDER JULIUS II 139 scholarship owed little in Rome to papal pa- tronage. Julius II was too busy with his wars to do anything for the votaries of the Classics, — beyond the bestowal of a laurel-crown on a young Roman poet who assumed the garb of Orpheus. But it was under Julius that Rome was visited, in 1509, by a celebrated scholar from the North, who (as he tells us 1 ) passed unobserved through door after door in the solitudes of Cardinal Grimani's palace, until he lighted on a Greek attendant. The unknown stranger asked if he might see the Cardinal, was told the Cardinal was engaged, and said he would call again. Happily, it occurred to the attendant to ask the stranger for his name. It was Erasmus. The mention of the name immediately had a magic effect. He was at once admitted, and was even pressed by the Cardinal to remain in Rome ; but the hopes inspired by the news of the accession of Henry VIII soon called him to England. He afterwards wrote, however, to assure one of the Cardinals, that the river of Lethe alone would wash out the memory of the delights of Rome 2 ; and another, that he recalled with regret the theatre, the libraries, and the scholarly conversations he had enjoyed in that city'' 1 Ep. 1175. 2 Ep. 136. 3 Ep. 167-8. 140 ROME UNDER LEO X It was for Julius that Raphael painted, in the Camera della Segriatura, between 1509 and 1511, the famous fresco of Apollo and the Muses with the ancient poets on Parnassus, and the no less famous ' School of Athens,' which may well have been inspired either by the writings of Marsilio Ficino in Florence, or by the suggestions of Sadoleto in Rome. It was also under Julius that many men of letters, such as Sadoleto, Bembo, and Vida, gave the first proof of that distinction that added a lustre to the pontificate of his successor, LeoX. The warrior-pope has passed away; the age of the first Medicean Pope begins. Let us look on as he passes in that splendid procession from St Peter's to the Lateran, through streets made beautiful with marble statues of the old pagan divinities, and brightened with words of welcome, and even with words of wit. One of the Latin scrolls in front of a wealthy banker's palace recalls the times of Alexander VI and of Julius II by telling us that the reign of Venus and of Mars is over, and that of Minerva has begun. A Greek Press will shortly be set up in that banker's palace, and also (under Janus Lascaris) on Monte Cavallo. The first five books of the Annals of Tacitus will be recovered, and published in 15 15 in the cditio princeps of all ROME UNDER ADRIAN VI 141 his extant works, by the younger Beroaldo, with a papal brief insisting on the importance of Classical literature and on the merits of men of learning. Among the Latin scholars who adorned the court of Leo were those masters of Latin verse and of Ciceronian prose, Bembo and Sadoleto. In his earlier days, Sadoleto had celebrated in Latin hexameters the recovery of the Laocoon and the heroism of Marcus Curtius. There too was Vida of Cremona, who, not content with exhibiting a singular skill in writing didactic poems on the management of silkworms and on the game of chess, was emboldened to attempt a far loftier theme. In the age of Leo and amid the silvan retreats of Frascati, he began his celebrated epic poem on the Life of Christ. He also completed in that age the greatest of his earlier works, the didactic poem on the 'Art of Poetry.' When Leo died in 1521, his tomb in the Minerva, the Florentine Church in Rome, was strewn with many Latin verses lamenting the bygone glories of his ' golden age.' From the tomb of Leo let us go to St Peter's and the Vatican, and there find our way to the room of the Laocoon and the Apollo Belvedere. Leo's successor, the Spanish Pope, Adrian VI, is passing by, in the company of an envoy from Venice. As he looks for a moment 142 CLEMENT VII AND THE SACK OF ROME at those splendid memorials of ancient sculpture, he turns to the envoy and says with a sigh: — ' They are the idols of the ancients.' 1 A year later, the successor of Leo X is himself succeeded by the second Medicean Pope, Leo's cousin, Clement VII. In the month of May, 1527, the political entanglements caused by Clement culminate in that appalling event, the Sack of Rome by the Spanish and German troops of Charles V, — an event that, in Italy at least, marks the end of the great epoch known as the Revival of Learning. Amid the general ruin of Rome, many an artist and many a scholar perished, or suffered the loss of all his goods, or passed into exile. The learned recluse, who had aided Raphael in the study of Vitruvius, died a miserable death in a hospital ; the literary critic of the Latin poets of that age, Lilio Giraldi, had to lament the loss of all his books ; the writer of the eulogies of learned men, Paolo Giovio, was bereft of his only copy of part of the first decade of his great History of Rome, while the head of the Roman Academy saw most of his fine collection of manuscripts and antiquities dispersed and destroyed. One who had shared in a brief revival of learning under Clement VII, a successful imitator of Horace 1 Negri in Lettere di Principi, i 113 (Venice, 1581). THE END OF THE REVIVAL OF LEARNING 143 and Propertius, named Valeriano, was absent from Rome during this terrible calamity, but, on his return, he found in the strange adventures of those who had lingered in the doomed city, much of the material for his work on the misfortunes of scholars, — a volume, which, within its tiny compass, probably contains a larger amount of concentrated and unmitigated misery than any book in existence, having in fact a better claim than any other modern work to be described as 'written within and without with lamentations and mourning and woe.' Men were saying, on all sides, that the light of the world had perished. Sadoleto, who had left for his bishopric in the South of France, wrote to the head of the Roman Academy recalling those happy meetings that had now been broken up by the cruel fate of Rome 1 . He himself received a letter from Bembo, who had withdrawn to Padua, exhorting him to bury their common misfortunes in a life of study 2 ; and another from Erasmus, saying that 'this terrible event had affected the whole world ; for Rome was not only the fortress of the Christian religion, the instructress of noble minds, but also the mother of the nations; her fall was not the fall of the city, but of the world.' 3 1 Sadoleti Epp. i 106. ' Bembi Epp. Fam. Hi 24. 3 Ep. 988. 144 THE FOUNTAIN OF TREVI Our tour of Italy, that began with Florence, has ended, as all roads proverbially do, in Rome. Shall we ever meet in Rome again? Have we drunk of the Fountain of Trevi ? Let us listen, at least, to those lines of Bayard Taylor on ' Trevi's ancient fountain,' — lines of farewell linked with hope of return : — ' The Genius of the Tiber nods Benign, above his tilted urn: Kneel down and drink ! the beckoning gods This last libation will not spurn. Drink, and the old enchantment learn That hovers yet o'er Trevi's foam, — The promise of a sure return, Fresh footsteps in the dust of Rome ! ' We have drunk, in fancy, of that fountain; and, in fancy, we shall meet again in Rome. We shall once more see Sadoleto and Bembo and Erasmus. Rome had fallen in May, and, in the October of the self- same year, we find Erasmus 1 writing a letter foreshadowing his composition of that famous dialogue on Ciceronianism, which will engage our attention for part of the next lecture. 1 Ef. 899 (to Franciscus Vergara, Professor of Greek at Alcala), VI. THE HISTORY OF CICERONIANISM. The brilliant historian of the Roman Republic, the late Professor Mommsen, while he mercilessly attacks the political character of Cicero, contends that his real ' importance rests on his mastery of style,' and readily admits that he is ' the creator of the modern classical Latin prose.' The historian adds that ' Ciceronianism is a problem, which, in fact, cannot be properly solved, but can only be resolved into that greater mystery of human nature — language and the effect of language on the mind.' 1 It is not the purpose of the present lecture to attempt either to solve this problem or to penetrate this mystery, but simply to trace in briefest outline the general course of literary opinion as to the style of Cicero, and as to the degree to which that style is deserving of either partial or exclusive imitation. We shall begin with the age of Cicero, and we shall end but little 1 History of Rome, Book v, Chapter xii (v 456, 504, 506, ed. 1894). S. L. IO 146 CICERO AND THE ATTIC ORATORS later than the age of Erasmus. Rome will be our starting-point and Rome will be our goal. In Cicero's own day it was generally agreed that the orators of Athens were the best models that could be imitated by the orators of Rome. While Cicero was an ardent admirer of the Attic orators in general, and of Demosthenes in particu- lar, it is clear that his natural and instinctive knowledge of the inherent limitations of the Latin language must have led him to feel that a certain amplitude of style was necessary to win the ear of a Roman audience. The fulness and richness of the Ciceronian periods were, however, regarded as inflated and bombastic by the severe and rigid Atticists, whose model was Lysias. Late in the next century these opponents of Cicero are strongly condemned by his devoted admirer, Quintilian, who denounces them as an impious band of conspirators, who had dared to censure Cicero as unduly turgid and Asiatic and redun- dant, and had sheltered themselves under the shade of the Attic orators, solely because they could not endure the bright sunshine of Cicero's eloquence 1 . Quintilian's own opinion is clearly indicated by his well-known saying : — ' Whosoever shall greatly admire Cicero, may be sure that he 1 Quintilian, xii 10, 12-15. QUINTILIAN AND TACITUS ON CICERO 147 has made good progress.' 1 Cicero is imitated by Tacitus in the periodic structure, and in the copious and even redundant style, of his ' Dialogue on Orators,' as contrasted with the terse and epigrammatic manner of his other works. In discussing the decadence and dethronement of eloquence, one of the interlocutors in that Dialogue (Maternus) urges that the poet is now as famous as the orator, and that Cicero meets with more de- traction than Virgil ; another (Aper), in comparing Ciceronian and contemporary eloquence, holds that Cicero is wanting in polish; while a third (Messalla) contends that the foremost cause of the modern decay of eloquence is the neglect of that wide education in law and history, in philo- sophy and science, which so largely contributed to Cicero's greatness 2 - In the third century the influence of Cicero is clear in the case of Minucius Felix ; and, late in that century, in the case of Lactantius. In the fourth, it was through St Ambrose that the moral doctrine of the Stoics, as embodied in the De Officiis of Cicero, passed into the ethics of the Christian Church. In the same century the spell of Cicero's style fell with full force on St Jerome, 1 x i, 112, 'Me se profecisse sciat, cui Cicero valde placebit.' 2 Dialogus de Oratoribus, chapters 12, 22, and 32. 148 THE LA TIN FA THERS AND THE MIDDLE A GES who, in a delirious dream in the Syrian desert, heard the echo of the voice of conscience in those awe-inspiring words of doom : — ' Thou art no Christian ; thou art a Ciceronian.' In his later and maturer years, however, when he was sur- rounded by his youthful pupils in his cell at Bethlehem, he happily found no difficulty in reconciling the ' Ciceronian ' and the ' Christian.' Lastly, in the same century, St Augustine, who (like Lactantius) quotes a considerable number of passages from Cicero's treatise ' On the Republic,' derived his first serious impressions from the lost dialogue in praise of philosophy, entitled the Hortensius. During the Middle Ages Cicero is the foremost representative of the ' liberal art ' of Rhetoric ; his Speeches are imitated by the author of the classic life of Charles the Great, and are preserved for future students partly by the care of the best scholar of his time, Gerbert of Aurillac, better known as Silvester II. Cicero is also the favourite Latin author of John of Salisbury and of Roger Bacon, and his treatise ' On Friendship ' is one of the two books in which Dante finds consolation on the death of Beatrice 1 . 1 For details, cp. History of Classical Scholarship .. .to the end of the Middle Ages, pp. 623-7. CICERO AND PETRARCH 149 But, in the Middle Ages, Cicero had ceased in some measure to hold that foremost place in Latin literature which had been assigned him by the admiration of Quintilian. His philosophical teaching had been assimilated by the Latin Fathers, who had largely superseded him ; and, down to the end of those Ages, the leading name in Latin Letters was not Cicero, but Virgil 1 . At the Revival of Learning it was the influ- ence of Petrarch that restored Cicero to a position of prominence. Petrarch was the leader of the New Learning, but who was the leader of Petrarch? To find the answer let us turn to one of his own Letters : — ' If you were offended by my former letter, you will listen now to language that will soothe your wounded spirit... While I feel pity for your political career, I congratulate you on your talents and on your powers of speech. Father supreme of Roman eloquence ! I yield you hearty thanks, and not for myself alone, but for all of us, who adorn ourselves with the flowers of the Latin language. Yours are the springs from which we water our meadows ; you are the leader that marshals us ; yours are the suffrages that support us, and yours the light that shines upon our path.' 2 Need I add that the letter is addressed to Cicero ? Cicero's influence on Petrarch was not only the influence of a stylist. It was also a personal influence ; and the personality of Cicero was first 1 Cp. Zielinski, Cicero im Wandel der Jahrhunderte, 1897, p. 26. - Petrarch, Epistolae Dc Reims Familiaribus, xxiv 4. 150 PETRARCH AND BOCCACCIO brought vividly home to Petrarch during those days at Verona in 1345, when he happily dis- covered and eagerly transcribed all the Letters to Atticus, to Quintus, and to Brutus. It was from Cicero's Letters that Petrarch's successors first learnt to give a clear expression to their own individuality, and it is in their own letters that their individuality appears in its most attractive form. The Latin style of Petrarch is certainly superior to that of the mediaeval schoolmen, superior also to that of Dante, but it is not devoid of barbarisms and errors of grammar, and it was criticised ac- cordingly by later writers of greater precision, beginning with Bruni 1 and ending with Erasmus 2 . In the judgment of those writers the Latin style of Boccaccio was far inferior to that of Petrarch 3 . Boccaccio is undoubtedly a genuine scholar, but, owing to the defects of his early education, his Latin prose is inclined to be scrappy and jerky. It lacks that ' linked smoothness long drawn out/ which is one of the main charms of Cicero. Boccaccio's younger contemporary, the Latin Secretary of Florence, Coluccio Salutati, has been 1 Vita di Petrarca (1436), p. 53, ed. Galletti. 2 Ciceronianus (1528), p. 68, ed. 1621, Toulouse. 3 Bruni, I.e., p. 54; Erasmus, I.e., p. 68. COLUCCIO SALUTATI 151 described by the historian, Filippo Villani, as ' the ape of Cicero.' 1 The phrase is intended as a compliment, but it may be doubted whether the compliment was completely deserved. Salutati was more than sixty years of age when he came into possession of both of the great collections of Cicero's Letters. His private correspondence betrays the influence of Seneca and Petrarch rather than that of Cicero. In the official letters, which he wrote as Latin Secretary of Florence, he was the first to aim at elegance. In those letters his style is perhaps unduly florid ; it is over-weighted with a superfluity of erudition and a superabundance of sententiousness. But it was found effective at the time ; it even inspired awe among the enemies of Florence. In a later age, however, Pontano includes Salutati in the sentence of condemnation that he passes on Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, when he says that all those writers are frequently deficient, not only in their Latin vocabulary, but even in their Latin syntax, and, ' if anyone discredits this criticism, let him examine their writings for himself.' 2 When the genial and generous Salutati was, after a short interval of time, succeeded as Secre- 1 De Florentiae Famosis Civibus, p. 19, ed. Galletti. 2 De Aspiratione, ii 2. 152 LIONARDO BRUNI tary by the grave and reserved Lionardo Bruni, the letters written on behalf of Florence exhibited a new phase of Latinity. Bruni is said to have regarded himself as the restorer of the Latin language 1 ; and his manner is certainly less involved than that of Salutati. He holds that, in a good writer of letters, besides the words and the sound, we have the writer's own mind, which is revealed by the vibrations of language, just as the mind of a speaker is revealed by the play of the eye 2 . He is happiest in his letters to Niccoli, even rivalling Petrarch in a graphic account of a journey to Switzerland, where he describes the awe-inspiring splendour of the Alps, and the beauty of the Lake of Constance 3 . In ease and clearness of style he is regarded by Erasmus as approaching Cicero, but as deficient in force and in other points, such as perfect purity of Latin 4 . Livy rather than Cicero is his model in that History of Florence, on which his right hand is represented as resting in the celebrated marble monument to his memory in Santa Croce. Among his contemporaries, the true bearer of the 1 Epp. iii 19 ; Vespasiano, Frate A-mbrogio, § 6 ( Vite, p. 244, ed. 1859). 2 Epp- vii 3, ed. Mehus 1741. 3 Epp. iv 3. 4 Ciceronianus, p. 68, ed. 1627. GASPARINO DA BARZIZZA 153 banner of Ciceronianism is Gasparino da Barzizza, who is mainly associated with Milan. ' It is under his leadership, under his auspices ' (writes Guarino in 1422), 'that Cicero is loved and studied, and is famous in all the schools of Italy.' 1 Barzizza took the greatest delight in Cicero's Letters, and gave a strong impulse to the cultivation of a new style of epistolary Latin. Thenceforward, Latin letters were not to be inspired by the moral epistles of Seneca or the philosophical works of Cicero, like the letters of Petrarch. They were not to be rich in rhetorical exuberance, like those of Salutati. They were to aim at a studied ease, and to reflect the grace and charm of the best type of conversation. Barzizza's Latin style is far from uniform ; it is in his formal models for Latin epistles, which are marked by a somewhat colourless elegance and refinement, that he attains most closely to the Ciceronian standard. It is characteristic of the French ap- preciation of a correct and polished style, that this little volume of model Latin letters, printed in Paris in 1470, was the first book printed in France. The Letters of Cicero were the first of the Latin text-books in the scheme of education laid down 1 Bodleian manuscript, Land. Lat. 64, fol. 3 (Sabbadini, Storia del Ciceronianismo, 1886, p. 13), 'cujus ductu et auspiciis Cicero amatur, legitur, et per Italorum gymnasia summa cum gloria volitat.' 154 GUARINO DA VERONA by Guarino of Verona. That eager educationist held that the style of Cicero should be imbibed by the beginner like his mother's milk 1 , and, in Guarino's nice criticism of the works of others, his constant standard is Cicero, though his own com- positions are far from attaining that standard. Their structure is apt to be careless, the members of the period are rather loosely fitted together, and there are too many reminiscences of Latin verse. Three passages out of a laudatory oration composed by Guarino in 1428 are quoted nine years after- wards by a bitter opponent, George of Trebizond, who pulls them to pieces as though they were a schoolboy's exercise, and then proceeds to rewrite them. What Guarino had expressed in three short and independent sentences is transfused, without the loss of any essential point, into one compre- hensive period 2 - Whether the result is an improve- ment or not, the fact is sufficient to show that, in the year of this controversy, 1437, humanists were no longer satisfied with adopting a Latin style that was destitute of conscious art 3 . Among the contemporaries of Barzizza and Guarino, we have a clever stylist in the person of 1 Cod. Vindobon. 3330 f. 148 (Sabbadini, 17). 2 Georgius Trapezuntius, Rhetoricorum libri, v 140 f, ed. 1532. s Sabbadini, 17 f. POGGIO BRACCIOLINI 155 Poggio Bracciolini. He founded his Latin style on Cicero's Letters to Atticus, which he transcribed from beginning to end for Cosimo dei Medici in 1408. In one of his own letters he says : ' What- soever there is in me, I owe it all to Cicero, whom I have chosen as my instructor in eloquence.' 1 But, while he rivalled his model in a certain vivacity and vividness of mariner, he did not really imitate either the vocabulary, or the phraseology, or even the constructions of his master. His style is abso- lutely original. He invents new words, uses old words in new senses, and is equally careless about the form of his phrases and the structure of his periods. In the preface to his jest-book he avows that, in that work, his purpose is to prove that there is nothing that cannot be expressed in Latin, and, in carrying out that purpose, he is only too suc- cessful. His frivolous description of the baths of the Swiss Baden, and his impressive narrative of the heroic death of Jerome of Prague, have been often reprinted ; but his letters to Niccoli and others, with their graphic accounts of his discoveries at Constance, are of far greater interest to scholars. He wrote easily and rapidly, and strictly avoided most of the more obvious ornaments of style. Eras- mus refers to his 'vivid eloquence,' — an eloquence 1 Epp. xii 32. 156 LAURENTIUS VALLA characterised, not so much by art and erudition, as by a certain naturalness, though it was marred by occasional lapses from pure Latinity 1 . The Revival of Learning is rich in the litera- ture of invective, and the humanists even out-rival Aeschines and Demosthenes in their criticism of one another's style. Poggio, for example, had a quarrel with Laurentius Valla. Valla quotes a passage from Poggio's attack on himself and at once falls foul of it. 'Why! The very first sen- tence (he declares) begins with the beginning and ends with the end of a hexameter.' 2 After some minuter criticisms, he adds that his own favourite model, Quintilian, must have had some such author in view, when he said that, ' in certain writers, there is a crowd of empty words ; for, while they avoid the common forms of expression, they are tempted by the mere semblance of splendour of style to involve all that they say in a circumlocutory ver- bosity.' 3 Valla's own familiarity with many minor points of Latin usage was abundantly proved by his widely diffused work ' On the Elegancies of the Latin language'; but his grammatical knowledge 1 Ciccronianus, p. 69. ' Valla, Anlid. in Poggium, iii no f, p. 301 of Opera, ed. 1543. 3 Quintilian viii 1, 17. POLITIAN AND BARTOLOMEO SCALA 157 of the details of style did not suffice to make him a great stylist 1 . He was a profound admirer of Cicero and Quintilian, with a decided preference for Quintilian. While Valla belongs to the first half of the fifteenth century, in the second half of that century we have the great name of Politian. In matters of style, Politian was an eclectic, who studied the Latinity of the Silver as well as the Golden Age, and had also a somewhat eccentric fondness for rare and archaic words. As an eclectic, he found himself in opposition to the pretended Ciceronian, Bartolomeo Scala, and to the true Ciceronian, Paolo Cortesi. Scala was the Florentine Latin Secretary, of whom Erasmus afterwards said : — ' He fancied himself a Ciceronian, but I prefer even the dreams of Politian to the sober studies of Scala.' 2 In the course of the controversy with Scala, Politian in- sists that one style is not enough to express every- thing. He adds that his critics sometimes found fault with him for using words that were really derived from the best manuscripts of Cicero, while they themselves retained the barbarous forms which they had found in German texts. Scala is ready 1 Paulus Jovius, Elogia, no. 13; Cortesius, De hoininibus doctis, p; 229, ed. Galletti. Ciceronianus, p. 96. 158 POLITIAN AND PAOLO CORTESI to approve of Politian's imitation of Sallust and Livy, but he protests against Politian's partiality for the writers of the Silver Age 1 . Politian's other opponent, Paolo Cortesi, had, at the age of twenty-five, dedicated to Lorenzo, in 1490, his remarkable dialogue ' On Learned Men.' The dramatic scene of that dialogue is laid on an island in the lake of Bolsena. It includes a series of highly finished criticisms on the style of all the great Italian writers of Latin from Dante down to the author's own day. The secret of its success lay partly in the fact that Cortesi had discovered the importance of a rhythmical structure in the composition of Ciceronian prose 2 . It was warmly welcomed by Politian, who was, however, far less cordial in his approval of a collection of Ciceronian letters by various scholars, subsequently sent him by Cortesi. The ensuing controversy was the first serious conflict in the history of Ciceronianism. We find Politian denouncing the Ciceronians as the mere ' apes of Cicero.' ' To myself (he adds) the face of a bull or a lion appears far more beautiful than that of an ape, although the ape has a closer 1 Politian, Epp. v. 3 De hominibus doctis, p. 23, ed. Galletti, 'mea quidera sen- tentia est, orationem Latinam numerosa quadam structura contineri oportere, quae adhuc omnino a nostris hominibus ignoratur.' BEMBO AND GIANFRANCESCO PICO 159 resemblance to man.' With Politian, as with Pe- trarch, the style is the man. " Someone will say : ' You do not express Cicero.' I answer : ' I am not Cicero ; what I really express is myself! " 1 The controversy between Cortesi and Politian has its counterpart in that between the strict Ciceronian, Bembo, and the eclectic, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, the nephew of Politian's brilliant friend, Giovanni Pico. Pico's rather hasty letter on this topic receives a careful reply from Bembo, who enters on a general defence of Cicero, and lays down three laws of imitation : — firstly, we must imitate the best models ; secondly, our aim must be to rival them ; and, thirdly, in rivalling them, we must endeavour to surpass them 2 . It will be observed that, here, in speaking of the best models (in the plural), Bembo virtually abandons the defence of the imitation of the single model, Cicero. In the first third of the sixteenth century, the centre of Ciceronianism was Rome and the Roman Academy, with Bembo as its foremost representa- tive. He is said to have declared that he would rather write Ciceronian Latin than be made Marquis of Mantua 3 . In his ' History of Venice,' 1 Epp. viii 16. 2 Bembus, Ad I. F. Picum, De Imitatione (1513). 3 Teissier, Iiloges, quoted in Blount's Censura, p. 392, ed. 1690. i6o THE CICERONIANISM OF BEMBO the Senate of the Venetian Republic becomes the Patres Conscripti, the Turks are transformed into the Thracians, and, by a still stranger anachronism, the ' immortal gods ' are mentioned (to my certain knowledge) in thirteen passages, and probably in many more. The Senate even urges the Pope ' to put his trust in the immortal gods, whose Vicar he is on earth.' Similarly, in the letters officially written by Bembo on behalf of Leo X, the Pope is made to exhort Francis I per deos atque homines to undertake a crusade against the Turks ; and a Bishop is described as calling ' men and gods ' to witness to the truth of his statement. After this, it is a comparative trifle to find the papal letters dated, in the old Roman style, by Kalends, Nones and Ides. Bembo was a Papal Secretary for practically the whole of the pontificate of Leo X, from 15 13 to 1521. On a day in 1517 a mysterious stranger from the North appeared upon the scene. He was apparently some thirty years of age ; he wore a distinctly foreign garb ; his smart red cap and his closely fitting cloak were suggestive of a German soldier. Unlike the ordinary soldier, he wandered among the half-ruined monuments of ancient Rome, he even visited the modern Libraries, and, in an unguarded moment, he entered a College. He there LONGOLIUS 161 met some clever Professors, and entered into con- versation with them. They were at once struck by his extraordinary acumen, and his skill in word- fence ; and they soon found out that the ' German soldier ' was really a French or a Belgian scholar in disguise, and that, in fact, he was none other than Longolius 1 . Born at Malines, and educated in Paris and Valence, he had abandoned a legal career in France, as he had been irresistibly drawn to Rome, under the spell of the 'genius of Italy.' 2 For three years he was hospitably entertained by his Roman friends, and, under the advice of Bern bo, he applied himself to the study and the exclusive imitation of Cicero. He was even presented with the citizenship of Rome, — a fatal gift that led to his enemies charging him with treason on the ground that, as a youthful student in France, he had once had the audacity to eulogise the ancient Gauls at the expense of the ancient Romans. Longolius fled before the storm, but he left behind him two highly polished Ciceronian speeches in his own defence, the publication of which by his Roman friends led to his acquittal. He thought it best, however, to withdraw to the safe distance of 1 Paulus Jovius, Elogia, no. 67. 2 Longolius, Epp. iv 26, ' felicem ilium ac plane divinura Italiae genium sum secutus.' S. L. II 162 THE ' CICERONIANUS' OF ERASMUS Padua, where he once more found a friend in Bembo. At Padua he published a volume of Ciceronian epistles, and, in 1522, at the early age of thirty-four, he died in the arms of one who loved him as a brother, a young student from England, Reginald Pole. The early death of Longolius was lamented by all the scholars of the day, not excluding Erasmus, who, in a work published six years later, singles him out as a typical Ciceronian 1 . The work in question is none other than the celebrated dialogue called the Ciceronianus. There are three inter- locutors, an extreme Ciceronian, called Nosoponus ; an anti-Ciceronian, Bulephorus ; and a subordinate character, Hypologus, who professes Ciceronianism, but is easily converted to a more liberal view. The dialogue falls into three parts. In the first, we have a witty caricature of the extreme Ciceronian. Nosoponus, who was once so hale and hearty, is here represented as wasting away under the effects of a serious malady. He is pining for the perfect attainment of a Ciceronian style. Such is his reverence for the memory of Cicero, that he has had Cicero's portrait painted up in all parts of his house, and engraved on his rings. Seven years he has spent in reading- Cicero, and he now proposes 1 Ciceronianus (1528), pp. 82-88, ed. 1621. THE 'CICERONIANUS' OF ERASMUS 163 to spend seven more in imitating him. He has already made himself three vast dictionaries, the first containing an alphabetical list of all the words found in Cicero ; the second, all the phrases ; and the third, all the varieties of rhythm at the beginning, middle and end of the sentences. In composing, he limits himself, not merely to the words used by Cicero, but even to the actual inflexions. His study is situated in the remotest corner of his house ; it has thick walls, double doors and double windows, and every chink is filled up with plaster of Paris or with pitch, so that not a single sound, not a single ray of light, can penetrate. It is, in fact, a sound- proof, and even a sun-proof room. Our strict Ciceronian leads a severely ascetic life. As a nice, light diet, calculated to facilitate the composition of Ciceronian prose, he restricts himself to ten currants, and three coriander seeds, coated with sugar. Suppose he has to write a strictly Ciceronian letter. He sets himself down at his desk at the dead of night ; first jots down a few ideas ; then turns over a number of Cicero's Letters, consults his three dictionaries, and finds the appropriate words, phrases, and rhythms. He holds that no letter should consist of more than six sentences. Accord- ingly, he writes a single sentence on each night. At the end of the week, he compares his letter of 1 64 THE ' CICERO NIANUS' OF ERASMUS six sentences, ten times over, with each of his three dictionaries ; lays his letter on one side for a few- days, and, when the first excitement of composition is over, submits it to a final revision, — with the chance of its being ultimately condemned. In the second part of the dialogue, caricature is exchanged for a serious refutation of the Ciceronian doctrine. Under the pretext of asking for further advice, the critic makes the extreme Ciceronian admit that one who wishes to excel in composition, should select the best models, and that the only reason why Cicero is so selected is because he is more elegant than other Latin authors. But (con- tinues the critic) Cicero is lacking in humour, and in conciseness ; and his range of subjects is limited. To speak with propriety, we must adapt ourselves to the age in which we live, — an age that differs entirely from that of Cicero. The critic also points out, in all seriousness, the pagan spirit that lurks beneath the affectation of a Ciceronian style. In the third part of the dialogue a hundred and six Ciceronian Latin scholars of all nations are briefly and brilliantly reviewed, and the ultra- Ciceronian is constrained to confess that not one of them completely satisfies the strictest Ciceronian standard. This masterly composition aroused a perfect ERASMUS ATTACKED BY J. C. SCALIGER 165 storm of controversy. Among living scholars, some were offended because they had not been mentioned in its pages ; others because they had — but in language that, in their own opinion, was not entirely adequate. With Bembo and Sadoleto, who had been mentioned in a complimentary manner, Erasmus naturally remained on good terms. But he had unfortunately said that he preferred a single hymn of the Christian poet, Prudentius, to all the poems of Pontano and Sannazaro, and this aroused the indignation even of his Italian admirer, Floridus 1 . In Rome he was denounced as the enemy of Cicero and of Italy 2 . In France he was violently abused by Julius Caesar Scaliger, the father of the great Scaliger. Burning to make himself a name among scholars, the elder Scaliger published, in 1 531, an oration denouncing Erasmus as a parricide, a parasite, and a corrector of printer's proofs ; defending Cicero from the attacks of Erasmus ; and maintaining that Cicero was absolutely perfect 3 . Erasmus treated this abusive tirade with silent contempt ; he attributed it to Aleander ; he felt sure that Scaliger could not 1 Lectiones Succisivae, iii 6. 2 Erasmus, Ep. 1279. 1 J. Caesaris Scaligeri Pro M. Tullio Cicerone, contra Desiderium Erasmum Roterodamum, Oratio I, ed. 1620 (Toulouse). 166 ERASMUS ATTACKED BY ETIENNE DOLET possibly have had the ability to write it. Stung with rage and mortification, Scaliger flung himself once more into the fray. He prepared a still more violent and vain-glorious harangue, which was not published until December, 1536 1 ; but, meanwhile, in'' the month of July, Erasmus had passed from the fecenes of earthly controversy ' To where beyond these voices there is peace.' The controversy had in the interim been taken up in France by Etienne Dolet, who had studied at Padua under a pupil of Longolius, named Simon Villanovanus. His work, like that of Erasmus, is in the form of a dialogue. The scene is laid at Padua, and the speakers are Sir Thomas More, as the friend of Erasmus, and Villanovanus, as the pupil of Longolius 2 . Dolet was not only the defender of the memory of Longolius ; he was also the champion of the great French Scholar, Budaeus, whom Erasmus had unluckily mentioned in the same breath as the Paris printer, Badius. Dolet's dialogue is a scurrilous production, but it leaves us under the impression that its author was a moderate and not an extreme Ciceronian. It was 1 Oratio II, ed. 1623 (Toulouse). 2 Stephani Doleti Dialogus, De Imitation* Ciceroniana adversus Erasmum Roterodamtwi, pro Christophoro Longolio. 200 pp., 4to. Seb. Gryphius, Lyons, 1535. ERASMUS' LAST WORDS ON CICERO 167 published in the first half of 1535, while Erasmus was still living. Erasmus treated it with the same silent contempt as the first Oration of Scaliger 1 . Amid all the fierce quarrels that arose around this question of Ciceronianism, the most memorable fact is the serene and dignified composure of Erasmus. He launched his book into the world, and keenly watched its effect, and — was silent. In his preface he had explained that his aim had not been to deter students from attempting to imitate Cicero, but simply to show how they might imitate him in such a way as to combine the eloquence of a Cicero with the piety of a Christian. And his last words on Cicero were words of good-will. In the course of the beautiful preface to the Tusculan Disputations, written only two years before his death, he says : — ' Whether I have made progress with advancing years, I know not ; but certainly I have never loved Cicero more than I do now.' 2 After the death of Erasmus the controversy broke out afresh, and Cicero was attacked by Ramus in Paris in 1547 and by Gaspar Scioppius sixty years later, and defended by Ricci in Italy, 1 Christie's £tienne Dolet, 197-203. 2 Ep. 499 appendix ; short summary in Drammond's Erasmus, ii 294 f. 168 LATER PHASES OF THE CONTROVERSY by Camerarius in Germany, by Perionius, Henry Stephens and Joseph Scaliger in France, and lastly by Andreas Schott, at Antwerp, in 1610 1 . The typical Ciceronian, the 'pale-faced martyr to Cicero,' was afterwards caricatured by one of the contem- poraries of the elder Balzac 2 . But the controversy may fairly be regarded as practically over in 1610. It certainly produced nothing, either in literature or in scholarship, equal in interest and importance to the Ciceronianus of Erasmus, who, in his preface to the Tuscidans, has himself absolved us from the necessity of pursuing the question any further by advising students to spend their time on Cicero himself, and not on the trumpery literature of quarrels and controversies 3 . In conclusion, however, let us listen, for a few moments, to the opinions expressed on Ciceronian- ism by an eminent scholar, who, in the second half of the sixteenth century, exhibited the closest affinity with Cicero in his genius for lucid ex- pression, in his graceful and refined urbanity, and in his natural sense of harmony and rhythm. In 1 C. Lenient, De Ciceroniano Bello apud recentiores, Paris, 1855, pp. 50-70. - Colletet, De Veterum Imitatione, 1636. Balzac's Le Bat-lion (1651) is a pedant rather than a Ciceronian (cp. pp. 347, 36a of Lcs Oeuvrcs Diverses, Leyden, 16,51). J Rixosis ac pugnacibus libellis. MURETUS an inaugural oration, delivered in Rome in 1572, Muretus compares the slavish imitators of Cicero to parrots and magpies, and ridicules them for pretending that they can tell by the sound, whether a word is Ciceronian or not 1 . In the second part of his 'Various Readings,' published in 1580, he confesses that he had once regarded the writers of the Ciceronian age as alone worthy of imitation, but had since become conscious of the distinctive merits of later writers. He describes the ultra- Ciceronians of his own day as having a remarkably sensitive ear for any words, which they supposed to have been never used by Cicero. To these singularly fastidious critics the touchstone of Ciceronianism was the lexicon of Nizolius, pub- lished at Brescia in 1535. But, unfortunately, that lexicon was not quite complete. Muretus had in fact noted several rare words, which had been omit- ted from its pages ; and, once at least, when some of these over-sensitive Ciceronians came to his lectures in Rome, he slyly introduced a few of these words into his Latin discourse. Whenever any such word fell from his lips, he observed his fastidious friends shrugging their shoulders, con- tracting their brows, and whispering to one another that it was simple torture to listen to such bar- 1 Oratio I xxi (1572), vol. I p. 170 f, ed. Ruhnken. 170 MURETUS barisms. When the lecturer had finished, by way of compliment they escorted him home, but, on their way, they took leave to complain that they had been ill used. After tantalising them for a time, at last Muretus offered to lay a wager that those very words were really to be found in Cicero. As soon as he had given them proof of the fact, the effect was instantaneous. The very words, that had just before been deemed harsh and rough, at once be- came smooth and sweet and delightful to the ear ; ' like the seeds of lupines soaked in water,' they had ceased to be bitter, as soon as it was ascertained that they were Cicero's 1 . Twenty-four years previously, in 1556, in a letter prefixed to his edition of the Catilinarian Orations, Muretus had complained of the cor- ruptions that had found their way into the texts of the Classics, and had urged that the labour that would be really appreciated by posterity was the emendation and elucidation of the Classics, and not the writing of elegant Latin. ' How few there are (he adds) who now read the Latin poems and orations of Bembo and his contemporaries. Mean- while, whatever they wrote in illustration of the texts of the ancient Classics is valued ever more 1 Variae Lectiones, xv 1 (1580); Scripta Selecta, ii 196-204, ed. Frey. END OF THE EXCLUSIVE REIGN OF FORM 171 and more.' 1 In the judgment of so competent a scholar as Muretus, it is clear that, in Italy, in the year 1556, the reign of form had already ended and that of criticism had begun. The exclusive reign of form had indeed ended, but there was still room for form in its proper place. When we find ourselves compelled to struggle with the barbarous Latinity, and the chaotic confusion, that mar the work of certain scholars who have written since the close of the Revival of Learning, we may well be thankful for the example of lucidity and elegance set by critics such as Paulus Manutius, and Muretus himself, in the third quarter of the sixteenth century; in the eighteenth century, by Ruhnken, and, in the second half of the nine- teenth, by Cobet. Latin of an eclectic rather than a strictly Ciceronian type has become a kind of universal language, and it still continues to be the language of learned dissertations and of dedicatory inscriptions and of epitaphs. Of the English epitaph in honour of Sir James Macdonald in the Island of Skye, Dr Johnson said, ' the inscription should have been in Latin, as everything intended to be universal and permanent should be.' 2 Of his 1 1556. Opera, ii 523-8, ed. Ruhnken; Scripta Selecta, i 206-8, ed. Frey. 2 Tour to the Hebrides, 5 Sept., 1773 (iv 129 Napier). 172 LATIN, A UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE own Latin inscription in memory of Goldsmith, he observed, that ' he would never consent to dis- grace the walls of Westminster Abbey with an English inscription.' 'The language of the country of which a learned man was a native is not the language fit for his epitaph, which should be in ancient and permanent language. Consider, Sir, how you should feel, were you to find at Rotterdam an epitaph upon Erasmus in Dutch I' 1 Latin is still the language used at Oxford, Cambridge, and Dublin in academic laudations of the living ; and I remember receiving a letter from the late Mr E. A. Freeman in 1879, in which he declared, that, for all purposes connected with the conferring of honorary degrees, ' our blessed mother-tongue does not do.' Lastly, Latin continues to be the medium by which learned bodies, on either side of the Atlantic, are wont to express their condolences and their congratulations, even in cases where both of the bodies concerned claim English as their mother-tongue. In June, 1904, Professor White, acting on behalf of the Archaeological Institute of America, presented to the Society for the Pro- motion of Hellenic Studies, whose seat is in London, a Latin letter of congratulation, beginning with the appropriate sentiment that those who are united, 1 Boswell's Life of Johnson, in 1776 (ii 357 f, Napier). •A THREEFOLD CORD, NOT QUICKLY BROKEN' 173 not only by ties of blood, but also by ties of a common interest in the same studies, are bound by a double bond of kinship 1 . It is the same double bond of kinship that has repeatedly led to the interchange of lecturers between the Old Cambridge and the New ; and, on the present occasion, when the medium of communication between a lecturer from another land and a kindly audience is not Latin but English, that double bond of community of race and community of intellectual interests is so materially strengthened by the tie of a common language and a united allegiance to the honoured name of Cambridge, that the double bond, which knits us all together, becomes more than threefold, and in the last resort we rest assured, that ' a threefold cord is not quickly broken.' 1 ' Qui consanguinei idem sentiunt, bis consanguinei sunt.' VII. THE STUDY OF GREEK. No course of lectures on the Revival of Learning can be regarded as even approximately complete, unless it includes some notice of the new interest then aroused in the study of the Greek language and the Greek literature. It was the Revival of Learning that awakened that language and that literature from the long slumber, in which they had lain for centuries in the West of Europe. During the Middle Ages, Greek had been studied to some slight extent for the purposes of diplomatic intercourse between the Church and the Empire in the West and the Church and Empire in the East. But the attention thus paid to Greek was only concerned with the modern language, and not with the ancient literature. The elementary knowledge of Greek, that passed from Gaul to Ireland in the fifth century, was brought back to Frankland by the Irish monks, who, early in the seventh, founded the monastery of St Gallen (614). Greek was studied GREEK IN THE MIDDLE AGES 175 for a time at Canterbury in the days of the Greek Archbishop, Theodore of Tarsus, who died in 690; and, before the year 859, the Irishman known as 'John the Scot' was capable of producing for Charles the Bald a literal rendering of the Neo- Platonic works attributed to Dionysius the Areo- pagite. Plato was hardly known in the West, except in a Latin version of part of the Timaeus. Aristotle was at first familiar only in the renderings of part of the Organon made about the year 510 by Boethius, who marks the transition between the ancient world and the Middle Ages. After 11 28, the whole of the Organon was known in a Latin translation; and, in and after 1 150, Latin versions of Arabic renderings of Aristotle reached Europe from the Arabs in Spain. They were gradually superseded by renderings from the original Greek. Among these was the translation of the Rhetoric and Politics, executed by William of Moerbeke, at the instance of the great Dominican, Thomas Aquinas, who died in 1274. Two years earlier, the current renderings (not excluding those of William himself) were keenly criticised by Roger Bacon, who had derived his knowledge of Greek from Byzantine sources. This is proved by the Latin transliteration of the Greek passages quoted 176 GREEK IN SOUTH ITALY in his 'Greek Grammar', published in 1902 by the Cambridge University Press. Meanwhile, in Italy, Greek had long survived as a living language in the distant South. First in the year 727, and again in the year 816, the iconoclastic decrees of the Byzantine Emperors had driven many of the Greek monks and their lay adherents from their homes in the Eastern Empire to the South of Italy, and even to Rome itself. The South of Italy belonged to the Eastern Empire for the five centuries between the recovery of Italy by the generals of Justinian, in 553, and the conquest of Southern Italy by the Normans, between 1041 and 1071. In the extreme South, there were Greek monks still in existence during the dawn of the Renaissance, and Greek has con- tinued to be a living language in certain Calabrian villages, down to the present day 1 . It was a Calabrian monk, named Barlaam, who visited Avignon as an envoy from Constantinople in 1339, and again in 1342. It was probably his second visit that gave Petrarch his first opportunity of learning Greek. But, unhappily, he had only succeeded in reading and writing the capital letters-, 1 History of Classical Scholarship... to the end of the Middle Ages, p. 447- ' 2 De Nolhac, Pelrarqite et V Humanisme, 326. PETRARCH'S INTEREST IN GREEK 177 when, with a rare generosity, he recommended his teacher for appointment to a bishopric vacant in South Italy, and was thus deprived of his in- structor. A second envoy from Constantinople, Sigeros, who had visited Avignon in 1353, sent Petrarch a manuscript of Homer. Petrarch was transported with delight as he gazed on the precious gift ; he placed it beside his copy of Plato, and wrote to the donor of the Homer to say how proud he was to have under his roof at Milan two guests of such distinction 1 . Six years later, he even indited a letter to Homer, in reply to an epistle from a friend, purporting to come from Homer himself. From this letter we learn that at that time Florence could not claim more than four or five, who 'knew and loved' Homer, Verona only two, Bologna, Mantua, and Solmona one, and Rome none. The writer also mysteriously mentions the advent of a person who was prepared to restore to the present age the whole of Homer 2 In the same year, a pupil of the Calabrian Barlaam, named Leontius Pilatus, had arrived in Venice. Boccaccio, who had been urged by Petrarch to 1 De Rebus Familiaribus Epp. xviii -i. 2 ib. xxiv 12 (translated in Robinson and Rolfe, p. 253). Cp. Tiraboschi, v 473 f, ed. 17S9. S. L. 12 178 TRANSLATION OF HOMER BY PILATUS learn Greek, went to Venice, and brought Pilatus to Florence, where he generously entertained him for three years in his own house, carefully noting all the little items of Greek learning that fell from the lips of his somewhat ignorant and ill-favoured instructor, and keeping him hard at work on a Latin translation of the whole of Homer for the use of Boccaccio and Petrarch. So eager was Petrarch to possess a rendering of Homer, that, although he was no less eager for a translation of Plato, he urged that Pilatus should devote himself to Homer alone, for fear of his being overwhelmed by the double burden of the two Immortals 1 . In due time he received a preliminary translation of the first five books of the Iliad?, and of the eleventh book of the Odyssey, and it is now known that the translation was actually used by Benvenuto in his Commentary on Dante 3 . About 1367 Petrarch received a transcript of the whole, but so bald was the Latin, that it even led to some abatement in his enthusiasm for the Greek poet, though his later writings give proof of his study of its pages. Meanwhile, the translator himself had left for 1 Variarum Ef. xxv (ii 371 Fracassetti). 2 De Nolhac, 354. 3 Paget Toynbee's Index in Reprint of Reports of Dante Society, Cambridge, Mass., 1901, pp. 25 f, 45-54. BOCCACCIO'S STUDY OF GREEK 179 Constantinople, whence it was hoped that he would come again, laden with new stores of the old Greek literature. But, before the vessel, on which he was returning, could reach the roadstead of Venice, Pilatus himself had been struck dead by lightning, while standing against the mast, and Petrarch hurried down to the quay in the vain hope of finding, in the unhappy man's possessions, some precious manuscript of Euripides or of Sophocles 1 . Thanks to Pilatus, some slight proficiency in Greek had been attained by Boccaccio, who proudly claims to have been the first to offer hospitality to a teacher of Greek in Italy, the first to introduce the works of Homer into Tuscany, the first of all Italians to resume the reading of Homer 8 . The influence of Petrarch and Boccaccio sur- vived in Florence in the circle that gathered round Luigi Marsigli in the convent of San Spirito. To this circle belonged Salutati and Rossi and Niccoli. On learning that Manuel Chrysoloras, a Byzantine of noble birth, and the most accom- plished and eloquent Greek scholar of his age, had arrived in Venice, as the envoy of the Emperor Palaeologus, two noble sons of Florence, Rossi and Scarparia, set forth to meet him. By the advice of 1 Epp. Rerum Senilium, vi 1, p. 806 f, ed. 1581. 1 Dc Gemalogia Dcoricm, xv c. 7. CHRYSOLORAS Salutati, Scarparia accompanied Chrysoloras to Constantinople, with a view to learning Greek and collecting Greek manuscripts. Rossi returned to Florence, and joined Niccoli and Palla Strozzi in urging the Signory to invite Chrysoloras ; while Salutati, as Latin Secretary of the Republic, was authorised to write the official letter for this purpose. The result was that, after the lapse of a whole generation of thirty-three years since the departure of Pilatus, Chrysoloras was teaching Greek in Florence from 1396 to 1400. Half a century before the fall of Constantinople, the future destinies of Greek were thus assured in Europe. Chrysoloras also taught at Pavia, where he began about 1400 that literal rendering of Plato's Republic, which, in its final form, was dedicated in 1441 by Pier Candido Decembrio to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester. When Chrysoloras died in 141 5, during the Council of Constance, he left little behind him apart from his Catechism of Greek Grammar, first printed at Venice in 1484. Earlier than the earliest printed edition of this little work is the manuscript copy, which I have had the privilege of seeing in the fine library of Mr Gennadius, formerly Greek Minister in London. It is the very copy that once belonged to Sigismondo BRUNI AND GUARINO Malatesta, which he doubtless used in learning Greek with a view to that campaign in the Morea, which enabled him to rescue the site of Sparta from the Turks and to bring the bones of Plethon to the pantheon at Rimini 1 . Among the enthusiastic pupils of Chrysoloras at Florence was Lionardo Bruni, who left the study of Roman law for that of Greek literature, which (he tells us) had been suspended in Italy for 'seven centuries.' 2 Bruni produced Latin ren- derings of parts of Aristotle, Plato, Demosthenes, and Plutarch. During the brief return of Chrysoloras to Constantinople, Guarino of Verona lived in his household for five years (1403-8), and thus learnt the Greek language. He returned to Italy with about fifty Greek manuscripts, a list of which is still in existence 3 . Before his death at the age of ninety, he had translated the whole of Strabo and many of the Lives of Plutarch, and had abridged the Greek Grammar of Chrysoloras. In the ac- count of the system of teaching that he established at Ferrara, Greek is described for the first time as an essential part of a liberal education 4 . 1 See p. 132. 2 Muratori, Script- xix 920. s Omont, Les manuscrits grecs de Guarino, in Revue des Biblio- theques, 1892, pp. 78-81. * See p. 78. 1 82 AURISPA AND FILELFO He was not alone in bringing the literature of Greece to the shores of Italy. In 1422 the Sicilian Aurispa visited Constantinople, learnt Greek, and, in the following year, returned to Venice with no less than 238 Greek manuscripts, including the celebrated copy of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Apollonius Rhodius, now in the Laurentian Library at Florence. In 1427 Filelfo, after spend- ing seven years as Secretary of the Venetian Legation in Constantinople, returned to Italy with a large supply of Greek volumes, including at least forty authors, such as Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Euripides, and Theocritus, as well as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes, and parts of Aristotle 1 . He was particularly proud of the purity of the Greek pronunciation, which he had acquired from his wife, the grand-niece of Chrysoloras. In Florence he lectured on Xeno- phon and Thucydides ; and among the Greek books, that he translated into Latin, was the Rhetoric of Aristotle. A controversy as to the relative merits of Aristotle and Plato was incidentally raised at the Council, which met at Ferrara, in 1438, to delibe- rate on the reunion of the Greek and Latin 1 Complete list in Symonds, Revival of Learning, p. 270, ed. THE COUNCIL OF FERRARA AND FLORENCE 183 Churches. The leading representatives of both were hospitably entertained by the able physician and dialectician, Ugo Benzi of Siena, who, after setting forth the differences between Plato and Aristotle, is said to have triumphantly refuted the Greeks in their preference for Plato 1 . Possibly the sumptuousness of his entertainment aided the cogency of his arguments in securing the victory for Aristotle. When the Council was transferred to Florence, in 1439, one of the foremost of the Greek envoys, Georgios Gemistos Plethon, won the ear of Cosimo dei Medici, and prompted him to found the Platonic Academy of Florence, and ultimately to cause Marsilio Ficino to translate Plato and Plotinus into Latin 2 . Before leaving Florence, Plethon produced a treatise on the points of difference between Plato and Aristotle, and thus renewed a controversy which stimulated the Italian humanists to a closer study of both. The general result was an increased appreciation of the im- portance of Plato, and a material diminution of the authority of Aristotle, which had remained unchallenged in Western Europe throughout the Middle Ages. Among the Greeks assembled at the Council 1 Aeneas Sylvius, Europa, u. 52. 2 See pp. 88-94. 1 84 BESSARION AND THEODORUS GAZA was Bessarion, the Archbishop of Nicaea, whose services to the papal cause led to his being made a Cardinal. He afterwards translated into Latin the Memorabilia of Xenophon, and the Metaphysics of Aristotle, and gave to Venice a large number of Greek manuscripts, which formed the foundation of the famous Library of St Mark's. As a Cardinal resident in Rome, and surrounded by a crowd of Greek and Latin scholars, who escorted him every morning to the Vatican from his Palace on the Quirinal, he was conspicuous as the great patron of all the learned Greeks, who flocked to Italy, both before the fall of Constantinople, and after that event. Of the Greeks who arrived before its fall, the foremost (apart from Bessarion) were Theodorus Gaza, Georgius Trapezuntius, Joannes Argyro- poulos, and Demetrius Chalcondyles. The first of these, Theodorus Gaza, fled from his native city of Thessalonica before its capture by the Turks in 1430, and ultimately became the first Professor of Greek at Ferrara, where his pupils included the German humanist, Rudolphus Agricola. At Rome, he translated parts of Aristotle and Theophrastus into Latin. Of his two transcripts of the Iliad, one is preserved in Florence, and the other in Venice. He also produced a Greek Grammar, TRAPEZUNTIUS AND ARGYROPOULOS 185 which was the first modern manual to include Syntax. It was used as a text-book by Budaeus in Paris, and by Erasmus in Cambridge. The second, Georgius Trapezuntius, a native of Crete, who finally reached Venice about 1430, became one of the Papal Secretaries, and, in 1484, died at the age of nearly ninety. His numerous translations included the R/ietoric and Problems of Aristotle, and the Laws and P armenides of Plato ; but they were more verbose and, in general, less felicitous than those of Theodorus Gaza. The third, Argyropoulos of Constantinople, was in Padua as early as 1441, aiding the distinguished Florentine exile, Palla Strozzi, in the study of Greek. At Florence he taught Greek under the patronage of the Medici for fifteen years, leaving in 1471 for Rome, where he died in 1484. All of his translations from Aristotle have been printed. His Greek lectures at Florence were attended by Politian, and we know of an English nobleman, an Earl of Worcester, who went to one of his lectures incognito 1 At Rome, in 1482, his lectures on Thucydides were attended by Reuchlin, who became one of the lights of the New Learning in Germany. Lastly, Demetrius Chalcondyles of Athens reached Rome in 1447, and taught Greek at 1 Vespasiano, Vite, p. 403. 1 86 CHALCONDYLES. NICOLAS V Perugia, Padua, Florence, and Milan. As a young lecturer at Perugia, he made an immediate con- quest of his Italian audience. One of his enthusiastic pupils says : — ' I listen to his lectures with rapture, firstly, because he is a Greek, secondly, because he is an Athenian, and, thirdly, because he is Demetrius. He looks like another Plato.' 1 At Padua, he was the first teacher of Greek who received a fixed stipend in any of the Universities of Europe. In Florence he prepared the editio princeps of Homer, which was there printed in 1488. At Milan he produced the editio princeps of Isocrates (1493) and of the Lexicon of Sui'das (1499). Of the five Greeks already mentioned, three, namely Georgius Trapezuntius, Theodorus Gaza, and Bessarion, took part in the great scheme of Nicolas V for the translation of the principal Greek prose authors into Latin. The author entrusted to these three was Aristotle. Other Classics were assigned to Italian students of Greek; and all these translators were liberally rewarded by the Pope, who, on his dying bed, made gracious mention of his generous patronage of learning-. On his death in 1455, his enterprise in causing the Greek Classics to be translated into Latin, and his 1 Campanus, Epp. ii 9, p. 72, ed. 1707. See p. 138. THE FALL OF CONSTANTINOPLE 187 ardour in collecting manuscripts, prompted the exultant saying of Filelfo : — 'Greece has not perished, but has emigrated to Italy, the land known of old as Magna Graecia.' 1 Only two years before the death of Nicolas, Constantinople had been taken by the Turks, and, when the news of that event burst like a thunder- bolt on Italy, the humanist and future Pope, Aeneas Sylvius, was fully conscious of the blow that had befallen the cause of Greek literature. In a letter to Nicolas, the Papal patron of the Classics who had raised him to the purple, we find him exclaiming : — ' How many names of mighty men will perish ! It is a second death to Homer, and to Plato. The fount of the Muses is dried up for evermore.' 2 The fall of Constantinople was once regarded as the cause of the Revival of Greek Learning in Italy. This opinion has been long exploded. If it is still necessary to dispel the delusion, we have only to remember that, exactly a century before that event, Petrarch possessed a manuscript of Homer and of Plato ; that the whole of Homer was translated into Latin for the use of Petrarch and Boccaccio ; that Boccaccio learnt Greek ; that, 1 Epp. xiii 1. 2 Ep. 162 (12 July, 1453). 1 88 CONTROVERSY ON PLATO AND ARISTOTLE half a century before the fall, Greek was being taught in Florence by Chrysoloras ; and that the principal Greek prose authors had already been translated, and at least five of the foremost of the Greek refugees had reached Italy, before the over- throw of the doomed city. The most prominent of the Greeks, who found their way to Italy after the fall of Constantinople, were Michael Apostolius, Andronicus Callistus, Constantine and Janus Lascaris, Marcus Musurus, and Zacharias Callierges. The Greeks at Rome continued the controversy as to the respective merits of Plato and Aristotle, which had been revived at Florence by Plethon in 1439. Plethon and Plato were attacked without bitterness by Theodorus Gaza, and defended with good temper by Bessarion between 1455 and 1459. Bessarion also wrote a second treatise, which was answered by Gaza. Gaza's preference for Aristotle brought down upon him an ill-mannered and ill- tempered attack on the part of one of Bessarion's proteges, Michael Apostolius, who hoped to retain Bessarion's favour by defending Plato. But Bes- sarion thoroughly disapproved of his protege's controversial methods, protesting that he himself had a profound respect for Aristotle as well as for Plato, and even giving a cordial welcome to a short MICHAEL APOSTOLIUS treatise in which Aristotle was defended, and Apostolius refuted, in a sensible and moderate manner by a Greek of better breeding named Andronicus Callistus. Bessarion was afterwards attacked in a petulant spirit by Georgius Trape- zuntius, who in his turn was answered by Bessarion (1469). Simply for approving this answer, Argyro- poulos was denounced by Theodorus Gaza, who, so far as the Greeks were concerned, had the last word in this long debate {c. 1470). Throughout all the tangles of this complicated controversy a thread of gold is inwoven by the serene and imperturbable temper of the great patron of all the Greeks in Italy, the Cardinal Bessarion. Among the Aristotelians who joined in the fray, Theodorus Gaza shines by contrast with Georgius Trapezuntius, while Andronicus Callistus is far more attractive than the selfish and interested Platonist, Apostolius 1 . Apostolius, who had been a pupil of Argyro- poulos at Constantinople, fled to Rome in 1454. He subsequently settled in Crete, where he supported 1 The earliest account of this controversy is that of Boivin le Cadet, in the Memoires de Literature of the French Academy, ii (1717) 775-79I- Some of the pamphlets, which it produced, are analysed in Buhle's Geschichte iter neucru Philosophic, ii (1800) 129-168. Its chronology has been elucidated by Gaspary in the Archiv fiir Geschichte der Philosophic, iii (1890) 50-53. 190 ANDRONICUS CALLISTTJS. POLITIAN himself as a copyist His bitter attack on Theodorus Gaza was answered (as we have seen) in a courteous spirit by Andronicus Callistus, a native of Con- stantinople, who makes his first appearance in Italy in 1 46 1, when (like Argyropoulos at an earlier date) he aided the Greek studies of Palla Strozzi at Padua. He afterwards taught at Bologna and at Rome, and, on the death of Bessarion in 1472, left for Florence, where his lectures were attended by Politian, and where he dedicated to Lorenzo a translation from Aristotle 1 . He subsequently lived in Milan and in Paris. He died in London, far from his friends, after aiding a fellow-country- man, Hermonymus of Sparta, to return to Paris, where he was one of the earliest teachers of Greek in France. Among the Greek scholars of Italian birth, Politian, who wrote Greek poems at the age of seventeen, and, by his verse translation of the first five books of the Iliad"-, gained the proud title of Homericus juvenis, was the earliest of the Italians, who rivalled the Greek refugees as a lecturer on Greek 3 . A specimen of part of his teaching survives in an interesting introduction to the Prior Analytics 1 De Generatione et Corruptible. 2 Pocsie Latzne, 429-523. i Letter to Matthias Corvinus, in Epf. ix 1. CONSTANTINE LASCAKIS 191 of Aristotle, while his extant translations include poems from Moschus and Callimachus and the Greek Anthology, with part of Plato's Ckarmides, and Epictetus, and a flowing rendering of the historian Herodian. Returning to the Greek immigrants, we im- mediately light on the notable name of Constantine Lascaris (1434-1501), who, on the fall of Constanti- nople, escaped to Corfu and Rhodes, and, from 1460 to 1465, taught Greek in Milan. He presented his pupil, the princess Hippolyta Sforza, with a beautifully written transcript of his work ' On the Eight Parts of Speech,' now in the Paris Library. On her marrying Alfonso II, the future King of Naples, he followed her to that court, and, a year later, started for Greece in a vessel that stopped at Messina. He was urged to stay, and there he abode for the remaining thirty-five years of his life. At Messina he taught Greek, one of his pupils being the future Cardinal Bembo. In the bitter- ness of his spirit, he once wrote to a friend lamenting the enslavement of Greece, and longing to leave Sicily for the British Isles, or for the Islands of the Blest 1 . In gratitude, however, to the Sicilian city, where he had spent the latter half of his life, he left his manuscripts to Messina, then under the 1 Legrand, Bibliothiquc Hellenique, vol. I p. lxxx f. 192 JANUS LASCARIS rule of Castile. They were afterwards removed to Palermo, and ultimately to Madrid, where they now are. Among them (dated Messina, 1496) is his own copy of Quintus Smyrnaeus,— the poet once known as Quintus Calaber, simply because the manuscript of his epic was first found, by Bessarion, in Calabria. The small Greek Grammar of Constantine Lascaris, published at Milan in 1476, is the first book printed in Greek. The same famous surname was borne by Janus Lascaris (1445-1535), who, on the fall of Con- stantinople, was taken to the Peloponnesus and to Crete. On his subsequent arrival in Venice, he was sent, at the charges of Bessarion, to learn Latin at Padua. On the death of his Greek patron, he was welcomed by Lorenzo in Florence, where he lectured on Thucydides and Demosthenes, and on Sophocles and the Greek Anthology. As Lorenzo's librarian, he went twice to the East in quest of manuscripts. He recovered as many as 200, but, shortly before his second return, his great Florentine patron had passed away (1492). On the fall of the Medici he entered the service of France, and was the French envoy at Venice from 1503 to 1508. When the second son of Lorenzo became Pope as Leo X, Janus Lascaris was at once invited to Rome, and set over a Greek College. Ten MARCUS M US US US 193 years later he returned to France, where he aided Francis I in founding the Royal Library at Fontainebleau. In this work he was associated with Budaeus, who, as an occasional pupil of his colleague, learnt more Greek from Lascaris than from his former teacher, Hermonymus of Sparta. Lascaris returned to Rome on the accession of the second Medicean Pope, in 1523, and again in 1534. In the following year he died, and was buried in the Church of Sant' Agata, where the Greek epitaph, composed by himself, is still to be seen, telling of his grief for the enslavement of his country, and of his gratitude to the alien land that had given him a new home. His reputation rests on his five editiones priitcipes, all of them printed in Florence in Greek capitals with accents : namely, four plays of Euripides, Callimachus, Apollonius Rhodius, the Greek Anthology, and Lucian (1494-6). At Rome he produced at the Greek Press on the Quirinal the ancient Scholia on the Iliad and on Sophocles (15 17-8). Among his pupils in Florence was the Cretan Musurus, who was so diligent in teaching Greek at Padua that he allowed himself only four days of holiday throughout the year. In 15 13 we find him lecturing on Greek in Venice, and making it a ' second Athens.' Such is the language of Aldus s. l. 13 194 ZACHAKIAS CALLIERGES. ALDUS MANUTIUS Manutius 1 , whom he aided, from 1498 to 15 15, in the preparation of the earliest printed editions of Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, Athenaeus, Hesychius, and Pausanias. In the course of the beautiful Greek poem, prefixed in 15 13 to the editio princeps of Plato, Musurus prays Plato to send against the Turks, not only the forces of France, Spain, and Italy, but also 'the endless phalanxes of the gigantic Germans,' and the ' warlike race of the Britons.' In recognition of this poem, he was appointed Bishop of Mosembasi'a in the Morea, but died at the age of less than fifty, before starting for his distant diocese. He was the editor of the ' Etymologimm Magnum', published at Venice in 1499, while the printer was Zacharias Callierges, who also produced at Rome the second edition of Pindar (15 15), and an early edition of Theocritus (15 16). Callierges was noted for his calligraphy, and his Greek type is as beau- tiful, in its kind, as that of Aldus Manutius. Between 1476 and 1494 the principal Greek Classics printed in Italy were the Florence edition of Homer (1488) and the Milan edition of Isocrates (1493). In the twenty-one years between 1494 and 15 1 5, Aldus produced in Venice no less than twenty-four editio?ies principes of Greek authors 1 Preface to Oratores Graeci, 15 13. STUDY OF GREEK IN FRANCE 195 and of Greek works of reference. By the date of his death in 1515 all the principal Greek Classics had been published. Before 1525 the study of Greek had begun to decline in Italy, but mean- while an interest in that language had happily been transmitted to the lands beyond the Alps. In France the teaching of Greek had been begun in 1456 by Gregorio da Citta di Castello, and resumed in 1472 by the skilful copyist, Hermonymus of Sparta. Twenty-three years later Janus Lascaris comes on the scene as the occasional instructor of Budaeus. Teaching of a more con- tinuous kind was happily provided in Paris by the Italian Jerome Aleander, who arrived in 1508, armed with an introduction from Erasmus, and lectured for eight years on Greek, as well as other languages. It was under his influence that a small portion of Plutarch's M or alia was printed in Paris in 1 509, preceded in 1 507 by a diminutive volume of extracts from the Gnomic poets, — the first Greek book printed in France. 1529 is the date of the first French edition of the whole of Sophocles. It is also the date of the ' Commen- taries on the Greek Language,' by Budaeus. The most permanent service rendered to scholarship by Budaeus was his ultimate success in prompting Francis I to found in 1530 the Corporation of the 196 STUDY OF GREEK IN GERMANY Royal Readers in Greek, as well as in Latin and Hebrew, which long afterwards received a local habitation, now famous under the name of the College de France. In the study of Greek, one of the earliest links between Italy and Germany was Rudolphus Agricola (1443-85), who had spent seven years in Italy, working at Greek under Theodorus Gaza at Ferrara. Erasmus, who, at the age of twelve, had seen him at Deventer, says of Agricola : — ' He was the first to bring us from Italy some breath of a higher culture.' 1 In 1483, towards the end of his short life, he was lecturing on Aristotle at Heidelberg. His younger contemporary Reuchlin (1455-1522), who had learnt a little Greek from Hermonymus in Paris, and had taught it at Basel and elsewhere, won the warm admiration of Argyropoulos by his ready rendering of a passage from Thucydides in a lecture-room in Rome. On hearing that rendering, the lecturer exclaimed with a sigh : — ' Lo ! through our exile, Greece has flown across the Alps.' 2 1 First page of Catalogus libroriim Suorum, in vol. i of Le Clerc's ed., ' Rodolphus Agricola primus omnium aurulam quandam altioris litteraturae nobis invexit ex Italia.' 2 Melanchthon, Declam. (1533 and 1552) in Corpus Reform a- toritm, xi 238, 1005, 'Ecce, Graecia nostro exsilio transvolavit Alpes.' STUDY OF GREEK IN ENGLAND 197 In England, in the second half of the fifteenth century, a certain interest in Italian humanism was felt by men like John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester (c. 1427-1470), William Grey, the future Bishop of Ely (d. 1478), John Free, Fellow of Balliol (d. 1465), and John Gunthorpe, the future Dean of Wells (d. 1498). All of these were Oxford men, all went on pilgrimage to Ferrara, all left Latin manuscripts to College Libraries, and (notwithstanding their great merits) all of them failed to arouse any permanent interest in the Classics. ' It was not until the value of Greek thought became in any degree manifest that the New Learning awakened any enthusiasm in England.' 1 In the Revival of Learning the first English- man, who studied Greek, was a Benedictine monk, William Tilly, of Selling, near Canterbury (d. 1494). ' Night and day ' (we are told) ' he was haunted by the vision of Italy, that land, which, next to Greece, was the nursing mother of men of genius.' 2 He paid two visits to Italy, in 1464 and in 1485. On the former occasion he studied at Padua and 1 Creighton, Historical Lectures and Addresses (The Early Renais- sance in England), p. 204; cp. Einstein's Italian Renaissance in England, pp. 1-38. 2 Leland, Scriptores Britannia, p. 482, ' ecce subito illi prae oculis noctes atque dies obversabalur Italia, post Graeciam, bonorum ingeniorum et parens et altrix.' LIN ACRE, GROCYN, AND LILY Bologna. On his return he became prior of Christ Church, Canterbury, and paid special attention to Greek. Of the manuscripts, which he bequeathed to Christ Church, we have probably one still sur- viving in the Homer given by Archbishop Parker to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 1 . In the school of Christ Church he inspired his nephew, Thomas Linacre, with a love of classical learning. Linacre became a Fellow of All Souls, Oxford, and, in 1485, accompanied his uncle to Italy, and studied Greek at Florence under Politian and Chalcondyles. At Rome, as he was poring over a manuscript of the Phaedrus in the Vatican, he struck up a friendship with the Venetian scholar, Hermolaus Barbaras ; at Venice he became an honorary member of the Greek Academy of Aldus Manutius ; and, on his way back to England in 1492, he built on the highest crest of the Cevennes an altar, which he dedicated to Italy as his Sancta Mater Studiorum-. His translation of the Spliere of Proclus was published in Venice ; and, of his renderings from Galen, one was printed at Cambridge, in 1521, by Siberch 3 , who, in the same year and place, was the first to use Greek type in 1 M. R. James, Parker MSS, published by Cambridge Anti- quarian Society (1899), p. 9. v Paulus Jovius, Elogia, no. 163. 3 De Temperammtis, Facsimile ed. 1881. ERASMUS AT OXFORD 199 England. The earliest words, in which this inno- vation was introduced, are the motto of his edition of a Sermon of St Augustine 1 , vavrcov fierafioXr), a fitting phrase for a transitional time fraught with momentous changes. Modem Scholarship in England begins with Linacre and his friends, William Grocyn and William Latimer, both of whom attended Greek lectures in Florence. It was probably not until Grocyn's return from Italy in 1490 that the effective teaching of Greek began in Oxford. A younger member of this group of Greek scholars was William Lily, who picked up his Greek at Rhodes, on his pilgrimage to Palestine, and became the first High-Master of the School founded by Colet at St Paul's. Erasmus had met most of these scholars during his two visits to Oxford, and he afterwards writes with enthusiasm to one of his English friends in Italy : — ■ I have found in England so much learning and culture, and that of no common kind,. ..that I now hardly want to go to Italy except to see it. When I listen to my friend Colet, I can fancy I am listening to Plato himself. Who can fail to admire Grocyn, with all his encyclopaedic erudition ? Can anything be more acute, more elevated, more refined, than the judgment of Linacre? Has Nature ever moulded anything gentler, pleasanter, or happier, than the mind of Thomas More? 2 1 Facsimile ed. 1886. 2 Ep. 14. ERASMUS A7 CAMBRIDGE It was to a daughter of More that Erasmus, in the language of a modern picture of the Household of Sir Thomas More, disclosed his opinion of the relative value of Greek and Latin : — ' You are an elegant Latinist, Margaret,' he was pleased to say, ' but, if you woulde drink deeplie of the Well-springs of Wisdom, applie to Greek. The Latins have onlie shallow Rivulets ; the Greeks, copious Rivers running over Sands of gold. Read Plato, he wrote on marble with a Diamond ; but above alle read the New Testament. 'Tis the Key of the Kingdom of Heaven. ' 1 During the three years spent by Erasmus in Cambridge (December, 15 IO, to December, 1513), he gave unofficial instruction in Greek, beginning with the Catechism of Chrysoloras, and going on to the larger Grammar of Theodorus Gaza. The scene of that memorable instruction was the set of rooms near the South-East corner of the inner cloistered court of Queens'. From the two win- dows of the spacious sitting-room, with its sunny Southern aspect, there was then an unbroken view across the green pastures bounded by the grey willows that fringe the upper reaches of the quiet Cam. It is still a place of pilgrimage to many a wanderer from the lands across the seas. It was in those rooms that Erasmus collated his manu- scripts, and prepared, for publication at Basel in 1 [Miss A. Manning], The Household of Sir Thomas More, p. 90, ed. Hutton, 1896. ERASMUS AT LOUVAIN 1 516, the first edition of the Greek Testament that was ever published. The next few years, till 1521, were mainly spent at Louvain, where he rendered no small service to the land of his birth by helping to organise a newly-founded College for the study of Greek, as well as Latin and Hebrew. Aristotle and Ptolemy were the two Greek authors that he edited during the five years preceding his death at Basel in 1536, — exactly a century before the foundation of Harvard. Bound by the ties of birth to the Netherlands, he was nevertheless so completely cosmopolitan in his character, and in his career, that we associate him at least as much with France, Italy, Germany, and Switzerland, as with the land of his nativity. Happily for the world, he did not remain for ever at Rotterdam. The Academic Institutions of Louvain, the seat of the University and the College of the Southern Netherlands, then enslaved beneath the yoke of Spain, were soon surpassed in reputation by the free University founded in 1575 in the Northern Netherlands, in perpetual memory of that heroic defence of Leyden, which has been immortalised in the pages of Motley x . 1 Rise of the Dutch Republic, Part IV, chap, ii (vol. ii, 538-568, ed. 1864). 13—5 THE UNVIERSITY OF LEYDEN In 1625 the first Jubilee of Leyden was celebrated by the publication of a quaintly illustrated historic and biographic work, prepared by the learned Greek scholar, Meursius, in which that future citadel of Greek studies in Europe is described as the ' Batavian Athens'; and, in 1636, the second great University of the Northern Nether- lands was founded at Utrecht, — a University exactly coeval with Harvard. Meanwhile the little band of English exiles, which had settled for a time at Leyden, happily did not remain for ever in Holland. At Leyden, William Brewster, of Peterhouse, Cambridge, planted a printing-press, and, in 1615, another son of Cambridge, John Robinson, entered the Dutch University ; but two years later, when ' Master Robinson and his Church ' began ' to think of a remove to America,' 1 they applied to the Treasurer of the Virginia Company, Sir Edwin Sandys, who applauded their proposal, and obtained for them a patent permitting them to settle in Virginia 2 . The scene in 1620, when the faithful pastor came down from Leyden to Delfshaven, near the birth-place of Erasmus, there to bid 1 Thomas Prince's New England Chronology (Boston, 1736) in Edward Arber's English Garner, ii 382. - id. ii 38+, 393, 395. THE VOYAGE FROM LEYDEN TO NEW ENGLAND 203 farewell to the Pilgrim Fathers, has been made memorable by one of your own poets : — "Before the Speedwell's anchor swung, Ere yet the Mayflower's sail was spread, While round his feet the Pilgrims clung, The pastor spake, and thus he said : — ' Men, brethren, sisters, children dear ! God calls you hence from over sea ; Ye may not build by Haerlem Meer, Nor yet along the Zuyder-Zee.' ... He spake : with lingering, long embrace, With tears of love and partings fond, They floated down the creeping Maas, Along the isle of Ysselmond — The sails were set, the pennons flew, And westward ho ! for worlds unknown." 1 The Mayflozver, as we are all aware, never reached the coast of Virginia ; it was steered instead ' to these northward coasts' 2 of New England; and when, in 1630, the year of the founding of Boston, that historic vessel saw for the third time the shores of the New World, it was bound no longer for New Plymouth, but for a port still nearer to the place where we are now assembled, for it came to anchor in ' the harbour of Charlestown.' 3 On the eve of the earlier voyage a few brief words, which have become famous for ever, were spoken by him who now sleeps at Leyden, as 1 Robinson of Leyden in Oliver Wendell Holmes, Poetical Works, i 435 f, ed. 1881. ■ Netv England Chronology, ii 410. 3 ib. ii 508. 204 TRUTH, THE MOTTO OF HARVARD 'with watery cheeks' 1 he bade the Pilgrims a last farewell : — Then, prophet-like, the pastor spake, ' In days to come, the Lord Hath yet more truth and light to break Forth from His Holy Word.' 2 ' More truth,' and ' more light.' If we interpret those terms in their widest sense, surely no nobler aim can, in the present day, be kept in view by a great com- munity, or by a great University. Part of the motto of Cambridge (and of Oxford too) is Light; and one of the two mottoes of Harvard is Truth. In such a place no final words can be more fitting than those of a famous son of 'fair Harvard,' — Lowell the poet, Lowell the envoy of peace and good-will to England. In addressing his Alma Mater in the great 'Commemoration Ode ' of 1865, he has eloquently described her glorious motto as ' that stern device The sponsors chose that round thy cradle stood In the dim unventured wood, The Veritas that lurks beneath The letter's unprolific sheath, Life of whate'er makes life worth living, Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the giving.' 3 1 New England Chronology, ii 399. 2 i/>. ii 416, 'He was very confident the Lord had more truth and light yet to brake out of His Holy Word.' a Lowell's Commemoration Ode, p. 430 of Poetical Works, ed. 1874- INDEX Academies, 84-114 Adrian VI, 141 Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, 57, 67, 69, 122 f, 187; Pius II, 46, 57. 67, 69 Aeschylus, 120, 1S2 Aesop, 66 Agricola, 184, 196 Ailly, Pierre d', 53 Alberti, Leo Baptista, 29, 94 Alberti, Villa Paradiso degli, 120 Aldine Press, 124, 130, I46f Aldus Manutius, 100, 124, 194 f, 198 Aleander, 165, 195 Alfonso, land II, ofFerrara, [30 Alfonso I, of Naples, 69, 101 f, 126, 135 f. Alfonso II, of Naples, 135, 191 Ambrose, St, 147 America, 50, 172 Ammianus Marcellinus, 36 Ancona, 43, 69, 132 Andrea, Giovanni, 74 Anthology, Greek, 192 f Apollonius Rhodius, 193 Apostolius, Michael, 188 f Aquinas, St Thomas, 116, 175 Arcadi, 107 f Arcadia of Sannazaro, 104-7 Archaeology, Roman, 42 f Argyropoulos, 185, 189, 196 Aristophanes, 42, 84, 194 Aristotle, 182, 191, 196, 201; Aristotle and Plato, 183, 188; Ethics, 57, 79; translations, 175, 181, 182, 184-6, 190 Arqua, 6 f, 19 Arrian, 61, 74 Asconius, 35 Athenaeus, 194 Attic Orators, Cicero and, 146 Augustine, St, 10, 63, 65, 148 Aurispa, 40 f, 182 Avignon, 6, 9, 35, 176 f Bacon, Roger, 148, 175 Badius, 166 Balzac, the elder, 168 Barbaro, Francesco, 78, 125 Barbaras, Hermolaus, 198 Barlaam, 176 Basel, 40, 67, 123, 196, 200, 201 Basil, St, 62, 68 Beaufort, Cardinal, 37 Beccadelli, 101 f, 136 Bellini, Jacopo, 49 Bembo, 112, 130, 133, 134, 140, 141, 143, 159, 161 f, 165, 170, 191 Benci, Amerigo, 91 Benzi, Ugo, 183 206 INDEX Benvenuto, 23, 178 Beroaldo, the elder, 131; the younger, 141 Bessarion, 41, 53, 123, 184, 188 f, 792 Biondo, Flavio, 45 f Bisticci, Vespasiano da, 55, 133 Boccaccio, 12, 18, 20-26, 117 f, 122, 177-9 Boetbius, 175 Bologna, 131 f, 198 Borgia, Lucrezia, 130 Boston, 40, 203 ; W. Everett's Lectures at, 2 Browning, 25 f Bruni, Lionardo, 62-64, 121 f, 150, 152, 181 Budaeus, 166, 1S5, 195 Caesar, 49, 63, 74, 75, 77 Calcagnini, 131 Callierges, 194 Callimachus, 191, 193 Callistus, Andronicus, 189 Camaldoli in Casentino, 93, 122 Cambridge, 3, 172 f, 204; Caius College, 127; Corpus Christi College, 198; Emmanuel, 1, 4, 82, 114; Erasmus at Queens', 200; early printing at, 198 f Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1, 1 14, 173; see Harvard Camerarius, 168 Canterbury, 197 f Carraras of Padua, 125 Carteromachus, 100 Castiglione, 112, 133 Catullus, 15 Certaldo, 26, 122 Chalcondyles, 185, 198 Charles VIII of France, 95, "5 Chrysoloras, 179-181; 59-61,76, 118, 200 Cicero, 13, 15-17, 63, 69, 74, 145-170; his 'Academia,' 85; De Amicitia, 148 ; De Oratore, Brutus, and Orator, 38, 72 (Brutus, 45); Letters, 75, 79, 150 f, 153; ad Attiatm,ij, 30, 12 7> '55! ad Familiarcs, 30, 97, 124; pro A?-chia, 16; other Speeches, 36 f, 75, 170; Philo- sophical Works, 1 1 ; De Officiis, 79; Paradoxes, 81; Tusculan Disputations, 79, 167 f; Rhe- toric, 16, 37 f, 72; his style, 145 f, 150; 'apes of Cicero,' 151, 15 8 Ciceronianism, 1 45-1 71 Ciriaco of Ancona, 43-45, 133; his influence, 47-49 Clement VII, 142 ; the second Medicean Pope, 193 Cluni, 36 Cobet, 171 Codrus Urceus, 131 Colet, 199 Colletet, 168 n. Colombaria, 87 Columbus, 51-54; 19, 28 Columella, 36, no f Como, 127 Constance, 32-35, 60, 152, 155, 180 Constantine, 'Donation' of, 137 Constantinople, fall of, 187 Cortesi, Paolo, 158 Corvey, 39 Creighton, Bishop, 73 n., 82, 197 n. Crusca, della, 99 Curtius, Marcus, 141 ; Quintus, 63, 74, III, 136 INDEX 207 Dante, 20, 25, 51, 93, i + 8, 150, 158- 178 Decembrio, 128, 180 Demosthenes, 74, 100, 146, 181 f, 192 Discoveries, Age of, 28-54 Disraeli, Isaac, 86 Dolet, Etienne, 166 Dondi, 42 Dramatists, Greek, 74, 79 Dublin, 172 Diirer, 45 Education, 55-S3; of women, 80 f Einsiedeln, 43 Elizabeth, Queen, 82 England, Poggio in, 37; early study of Greek in, 157 English students at Ferrara, 78, 197; and Padua, 127 Erasmus, 143 f, 150, 155, 172, 195 f, 199-201; at Bologna, 132; Cambridge, 200; 185; Louvain, 201; Oxford, 199; Rome, 139; Venice, 101 ; Ciceronianus of, 162-7 Este, Isabella d', 130 ' Etymologicum Magnum,'' 194 Eugenius IV, 46, 137 f Euripides, 182, 193, 194 Everett, E., 3; W., 2 Federigo, Count of Montefeltro, and Duke of Urbino, 64, 74, 81, 133 Felicianus, 48 Ferrara, 76-82, 130 f, 182, 184, 197 Festus, in Ficino, 89-94, 117, 121, 140, 183 Fiesole, 96, 119, 120 Filelfo, 41, 128, 182, 187 Flaminio, Marcantonio, 82 Florence, 115-122, 198; Platonic Academy, 88-99; later Aca- demies, 99. (Colombaria), 87; Council of, 88 f, 183; Libraries, 3>> 32. 36. 39. 4i. 76, 119; Palazzo Vecchio, 119; Pazzi Palaces, 87 ; Pitti Palace, 121; Printers, 186, 193 f; San Spirito, 117 f, 179; Santa Croce, 63, 121, 152; Santa Maria degliAngeli, 120; Santa Maria Novella, 115-117; Uf- fizi, 93, 121; Medicean Villas, (Careggi), 90, 92, 121; 120 f; Villa Paradiso, 120 Floridus, 165 Fontainebleau, 193 Foscolo, Ugo, 87 France, early study of Greek in, 195; first book printed in, 153; College de France, 196 Francis I, 193, 195 Free, John, 197 Freeman, E. A., 172 Frontinus, 40 Galen, 198 Gallen, St, 33 f, 174 Garda, Lago di, 47, 74 Gaspaiino Barzizza, 128, 153 Gaza, Theodoras, 184 f, 188, 200 Gellius, 75 Germany, study of Greek in, 196 Ghirlandaio, 117 Giocondo, Fra, 49 f Giovio, Paolo, 112, 118, 142 Giraldi, Lilio, 131, 142 Giustiniani, 125 Gloucester, Humphrey Duke of, 180 20S INDEX Gonzagas, the, 129 f; Cecilia, 80; Gianfrancesco, 71 Gorricio, 54 Gozzoli, Benozzo, 119 Grammar, Greek, 176, 180 f, 184, 191 ; Latin, 74 Greek, study of, t 74—202 ; in Middle Ages, 1741"; in S. Italy, 1 76 ; during revival of learning, in Italy, 178-195; in France, 195; Germany, [96; England, 197-200; influence of Greek thought, 197; Netherlands, 201 f; study of Greek important and essential, iS, 70, 78 f; Greek MSS, 1S1 f, 192 ; trans- lations of Greek prose authors, 137 f ; Greek printing in Italy, 140, 192-5 ; France, 195 ; England, 198 f; editiones prin- cipes, 193 f; Greek Testament, 200 f Greeks at Council of Ferrara, 1S2, and Florence, SSf, 183 ; Greek immigrants, 1 84- 194 Gregorio da Citta di Castello, 195 Gregory the Great, 126 Grey, William, 197 Grocyn, 95, 199 Guarino, 75-80; 70, 153 f, 181; his son, Battista, 78 Guidobaldo, Duke of Urbino, 133 Gunthorpe, John, 196 Harvard, 2, 82, 98, 201 f, 204; John Harvard, t, 114 Heidelberg, Si, 196 Hellenic Society, 42, 172 Hermonymus, 190, 193, 195 f Herodian, 191 Herodotus, 74, 13S, 182 Hersfeld, 39 Hesiod, 74, 96, 182 Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 3, 203 Homer, 1, 70, 74, 79, 182, 184, 190, 198; Petrarch's MS, 177; translation by Pilatus, 178 f; editio princeps of text, 186, 194, and Scholia, 193 Horace, 1, 14, 18, 60,69, 74> 79 Howells, W. D., 123 n. Httvianiores, LiUcrae, 30 Humanism, homes of, 115-144 IfzimanitaSy 79, 128 Hungary, 67-70 Inscriptions, Latin, 42 f, 47-49 Isocrates, 74 ; editio princeps, 186, 194 ' Italic' type, 124 Italy, 4 f, 160, 187 f, 197, &c. ; Greek in S., 176 Jerome, St, 147 Johnson, Dr, 171 f Julius II, 112, 132, 139 Justinian, Pandects of, 97 Juvenal, 69, 74, 79 Lactantius, 63, 147 Ladislas, king of Bohemia, 67 Landino, 91, 93, 117, 122 Landriani, 37 f Langey, 70 Langres, 37 Laocoon, 141 Lascaris, (1) Constantine, 191 f; (2) Janus, 192; 41, 101, 140, Latimer, W., 199 Latin Classics, editiones principes, 75 ; Latin of Silver Age, 95, INDEX 209 157 f; modern Latin Letters, J 5i-3> 155. 160, 172 Leo X, 140 f; 112, 160, 192 Leonicenus, 74 Leyden, 201-3 Libraries, 41, 59, 119, 123, 184, 193 Lily, W., 199 Linacre, 198 f; 95, 101, 127 Lincei, 87 Livy, 17, 18, 22, 38, 63, 69, 74, 75.99' '36. r 5 2 > r 58; 'relics' of, 126 Lodi, 37, 64, 129 London, 180, 190 Longfellow, 3, 24 Longolius, 160-162; 127 Louvain, 201 Lowell, J. R., 2, 3, 51 f, 204 Lucan, 68, 74, 75 Lucian, 108, 193 Lucretius, 15, 36 Ludovico il Moro, 129 Lysias, 146 Machiavelli, 99 Macrobius, 15 Madrid, 35, 192 Malatesta, Baptista, 62, 80 ; Carlo, 129; Sigismondo, 132, 180 Manetti, 135 f Mantegna, 47 f, 129 Mantua, 71-75, 129 Manutius, Aldus, 100, 124, 194 f, 198; his son Paulus Manutius, i/i Marcanuova, 48 Marsigli, Luigi, 118, 120, 179 Marsuppini, Carlo, 121 f Martial, 69 flower, the, 203 Medici, Cosimo dei, pater pa- trine, 31, 88 f, 118-121, 125, 137; Lorenzo, 91, 93, 96-99, 120 f, 158, 190, 192; Duke Cosimo I, 99, 118 (Victorius) Messina, 191 Meursius, 202 Middle Ages, 4, 30, 174 f Milan, 128 f; 97, 191 Milton in Florence, 99 f Minucius Felix, 147 Moerbeke, William of, 175 Mommsen, 145 Monica, St, 65-67 Monte Cassino, 23 f, 39 f More, Sir Thomas, 166, 199 f Moschus, 191 Motley, 3, 201 Muretus, 168-171 Musurus, 193 f ; 101 Naples, 86, 101-9, 134-7 Navagero, Andrea, 125 Netherlands, 201 New World, study of Latin in the, 82 f Niccoli, Niccolo dei, 31, 36, 55 f. "8, 152, 155, 180 Nicolas V, 137 f; 46, 186 Niebuhr, 134, 138 Nizolius, 169 Nogarola, Isotta, 80 Nonius Marcellus, 38, 11 1 Norton, Professor C. E., 1, 3 Olympia Morata, 81, 130 Opera, origin of Italian, 98 Ovid, 68, 74, 75, 79, 103 Oxford, 23, 172, 197, 198, 204 Padua, 125-7; 47 £ 5 8 > 7 r > 162, 166, 186, 193, 197 INDEX Palilia, no Palladio, I 1 3 Pannonius, Janus, 78 Paris, 6, 18, 38, 49, 190, 191, 195; early printing at, 153, 195 Paul II, 1 10 Pausanias, 194 Pavia, 52, 128, 180 Pazzi, Piero dei, 56 ; Pazzi Palaces, 87 Perionius, 168 Perotti, 74 Persius, 69 Perugia, 186 Petrarch, 6-20, 42, 109; at Milan, 128, Padua, 125, and Venice, 123; his admiration for Cicero, 15, 149 f, and Virgil, 13; his Latin style, 17, 150 ; his interest in Greek, 176 f; his map of Italy, 28 Piccolomini, Aeneas Sylvius, 57, 67, 69, 123, 187; Pius II, 46, 57i 67, 69; Piccolomini Library, 122 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 94, 121 ; Gianfrancesco, 159 Pilatus, Leontius, 177-9 Pindar, 74, 182, 194 Pisanello, 75, So, 128 Pius II, 46, 57, 67, 69 Platina, nof. Plato, 74, 79, 178; Charmides, 191; Phaedrus, 198; Philebus, 90 ; Republic, 1 80 ; Sympo- siiim, 91 f; Timaeus, 175; translations of, 90 f, 181, 185; editio princeps, 10 r, 194; Plato's Academy, 84 f; Pla- tonic Academy of Florence, 88-99 ! Plato's Atlantis, 51 f; bust of Plato, 92 f; contro- versies on Plato and Aristotle, 183, 188 Plautus, 15, 39, 69, 70, 79, no Plethon, 88 f, 132, 183, 188 Pliny, the elder, 18, 93 ; the younger Pliny's Letters, 49, 77, in, and Panegyric, 40 f; statues of both the Plinies at Como, 127 Plutarch, Lives, 1, 74, 76, 181 ; Moralia, 195 ; De Audiendis Poetis, 79 ; on Education, 61 f, 68, 72 Poggio, 32-40, 42, 109, 121, 155 * Pole, Reginald, 127, 162 Politian, 95-99, 117, 120, 190, 198 ; controversy with Scala, 157, and Cortesi, 158 Polybius, 59, 105 Pomponius Laetus, 1 09-1 12 Pontano, 102-4, '35 % 151. 165 Porta, della, 86 Proclus, 101, 198 Propertius, 15 Prudentius, 165 Ptolemy, 52, 53, 201 Quintilian, 34, 61, 68, 70, 72, 74, in, 136, 146, 149, 156 f Quintus Smyrnaeus, 192 Ramus, 167 Raphael, 140, 142 Regiomontanus, 53 Reichenau, 33, 36 Renee, Duchess, 130 Reuchlin, 185, 196 Revival of Learning in Italy, causes of, 4 f; Revival of Greek in Europe, 176-201 INDEX Rhodes, 191, 198 Ricci, 167 Rienzi, 17, 42, 109 Rimini, 132 Robinson of Leyden, 202-4 Rome, ruins of ancient, 42, 1 10 ; Academy of, 109 f; Lincei, 87; Vitruvian Academy, 113; Sack of, 112, 142 f; Chigi Palace (Greek Press in), 140; Lateran Church, 138; Mau- soleum of Hadrian, 1 1 1 ; Monte Cavallo (Greek Press on), 140, 193; Sant' Agata, 193 ; Sant' Agostino, 67 ; Santa Maria sopra Minerva, 141 ; Fountain of Trevi, 144 ; Vatican Library, 41, 137 Rossi, Roberto dei, 11S, 179 Ruhnken, 171 Sabellicus, no Sadoleto, 70, 112, 140 f, 143, 165 Salisbury, John of, 148 Sallust, 63, 66, 69, 74, in, 158 Salutati, 30, 1 18, 120 f, 150 f, 179 f San Gallo, Giuliano da, 49 Sannazaro, 104-9, r 34 ^ x ^5 Scala, Bartolomeo, 157 Scaliger, Julius Caesar, 165 ; Joseph, 168 Scarparia, 179 f Schedel, 45 Schott, A., 168 Scioppius, G., 167 Scot, John the, 175 Sculptors, signaturesof Greek, 97 Selling, William Tilly of, 197 Seneca, n, 17, 136; his Trage- dies, 66, 79 ; his Medea, 54 Sforza, Francesco, 129; Hip- polyta, 191 Shakespeare {Taming of the Shrew, i 1), 126 Shelley, 126 Siberch, 198 Sidney, Sir Philip, 107 Siena, 122 Sigeros, 177 Sigismund, (1) Emperor (1433), 64; (2) Archduke (1443), 57 Silvester II, 148 Simone Martini {or Memmi), 14 Sixtus IV, in Sophocles, 192, 193, 195, Oed. Tyr. 114; Laurentian MS, 42, 120, 182; Scholia, 193 Speyer, John of, 123 Statius, 68, 79; Silvae, 35 Stephens, H., 168 Story, Judge, 2 Strabo, 52, 76, 181 Strozza, Ercole, 130 Strozzi, Palla, 125, 180, 185, 190 Sui'das, 1 86 Tacitus, 24 f, 38 f, 140, 147 Taylor, Bayard, 144 Terence, 1, 22, 69, 70, 79 ; Donatus on, 40 Theocritus, 108, 182, 194 Theodore of Tarsus, 175 Theophrastus, 184 Thucydides, 138, 182, 185, 192 Toscanelli, 53 Trapezuntius, Georgius, 185, 186, 189; George of Trebizond, 154 Traversari, 40, 120 Turks, 69 f, 84, 160, 187, 194 Urbino, 133; 41, 62, 64, 74, 81 Utrecht, 202 INDEX Valeriano, 143 Valerius Flaccus, 35 Valla, 136-S; 109, 156 Vaucluse, 6, 18 Vegio, 64-67 Venice, 123-5; 71; Greek Aca- demy, 100; Libraries, 41, 123, 184; Printers, 123-5, J 94f Ventoux, Mont, 9 Vergerio, 58-61 Vergi litis, 97 Veritas, Harvard motto, 204 Verona, 127; 16, 70, 75 f, 150 Vespasiano da Bisticci, 55, 133 Vespucci, Amerigo, 50, 91 Vicenza, 113 f Victorius, 3, 118 Vida, 140 f Villani, 20, 151 Villanovanus, 166 Virgil, 13 f, 56, 63, 64 f, 66, 68, 70, 74 f, 79, 96, 102, 105 f, 108, in, 149; statue at Mantua, 60, 129; tomb at Naples, 20, 134 Visconti, the, 128 f Vitravius, 35, 49, 113 f, 142 Vittoria Colonna, 81, 130 Vittorino da Feltre, 70-75, 130, '33 Weingarten, 33 Worcester, Earl of, 185, 197 Xenophon, 74, 182, 184 Zeno, Carlo, 125 Cambridge: printed by john clay, m.a., at the university press. BY DR SANDYS. Crown 8vo., pp. xxiv + 672. ioj. 6d. net. American price % 3.50. A History of Classical Scholarship from the Sixth Century B.C. to the end of the Middle Ages ; with Chronological Tables, Facsimiles from Manuscripts and other Illustrations. 1903. Spectator. — " The fact that there is no book of a similar character in English, together with the exactitude and extent of the information it contains, make it indispensable to all interested in scholarship." Times. — " No lover of classical literature will open it even at random without being tempted to browse at his own sweet will in its ample and varied pastures. " Classical Review. — "A work teeming with detailed and varied information on an astounding multiplicity of most interesting topics." Tablet. — " In spite of compression, its pages, opened at almost any point, will be found to be exceptionally entertaining and readable." London Quarterly Review. — " It is not only a work of monu- mental erudition, it is full of information of the most curious interest, and is a rich treasury of out-of-the-way lore." Professor Saintsbury in School. — "Here is, we believe absolutely for the first time, a full, a clear, and an exact account of what the greater part of a millennium (in the Middle Ages) knew and thought of the two great languages and literatures." Revue Critique. — " M. Sandys a vise a condenser le plus de renseignements possibles sous le plus petit volume ; non seulement il a reussi, mais il est toujours rest6 clair, elegant, interessant." Musee Beige. — "C'est un sujet qui n'avait pas ete traite jusqu'ici dans son ensemble : M. Sandys le traite d'une mani^re complete." Literarisches Centralblatt. — " Fur zuverlassig darf das Buch durchans gelten, und ein femeres Lob ist der einfache und leichte Stil." Wochenschrift fiir classische Philologie. — "Eine sehr eingehende, lichtvolle und in angenehmer Form sich darbietende Geschichte." CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS WAREHOUSE C. F. CLAY, Manager LONDON : AVE MARIA LANE. GLASGOW: 50, WELLINGTON ST. NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY PruJiettte SUateg ijall ffitbrarg Strata, Nero Jark THE GIFT OF 'rm "37