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Title: Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1
Author: Hallam, Henry, 1777-1859
Language: English
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_THE WORKS OF HENRY HALLAM._
INTRODUCTION
TO THE
LITERATURE OF EUROPE
IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH,
AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.
BY
HENRY HALLAM, F.R.A.S.,
CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF MORAL
AND POLITICAL SCIENCES IN THE FRENCH INSTITUTE
_VOLUME I._
WARD, LOCK & CO.,
LONDON: WARWICK HOUSE, SALISBURY SQUARE, E.C.
NEW YORK: BOND STREET.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE END
OF THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
Page
Retrospect of Learning in Middle Ages Necessary 1
Loss of learning in Fall of Roman Empire 1
Boethius--his Consolation of Philosophy 1
Rapid Decline of Learning in Sixth Century 2
A Portion remains in the Church 2
Prejudices of the Clergy against Profane Learning 2
Their Uselessness in preserving it 3
First Appearances of reviving Learning in Ireland and England 3
Few Schools before the Age of Charlemagne 3
Beneficial Effects of those Established by him 4
The Tenth Century more progressive than usually supposed 4
Want of Genius in the Dark Ages 5
Prevalence of bad Taste 5
Deficiency of poetical Talent 5
Imperfect State of Language may account for this 6
Improvement at beginning of Twelfth Century 6
Leading Circumstances in Progress of Learning 6
Origin of the University of Paris 6
Modes of treating the Science of Theology 6
Scholastic Philosophy--its Origin 7
Roscelin 7
Progress of Scholasticism; Increase of University of Paris 8
Universities founded 8
Oxford 8
Collegiate Foundations not derived from the Saracens 9
Scholastic Philosophy promoted by Mendicant Friars 9
Character of this Philosophy 10
It prevails least in Italy 10
Literature in Modern Languages 10
Origin of the French, Spanish, and Italian Languages 10
Corruption of colloquial Latin in the Lower Empire 11
Continuance of Latin in Seventh Century 12
It is changed to a new Language in Eighth and Ninth 12
Early Specimens of French 13
Poem on Boethius 13
Provençal Grammar 14
Latin retained in use longer in Italy 14
French of Eleventh Century 14
Metres of Modern Languages 15
Origin of Rhyme in Latin 16
Provençal and French Poetry 16
Metrical Romances--Havelok the Dane 18
Diffusion of French Language 19
German Poetry of Swabian Period 19
Decline of German Poetry 20
Poetry of France and Spain 21
Early Italian Language 22
Dante and Petrarch 22
Change of Anglo-Saxon to English 22
Layamon 23
Progress of English Language 23
English of the Fourteenth Century--Chaucer, Gower 24
General Disuse of French in England 24
State of European Languages about 1400 25
Ignorance of Reading and Writing in darker Ages 25
Reasons for supposing this to have diminished after 1100 26
Increased Knowledge of Writing in Fourteenth Century 27
Average State of Knowledge in England 27
Invention of Paper 28
Linen Paper when first used 28
Cotton Paper 28
Linen Paper as old as 1100 28
Known to Peter of Clugni 29
And in Twelfth and Thirteenth Century 29
Paper of mixed Materials 29
Invention of Paper placed by some too low 29
Not at first very important 30
Importance of Legal Studies 30
Roman Laws never wholly unknown 31
Irnerius--his first Successors 31
Their Glosses 31
Abridgements of Law--Accursius’s Corpus Glossatum 31
Character of early Jurists 32
Decline of Jurists after Accursius 32
Respect paid to him at Bologna 33
Scholastic Jurists--Bartolus 33
Inferiority of Jurists in Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries 34
Classical Literature and Taste in dark Ages 34
Improvement in Tenth and Eleventh Centuries 34
Lanfranc and his Schools 35
Italy--Vocabulary of Papias 36
Influence of Italy upon Europe 36
Increased copying of Manuscripts 36
John of Salisbury 36
Improvement of Classical Taste in Twelfth Century 37
Influence of increased Number of Clergy 38
Decline of Classical Literature in Thirteenth Century 38
Relapse into Barbarism 38
No Improvement in Fourteenth Century--Richard of Bury 39
Library formed by Charles V. at Paris 39
Some Improvement in Italy during Thirteenth Century 40
Catholicon of Balbi 40
Imperfection of early Dictionaries 40
Restoration of Letters due to Petrarch 40
Character of his Style 41
His Latin Poetry 41
John of Ravenna 41
Gasparin of Barziza 42
CHAPTER II.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1400 TO 1440.
Zeal for Classical Literature in Italy 42
Poggio Bracciolini 42
Latin Style of that Age indifferent 43
Gasparin of Barziza 43
Merits of his Style 43
Victorin of Feltre 44
Leonard Aretin 44
Revival of Greek Language in Italy 44
Early Greek Scholars of Europe 44
Under Charlemagne and his Successors 45
In the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries 45
In the Twelfth 46
In the Thirteenth 46
Little Appearance of it in the Fourteenth Century 47
Some Traces of Greek in Italy 47
Corruption of Greek Language itself 47
Character of Byzantine Literature 48
Petrarch and Boccace learn Greek 48
Few acquainted with the Language in their Time 49
It is taught by Chrysoloras about 1395 49
His Disciples 49
Translations from Greek into Latin 50
Public Encouragement delayed 51
But fully accorded before 1440 51
Emigration of learned Greeks to Italy 52
Causes of Enthusiasm for Antiquity in Italy 52
Advanced State of Society 52
Exclusive Study of Antiquity 53
Classical Learning in France low 53
Much more so in England 53
Library of Duke of Gloucester 54
Gerard Groot’s College at Deventer 54
Physical Sciences in Middle Ages 55
Arabian Numerals and Method 55
Proofs of them in Thirteenth Century 56
Mathematical Treatises 56
Roger Bacon 57
His Resemblance to Lord Bacon 57
English Mathematicians of Fourteenth Century 57
Astronomy 58
Alchemy 58
Medicine 58
Anatomy 58
Encyclopædic Works of Middle Ages 58
Vincent of Beauvais 59
Berchorius 59
Spanish Ballads 59
Metres of Spanish Poetry 60
Consonant and assonant Rhymes 60
Nature of the Glosa 61
The Cancionero General 61
Bouterwek’s Character of Spanish Songs 61
John II. 62
Poets of his Court 62
Charles, Duke of Orleans 62
English Poetry 62
Lydgate 63
James I. of Scotland 63
Restoration of Classical Learning due to Italy 63
Character of Classical Poetry lost in Middle Ages 64
New School of Criticism in Modern Languages 64
Effect of Chivalry on Poetry 64
Effect of Gallantry towards Women 64
Its probable Origin 64
It is shown in old Teutonic Poetry;
but appears in the Stories of Arthur 65
Romances of Chivalry of two Kinds 65
Effect of Difference of Religion upon Poetry 66
General Tone of Romance 66
Popular Moral Fictions 66
Exclusion of Politics from Literature 67
Religious Opinions 67
Attacks on the Church 67
Three Lines of Religious Opinions in Fifteenth Century 67
Treatise de Imitatione Christi 68
Scepticism--Defences of Christianity 69
Raimond de Sebonde 69
His Views misunderstood 69
His real Object 70
Nature of his Arguments 70
CHAPTER III.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1440 TO THE CLOSE
OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
The year 1440 not chosen as an Epoch 71
Continual Progress of Learning 71
Nicolas V. 71
Justice due to his Character 72
Poggio on the Ruins of Rome 72
Account of the East, by Conti 72
Laurentius Valla 72
His Attack on the Court of Rome 72
His Treatise on the Latin Language 73
Its Defects 73
Heeren’s Praise of it 73
Valla’s Annotations on the New Testament 73
Fresh Arrival of Greeks in Italy 74
Platonists and Aristotelians 74
Their Controversy 74
Marsilius Ficinus 75
Invention of Printing 75
Block Books 75
Gutenberg and Costar’s Claims 75
Progress of the Invention 76
First printed Bible 76
Beauty of the Book 77
Early printed Sheets 77
Psalter of 1547--Other early Books 77
Bible of Pfister 77
Greek first taught at Paris 78
Leave unwillingly granted 78
Purbach--his Mathematical Discoveries 78
Other Mathematicians 78
Progress of Printing in Germany 79
Introduced into France 79
Caxton’s first Works 79
Printing exercised in Italy 79
Lorenzo de’ Medici 80
Italian Poetry of Fifteenth Century 80
Italian Prose of same Age 80
Giostra of Politian 80
Paul II. persecutes the Learned 81
Mathias Corvinus 81
His Library 81
Slight Signs of Literature in England 81
Paston Letters 82
Low Condition of Public Libraries 83
Rowley 83
Clotilde de Surville 83
Number of Books printed in Italy 83
First Greek printed 84
Study of Antiquities 84
Works on that Subject 84
Publications in Germany 85
In France 85
In England, by Caxton 85
In Spain 85
Translations of Scripture 85
Revival of Literature in Spain 86
Character of Labrixa 86
Library of Lorenzo 87
Classics corrected and explained 87
Character of Lorenzo 87
Prospect from his Villa at Fiesole 87
Platonic Academy 88
Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino 88
Philosophical Dialogues 89
Paulus Cortesius 89
Schools in Germany 89
Study of Greek at Paris 91
Controversy of Realists and Nominalists 91
Scotus 91
Ockham 92
Nominalists in University of Paris 92
Low State of Learning in England 92
Mathematics 93
Regiomontanus 93
Arts of Delineation 93
Maps 94
Geography 94
Greek printed in Italy 94
Hebrew printed 95
Miscellanies of Politian 95
Their Character, by Heeren 95
His Version of Herodian 96
Cornucopia of Perotti 96
Latin Poetry of Politian 96
Italian Poetry of Lorenzo 97
Pulci 97
Character of Morgante Maggiore 97
Platonic Theology of Ficinus 98
Doctrine of Averroes on the Soul 98
Opposed by Ficinus 99
Desire of Man to explore Mysteries 99
Various Methods employed 99
Reason and Inspiration 99
Extended Inferences from Sacred Books 99
Confidence in Traditions 100
Confidence in Individuals as inspired 100
Jewish Cabbala 100
Picus of Mirandola 101
His Credulity in the Cabbala 101
His Literary Performances 102
State of Learning in Germany 102
Agricola 103
Renish Academy 103
Reuchlin 104
French Language and Poetry 104
European Drama 104
Latin 104
Orfeo of Politian 105
Origin of Dramatic Mysteries 105
Their early Stage 105
Extant English Mysteries 105
First French Theatre 106
Theatrical Machinery 107
Italian Religious Dramas 107
Moralities 107
Farces 107
Mathematical Works 107
Leo Baptista Alberti 108
Lionardo da Vinci 108
Aldine Greek Editions 109
Decline of Learning in Italy 110
Hermolaus Barbarus 111
Mantuan 111
Pontanus 111
Neapolitan Academy 112
Boiardo 112
Francesco Bello 113
Italian Poetry near the End of the Century 113
Progress of Learning in France and Germany 113
Erasmus--his Diligence 114
Budæus--his early Studies 114
Latin not well written in France 115
Dawn of Greek Learning in England 115
Erasmus comes to England 116
He publishes his Adages 116
Romantic Ballads of Spain 116
Pastoral Romances 117
Portuguese Lyric Poetry 117
German popular Books 117
Historical Works 118
Philip de Comines 118
Algebra 118
Events from 1490 to 1500 119
Close of Fifteenth Century 119
Its Literature nearly neglected 119
Summary of its Acquisitions 119
Their Imperfection 120
Number of Books printed 120
Advantages already reaped from Printing 120
Trade of Bookselling 121
Books sold by Printers 121
Price of Books 122
Form of Books 122
Exclusive Privileges 122
Power of Universities over Bookselling 123
Restraints on Sale of Printed Books 124
Effect of Printing on the Reformation 124
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1500 TO 1520.
Decline of Learning in Italy 125
Press of Aldus 125
His Academy 126
Dictionary of Calepio 126
Books printed in Germany 126
First Greek Press at Paris 126
Early Studies of Melanchthon 127
Learning in England 127
Erasmus and Budæus 128
Study of Eastern Languages 128
Dramatic Works 128
Calisto and Melibœa 128
Its Character 129
Juan de la Enzina 129
Arcadia of Sanazzaro 129
Asolani of Bembo 130
Dunbar 130
Anatomy of Zerbi 130
Voyages of Cadamosto 130
Leo X., his Patronage of Letters 131
Roman Gymnasium 131
Latin Poetry 132
Italian Tragedy 132
Sophonisba of Trissino 132
Rosmunda of Rucellai 132
Comedies of Ariosto 132
Books printed in Italy 133
Cælius Rhodiginus 133
Greek printed in France and Germany 133
Greek Scholars in these Countries 134
College at Alcala and Louvain 134
Latin Style in France 135
Greek Scholars in England 135
Mode of Teaching in Schools 136
Few Classical Works printed here 137
State of Learning in Scotland 137
Utopia of More 137
Inconsistency in his Opinions 138
Learning restored in France 138
Jealousy of Erasmus and Budæus 138
Character of Erasmus 139
His Adages severe on Kings 139
Instances in illustration 140
His Greek Testament 142
Patrons of Letters in Germany 142
Resistance to Learning 143
Unpopularity of the Monks 145
The Book excites Odium 145
Erasmus attacks the Monks 145
Their Contention with Reuchlin 145
Origin of the Reformation 146
Popularity of Luther 147
Simultaneous Reform by Zwingle 147
Reformation prepared beforehand 147
Dangerous Tenets of Luther 148
Real Explanation of them 149
Orlando Furioso 150
Its Popularity 150
Want of Seriousness 150
A Continuation of Boiardo 150
In some Points inferior 151
Beauties of its Style 151
Accompanied with Faults 151
Its Place as a Poem 152
Amadis de Gaul 152
Gringore 152
Hans Sachs 152
Stephen Hawes 153
Change in English Language 153
Skelton 154
Oriental Languages 154
Pomponatius 155
Raymond Lully 155
His Method 155
Peter Martyr’s Epistles 156
CHAPTER V.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Superiority of Italy in Taste 157
Admiration of Antiquity 158
Sadolet 158
Bembo 159
Ciceronianus of Erasmus 159
Scaliger’s Invective against it 160
Editions of Cicero 160
Alexander ab Alexandro 160
Works on Roman Antiquities 161
Greek less Studied in Italy 161
Schools of Classical Learning 161
Budæus--his Commentaries on Greek 161
Their Character 162
Greek Grammars and Lexicons 162
Editions of Greek Authors 163
Latin Thesaurus of R. Stephens 163
Progress of Learning in France 164
Learning in Spain 165
Effects of Reformation on Learning 165
Sturm’s Account of German Schools 165
Learning in Germany 166
In England--Linacre 166
Lectures in the Universities 166
Greek perhaps Taught to Boys 167
Teaching of Smith at Cambridge 167
Succeeded by Cheke 168
Ascham’s Character of Cambridge 168
Wood’s Account of Oxford 168
Education of Edward and his Sisters 169
The Progress of Learning is still slow 169
Want of Books and Public Libraries 169
Destruction of Monasteries no Injury to Learning 169
Ravisius Textor 170
Conrad Gesner 170
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Progress of the Reformation 171
Interference of Civil Power 171
Excitement of Revolutionary Spirit 172
Growth of Fanaticism 172
Differences of Luther and Zwingle 172
Confession of Augsburg 173
Conduct of Erasmus 173
Estimate of it 174
His Controversy with Luther 174
Character of his Epistles 176
His Alienation from the Reformers increases 176
Appeal of the Reformers to the Ignorant 176
Parallel of those Times with the Present 177
Calvin 177
His Institutes 177
Increased Differences among Reformers 178
Reformed Tenets spread in England 178
In Italy 178
Italian Heterodoxy 179
Its Progress in the Literary Classes 180
Servetus 180
Arianism in Italy 181
Protestants in Spain and Low Countries 181
Order of Jesuits 181
Their Popularity 181
Council of Trent 182
Its Chief Difficulties 182
Character of Luther 182
Theological Writings--Erasmus 183
Melanchthon--Romish Writers 183
This Literature nearly forgotten 184
Sermons 184
Spirit of the Reformation 184
Limits of Private Judgment 185
Passions instrumental in Reformation 185
Establishment of new Dogmatism 186
Editions of Scripture 186
Translations of Scripture 186
In English 187
In Italy and Low Countries 187
Latin Translations 187
French Translations 188
CHAPTER VII.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE, MORAL, AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, AND OF
JURISPRUDENCE, IN EUROPE, FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Logic included under this head 188
Slow Defeat of Scholastic Philosophy 188
It is sustained by the Universities and Regulars 188
Commentators on Aristotle 188
Attack of Vives on Scholastics 189
Contempt of them in England 189
Veneration for Aristotle 189
Melanchthon countenances him 189
His own Philosophical Treatises 190
Aristotelians of Italy 190
University of Paris 190
New Logic of Ramus 190
It meets with unfair treatment 191
Its Merits and Character 191
Buhle’s account of it 191
Paracelsus 191
His Impostures 192
And Extravagancies 192
Cornelius Agrippa 192
His pretended Philosophy 193
His Sceptical Treatise 193
Cardan 193
Influence of Moral Writers 194
Cortegiano of Castiglione 194
Marco Aurelio of Guevara 194
His Menosprecio di Corte 194
Perez d’Oliva 195
Ethical Writings of Erasmus and Melanchthon 195
Sir T. Elyot’s Governor 195
Severity of Education 196
He seems to avoid Politics 196
Nicholas Machiavel 196
His motives in writing the Prince 197
Some of his Rules not immoral 197
But many dangerous 197
Its only Palliation 198
His Discourses on Livy 198
Their leading Principles 198
Their Use and Influence 199
His History of Florence 199
Treatises on Venetian Government 199
Calvin’s Political Principles 199
Jurisprudence confined to Roman Law 200
The Laws not well arranged 200
Adoption of the entire System 200
Utility of General Learning to Lawyers 200
Alciati--his Reform of Law 201
Opposition to him 201
Agustino 201
CHAPTER VIII.
HISTORY OF THE LITERATURE OF TASTE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Poetry of Bembo 201
Its Beauties and Defects 202
Character of Italian Poetry 202
Alamanni 202
Vittoria Colonna 202
Satires of Ariosto and Alamanni 203
Alamanni 203
Rucellai 203
Trissino 203
Berni 203
Spanish Poets 204
Boscan and Garcilasso 204
Mendoza 204
Saa di Miranda 205
Ribeyro 205
French Poetry 205
Marot 206
Its Metrical Structure 206
German Poetry 206
Hans Sachs 206
German Hymn 206
Theuerdanks of Pfintzing 206
English Poetry--Lyndsay 206
Wyatt and Surrey 207
Dr. Nott’s Character of them 207
Perhaps rather exaggerated 208
Surrey improves our versification 208
Introduces Blank Verse 208
Dr. Nott’s Hypothesis as to his Metre 208
It seems too extensive 209
Politeness of Wyatt and Surrey 209
Latin Poetry 210
Sannazarius 210
Vida 210
Fracastorius 210
Latin Verse not to be disdained 210
Other Latin Poets in Italy 211
In Germany 211
Italian Comedy 211
Machiavel 211
Aretin 211
Tragedy 212
Sperone 212
Cinthio 212
Spanish Drama 212
Torres Naharro 212
Lope de Rueda 212
Gil Vicente 213
Mysteries and Moralities in France 213
German Theatre--Hans Sachs 213
Moralities and Similar Plays in England 214
They are turned to religious Satire 214
Latin Plays 214
First English Comedy 215
Romances of Chivalry 215
Novels 215
Rabelais 216
Contest of Latin and Italian Languages 216
Influence of Bembo in this 217
Apology for Latinists 217
Character of the Controversy 217
Life of Bembo 217
Character of Italian and Spanish Style 218
English Writers 218
More 218
Ascham 218
Italian Criticism 218
Bembo 218
Grammarians and Critics in France 219
Orthography of Meigret 219
Cox’s Art of Rhetoric 219
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE OF EUROPE
FROM 1520 TO 1550.
Geometrical Treatises 220
Fernel Rhœticus 220
Cardan and Tartaglia 220
Cubic Equations 220
Beauty of the Discovery 221
Cardan’s other Discoveries 221
Imperfections of Algebraic Language 222
Copernicus 222
Revival of Greek Medicine 223
Linacre and other Physicians 223
Medical Innovators 224
Paracelsus 224
Anatomy 224
Berenger 224
Vesalius 224
Portal’s Account of him 225
His Human Dissections 225
Fate of Vesalius 225
Other Anatomists 225
Imperfection of the Science 225
Botany--Botanical Gardens 226
Ruel 226
Fuchs 226
Matthioli 226
Low State of Zoology 226
Agricola 227
Hebrew 227
Elias Levita--Pellican 227
Arabic and Oriental Literature 227
Geography of Grynæus 228
Apianus 228
Munster 228
Voyages 228
Oviedo 228
Historical Works 228
Italian Academies 229
They pay regard to the Language 229
Their fondness for Petrarch 229
They become numerous 229
Their Distinctions 230
Evils connected with them 230
They succeed less in Germany 230
Libraries 230
CHAPTER X.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Progress of Philology 231
First Editions of Classics 231
Change in Character of Learning 232
Cultivation of Greek 232
Principal Scholars--Turnebus 232
Petrus Victorius 233
Muretus 233
Gruter’s Thesaurus Criticus 234
Editions of Greek and Latin Authors 235
Tacitus of Lipsius 235
Horace of Lambinus 235
Of Cruquius 236
Henry Stephens 236
Lexicon of Constantin 237
Thesaurus of Stephens 237
Abridged by Scapula 238
Hellenismus of Caninius 239
Vergara’s Grammar 239
Grammars of Ramus and Sylburgius 239
Camerarius--Canter--Robortellus 240
Editions by Sylburgius 241
Neander 241
Gesner 241
Decline of Taste in Germany 242
German Learning 242
Greek Verses of Rhodomanu 242
Learning Declines 243
Except in Catholic Germany 243
Philological Works of Stephens 243
Style of Lipsius 244
Minerva of Sanctius 244
Orations of Muretus 244
Panegyric of Ruhnkenius 244
Defects of his Style 245
Epistles of Manutius 245
Care of the Italian Latinists 245
Perpinianus--Osorius--Maphœus 246
Buchanan--Haddon 246
Sigonius, De Consolatione 246
Decline of Taste and Learning in Italy 247
Joseph Scaliger 247
Isaac Casaubon 248
General Result 249
Learning in England under Edward and Mary 249
Revival under Elizabeth 249
Greek Lectures at Cambridge 250
Few Greek Editions in England 250
School Books enumerated 250
Greek taught in Schools 251
Greek better known after 1580 251
Editions of Greek 252
And of Latin Classics 252
Learning lower than in Spain 252
Improvement at the End of the Century. 253
Learning in Scotland 253
Latin little used in Writing 253
Early Works on Antiquities 254
P. Manutius on Roman Laws 254
Manutius, De Civitate 254
Panvinius--Sigonius 255
Gruchius 255
Sigonius on Athenian Polity 256
Patrizzi and Lipsius on Roman Militia 256
Lipsius and other Antiquaries 256
Saville on Roman Militia 257
Numismatics 257
Mythology 257
Scaliger’s Chronology 258
Julian Period 258
CHAPTER XI.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Diet of Augsburg in 1555 259
Progress of Protestantism 259
Its Causes 260
Wavering of Catholic Princes 260
Extinguished in Italy and Spain 260
Reaction of Catholicity 260
Especially in Germany 261
Discipline of the Clergy 261
Influence of Jesuits 261
Their Progress 262
Their Colleges 262
Jesuit Seminary at Rome 262
Patronage of Gregory XIII. 262
Conversions in Germany and France 263
Causes of this Reaction 263
A rigid Party in the Church 264
Its Efforts at Trent 264
No Compromise in Doctrine 265
Consultation of Cassander 265
Bigotry of Protestant Churches 266
Tenets of Melanchthon 266
A Party hostile to him 267
Form of Concord, 1576 267
Controversy raised by Baius 267
Treatise of Molina on Free will 268
Protestant Tenets 268
Trinitarian Controversy 268
Religious Intolerance 270
Castalio 270
Answered by Beza 271
Aconcio 271
Minus Celsus, Koornhert 271
Decline of Protestantism 272
Desertion of Lipsius 272
Jewell’s Apology 272
English Theologians 272
Bellarmin 273
Topics of Controversy changed 273
It turns on Papal Power 274
This upheld by the Jesuits 274
Claim to depose Princes 274
Bull against Elizabeth 274
And Henry IV. 275
Deposing Power owned in Spain 275
Asserted by Bellarmin 275
Methods of Theological Doctrine 275
Loci Communes 275
In the Protestant and Catholic Church 276
Catharin 276
Critical and Expository Writings 276
Ecclesiastical Historians 277
Le Clerc’s Character of them 277
Deistical Writers 277
Wierus, De Præstigiis 278
Scot on Witchcraft 278
Authenticity of Vulgate 278
Latin Versions and Editions by Catholics 278
By Protestants 279
Versions into Modern Languages 279
CHAPTER XII.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Predominance of Aristotelian Philosophy 279
Scholastic and genuine Aristotelians 280
The former class little remembered 280
The others not much better known 280
Schools of Pisa and Padua 280
Cesalpini 280
Sketch of his System 280
Cremonini 281
Opponents of Aristotle 281
Patrizzi 281
System of Telesio 281
Jordano Bruno 282
His Italian Works--Cena de li Ceneri 282
Della Causa, Principio ed Uno 282
Pantheism of Bruno 283
Bruno’s other Writings 284
General Character of his Philosophy 285
Sceptical Theory of Sanchez 286
Logic of Aconcio 286
Nizolius on the Principles of Philosophy 286
Margarita Antoniana of Pereira 287
Logic of Ramus--its Success 288
CHAPTER XIII.
HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE
FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Soto, De Justitia 289
Hooker 290
His Theory of Natural Law 290
Doubts felt by others 290
Essays of Montaigne 290
Their Characteristics 290
Writers on Morals in Italy 293
In England 293
Bacon’s Essays 293
Number of Political Writers 294
Oppression of Governments 294
And Spirit generated by it 294
Derived from Classic History 294
From their own and the Jewish 294
Franco Gallia of Hossoman 295
Vindiciæ of Languet 295
Contr’Un of Boetie 295
Buchanan, De Jure Regni 296
Poynet, on Politique Power 296
Its liberal Theory 296
Argues for Tyrannicide 297
The Tenets of Parties swayed by Circumstances 297
Similar Tenets among the Leaguers 298
Rose on the Authority of Christian States over Kings 298
Treatise of Boucher in the same Spirit 299
Answered by Barclay 299
The Jesuits adopt these Tenets 299
Mariana, De Rege 299
Popular Theories in England 300
Hooker 300
Political Memoirs 301
La Noue 301
Lipsius 301
Botero 301
His Remarks on Population 301
Paruta 302
Bodin 302
Analysis of his Treatise called the Republic 302
Authority of Heads of Families 302
Domestic Servitude 303
Origin of Commonwealths 303
Privileges of Citizens 303
Nature of Sovereign Power 304
Forms of Government 304
Despotism and Monarchy 304
Aristocracy 305
Senates and Councils of State 305
Duties of Magistrates 305
Corporations 305
Slaves, part of the State 305
Rise and Fall of States 306
Causes of Revolution 306
Astrological Fancies of Bodin 306
Danger of sudden Changes 307
Judicial Power of the Sovereign 307
Toleration of Religions 307
Influence of Climate on Government 307
Means of obviating Inequality 308
Confiscations--Rewards 308
Fortresses 308
Necessity of Good Faith 309
Census of Property 309
Public Revenues 309
Taxation 309
Adulteration of Coin 310
Superiority of Monarchy 310
Conclusion of the Work 310
Bodin compared with Aristotle and Machiavel 310
And with Montesquieu 310
Golden Age of Jurisprudence 311
Cujacius 311
Eulogies bestowed upon him 311
Cujacius, an Interpreter of Law rather than a Lawyer 312
French Lawyers below Cujacius--Govca and others 312
Opponents of the Roman Law 313
Faber of Savoy 313
Anti-Tribonianus of Hottoman 313
Civil Law not countenanced in France 314
Turamini 314
Cau Law 314
Law of Nations; its early State 314
Francis a Victoria 314
His Opinions on Public Law 315
Ayala, on the Rights of War 315
Albericus Gentilis on Embassies 316
His Treatise on the Rights of War 317
CHAPTER XIV.
HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1550 TO 1600.
General Character of Italian Poets in this Age 318
Their usual Faults 318
Their Beauties 318
Character given by Muratori 318
Poetry of Casa 318
Of Costanzo 319
Baldi 319
Caro 319
Odes of Celio Magus 319
Coldness of the Amatory Sonnets 320
Studied Imitation of Petrarch 320
Their Fondness for Description 320
Judgment of Italian Critics 320
Bernardino Rota 320
Gaspara Stampa; her Love for Collalto 321
Is ill-requited 322
Her Second Love 322
Style of Gaspara Stampa 322
La Nautica of Baldi 322
Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso 323
Satirical and burlesque Poetry; Aretin 323
Other burlesque Writers 324
Attempts at Latin Metres 324
Poetical Translations 324
Torquato Tasso 324
The Jerusalem excellent in Choice of Subject 324
Superior to Homer and Virgil in some Points 324
Its Characters 325
Excellence of its Style 325
Some Faults in it 325
Defects of the Poem 326
It indicates the peculiar Genius of Tasso 326
Tasso compared to Virgil 326
To Ariosto 326
To the Bolognese Painters 327
Poetry Cultivated under Charles and Philip 327
Luis de Leon 328
Herrera 328
General Tone of Castilian Poetry 329
Castillejo 329
Araucana of Ercilla 329
Many epic Poems in Spain 329
Camœns 330
Defects of the Lusiad 330
Its Excellencies 330
Mickle’s Translation 330
Celebrated Passage in the Lusiad 331
Minor Poems of Camœns 331
Ferreira 331
Spanish Ballads 331
French Poets numerous 332
Change in the Tone of French Poetry 333
Ronsard 333
Other French Poets 334
Du Bartas 334
Pibrac; Desportes 335
French Metre and Versification 335
General character of French Poetry 335
German Poetry 336
Paradise of Dainty Devices 336
Character of this Collection 336
Sackville’s Induction 336
Inferiority of Poets in early years of Elizabeth 337
Gascoyne 337
Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar 337
Sydney’s Character of Contemporary Poets 338
Improvement soon after this Time 338
Relaxation of Moral Austerity 339
Serious Poetry 339
Poetry of Sydney 339
Epithalanium of Spenser 340
Poems of Shakspeare 340
Daniel and Drayton 340
Nosce Teipsum of Davies 340
Satires of Hall, Marston, and Donne 341
Modulation of English Verse 341
Translations of Homer by Chapman 341
Of Tasso by Fairfax 342
Employment of Ancient Measures 342
Number of Poets in this Age 342
Scots and English Ballads 343
The Faery Queen 343
Superiority of the First Book 343
The succeeding Books 344
Spenser’s Sense of Beauty 344
Compared to Ariosto 344
Style of Spenser 345
Inferiority of the latter Books 345
Allegories of the Faery Queen 346
Blemishes in the Diction 346
Admiration of the Faery Queen 346
General Parallel of Italian and English Poetry 347
Decline of Latin Poetry in Italy 347
Compensated in other Countries 347
Lotichius 347
Collections of Latin Poetry by Gruter 348
Characters of some Gallo-Latin Poets 348
Sammarthanus 349
Belgic Poets 349
Scots Poets--Buchanan 349
CHAPTER XV.
HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Italian Tragedy 350
Pastoral Drama 351
Aminta of Tasso 351
Pastor Fido of Guarini 352
Italian Opera 352
The National Taste revives in the Spanish Drama 353
Lope de Vega 353
His Extraordinary Fertility 353
His Versification 354
His Popularity 354
Character of his Comedies 354
Tragedy of Don Sancho Ortiz 355
His Spiritual Plays 356
Numancia of Cervantes 356
French Theatre--Jodelle 357
Garnier 357
Comedies of Larivey 358
Theatres in Paris 358
English Stage 359
Gammar Gurton’s Needle 359
Gorboduc of Sackville 359
Preference given to the Irregular Form 359
First Theatres 360
Plays of Whetstone and Others 360
Marlowe and his Contemporaries 360
Tamburlaine 361
Blank Verse of Marlowe 361
Marlowe’s Jew of Malta 361
And Faustus 361
His Edward II. 361
Plays whence Henry VI. was taken 361
Peele 362
Greene 362
Other Writers of this Age 363
Heywood’s Woman Killed with Kindness 363
William Shakspeare 364
His First Writings for the Stage 364
Comedy of Errors 365
Love’s Labour Lost 365
Taming of the Shrew 365
Midsummer Night’s Dream 365
Its Machinery 366
Its Language 366
Romeo and Juliet 366
Its Plot 367
Its Beauties and Blemishes 367
The Characters 367
The Language 367
Second Period of Shakspeare 368
The Historical Plays 368
Merchant of Venice 368
As You Like It 369
Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour 369
CHAPTER XVI.
HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
Italian Writers 369
Casa 369
Tasso 370
Firenzuola 370
Character of Italian Prose 370
Italian Letter Writers 370
Davanzati’s Tacitus 371
Jordano Bruno 371
French Writers--Amyot 371
Montaigne; Du Vair 371
Satire Menippée 372
English Writers 372
Ascham 372
Euphues of Lilly 373
Its Popularity 373
Sydney’s Arcadia 374
His Defence of Poesie 374
Hooker 374
Character of Elizabethan Writers 374
State of Criticism 375
Scaliger’s Poetics 375
His Preference of Virgil to Homer 375
His Critique on Modern Latin Poets 376
Critical Influence of the Academics 376
Dispute of Caro and Castelvetro 377
Castelvetro on Aristotle’s Poetics 377
Severity of Castelvetro’s Criticism 377
Ercolano of Varchi 378
Controversy about Dante 378
Academy of Florence 378
Salviati’s Attack on Tasso 379
Pinciano’s Art of Poetry 379
French Treatises of Criticism 379
Wilson’s Art of Rhetorique 379
Gascoyne; Webbe 380
Puttenham’s Art of Poesie 380
Sydney’s Defence of Poesy 380
Novels of Bandello 380
Of Cinthio 381
Of the Queen of Navarre 381
Spanish Romances of Chivalry 381
Diana of Monte-Mayor 382
Novels in the Picaresque Style 382
Guzman d’Alfarache 382
Las Guerras de Granada 383
Sydney’s Arcadia 383
Its Character 383
Inferiority of other English Fictions 384
CHAPTER XVII.
HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE FROM 1500 TO 1600.
Tartaglia and Cardan 385
Algebra of Pelletier 385
Record’s Whetstone of Wit 385
Vieta 385
His Discoveries 386
Geometers of this Period 388
Joachim Rhœticus 388
Copernican Theory 388
Tycho Brahe 389
His System 389
Gregorian Calendar 390
Optics 390
Mechanics 390
Statics of Stevinus 391
Hydrostatics 392
Gilbert on the Magnet 392
Gesner’s Zoology 392
Its Character by Cuvier 392
Gesner’s Arrangement 393
His Additions to known Quadrupeds 393
Belon 394
Salviani and Rondelet’s Ichthyology 394
Aldrovandus 394
Botany--Turner 395
Maranta--Botanical Gardens 395
Gesner 396
Dodœns 396
Lobel 396
Clusius 396
Cæsalpin 396
Dalechamps--Bauhin 397
Gerard’s Herbal 397
Anatomy--Fallopius 397
Eustachius 397
Coiter 398
Columbus 398
Circulation of the Blood 398
Medicinal Science 398
Syriac Version of New Testament 399
Hebrew Critics 399
Its Study in England 399
Arabic begins to be Studied 399
Collection of Voyages by Ramusio 400
Curiosity they awakened 400
Other Voyages 401
Accounts of China 401
India and Russia 401
English Discoveries in the Northern Seas 401
Geographical Books--Ortelius 401
Guicciardini 402
French Memoirs 403
Universities in Italy 403
In other Countries 403
Libraries 403
Collections of Antiquities in Italy 404
Pinelli 404
Italian Academies 405
Society of Antiquaries in England 405
New Books and Catalogues of them 406
Literary Correspondence 406
Bibliographical Works 406
Restraints on the Press 407
Index Expurgatorius 407
Its Effects 407
Restrictions in England 407
Latin more employed on this account 408
Influence of Literature 408
CHAPTER XVIII.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Learning of 17th Century less Philological 409
Popularity of Comenius 409
Decline of Greek Learning 410
Casaubon 410
Viger de Idiotismis 411
Weller’s Greek Grammar 411
Labbe and Others 411
Salmasius de Lingua Hellenistica 412
Greek Editions--Savile’s Chrysostom 412
Greek Learning in England 413
Latin Editions--Torrentius 413
Gruter 413
Heinsius 413
Grotius 414
Rutgersius--Reinesius--Barthius 414
Other Critics--English 414
Salmasius 415
Good Writers of Latin 415
Scioppius 416
His Philosophical Grammar 416
His Infamia Famiani 416
Judicium de Stylo Historico 416
Gerard Vossius, de Vitiis Sermonis 417
His Aristarchus 417
Progress of Latin Style 418
Gruter’s Collection of Inscriptions 418
Assisted by Scaliger 419
Works on Roman Antiquity 419
Geography of Cluversius 420
Meursius 420
Ubbo Emmius 420
Chronology of Lydiat--Calvisius 420
Petavius 421
Character of this Work 421
CHAPTER XIX.
HISTORY Of THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Temporal Supremacy of Rome 422
Contest with Venice 423
Father Paul Sarpi 423
History of Council of Trent 424
Gallican Liberties--Richter 424
Perron 425
Decline of Papal Power 425
Unpopularity of the Jesuits 426
Richelieu’s Care of Gallican Liberties 426
Controversy of Catholics and Protestants 426
Increased respect for the Fathers 426
Especially in England--Laud 427
Defections to the Catholic Church 427
Wavering of Casaubon 428
And of Grotius 429
Calixtus 434
His Attempts at Concord 434
High Church Party in England 435
Daillé on the Right Use of the Fathers 435
Chillingworth’s Religion of Protestants 436
Character of this Work 436
Hales on Schism 438
Controversies on Grace and Free will--Augustinian Scheme 438
Semi-pelagian Hypothesis 439
Tenets of the Reformers 439
Rise of Arminianism 440
Episcopius 440
His Writings 440
Their Spirit and Tendency 440
Great Latitude allowed by them 441
Progress of Arminianism 441
Cameron 441
Rise of Jansenism 441
Socinus--Volkelius 442
Crellius--Ruarus 442
Erastianism maintained by Hooker 443
And Grotius 444
His Treatise on Ecclesiastical Power of the State 444
Remark upon this Theory 446
Toleration of Religious Tenets 446
Claimed by the Arminians 446
By the Independents 447
And by Jeremy Taylor 447
His Liberty of Prophesying 447
Boldness of his Doctrines 447
His Notions of Uncertainty in Theological Tenets 448
His low Opinion of the Fathers 448
Difficulty of Finding out Truth 449
Grounds of Toleration 449
Inconsistency of One Chapter 450
His General Defence of Toleration 450
Effect of this Treatise 451
Its Defects 451
Great Erudition of this Period 452
Usher--Petavius 452
Sacred Criticism 452
Grotius--Coccejus 452
English Commentators 453
Style of Preaching 453
English Sermons 453
Of Donne 454
Of Jeremy Taylor 454
Devotional Writings of Taylor and Hall 454
In the Roman 455
And Lutheran Church 455
Infidelity of some Writers--Charron--Vanini 455
Lord Herbert of Cherbury 456
Grotius de Veritate 457
English Translation of the Bible 457
Its Style 457
CHAPTER XX.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Subjects of this Chapter 458
Aristotelians and Ramists 458
No improvement till near the End of the Century 459
Methods of the Universities 459
Scholastic Writers 459
Treatises on Logic 460
Campanella 460
His Theory taken from Telesio 460
Notion of Universal Sensibility 461
His Imagination and Eloquence 461
His Works Published by Admai 462
Basson 463
Berigard 463
Magnen 463
Paracelsists 463
And Theosophists 463
Fludd 464
Jacob Behmen 464
Lord Herbert de Veritate 464
His Axioms 465
Conditions of Truth 465
Instinctive Truths 466
Internal Perceptions 466
Five Notions of Natural Religion 466
Remarks of Gassendi on Herbert 467
Gassendi’s Defence of Epicurus 468
His chief Works after 1650 468
Preparation for the Philosophy of Lord Bacon 468
His Plan of Philosophy 468
Time of its Conception 469
Instauratio Magna 470
First Part--Partitiones Scientiarum 470
Second Part--Novum Organum 470
Third Part--Natural History 470
Fourth Part--Scala Intellectûs 471
Fifth Part--Anticipationes Philosophiæ 471
Sixth Part--Philosophia Secunda 471
Course of studying Lord Bacon 472
Nature of the Baconian Induction 472
His Dislike of Aristotle 474
His Method much required 474
Its Objects 474
Sketch of the Treatise De Augmentis 474
History 474
Poetry 475
Fine Passage on Poetry 475
Natural Theology and Metaphysics 475
Form of Bodies might sometimes be inquired into 475
Final Causes too much slighted 476
Man not included by him in Physics 476
Man--in Body and Mind 476
Logic 476
Extent given it by Bacon 476
Grammar and Rhetoric 477
Ethics 477
Politics 477
Theology 478
Desiderata enumerated by him 478
Novum Organum--First Book 478
Fallacies--Idola 478
Confounded with Idols 478
Second Book of Novum Organum 479
Confidence of Bacon 479
Almost justified of late 480
But should be kept within Bounds 481
Limits to our Knowledge by Sense 481
Inductive Logic--whether confined to Physics 481
Baconian Philosophy built on Observation and Experiment 482
Advantages of the latter 482
Sometimes applicable to Philosophy of Human Mind 483
Less so to Politics and Morals 483
Induction less conclusive on these Subjects 483
Reasons for this Difference 484
Considerations on the other Side 484
Result of the whole 485
Bacon’s Aptitude for Moral Subjects 486
Comparison of Bacon and Galileo 487
His Prejudice against Mathematics 488
Bacon’s Excess of Wit 488
Fame of Bacon on the Continent 489
Early Life of Descartes 491
His beginning to philosophise 491
He retires to Holland 491
His Publications 492
He begins by doubting all 492
His First Step in Knowledge 492
His Mind not Sceptical 493
He arrives at more Certainty 493
His Proof of a Deity 493
Another Proof of it 494
His Deductions from this 494
Primary and Secondary Qualities 495
Objections made to his Meditations 495
Theory of Memory and Imagination 496
Seat of Soul in Pineal Gland 497
Gassendi’s Attacks on the Meditations 497
Superiority of Descartes 497
Stewart’s Remarks on Descartes 498
Paradoxes of Descartes 499
His Just Notions and Definitions 500
His Notion of Substances 501
Not Quite Correct 501
His Notions of Intuitive Truth 501
Treatise on Art of Logic 502
Merits of his Writings 502
His Notions of Free will 502
Fame of his System, and Attacks upon it 503
Controversy with Voet 503
Charges of Plagiarism 504
Recent Increase of his Fame 505
Metaphysical Treatises of Hobbes 505
His Theory of Sensation 506
Coincident with Descartes 506
Imagination and Memory 506
Discourse or Train of Imagination 507
Experience 507
Unconceivableness of Infinity 507
Origin of Language 508
His Political Theory interferes 508
Necessity of Speech exaggerated 509
Use of Names 509
Names Universal not Realities 509
How imposed 510
The Subject continued 510
Names differently imposed 511
Knowledge 511
Reasoning 512
False Reasoning 512
Its frequency 513
Knowledge of Fact not derived from Reasoning 514
Belief 514
Chart of Science 515
Analysis of Passions 515
Good and Evil relative Terms 515
His Paradoxes 515
His Notion of Love 516
Curiosity 516
Difference of Intellectual Capacities 516
Wit and Fancy 517
Differences in the Passions 517
Madness 517
Unmeaning Language 517
Manners 517
Ignorances and Prejudice 518
His Theory of Religion 518
Its supposed Sources 518
CHAPTER XXI.
HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE
FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Casuistical Writers 521
Importance of Confession 521
Necessity of Rules for the Confessor 521
Increase of Casuistical Literature 521
Distinction of subjective and objective Morality 522
Directory Office of the Confessor 522
Difficulties of Casuistry 522
Strict and Lax Schemes of it 523
Convenience of the latter 523
Favoured by the Jesuits 523
The Causes of this 523
Extravagance of the strict Casuists 524
Opposite Faults of Jesuits 524
Suarez, De Legibus 524
Titles of his Ten Books 524
Heads of the Second Book 525
Character of such Scholastic Treatises 525
Quotations of Suarez 525
His Definition of Eternal Law 526
Whether God is a Legislator 526
Whether God could permit or commend wrong Actions 527
English Casuists--Perkins--Hall 527
Selden, De Jure Naturali Juxta Hebræos 528
Jewish Theory of Natural Law 528
Seven Precepts of the Sons of Noah 528
Character of Selden’s Work 528
Grotius and Hobbes 528
Charron on Wisdom 529
La Mothe le Vayer--his Dialogues 529
Bacon’s Essays 529
Their Excellence 530
Feltham’s Resolves 530
Browne’s Religio Medici 531
Selden’s Table Talk 532
Osborn’s Advice to his Son 532
John Valentine Andrax 532
Abandonment of Anti-Monarchical Theories 533
Political Literature becomes historical 533
Bellenden De Statu 534
Campanella’s Politics 534
La Mothe le Vayer 534
Naude’s Coups d’Etat 534
Patriarchal Theory of Government 534
Refuted by Suarez 535
His Opinion of Law 535
Bacon 536
Political Economy 536
Serra on the Means of obtaining Money without Mines 537
His Causes of Wealth 537
His Praise of Venice 537
Low Rate of Exchange not essential to wealth 587
Hobbes.--His Political Works 538
Analysis of his Three Treatises 538
Civil Jurists of this period 543
Suarez on Laws 544
Grotius--De Jure Belli et Pacis 544
Success of this Work 544
Its Originality 545
Its Motive and Object 545
His Authorities 545
Foundation of Natural Law 546
Positive Law 546
Perfect and Imperfect Rights 546
Lawful Cases of War 546
Resistance by Subjects unlawful 547
All Men naturally have Right of War 547
Right of Self-Defence 548
Its Origin and Limitations 548
Right of Occupancy 549
Relinquishment of it 549
Right over Persons--By Generation 549
By Consent 549
In Marriage 549
In Commonwealths 549
Right of Alienating Subjects 549
Alienation by Testament 550
Rights of Property by Positive Law 550
Extinction of Rights 550
Some Casuistical Questions 550
Promises 550
Contracts 551
Considered ethically 551
Promissory Oaths 552
Engagements of Kings towards Subjects 552
Public Treaties 552
Their Interpretation 553
Obligation to repair Injury 553
Rights by Law of Nations 554
Those of Ambassadors 554
Right of Sepulture 554
Punishments 554
Their Responsibility 555
Insufficient Causes of War 556
Duty of avoiding it 556
And Expediency 556
War for the sake of other Subjects 556
Allies 556
Strangers 556
None to Serve in an Unjust War 556
Rights in War 557
Use of Deceit 557
Rules and Customs of Nations 557
Reprisals 557
Declarations of War 557
Rights by law of nations over Enemies 558
Prisoners become Slaves 558
Rights of Postliminium 558
Moral Limitation of Rights in War 558
Moderation required as to spoil 559
And as to Prisoners 559
Also in Conquest 559
And in Restitution to right Owners 559
Promises to Enemies and Pirates 559
Treaties concluded by competent Authority 560
Matters relating to them 561
Truces and Conventions 561
Those of Private persons 561
Objections to Grotius made by Paley unreasonable 561
Reply of Mackintosh 561
Censures of Stewart 562
Answer to them 562
Grotius vindicated against Rousseau 565
His Arrangement 565
His Defects 565
CHAPTER XXII.
HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Low Estimation of the Seicentisti 566
Not quite so great as formerly 566
Praise of them by Rubbi 566
Also by Salfi 566
Adone of Marini 567
Its Character 567
And Popularity 567
Secchia Rapita of Tassoni 568
Chiabrera 569
His Followers 569
The Styles of Spanish Poetry 570
The Romances 570
The Brothers Argensola 570
Villegas 571
Quevedo 571
Defects of Taste in Spanish Verse 571
Pedantry and far-fetched Allusions 572
Gongora 572
The Schools formed by him 573
Malherbe 573
Criticisms upon his Poetry 574
Satires of Regnier 574
Racan--Maynard 574
Voiture 574
Sarrasin 575
Low state of German Literature 575
Literary Societies 575
Opitz 575
His Followers 576
Dutch Poetry 576
Spiegel 576
Hooft-Cats-Vondel 577
Danish Poetry 577
English Poets numerous in this age 577
Phineas Fletcher 577
Giles Fletcher 578
Philosophical Poetry 578
Lord Brooke 578
Denham’s Cooper’s Hill 579
Poets called Metaphysical 579
Donne 580
Crashaw 580
Cowley 580
Johnson’s Character of him 580
Narrative Poets--Daniel 580
Drayton’s Polyolbion 581
Browne’s Britannia’s Pastorals 581
Sir John Beaumont 582
Davenant’s Gondibert 582
Sonnets of Shakspeare 582
The person whom they address 583
Sonnets of Drummond and others 584
Carew 584
Ben Jonson 585
Wither 585
Habington 585
Earl of Pembroke 585
Suckling 586
Lovelace 586
Herrick 586
Milton 586
His Comus 586
Lycidas 587
Allegro and Penseroso 587
Ode on the Nativity 588
His Sonnets 588
Anonymous Poetry 588
Latin Poets of France 588
In Germany and Italy 588
In Holland--Heinsius 589
Casimir Sarbievius 589
Barlæus 589
Balde--Greek Poems of Heinsius 590
Latin Poets of Scotland--Jonston’s Psalms 590
Owen’s Epigrams 590
Alabaster’s Roxana 590
May’s Supplement to Lucan 590
Milton’s Latin Poems 591
CHAPTER XXIII.
HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Decline of the Italian Theatre 591
Filli de Sciro 592
Translations of Spanish Dramas 592
Extemporaneous Comedy 593
Spanish Stage 593
Calderon--Number of his Pieces 593
His Comedies 593
La Vida es Sueno 594
A Secreto agravio secreta vengança 595
Style of Calderon 595
His Merits sometimes overrated 596
Plays of Hardy 596
The Cid 597
Style of Corneille 598
Les Horaces 598
Cimia 598
Polyeucte 599
Rodogune 599
Pompey 599
Heraclius 599
Nicomède 600
Faults and Beauties of Corneille 600
Le Menteur 600
Other French Tragedies 600
Wenceslas of Rotron 600
Popularity of the Stage under Elizabeth 601
Number of Theatres 601
Encouraged by James 601
General Taste for the Stage 601
Theatres closed by the Parliament 602
Shakspeare’s Twelfth Night 602
Merry Wives of Windsor 603
Measure for Measure 604
Lear 604
Timon of Athens 604
Pericles 605
His Roman Tragedies--Julius Cæsar 606
Antony and Cleopatra 606
Coriolanus 606
His Retirement and Death 607
Greatness of his Genius 607
His Judgment 607
His Obscurity 608
His Popularity 608
Critics on Shakspeare 609
Ben Jonson 609
The Alchemist 609
Volpone, or The Fox 610
The Silent Woman 610
Sad Shepherd 611
Beaumont and Fletcher 611
Corrupt State of their Text 611
The Maid’s Tragedy 611
Philaster 612
King and no King 613
The Elder Brother 613
The Spanish Curate 613
The Custom of the Country 613
The Loyal Subject 613
Beggar’s Bush 613
The Scornful Lady 614
Valentinian 614
The Two Noble Kinsmen 615
The Faithful Shepherdess 615
Rule a Wife, and have a Wife 616
Some other Plays 616
Origin of Fletcher’s Plays 616
Defects of their plots 616
Their Sentiments and Style Dramatic 617
Their Characters 617
Their Tragedies 617
Inferior to their Comedies 618
Their Female Characters 618
Massinger--Nature of his Dramas 619
His Delineations of Character 619
His Subjects 619
Beauty of His Style 620
Inferiority of his Comic Powers 620
Some of his Tragedies particularized 620
And of his other Plays 620
Ford 621
Shirley 621
Heywood 622
Webster 622
His Duchess of Malfy 622
Vittoria Corombona 622
CHAPTER XXIV.
HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Decline of Taste in Italy 623
Style of Galileo 624
Bentivoglio 624
Boccalini’s News from Parnassus 624
His Pietra del Paragone 625
Terrante Pallavicino 625
Dictionary Delia Crusca 625
Grammatical Works--Buonmattei--Bartoli 626
Tassoni’s Remarks on Petrarch 626
Galileo’s Remarks on Tasso 626
Sforza Pallavicino 626
And other Critical Writers 626
Prolusiones of Strada 627
Spanish Prose--Gracian 627
French Prose--Du Vair 627
Balzac 628
Character of his Writings 628
His Letters 628
Voiture--Hotel Rambouillet 629
Establishment of French Academy 630
Its objects and Constitution 630
It publishes a Critique on the Cid 631
Vaugelas’s Remarks on the French Language 631
La Mothe le Vayer 632
Legal Speeches of Patru 632
And of Le Maistre 632
Improvement in English Style 633
Earl of Essex 633
Knolles’s History of the Turks 634
Raleigh’s History of the World 635
Daniel’s History of England 635
Bacon 635
Milton 636
Clarendon 636
The Icon Basilice 636
Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy 637
Earle’s Characters 637
Overbury’s Characters 637
Jonson’s Discoveries 637
Publication of Don Quixote 638
Its Reputation 638
New Views of its Design 638
Probably erroneous 638
Difference between the two Parts 639
Excellence of this Romance 639
Minor Novels of Cervantes 639
Other Novels--Spanish 639
And Italian 639
French Romances--Astrée 639
Heroic Romances--Gomberville 640
Calprenède 640
Scuderi 641
Argenis of Barclay 641
His Euphormis 643
Campanella’s City of the Sun 643
Few Books of Fiction in England 643
Mundus Alter et Idem of Hall 644
Godwin’s Journey to the Moon 644
Howell’s Dodona’s Grove 644
Adventures of Baron de Fænesle 644
CHAPTER XXV.
HISTORY OF MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
State of Science in 16th Century 645
Tediousness of Calculations 645
Napier’s Invention of Logarithms 645
Their Nature 645
Property of Numbers discovered by Stifelius 645
Extended to Magnitudes 646
By Napier 646
Tables of Napier and Briggs 646
Kepler’s New Geometry 647
Its Difference from the Ancient 647
Adopted by Galileo 648
Extended by Cavalieri 648
Applied to the Ratios of Solids 648
Problem of the Cycloid 648
Progress of Algebra 649
Briggs--Girard 649
Harriott 649
Descartes 650
His Application of Algebra to Curves 650
Suspected Plagiarism from Harriot 650
Fermat 651
Algebraic Geometry not successful at first 652
Astronomy--Kepler 652
Conjectures as to Comets 652
Galileo’s Discovery of Jupiter’s Satellites 653
Other Discoveries by him 653
Spots of the Sun discovered 653
Copernican System held by Galileo 654
His Dialogues, and Persecution 654
Descartes alarmed by this 655
Progress of Copernican System 655
Descartes denies General Gravitation 655
Cartesian Theory of the World 655
Transits of Mercury and Venus 656
Laws of Mechanics 656
Statics of Galileo 657
His Dynamics 657
Mechanics of Descartes 658
Law of Motion laid down by Descartes 658
Also those of Compound Forces 659
Other Discoveries in Mechanics 659
In Hydrostatics and Pneumatics 659
Optics--Discoveries of Kepler 660
Invention of the Telescope 660
Of the Microscope 660
Antonio de Dominis 660
Dioptrics of Descartes--Law of Refraction 661
Disputed by Fermat 661
Curves of Descartes 661
Theory of the Rainbow 661
CHAPTER XXVI.
HISTORY OF SOME OTHER PROVINCES OF LITERATURE FROM 1600 TO 1650.
Aldrovandus 662
Clusius 662
Rio and Marcgraf 662
Jonston 662
Fabricius on the Language of Brutes 663
Botany--Columna 664
John and Gaspar Bauhin 664
Parkinson 664
Valves of the Veins discovered 665
Theory of the Blood’s Circulation 665
Sometimes ascribed to Servetus 665
To Columbus 666
And to Cæsalpin 666
Generally unknown before Harvey 667
His Discovery 667
Unjustly doubted to be Original 667
Harvey’s Treatise on Generation 668
Lacteals discovered by Asellius 668
Optical Discoveries of Scheiner 669
Medicine--Van Helmont 669
Diffusion of Hebrew 669
Language not studied in the best method 669
The Buxtorfs 670
Vowel Points rejected by Cappel 670
Hebrew Scholars 671
Chaldee and Syriac 671
Arabic 671
Erpenius 671
Golius 671
Other Eastern Languages 672
Purchas’s Pilgrim 672
Olearius and Pietro della Valle 672
Lexicon of Ferrari 672
Maps of Blaew 672
Davila and Bentivoglio 673
Mendoza’s Wars of Granada 673
Mezeray 673
English Historians 673
English Histories 673
Universities 673
Bodleian Library founded 674
Casaubon’s Account of Oxford 674
Catalogue of Bodleian Library 674
Continental Libraries 675
Italian Academies 675
The Lincei 675
Prejudice for Antiquity diminished 676
Browne’s Vulgar Errors 677
Life and Character of Peiresc 677
CHAPTER XXVII.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
James Frederic Gronovius 678
James Gronovius 679
Grævius 679
Isaac Vossius 679
Decline of German Learning 679
Spanheim 679
Jesuit Colleges in France 679
Port-Royal Writers--Lancelot 679
Latin Writers--Perizonius 680
Delphin Editions 680
Le Fevre and the Daciers 680
Henry Valois--Complaints of Decay of Learning 680
English Learning--Duport 681
Greek not much studied 681
Gataker’s Cinnus and Antoninus 681
Stanley’sÆschylus 682
Other English Philologers 682
Bentley 682
His Epistle to Mill 682
Dissertation on Phalaris 682
Disadvantages of Scholars in that Age 683
Thesauri of Grævius and of Gronovius 683
Fabretti 684
Numismatics, Spanheim--Vaillant 684
Chronology--Usher 684
Pezron 685
Marsham 685
CHAPTER XXVIII.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Decline of Papal Influence 685
Dispute of Louis XIV. with Innocent XI. 686
Four Articles of 1682 686
Dupin on the ancient Discipline 686
Dupin’s Ecclesiastical Library 687
Fleury’s Ecclesiastical History 687
His Dissertations 687
Protestant Controversy in France 688
Bossuet’s Exposition of Catholic Faith 688
His Conference with Claude 688
Correspondence with Molanus and Leibnitz 689
His Variations of Protestant Churches 690
Anglican Writings against Popery 690
Taylor’s Dissuasive 690
Barrow--Stillingfleet 690
Jansenius 691
Condemnation of his Augustinus in France 691
And at Rome 691
The Jansenists take a Distinction 692
And are Persecuted 692
Progress of Arminianism 692
Courcelles 693
Limborch 693
Le Clerc 693
Sancroft’s Fur Prædestinatus 693
Arminianism in England 694
Bull’s Harmonia Apostolica 694
Hammond--Locke--Wilkins 694
Socinians in England 695
Bull’s Defensio Fidei Nicenæ 695
Not Satisfactory to all 695
Mystics 696
Fenelon 696
Change in the Character of Theological Literature 696
Freedom of many Writings 696
Thoughts of Pascal 697
Vindications of Christianity 699
Progress of Tolerant Principles 700
Bayle’s Philosophical Commentary 700
Locke’s Letter on Toleration 700
French Sermons 701
Bourdaloue 701
Compared with Bossuet 702
Funeral Discourses of Bossuet 702
Fléchier 703
English Sermons--Barrow 703
South 704
Tillotson 704
Expository Theology 704
Pearson on the Creed 704
Simon’s Critical Histories 705
CHAPTER XXIX.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Aristotelian Metaphysics 705
Their Decline. Thomas White 706
Logic 706
Stanley’s History of Philosophy 707
Gale’s Court of Gentiles 707
Cudworth’s Intellectual System 707
Its object 708
Sketch of it 708
His plastic nature 708
His account of old Philosophy 708
His Arguments against Atheism 709
More 709
Gassendi 710
His Logic 710
His Theory of Ideas 710
And of the Nature of the Soul 710
Distinguishes Ideas of Reflection 711
Also Intellect from Imagination 711
His Philosophy misunderstood by Stewart 712
Bernier’s Epitome of Gassendi 713
Process of Cartesian Philosophy 713
La Forge--Regis 714
Huet’s Censure of Cartesianism 715
Port-Royal Logic 716
Malebranche 717
His Style 717
Sketch of his Theory 717
Character of Malebranche 724
Compared with Pascal 724
Arnauld on True and False ideas 725
Norris 725
Pascal 725
Spinosa’s Ethics 726
Its general Originality 726
View of his Metaphysical Theory 727
Spinosa’s Theory of action and Passion 731
Character of Spinosism 732
Glanvil’s Scepsis Scientifica 733
His Plus Ultra 734
Dalgarno 735
Wilkins 736
Locke on Human Understanding 736
Its merits 736
Its Defects 737
Origin of Ideas according to Locke 737
Vague Use of the Word Idea 738
An Error as to Geometrical Figure 739
His Notions as to the Soul 740
And its Immateriality 740
His Love of Truth and Originality 741
Defended in two cases 742
His View of Lunatic Ideas 742
General Praise 743
Locke’s Conduct of Understanding 743
CHAPTER XXX.
HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE
FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Casuistry of the Jesuits 744
Pascal’s Provincial Letters 744
Their Truth questioned by some 744
Taylor’s Ductor Dubitantium 745
Its Character and Defects 745
Cudworth’s immutable Morality 745
Nicole--La Placette 746
Other Writers 746
Moral System of Spinosa 746
Cumberland’s De Legibus Naturæ 747
Analysis of Prolegomena 748
His Theory expanded afterwards 749
Remarks on Cumberland’s Theory 752
Puffendorf’s Law of Nature and Nations 753
Analysis of this Work 754
Puffendorf and Paley compared 757
Rochefoucault 757
La Bruyère 758
Education--Milton’s Tractrate 758
Locke on Education--Its merits 759
And Defects 759
Fenelon on Female Education 761
Puffendorf’s Theory of Politics 762
Politics of Spinosa 764
His Theory of a Monarchy 766
Amelot de la Houssaye 766
Harrington’s Oceana 766
Patriarcha of Filmer 767
Sydney’s Discourses on Government 767
Locke on Government 768
Observations on this Treatise 771
Avis auz Refugiéz, perhaps by Bayle 772
Political Economist’s 772
Mun on Foreign Trade 773
Child on Trade 773
Locke on the Coin 773
Statistical Tracts 774
Works of Leibnitz on Roman Law 775
Civil Jurists--Godefroy--Domat 775
Noodt of Usury 776
Law of Nations--Puffendorf 776
CHAPTER XXXI.
HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Improved Tone of Italian Poetry 776
Filicaja 777
Guidi 777
Menzini 778
Salvator Rosa--Redi 778
Other Poets 778
Christina’s Patronage of Letters 778
Society of Arcadians 778
La Fontaine 779
Character of his Fables 779
Boileau: His Epistles 780
His Art of Poetry 780
Comparison with Horace 780
The Lutrin 780
General Character of his Poetry 780
Lyric Poetry lighter than before 781
Benserade 781
Chaulieu 781
Pastoral Poetry 781
Segrais 781
Deshouliéres 781
Fontenelle 782
Bad Epic Poems 782
German Poetry 782
Waller 782
Butler’s Hudibras 783
Paradise Lost--Choice of Subject 783
Open to some Difficulties 783
Its Arrangement 783
Characters of Adam and Eve 784
He owes less to Homer than the Tragedians 784
Compared with Dante 784
Elevation of his Style 785
His Blindness 786
His Passion for Music 786
Faults in Paradise Lost 786
Its Progress to Fame 786
Paradise Regained 787
Samson Agonistes 787
Dryden--His earlier Poems 787
Absalom and Achitophel 788
Mac Flecknoe 788
The Hind and Panther 789
Its Singular Fable 789
Its Reasoning 789
The Fables 789
His Odes--Alexander’s Feast 790
His Translation of Virgil 790
Decline of Poetry from the Restoration 790
Some Minor Poets enumerated 790
Latin Poets of Italy 791
Ceva 791
Sergardi 791
Of France--Quillet 791
Menage 792
Rapin on Gardens 792
Santeul 793
Latin Poetry in England 793
CHAPTER XXXII.
HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Italian and Spanish Drama 793
Racine’s first Tragedies 793
Andromaque 794
Britannicus 795
Berenice 795
Bajazet 795
Mithridate 796
Iphigénie 796
Phédre 797
Esther 797
Athalie 797
Racine’s Female Characters 798
Racine compared with Corneille 798
Beauty of his Style 798
Thomas Corneille--His Ariane 799
Manlius of La Fosse 799
Molière 799
L’Avare 799
L’Ecole des Femmes 800
Le Misanthrope 800
Les Femmes Savantes 801
Tartuffe 801
Bourgeois Gentilhomme--George Dandin 801
Character of Molière 802
Les Plaideurs of Racine 802
Regnard--Le Joueur 802
His Other Plays 803
Quinault--Boursault 803
Dancourt 803
Brueys 804
Operas of Quinault 804
Revival of the English Theatre 804
Change of Public Taste 804
Its Causes 805
Heroic Tragedies of Dryden 805
His later Tragedies 805
Don Sebastian 806
Spanish Friar 806
Otway 806
Southern 807
Lee 807
Congreve 807
Comedies of Charles II.’s Reign 807
Wycherley 808
Improvement after the Revolution 808
Congreve 808
Love for Love 808
His other Comedies 808
Farquhar--Vanbrugh 809
CHAPTER XXXIII.
HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Low State of Literature in Italy 809
Crescimbeni 810
Age of Louis XIV. in France 810
Fontenelle--his Character 810
His Dialogues of the Dead 811
Those of Fenelon 811
Fontenelle’s Plurality of Worlds 811
His History of Oracles 811
St. Evremond 812
Madame de Sevigné 812
The French Academy 812
French Grammars 813
Bouhour’s Entretiens d’Ariste et d’Eugène 813
Attacked by Barbier d’Ancour 814
La Manière de Bien Penser 815
Rapin’s Reflections on Eloquence and Poetry 815
His Parallel’s of Great Men 815
Bossu on Epic Poetry 816
Fontenelle’s Critical Writings 816
Preference of French Language to Latin 816
General Superiority of Ancients disputed 816
Charles Perrault 816
Fontenelle 817
Boileau’s Defence of Antiquity 817
First Reviews--Journal des Sçavans 817
Reviews Established by Bayle 818
Reviews Established by Le Clerc 818
Leipsic Acts 819
Bayle’s Thoughts on the Comet 819
His Dictionary 819
Baillet--Morhof 820
The Ana 820
English Style in this Period 820
Hobbes 821
Cowley 821
Evelyn 821
Dryden 821
His Essay on Dramatic Poesy 822
Improvements in his Style 823
His Critical Character 823
Rymer on Tragedy 823
Sir William Temple’s Essays 824
Style of Locke 824
Sir George Mackenzie’s Essays 824
Andrew Fletcher 824
Walton’s Complete Angler 824
Wilkins’ New World 824
Antiquity defended by Temple 825
Wotton’s Reflection’s 825
Quevedo’s Visions 825
French Heroic Romances 826
Novels of Madame La Fayette 826
Scarron’s Roman Comique 826
Cyrano de Bergerac 827
Segrais 827
Perrault 827
Hamilton 827
Télémaque of Fenelon 827
Deficiency of English Romances 828
Pilgrim’s Progress 828
Turkish Spy 829
Chiefly of English Origin 830
Swift’s Tale of a Tub 831
CHAPTER XXXIV.
HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND OTHER LITERATURE FROM 1650 TO 1700.
Reasons for omitting Mathematics 831
Academy del Cimento 831
Royal Society 832
Academy of Sciences at Paris 832
State of Chemistry 832
Becker 833
Boyle 833
His Metaphysical Works 833
Extract from one of them 833
His Merits in Physics and Chemistry 834
General Character of Boyle 834
Of Hooke and Others 834
Lemery 835
Slow Progress of Zoology 835
Before Ray 835
His Synopsis of Quadrupeds 835
Merits of this Work 835
Redi 836
Swammerdam 836
Lister 836
Comparative Anatomy 836
Botany 837
Jungius 837
Morison 837
Ray 837
Rivinus 838
Tournefort 838
Vegetable Physiology 839
Grew 839
His Anatomy of Plants 840
He discovers the Sexual System 840
Camerarius confirms this 840
Predecessors of Grew 840
Malpighi 840
Early Notions of Geology 840
Burnet’s Theory of Earth 840
Other Geologists 841
Protogæa of Leibnitz 841
Circulation of Blood Established 842
Willis--Vieussens 842
Malpighi 842
Other Anatomists 842
Medical Theories 843
Polyglott of Walton 843
Hottinger 844
Spencer 844
Bochart 844
Pococke 844
D’Herbelot 844
Hyde 844
Maps of the Sansons 844
De Lisle’s Map of the World 845
Voyages and Travels 845
Historians 845
De Solis 845
Memoirs of De Retz 845
Bossuet on Universal History 846
English Historical Works 846
Burnet 846
General Character of 17th Century 846
Conclusion 847
PREFACE.
The advantages of such a synoptical view of literature as displays its
various departments in their simultaneous condition through an extensive
period, and in their mutual dependency, seem too manifest to be
disputed. And, as we possess little of this kind in our own language, I
have been induced to undertake that to which I am in some respects, at
least, very unequal, but which no more capable person, as far as I could
judge, was likely to perform. In offering to the public this
introduction to the literary history of three centuries--for I cannot
venture to give it a title of more pretension--it is convenient to state
my general secondary sources of information, exclusive of the
acquaintance I possess with original writers; and, at the same time, by
showing what has already been done, and what is left undone, to furnish
a justification of my own undertaking.
The history of literature belongs to modern, and chiefly to almost
recent times. The nearest approach to it that the ancients have left us
is contained in a single chapter of Quintilian, the first of the tenth
book, wherein he passes rapidly over the names and characters of the
poets, orators, and historians of Greece and Rome. This, however, is but
a sketch; and the valuable work of Diogenes Laertius preserves too
little of chronological order to pass for a history of ancient
philosophy, though it has supplied much of the materials for all that
has been written on the subject.
In the sixteenth century, the great increase of publications, and the
devotion to learning which distinguished that period, might suggest the
scheme of a universal literary history. Conrad Gesner, than whom no one,
by extent and variety of erudition, was more fitted for the labour,
appears to have framed a plan of this kind. What he has published, the
Bibliotheca Universalis, and the Pandectæ Universales, are, taken
together, the materials that might have been thrown into an historical
form; the one being an alphabetical catalogue of authors and their
writings; the other a digested and minute index to all departments of
knowledge, in twenty-one books, each divided into titles, with short
references to the texts of works on every head in his comprehensive
classification. The order of time is therefore altogether disregarded.
Possevin, an Italian Jesuit, made somewhat a nearer approach to this in
his Bibliotheca Selecta, published at Rome in 1593. Though his
partitions are rather encyclopædic than historical, and his method,
especially in the first volume, is chiefly argumentative, he gives under
each chapter a nearly chronological catalogue of authors, and sometimes
a short account of their works.
Lord Bacon, in the second book De Augmentis Scientiarum, might justly
deny, notwithstanding these defective works of the preceding century,
that any real history of letters had been written; and he
compares that of the world, wanting this, to a statue of Polypheme
deprived of his single eye. He traces the method of supplying this
deficiency in one of those luminous and comprehensive passages which
bear the stamp of his vast mind: the origin and antiquities of every
science, the methods by which it has been taught, the sects and
controversies it has occasioned, the colleges and academies in which it
has been cultivated, its relation to civil government and common
society, the physical or temporary causes which have influenced its
condition, form, in his plan, as essential a part of such a history, as
the lives of famous authors, and the books they have produced.
No one has presumed to fill up the outline which Bacon himself could but
sketch; and most part of the seventeenth century passed away with few
efforts on the part of the learned to do justice to their own
occupation; for we can hardly make an exception for the Prodromus
Historiæ Literariæ (Hamburg, 1659) of Lambecius, a very learned German,
who, having framed a magnificent scheme of a universal history of
letters, was able to carry it no farther than the times of Moses and
Cadmus. But, in 1688, Daniel Morhof, professor at Kiel in Holstein,
published his well-known Polyhistor, which received considerable
additions in the next age at the hands of Fabricius, and is still found
in every considerable library.
Morhof appears to have had the method of Possevin in some measure before
his eyes; but the lapse of a century, so rich in erudition as the
seventeenth, had prodigiously enlarged the sphere of literary history.
The precise object, however, of the Polyhistor, as the word imports, is
to direct, on the most ample plan, the studies of a single scholar.
Several chapters, that seem digressive in an historical light, are to be
defended by this consideration. In his review of books in every province
of literature, Morhof adopts a sufficiently chronological order; his
judgments are short, but usually judicious; his erudition so copious,
that later writers have freely borrowed from, and, in many parts, added
little to the enumeration of the Polyhistor. But he is far more
conversant with writers in Latin than the modern languages; and, in
particular, shows a scanty acquaintance with English literature.
Another century had elapsed, when the honour of first accomplishing a
comprehensive synopsis of literary history in a more regular form than
Morhof, was the reward of Andrès, a Spanish Jesuit, who, after the
dissolution of his order, passed the remainder of his life in Italy. He
published at Parma, in different years, from 1782 to 1799, his Origine
Progresso e Stato attuale d’ogni Litteratura. The first edition is in
five volumes quarto; but I have made use of that printed at Prato, 1806,
in twenty octavo volumes. Andrès, though a Jesuit, or perhaps because a
Jesuit, accommodated himself in some measure to the tone of the age
wherein his book appeared, and is always temperate, and often candid.
His learning is very extensive in surface, and sometimes minute and
curious, but not, generally speaking, profound; his style is flowing,
but diffuse and indefinite; his characters of books have a vagueness
unpleasant to those who seek for precise notions; his taste is correct,
but frigid; his general views are not injudicious, but display a
moderate degree of luminousness or philosophy. This work is, however, an
extraordinary performance, embracing both ancient and modern literature
in its full extent, and, in many parts, with little assistance from any
former publication of the kind. It is far better known on the
Continent than in England, where I have not frequently seen it quoted;
nor do I believe it is common in our private libraries.
A few years after the appearance of the first volumes of Andrès, some of
the most eminent among the learned of Germany projected a universal
history of modern arts and sciences on a much larger scale. Each single
province, out of eleven, was deemed sufficient for the labours of one
man, if they were to be minute and exhaustive of the subject: among
others, Bouterwek undertook poetry and polite letters; Buhle speculative
philosophy; Kästner the mathematical sciences; Sprengel anatomy and
medicine; Heeren classical philology. The general survey of the whole
seems to have been assigned to Eichhorn. So vast a scheme was not fully
executed; but we owe to it some standard works, to which I have been
considerably indebted. Eichhorn published, in 1796 and 1799, two
volumes, intended as the beginning of a General History of the
Cultivation and Literature of modern Europe, from the twelfth to the
eighteenth century. But he did not confine himself within the remoter
limit; and his second volume, especially, expatiates on the dark ages
that succeeded the fall of the Roman empire. In consequence, perhaps, of
this diffuseness, and also of the abandonment, for some reason with
which I am unacquainted, of a large portion of the original undertaking,
Eichhorn prosecuted this work no farther in its original form. But,
altering slightly its title, he published, some years afterwards, an
independent universal “History of Literature” from the earliest ages to
his own. This is comprised in six volumes, the first having appeared in
1805, the last in 1811.
The execution of these volumes is very unequal. Eichhorn was conversant
with oriental, with theological literature, especially of his own
country, and in general with that contained in the Latin language. But
he seems to have been slightly acquainted with that of the modern
languages, and with most branches of science. He is more specific, more
chronological, more methodical in his distribution than Andrès: his
reach of knowledge, on the other hand, is less comprehensive; and though
I could praise neither highly for eloquence, for taste, or for
philosophy, I should incline to give the preference in all these to the
Spanish Jesuit. But the qualities above mentioned render Eichhorn, on
the whole, more satisfactory to the student.
These are the only works, as far as I know, which deserve the name of
general histories of literature, embracing all subjects, all ages, and
all nations. If there are others, they must, I conceive, be too
superficial to demand attention. But in one country of Europe, and only
in one, we find a national history so comprehensive as to leave
uncommemorated no part of its literary labour. This was first executed
by Tiraboschi, a Jesuit born at Bergamo, and, in his later years,
librarian of the Duke of Modena, in twelve volumes quarto: I have used
the edition published at Rome in 1785. It descends to the close of the
seventeenth century. In full and clear exposition, in minute and exact
investigation of facts, Tiraboschi has few superiors; and such is his
good sense in criticism, that we must regret the sparing use he has made
of it. But the principal object of Tiraboschi was biography. A writer of
inferior reputation, Corniani, in his Secoli della litteratura Italiana
dopo il suo risorgimento (Brescia, 9 vols., 1804-1813), has gone more
closely to an appreciation of the numerous writers whom he passes in
review before our eyes. Though his method is biographical, he
pursues sufficiently the order of chronology to come into the class of
literary historians. Corniani is not much esteemed by some of his
countrymen, and does not rise to a very elevated point of philosophy;
but his erudition appears to me considerable, his judgments generally
reasonable; and his frequent analyses of books gives him one superiority
over Tiraboschi.
The Histoire Littéraire de l’Italie, by Ginguéné, is well known: he had
the advantage of following Tiraboschi; and could not so well, without
his aid, have gone over a portion of the ground, including in his
scheme, as he did, the Latin learning of Italy; but he was very
conversant with the native literature of the language, and has, not a
little prolixly, doubtless, but very usefully, rendered much of easy
access to Europe, which must have been sought in scarce volumes, and
was, in fact, known by name to a small part of the world. The Italians
are ungrateful if they deny their obligations to Ginguéné.
France has, I believe, no work of any sort, even an indifferent one, on
the universal history of her own literature; nor can we claim for
ourselves a single attempt of the most superficial kind. Warton’s
History of Poetry contains much that bears on our general learning; but
it leaves us about the accession of Elizabeth.
Far more has been accomplished in the history of particular departments
of literature. In the general history of philosophy, omitting a few
older writers, Brucker deserves to lead the way. There has been, of late
years, some disposition to depreciate his laborious performance, as not
sufficiently imbued with a metaphysical spirit, and as not rendering,
with clearness and truth, the tenets of the philosophers whom he
exhibits. But the Germany of 1744 was not the Germany of Kant and
Fichte; and possibly Brucker may not have proved the worse historian for
having known little of recent theories. The latter objection is more
material; in some instances he seems to me not quite equal to his
subject. But, upon the whole, he is of eminent usefulness; copious in
his extracts, impartial and candid in his judgments.
In the next age after Brucker, the great fondness of the German learned
both for historical and philosophical investigation produced more works
of this class than I know by name, and many more than I have read. The
most celebrated, perhaps, is that of Tennemann; but of which I only know
the abridgment, translated into French by M. Victor Cousin, with the
title Manuel de l’Histoire de Philosophie. Buhle, one of the society
above mentioned, whose focus was at Göttingen, contributed his share to
their scheme in a History of Philosophy from the revival of letters.
This I have employed through the French translation in six volumes.
Buhle, like Tennemann, has very evident obligations to Brucker; but his
own erudition was extensive, and his philosophical acuteness not
inconsiderable.
The history of poetry and eloquence, or fine writing, was published by
Bouterwek, in twelve volumes octavo. Those parts which relate to his own
country, and to Spain and Portugal, have been of more use to me than the
rest. Many of my readers must be acquainted with the Littérature du
Midi, by M. Sismondi; a work written in that flowing and graceful style
which distinguishes the author, and succeeding in all that it seeks to
give--a pleasing and popular, yet not superficial or unsatisfactory,
account of the best authors in the southern languages. We have nothing
historical as to our own poetry but the prolix volumes of Warton. They
have obtained, in my opinion, full as much credit as they deserve.
Without depreciating a book in which so much may be found and which has
been so great a favourite with the literary part of the public, it may
be observed that its errors as to fact, especially in names and dates,
are extraordinarily frequent, and that the criticism, in points of
taste, is not of a very superior kind.
Heeren undertook the history of classical literature--a great
desideratum, which no one had attempted to supply. But, unfortunately,
he has only given an introduction, carrying us down to the close of the
fourteenth century, and a history of the fifteenth. These are so good,
that we must much lament the want of the rest; especially as I am aware
of nothing to fill up the vacuity. Eichhorn, however, is here of
considerable use.
In the history of mathematical science, I have had recourse chiefly to
Montucla and, as far as he conducts us, to Kästner, whose catalogue and
analysis of mathematical works is far more complete, but his own
observations less perspicuous and philosophical. Portal’s History of
Anatomy, and some other books, to which I have always referred, and
which it might be tedious to enumerate, have enabled me to fill a few
pages with what I could not be expected to give from any original
research. But several branches of literature, using the word, as I
generally do, in the most general sense for the knowledge imparted
through books, are as yet deficient in anything that approaches to a
real history of their progress.
The materials of literary history must always be derived in great
measure from biographical collections, those especially which intermix a
certain portion of criticism with mere facts. There are some, indeed,
which are almost entirely of this description. Adrian Baillet, in his
Jugemens des Sçavans, published in 1685, endeavoured to collect the
suffrages of former critics on the merits of all past authors. His
design was only executed in a small part, and hardly extends beyond
grammarians, translators, and poets; the latter but imperfectly. Baillet
gives his quotations in French, and sometimes mingles enough of his own
to raise him above a mere compiler, and to have drawn down the animosity
of some contemporaries. Sir Thomas Pope Blount is a perfectly
unambitious writer of the same class. His Censura Celebriorum Autorum,
published in 1690, contains nothing of his own, except a few short dates
of each author’s life, but diligently brings together the testimonies of
preceding critics. Blount omits no class, nor any age; his arrangement
is nearly chronological, and leads the reader from the earliest records
of literature to his own time. The polite writers of modern Europe, and
the men of science, do not receive their full share of attention; but
this volume, though not, I think, much in request at present, is a very
convenient accession to any scholar’s library.
Bayle’s Dictionary, published in 1697, seems at first sight an
inexhaustible magazine of literary history. Those who are conversant
with it know that it frequently disappoints their curiosity; names of
great eminence are sought in vain, or are very slightly treated; the
reader is lost in episodical notes, perpetually frivolous, and disgusted
with an author who turns away at every moment from what is truly
interesting to some idle dispute of his own time, or some contemptible
indecency. Yet the numerous quotations contained in Bayle, the
miscellaneous copiousness of his erudition, as well as the good
sense and acuteness he can always display when it is his inclination to
do so, render his Dictionary of great value, though, I think, chiefly to
those who have made a tolerable progress in general literature.
The title of a later work by Père Niceron, Mémoires Pour Servir à
l’Histoire des Hommes Illustres de la République des Lettres, avec un
Catalogue Raisonné de leurs Ouvrages, in forty-three volumes 12mo,
published at Paris from 1727 to 1745, announces something rather
different from what it contains. The number of “illustrious men”
recorded by Niceron is about 1600, chiefly of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries. The names, as may be anticipated, are frequently
very insignificant; and, in return, not a few of real eminence,
especially when Protestant, and, above all, English, are overlooked, or
erroneously mentioned. No kind of arrangement is observed; it is utterly
impossible to conjecture in what volume of Niceron any article will be
discovered. A succinct biography, though fuller than the mere dates of
Blount, is followed by short judgments on the author’s works, and by a
catalogue of them far more copious, at least, than had been given by any
preceding bibliographer. It is a work of much utility; but the more
valuable parts have been transfused into later publications.
The English Biographical Dictionary was first published in 1761. I speak
of this edition with some regard from its having been the companion of
many youthful hours; but it is rather careless in its general execution.
It is sometimes ascribed to Birch; but I suspect that Heathcote had more
to do with it. After several successive enlargements, an edition of this
Dictionary was published in thirty-two volumes from 1812 to 1817, by
Alexander Chalmers, whose name it now commonly bears. Chalmers was a man
of very slender powers, relatively to the magnitude of such a work; but
his life had been passed in collecting small matters of fact, and he has
added much of this kind to British biography. He inserts, beyond any one
else, the most insignificant names, and quotes the most wretched
authorities. But as the faults of excess, in such collections, are more
pardonable than those of omission, we cannot deny the value of his
Biographical Dictionary, especially as to our own country, which has not
fared well at the hands of foreigners.
Coincident nearly in order of time with Chalmers, but more distinguished
in merit, is the Biographie Universelle. The eminent names appended to a
large proportion of the articles contained in its fifty-two volumes, are
vouchers for the ability and erudition it displays. There is, doubtless,
much inequality in the performance; and we are sometimes disappointed by
a superficial notice where we had a right to expect most. English
literature, though more amply treated than had been usual on the
Continent, and with the benefit of Chalmer’s contemporaneous volumes, is
still not fully appreciated: our chief theological writers, especially,
are passed over almost in silence. There seems, on the other hand, a
redundancy of modern French names; those, above all, who have, even
obscurely and insignificantly been connected with the history of the
Revolution: a fault, if it be one, which is evidently gaining ground in
the supplementary volumes. But I must speak respectfully of a work to
which I owe so much, and without which, probably, I should never have
undertaken the present.
I will not here characterise several works of more limited biography;
among which are the Bibliotheca Hispana Nova of Antonio, the
Biographia Britannica, the Bibliothèque Française of Goujet; still less
is there time to enumerate particular lives, or those histories which
relate to short periods, among the sources of literary knowledge. It
will be presumed, and will appear by my references, that I have employed
such of them as came within my reach. But I am sensible that, in the
great multiplicity of books of this kind, and especially in their
prodigious increase on the Continent of late years, many have been
overlooked from which I might have improved these volumes. The press is
indeed so active, that no year passes without accessions to our
knowledge, even historically considered upon some of the multifarious
subjects which the present volumes embrace. An author who waits till all
requisite materials are accumulated to his hands, is but watching the
stream that will run on for ever; and though I am fully sensible that I
could have much improved what is now offered to the public by keeping it
back for a longer time, I should but then have had to lament the
impossibility of exhausting my subject. Epoiei, the modest phrase of the
Grecian sculptors, but expresses the imperfection that attaches to every
work of literary industry or of philosophical investigation. But I have
other warnings to bind up my sheaves while I may--my own advancing
years, and the gathering in the heavens.
I have quoted, to my recollection, no passage which I have not seen in
its own place; though I may possibly have transcribed in some instances,
for the sake of convenience, from a secondary authority. Without
censuring those who suppress the immediate source of their quotations, I
may justly say that in nothing I have given to the public has it been
practised by myself. But I have now and then inserted in the text
characters of books that I have not read, on the faith of my guides; and
it may be the case that intimation of this has not been always given to
the reader.
It is very likely that omissions, not, I trust, of great consequence,
will be detected; I might in fact say that I am already aware of them;
but perhaps these will be candidly ascribed to the numerous
ramifications of the subject, and the necessity of writing in a
different order from that in which the pages are printed. And I must add
that some omissions have been intentional: an accumulation of petty
facts, and especially of names to which little is attached, fatigues
unprofitably the attention; and as this is very frequent in works that
necessarily demand condensation, and cannot altogether be avoided, it
was desirable to make some sacrifice in order to palliate the
inconvenience. This will be found, among many other instances, in the
account of the Italian learned of the fifteenth century where I might
easily have doubled the enumeration, but with little satisfaction to the
reader.
But, independently of such slight omissions, it will appear that a good
deal is wanting in these volumes which some might expect in a history of
literature. Such a history has often contained so large a proportion of
biography, that a work in which it appears very scantily, or hardly at
all, may seem deficient in necessary information. It might be replied,
that the limits to which I have confined myself, and beyond which it is
not easy perhaps in the present age to obtain readers, would not admit
to this extension; but I may add, that any biography of the authors of
these centuries, which is not servilely compiled from a few known books
of that class, must be far too immense an undertaking for one man,
and besides its extent and difficulty, would have been particularly
irksome to myself, from the waste of time, as I deem it, which an
inquiry into trifling facts entails. I have more scruple about the
omission of extracts from some of the poets and best writers in prose,
without which they can be judged very unsatisfactorily: but in this also
I have been influenced by an unwillingness to multiply my pages beyond a
reasonable limit. But I have, in some instances, at least in the later
periods, gone more largely into analysis of considerable works than has
hitherto been usual. These are not designed to serve as complete
abstracts, or to supersede, instead of exciting, the reader’s industry;
but I have felt that some books of traditional reputation are less fully
known than they deserve.
Some departments of literature are passed over, or partially touched.
Among the former are books relating to particular arts, as agriculture
or painting, or to subjects of merely local interest, as those of
English law. Among the latter is the great and extensive portion of
every library, the historical. Unless where history has been written
with peculiar beauty of language, or philosophical spirit, I have
generally omitted all mention of it: in our researches after truth of
fact, the number of books that possess some value is exceedingly great,
and would occupy a disproportionate space in such a general view of
literature as the present. For a similar reason, I have not given its
numerical share to theology.
It were an impertinence to anticipate, for the sake of obviating, the
possible criticism of the public which has a right to judge, and for
those judgments I have had so much cause to be grateful, nor less so to
dictate how it should read what it is not bound to read at all; but
perhaps I may be allowed to say, that I do not wish this to be
considered as a book of reference on particular topics, in which point
of view it must often appear to disadvantage; and that, if it proves of
any value, it will be as an entire and synoptical work.
INTRODUCTION
TO THE
LITERATURE OF EUROPE
IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH,
AND
SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES.
CHAPTER I.
ON THE GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE IN THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE END OF
THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
_Loss of Ancient Learning in the Fall of the Roman Empire--First
Symptoms of its Revival--Improvement in the Twelfth
Century--Universities and Scholastic Philosophy--Origin of Modern
Languages--Early Poetry--Provençal, French, German, and
Spanish--English Language and Literature--Increase of Elementary
Knowledge--Invention of Paper--Roman Jurisprudence--Cultivation of
Classical Literature--Its Decline after the Twelfth Century--Less
visible in Italy--Petrarch._
|Retrospect of learning in middle ages necessary.|
1. Although the subject of these volumes does not comprehend the
literary history of Europe, anterior to the commencement of the
fifteenth century, a period as nearly coinciding as can be expected in
any arbitrary division of time, with what is usually denominated the
revival of letters, it appears necessary to prefix such a general
retrospect of the state of knowledge for some preceding ages, as will
illustrate its subsequent progress. In this, however, the reader is not
to expect a regular history of mediæval literature, which would be
nothing less than the extension of a scheme already, perhaps, too much
beyond my powers of execution.[1]
[1] The subject of the following chapter has been already
treated by me in another work, the History of Europe during the
Middle Ages. I have not thought it necessary to repeat all that is
there said: the reader, if he is acquainted with those volumes, may
consider the ensuing pages partly as supplemental, and partly as
correcting the former where they contain anything inconsistent.
|Loss of learning in fall of Roman empire.|
|Boethius--his Consolation of Philosophy.|
2. Every one is well aware, that the establishment of the barbarian
nations on the ruins of the Roman empire in the West, was accompanied or
followed by an almost universal loss of that learning which had been
accumulated in the Latin and Greek languages, and which we call ancient
or classical; a revolution long prepared by the decline of taste and
knowledge for several preceding ages, but accelerated by public
calamities in the fifth century with overwhelming rapidity. The last of
the ancients, and one who forms a link between the classical period of
literature and that of the Middle Ages, in which he was a favourite
author, is Boethius, a man of fine genius, and interesting both from his
character and his death. It is well known, that, after filling the
dignities of Consul and Senator in the court of Theodoric, he fell a
victim to the jealousy of a sovereign, from whose memory, in many
respects glorious, the stain of that blood has never been effaced. The
Consolation of Philosophy, the chief work of Boethius, was written in
his prison. Few books are more striking from the circumstances of their
production. Last of the classic writers, in style not impure, though
displaying too lavishly that poetic exuberance which had distinguished
the two or three preceding centuries, in elevation of sentiment equal to
any of the philosophers, and mingling a Christian sanctity with
their lessons, he speaks from his prison in the swan-like tones of dying
eloquence. The philosophy that consoled him in bonds, was soon required
in the sufferings of a cruel death. Quenched in his blood, the lamp he
had trimmed with a skilful hand gave no more light; the language of
Tully and Virgil soon ceased to be spoken; and many ages were to pass
away, before learned diligence restored its purity, and the union of
genius with imitation taught a few modern writers to surpass in
eloquence the latinity of Boethius.
|Rapid decline of learning in sixth century.|
3. The downfall of learning and eloquence, after the death of Boethius
in 524, was inconceivably rapid. His contemporary Cassiodorus, Isidore
of Seville, and Martianus Capella, the earliest, but worst, of the
three, by very indifferent compilations, and that encyclopedic method
which Heeren observes to be an usual concomitant of declining
literature, superseded the use of the great ancient writers, with whom,
indeed, in the opinion of Meiners, they were themselves acquainted only
through similar productions of the fourth and fifth centuries. Isidore
speaks of the rhetorical works of Cicero and Quintilian as too diffuse
to be read.[2] The authorities upon which they founded their scanty
course of grammar, logic, and rhetoric were chiefly obscure writers, no
longer extant. But themselves became the oracles of the succeeding
period, wherein the trivium and quadrivium, a course of seven sciences,
introduced in the sixth century, were taught from their jejune
treatises.[3]
[2] Meiners, Vergleichung der sitten, &c., des mittelalters mit denen
unsers Jahrhunderts, 3 vols. Hanover, 1793. Vol. ii p. 333.
Eichhorn, Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur und Litteratur, vol. ii.
p. 29. Heeren, Geschichte des studium der classischen Litteratur.
Göttingen, 1797. These three books, with the Histoire Littéraire de
la France, Brucker’s History of Philosophy, Turner’s and Henry’s
Histories of England, Muratori’s43d Dissertation, Tiraboschi, and
some few others, who will appear in the notes, are my chief
authorities for the dark ages. But none, in a very short compass,
is equal to the third discourse of Fleury, in the 13th volume of
the 12mo edition of his Ecclesiastical History.
[3] The trivium contained grammar, logic, and rhetoric;
the quadrivium, arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy, as in
these two lines, framed to assist the memory:--
“GRAMM. loquitur; DIA. vera docet; RHET. verba colorat; MUS. canit;
AR. numerat; GEO. ponderat; AST. colit astra.”
But most of these sciences, as such, were hardly taught at all. The
arithmetic, for instance, of Cassiodorus or Capella is nothing but
a few definitions mingled with superstitious absurdities about the
virtues of certain numbers and figures. Meiners, ii. 339. Kästner,
Geschichte der Mathematik, p. 8.
The arithmetic of Cassiodorus occupies little more than two folio
pages, and does not contain one word of the common rules. The
geometry is much the same; in two pages we have some definitions
and axioms, but nothing farther. His logic is longer and better,
extending to sixteen folio pages. The grammar is very short and
trifling, the rhetoric the same.
|A portion remains in the church.|
4. This state of general ignorance lasted, with no very sensible
difference, on a superficial view, for about five centuries, during
which every sort of knowledge was almost wholly confined to the
ecclesiastical order. But among them, though instances of gross
ignorance were exceedingly frequent, the necessity of preserving the
Latin language, in which the Scriptures, the canons, and other
authorities of the church, and the regular liturgies, were written, and
in which alone the correspondence of their well organised hierarchy
could be conducted, kept flowing, in the worst seasons, a slender but
living stream; and though, as has been observed, no great difference may
appear, on a superficial view, between the seventh and eleventh
centuries, it would easily be shown that, after the first prostration of
learning, it was not long in giving signs of germinating afresh, and
that a very slow and gradual improvement might be dated farther back
than is generally believed.[4]
[4] M. Guizot confirms me in a conclusion to which I had previously
come, that the seventh century is the _nadir_ of the human mind in
Europe, and that its movement in advance began before the end of
the next, or, in other words, with Charlemagne. Hist. de la
Civilisation en France, ii. 345. A notion probably is current in
England, on the authority of the older writers, such as Cave or
Robertson, that the greatest darkness was later; which is true as
to England itself. It was in the seventh century that the
barbarians were first tempted to enter the church, and obtain
bishoprics, which had, in the first age after their invasion, been
reserved to Romans. Fleury, p. 18.
|Prejudices of the clergy against profane learning.|
5. Literature was assailed in its downfall by enemies from within as
well as from without. A prepossession against secular learning had taken
hold of those ecclesiastics who gave the tone to the rest; it was
inculcated in the most extravagant degree by Gregory I., the founder, in
a great measure, of the papal supremacy, and the chief authority
in the dark ages;[5] it is even found in Alcuin, to whom so much is due,
and it gave way very gradually in the revival of literature. In some of
the monastic foundations, especially in that of Isidore, though himself
a man of considerable learning, the perusal of heathen authors was
prohibited. Fortunately Benedict, whose order became the most widely
diffused, while he enjoined his brethren to read, copy, and collect
books, was silent as to their nature, concluding, probably, that they
would be wholly religious. This, in course of time, became the means of
preserving and multiplying classical manuscripts.[6]
[5] Gregory has been often charged, on the authority of a passage in
John of Salisbury, with having burned a library of heathen authors.
He has been warmly defended by Tiraboschi, iii. 102. Even if the
assertion of our countryman were more positive, he is of too late
an age to demand much credit. Eichhorn, however, produces vehement
expressions of Gregory’s disregard for learning, and even for the
observance of grammatical rules. ii. 443.
[6] Heeren, p. 59. Eichhorn, ii. 11, 12, 40, 49, 50.
|Their usefulness in preserving it.|
6. If, however, the prejudices of the clergy stood in the way of what we
more esteem than they did, the study of philological literature, it is
never to be forgotten, that but for them the records of that very
literature would have perished. If they had been less tenacious of their
Latin liturgy, of the vulgate translation of Scripture, and of the
authority of the fathers, it is very doubtful whether less superstition
would have grown up, but we cannot hesitate to pronounce, that all
grammatical learning would have been laid aside. The influence of the
church upon learning, partly favourable, partly the reverse, forms the
subject of Eichhorn’s second volume; whose comprehensive views and well
directed erudition, as well as his position in a great protestant
university, give much weight to his testimony. But we should remember
also, that it is, as it were, by striking a balance that we come to this
result; and that, in many respects, the clergy counteracted that
progress of improvement which, in others, may be ascribed to their
exertions.
|First appearances of reviving learning in Ireland and England.|
7. It is not unjust to claim for these islands the honour of having
first withstood the dominant ignorance, and even led the way in the
restoration of knowledge. As early as the sixth century, a little
glimmer of light was perceptible in the Irish monasteries: and in the
next, when France and Italy had sunk in deeper ignorance, they stood,
not quite where national prejudice has sometimes placed them, but
certainly in a very respectable position.[7] That island both drew
students from the Continent, and sent forth men of comparative eminence
into its schools and churches. I do not find, however, that they
contributed much to the advance of secular, and especially of
grammatical learning. This is rather due to England, and to the happy
influence of Theodore, our first primate, an Asiatic Greek by birth,
sent hither by the pope in 668, through whom and his companion Adrian,
some knowledge of the Latin and even Greek languages was propagated in
the Anglo-Saxon church. The Venerable Bede, as he was afterwards styled,
early in the eighth century, surpasses every other name of our ancient
literary annals; and, though little more than a diligent compiler from
older writers, may perhaps be reckoned superior to any man the world (so
low had the east sunk like the west) then possessed. A desire of
knowledge grew up; the school of York, somewhat later, became
respectable, before any liberal education had been established in
France; and from this came Alcuin, a man fully equal to Bede in ability,
though not, probably, in erudition.[8] By his assistance, and that of
one or two Italians, Charlemagne laid in his vast dominions the
foundations of learning, according to the standard of that age, which
dispelled, at least for a time, some part of the gross ignorance wherein
his empire had been enveloped.[9]
[7] Eichhorn, ii. 176, 188. See also the first volume of Moore’s
History of Ireland, where the claims of his country are stated
favourably, and with much learning and industry, but not with
extravagant partiality.
[8] Eichhorn, ii. 188, 207, 263. Hist. Litt. de la France, vols. iii.
and iv. Henry’s History of England, vol. iv. Turner’s History of
Anglo-Saxons. No one, however, has spoken so highly or so fully of
Alcuin’s merits as M. Guizot in his Histoire de la Civilisation en
France, vol. ii. p. 344-385.
[9] Besides the above authors, see, for the merits of Charlemagne as
a restorer of letters, his Life by Gaillard, and Andrés, Origine,
&c., della Litteratura, i. 165.
|Few schools before the age of Charlemagne.|
8. The praise of having originally established schools belongs to some
bishops and abbots of the sixth century. They came in place of the
imperial schools overthrown by the barbarians.[10] In the downfall of
that temporal dominion, a spiritual aristocracy was providentially
raised up, to save from extinction the remains of learning, and religion
itself. Some of those schools seem to have been preserved in the south
of Italy, though merely, perhaps, for elementary instruction. But in
France the barbarism of the later Merovingian period was so complete,
that, before the reign of Charlemagne, all liberal studies had come to
an end.[11] Nor was Italy in a much better state at his accession,
though he called two or three scholars from thence to his literary
councils: the libraries were destroyed, the schools chiefly closed;
wherever the Lombard dominion extended, illiteracy was its
companion.[12]
[10] Eichhorn, ii. 5, 45. Guizot (vol. ii. p. 116) gives a list of
the episcopal schools in France before Charlemagne.
[11] Ante ipsum Carolum regem in Galliâ nullum fuerat studium
liberalium artium. Monachus Engolimensis, apud Launoy de Scholis
celebrioribus.
[12] Tiraboschi. Eichhorn. Heeren.
|Beneficial effects of those established by him.|
9. The cathedral and conventual schools, created or restored by
Charlemagne, became the means of preserving that small portion of
learning which continued to exist. They flourished most, having had time
to produce their fruits, under his successors, Louis the Debonair,
Lothaire, and Charles the Bald.[13] It was, doubtless, a fortunate
circumstance, that the revolution of language had now gone far enough to
render Latin unintelligible without grammatical instruction. Alcuin and
others who, like him, endeavoured to keep ignorance out of the church,
were anxious, we are told, to restore orthography; or, in other words,
to prevent the written Latin from following the corruptions of speech.
They brought back, also, some knowledge of better classical authors than
had been in use. Alcuin’s own poems could at least not have been written
by one unacquainted with Virgil:[14] the faults are numerous, but the
style is not always inelegant; and from this time, though quotations
from the Latin poets, especially Ovid and Virgil, and sometimes from
Cicero, are not very frequent, they occur sufficiently to show that
manuscripts had been brought to this side of the Alps. They were,
however, very rare: Italy was still, as might be expected, the chief
depository of ancient writings; and Gerbert speaks of the facility of
obtaining them in that country.[15]
[13] The reader may find more of the history of these schools in a
little treatise by Launoy, De Scholis celebrioribus a Car. Mag. et
post Car. Mag. instauratis; also in Hist. Litt. de la France, vols.
iii. and iv.; Crevier, Hist. de l’Université de Paris, vol. i.;
Brucker’s Hist. Phil. iii.; Muratori, Dissert. xliii.; Tiraboschi,
iii. 158; Eichhorn, 261, 295; Heeren, and Fleury.
[14] A poem by Alcuin, De Pontificibus Ecclesiæ Eboracensis, is
published in Gale’s xv. Scriptores, vol. iii. Henry quotes a
passage from this, describing the books at York, in which we read
this line--
Acer Atistoteles, rhetor _atque_ Tullius ingens. Such a verse
could not have come from Alcuin; though he errs in the quantity of
syllables, where memory alone could set him right, he was not
ignorant of common rules. It is found in Gale:
Rhetor _quoque_ Tullius ingens.
[15] Nosti quot scriptores in urbibus aut in agris Italise passim
habeantur. Gerbert, Epist. 130, apud Heeren, p. 166.
|The tenth century more progressive than usually supposed.|
10. The tenth century used to be reckoned by mediæval historians the
darkest part of this intellectual night. It was the iron age, which they
vie with one another in describing as lost in the most consummate
ignorance. This, however, is much rather applicable to Italy and
England, than to France and Germany. The former were both in a
deplorable state of barbarism. And there are, doubtless, abundant proofs
of ignorance in every part of Europe. But, compared with the seventh and
eighth centuries, the tenth was an age of illumination in France. And
Meiners, who judged the middle ages somewhat, perhaps, too severely, but
with a penetrating and comprehensive observation, of which there had
been few instances, has gone so far as to say, that “in no age, perhaps,
did Germany possess more learned and virtuous churchmen of the episcopal
order, than in the latter half of the tenth, and beginning of the
eleventh century.”[16] Eichhorn points out indications of a more
extensive acquaintance with ancient writers in several French and German
ecclesiastics of this period.[17] In the eleventh century, this
continued to increase; and, towards its close, we find more vigorous and
extensive attempts at throwing off the yoke of barbarous ignorance, and
either retrieving what had been lost of ancient learning, or supplying
its place by the original powers of the mind.
[16] Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 384. The eleventh century he holds
far more advanced in learning than the sixth. Books were read in
the latter which no one looked at in the earlier. P. 399.
[17] Allg. Gesch. ii. 335, 398.
|Want of genius in the dark ages.|
11. It is the most striking circumstance in the literary annals of the
dark ages, that they seem to us still more deficient in native,
than in acquired ability. The mere ignorance of letters has sometimes
been a little exaggerated, and admits of certain qualifications; but a
tameness and mediocrity, a servile habit of merely compiling from
others, runs through the writers of these centuries. It is not only that
much was lost, but that there was nothing to compensate for it; nothing
of original genius in the province of imagination; and but two
extraordinary men, Scotus Erigena and Gerbert, may be said to stand out
from the crowd in literature and philosophy. It must be added, as to the
former, that his writings contain, at least in such extracts as I have
seen, unintelligible rhapsodies of mysticism, in which, perhaps, he
should not even have the credit of originality. Eichhorn, however,
bestows great praise on Scotus; and the modern historians of philosophy
treat him with respect.[18]
[18] Extracts from John Scotus Erigena will be found in Brucker, Hist.
Philosophiæ, vol. iii. p. 619; in Meiners, ii. 373; or more fully,
in Turner’s History of England, vol. i. 447, and Guizot, Hist. de
la Civilisation en France, iii. 137, 178. The reader may consult
also Buhle, Tennemann, and the article on Thomas Aquinas in the
Encyclopædia Metropolitana, ascribed to Dr. Hampden. But, perhaps,
Mr. Turner is the only one of them who has seen, or at least read
the metaphysical treatise of John Scotus, entitled De Divisione
Naturæ, in which alone we find his philosophy. It is very rare out
of England.
|Prevalence of bad taste.|
12. It would be a strange hypothesis, that no man endowed with superior
gifts of nature lived in so many ages. Though the pauses of her
fertility in these high endowments are more considerable, I am disposed
to think, that any previous calculation of probabilities would lead us
to anticipate, we could not embrace so extreme a paradox. Of military
skill, indeed, and civil prudence, we are not now speaking. But, though
no man appeared of genius sufficient to burst the fetters imposed by
ignorance and bad taste, some there must have been, who, in a happier
condition of literature, would have been its legitimate pride. We
perceive, therefore, in the deficiencies of these writers, the effect
which an oblivion of good models, and the prevalence of a false standard
of merit, may produce in repressing the natural vigour of the mind.
Their style, where they aim at eloquence, is inflated and redundant,
formed upon the model of the later fathers, whom they chiefly read; a
feeble imitation of that vicious rhetoric which had long overspread the
latinity of the empire.[19]
[19] Fleury, l. xlv. § 19, and Troisième Discours (in vol. xiii.),
p. 6. Turner’s History of England, iv. 137, and History of
Anglo-Saxons, iii. 403. It is sufficient to look at any extracts
from these writers of the dark ages to see the justice of this
censure. Fleury, at the conclusion of his excellent third
discourse, justly and candidly apologises for these five ages, as
not wholly destitute of learning, and far less of virtue. They have
been, he says, outrageously depreciated by the humanists of the
sixteenth century, who thought good Latin superior to every thing
else; and by protestant writers, who laid the corruptions of the
church on its ignorance. Yet there is an opposite extreme into
which those who are disgusted with the commonplaces of superficial
writers sometimes run; an estimation of men by their
_relative_ superiority above their own times, so as to forget
their position in comparison with a fixed standard.
An eminent living writer, who has carried the philosophy of
history, perhaps, as far as any other, has lately endeavoured, at
considerable length, to vindicate in some measure the intellectual
character of this period. (Guizot, vol. ii. p. 123-224.) It is with
reluctance that I ever differ from M. Guizot; but the passages
adduced by him, (especially if we exclude those of the fifth
century, the poems of Avitus, and the homilies of Cæsarius,) do not
appear adequate to redeem the age by any signs of genius they
display. It must always be a question of degree; for no one is
absurd enough to deny the existence of a relative superiority of
talent, or the power of expressing moral emotions, as well as
relating facts, with some warmth and energy. The legends of saints,
an extensive though quite neglected portion of the literature of
the dark ages, to which M. Guizot has had the merit of directing
our attention, may probably contain many passages, like those he
has quoted, which will be read with interest; and it is no more
than justice, that he has given them in French, rather than in that
half-barbarous Latin, which, though not essential to the author’s
mind, never fails, like an unbecoming dress, to show the gifts of
nature at a disadvantage. But the questions still recur: Is this in
itself excellent? Would it indicate, wherever we should meet with
it, powers of a high order? Do we not make a tacit allowance in
reading it, and that very largely, for the mean condition in which
we know the human mind to have been placed at the period? Does it
instruct us, or give us pleasure?
In what M. Guizot has said of the moral influence of these
legends, in harmonising a lawless barbarian race (p. 157), I
should be sorry not to concur: it is a striking instance of that
candid and catholic spirit with which he has always treated the
mediæval church.
|Deficiency of poetical talent.|
13. It might naturally be asked, whether fancy and feeling were extinct
among the people, though a false taste might reign in the
cloister. Yet it is here that we find the most remarkable deficiency,
and could appeal scarce to the vaguest tradition, or the most doubtful
fragment, in witness of any poetical talent worthy of notice, except a
very little in the Teutonic languages. The Anglo-Saxon poetry has
occasionally a wild spirit, rather impressive, though it is often turgid
and always rude. The Scandinavian, such as the well-known song of Regner
Lodbrog, if that be as old as the period before us, which is now denied,
displays a still more poetical character. Some of the earliest German
poetry, the song on the victory of Louis III. over the Normans in 883,
and, still more, the poem in praise of Hanno, archbishop of Cologne, who
died in 1075, are warmly extolled by Herder and Bouterwek.[20] In the
Latin verse of these centuries, we find, at best, a few lines among
many, which show the author to have caught something of a classical
style: the far greater portion is very bad.[21]
|Imperfect state of language may account for this.|
14. The very imperfect state of language, as an instrument of refined
thought, in the transition of Latin to the French, Castilian, and
Italian tongues, seems the best means of accounting in any satisfactory
manner for this stagnation of the poetical faculties. The delicacy that
distinguishes in words the shades of sentiment, the grace that brings
them to the soul of the reader with the charm of novelty united to
clearness, could not be attainable in a colloquial jargon, the offspring
of ignorance, and indeterminate possibly in its forms, which those who
possessed any superiority of education would endeavour to avoid. We
shall soon have occasion to advert again to this subject.
[20] Herder, Zerstreute Blätter, vol. v. p. 169, 184. Heinsius,
Lehrbuch der Deutschen Sprachwissenschaft, iv. 29. Bouterwek
Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit, vol. ix. p. 78, 82. The
author is unknown; aber dem unbekannten sichert sein werk die
unsterblichkeit, says the latter critic. One might raise a question
as to the capacity of an anonymous author to possess immortal fame.
Nothing equal to this poem, he says occurs in the earlier German
poetry: it is an outpouring of genius, not without faults, but full
of power and feeling: the dialect is still Frankish, but approaches
to Swabian. Herder calls it “a truly Pindaric song.” He has given
large extracts from it in the volume above quoted, which glows with
his own fine sense of beauty.
[21] Tiraboschi supposes Latin versifiers to have been common in Italy.
Le Città al pari che le campagne risonavan di versi. iii. 207.
The specimens he afterwards produces, p. 219, are miserable.
Hroswitha, abbess of Gandersheim, has, perhaps, the greatest
reputation among these Latin poets. She wrote, in the tenth
century, sacred comedies in imitation of Terence, which I have not
seen, and other poetry which I saw many years since, and thought
very bad. Alcuin has now and then a Virgilian cadence.
|Improvement at beginning of twelfth century.|
|Leading circumstances in progress of learning.|
15. At the beginning of the twelfth century, we enter upon a new
division in the literary history of Europe. From this time we may deduce
a line of men, conspicuous, according to the standard of their times, in
different walks of intellectual pursuit, and the commencement of an
interesting period, the later Middle Ages; in which, though ignorance
was very far from being cleared away, the natural powers of the mind
were developed in considerable activity. We shall point out separately
the most important circumstances of this progress; not all of them
concurrent in efficacy with each other, for they were sometimes opposed,
but all tending to arouse Europe from indolence, and to fix its
attention on literature. These are, 1st. The institution of
universities, and the methods pursued in them: 2d. The cultivation of
the modern languages, followed by the multiplication of books, and the
extension of the art of writing: 3d. The investigation of the Roman law:
And lastly, the return to the study of the Latin language in its ancient
models of purity. We shall thus come down to the fifteenth century, and
judge better of what is meant by the revival of letters, when we
apprehend with more exactness their previous condition.
|Origin of the university of Paris.|
16. Among the Carlovingian schools it is doubtful whether we can reckon
one at Paris; and though there are some traces of public instruction in
that city about the end of the ninth century, it is not certain that we
can assume it to be more ancient. For two hundred years more, indeed, it
can only be said, that some persons appear to have come to Paris for the
purposes of study.[22] The commencement of this famous university, like
that of Oxford, has no record. But it owes its first reputation to the
sudden spread of what is usually called the scholastic philosophy.
[22] Crevier, i. 13-75.
|Modes of treating the science of theology.|
17. There had been hitherto two methods of treating theological
subjects: one that of the fathers, who built them on scripture,
illustrated and interpreted by their own ingenuity, and in some measure
also on the traditions and decisions of the church; the other, which is
said by the Benedictines of St. Maur to have grown up about the
eighth century (though Mosheim seems to refer it to the sixth), using
the fathers themselves, that is the chief writers of the first six
hundred years, who appear now to have acquired that distinctive title of
honour, as authority, conjointly with scripture and ecclesiastical
determinations, by means of extracts or compends of their writings.
Hence about this time we find more frequent instances of a practice
which had begun before--that of publishing _Loci communes_ or
_Catenæ patrum_, being only digested extracts from the authorities
under systematic heads.[23] Both these methods were usually called
positive theology.
[23] Fleury, 3me discours. p. 48. (Hist. Ecclés. vol. xiii. 12mo ed.)
Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 147. Mosheim, in Cent. vi. et post.
Muratori, Antichità Italiane, dissert. xliii. p. 610. In this
dissertation, it may be observed by the way, Muratori gives the
important fragment of Caius, a Roman presbyter before the end of
the second century, on the canon of the New Testament, which has
not been quoted, as far as I know, by any English writer, nor,
which is more remarkable, by Michaelis. It will be found in
Eichhorn, Einleitung in das Neue Testament, iv. 35. The Latinity is
very indifferent for the second century; yet it cannot be much
later, and may possibly be suspected of being a translation from a
Greek original.
Upon this great change in the theology of the church, which
consisted principally in establishing the authority of the fathers,
the reader may see M. Guizot, Hist. de la Civilisation, iii. 121.
There seem to be but two causes for this: the one, a consciousness
of ignorance and inferiority to men of so much talent as Augustin
and a few others; the other, a constantly growing jealousy of the
free exercise of reason, and a determination to keep up unity of
doctrine.
|Scholastic philosophy; its origin.|
|Roscelin.|
18. The scholastic theology was a third method; it was in its general
principle, an alliance between faith and reason; an endeavour to arrange
the orthodox system of the church, such as authority had made it,
according to the rules and methods of the Aristotelian dialectics, and
sometimes upon premises supplied by metaphysical reasoning. Lanfranc and
Anselm made much use of this method in the controversy with Berenger as
to transubstantiation; though they did not carry it so far as their
successors in the next century.[24] The scholastic philosophy seems
chiefly to be distinguished from this theology by a larger infusion of
metaphysical reasoning, or by its occasional inquiries into subjects not
immediately related to revealed articles of faith.[25] The origin of
this philosophy, fixed by Buhle and Tennemann in the ninth century, or
the age of Scotus Erigena, has been brought down by Tiedemann, Meiners,
and Hampden,[26] so low as the thirteenth. But Roscelin of Compiegne, a
little before 1100, may be accounted so far the founder of the
schoolmen, that the great celebrity of their disputations, and the rapid
increase of students, is to be traced to the influence of his theories,
though we have no proof that he ever taught at Paris. Roscelin
also, having been the first to revive the famous question as to the
reality of universal ideas, marks, on every hypothesis, a new era in the
history of that philosophy. The principle of the schoolmen in their
investigations was the expanding, developing, and if possible
illustrating and clearing from objection, the doctrines of natural and
revealed religion in a dialectical method and by dint of the subtlest
reasoning. The questions which we deem altogether metaphysical, such as
that concerning universal ideas, became theological in their hands.[27]
[24] Hist. Litt. de la France, ubi suprà. Tennemann, Manuel de l’Hist.
de la Philosophie, i. 332. Crevier, i. 100. Andrés, ii. 15.
[25] A Jesuit of the sixteenth century thus shortly and clearly
distinguishes the positive from the scholastic, and both from
natural or metaphysical theology. At nos theologiam scholasticam
dicimus quæ certiori methodo et rationibus imprimis ex divina
scriptura ac traditionibus seu decretis patrum in conciliis
definitis veritatem eruit, ac discutiendo comprobat. Quod cum in
scholis præcipue argumentando comparetur, id nomen sortita est.
Quamobrem differt a positiva theologia, non re sed modo,
quemadmodum item alia ratione non est eadem cum naturali theologia,
quo nomine philosophi metaphysicen nominarunt. Positiva igitur non
ita res disputandas proponit, sed pæne sententiam ratam et firmam
ponit, præcipue in pietatem incumbens. Versatur autem et ipsa in
explicatione Scripturæ sacræ, traditionum, conciliorum et sanctorum
patrum. Naturalis porro theologia Dei naturam per naturæ argumenta
et rationes inquirit, cum supernaturalis, quam scholasticam
dicimus, Dei ejusdem naturam, vim, proprietates, cæterasque res
divinas per ea principia vestigat, quæ sunt hominibus revelata
divinitas. Possevin, Bibliotheca Selecta, l. 3. c. i.
Both positive and scholastic theology were much indebted to Peter
Lombard, whose Liber Sententiarum is a digest of propositions
extracted from the fathers, with no attempt to reconcile them. It
was therefore a prodigious magazine of arms for disputation.
[26] The first of these, according to Tennemann, begins the list of
schoolmen with Hales; the two latter agree in conferring that
honour on Albertus Magnus. Brucker inclines to Roscelin, and has
been followed by others. It may be added, that Tennemann divides
the scholastic philosophy into four periods, which Roscelin, Hales,
Ockham, and the sixteenth century terminate; and Buhle into three,
ending with Roscelin, Albertus Magnus, and the sixteenth century.
It is evident, however, that, by beginning the scholastic series
with Roscelin, we exclude Lanfranc and even Anselm; the latter of
whom was certainly a deep metaphysician; since to him we owe the
subtle argument for the existence of a Deity, which Des Cartes
afterwards revived. Buhle, 679. This argument was answered at the
time by one Gaunelo; so that metaphysical reasonings were not
unknown in the eleventh century. Tennemann, 344.
[27] Brucker, though he contains some useful extracts, and tolerable
general views, was not well versed in the scholastic writers.
Meiners (in his Comparison of the Middle Ages) is rather
superficial as to their philosophy, but presents a lively picture
of the schoolmen in relation to literature and manners. He has
also, in the Transactions of the Göttingen Academy, vol. xii. pp.
26-47, given a succinct, but valuable, sketch of the Nominalist and
Realist Controversy. Tenneman, with whose Manuel de la Philosophie
alone I am conversant, is supposed to have gone very deeply into
the subject in his larger history of philosophy. Buhle appears
superficial. Dr. Hampden, in his Life of Thomas Aquinas, and view
of the scholastic philosophy, published in the Encyclopædia
Metropolitana, has the merit of having been the only Englishman,
past or present, so far as I know, since the revival of letters,
who has penetrated far into the wilderness of scholasticism. Mr.
Sharon Turner has given some extracts in the fourth volume of his
History of England.
|Progress of scholasticism; increase of university of Paris.|
19. Next in order of time to Roscelin came William of Champeaux, who
opened a school of logic at Paris in 1109; and the university can only
deduce the regular succession of its teachers from that time.[28] But
his reputation was soon eclipsed, and his hearers drawn away by a more
potent magician, Peter Abelard, who taught in the schools of Paris in
the second decade of the twelfth century. Wherever Abelard retired, his
fame and his disciples followed him; in the solitary walls of the
Paraclete, as in the thronged streets of the capital.[29] And the
impulse given was so powerful, the fascination of a science which now
appears arid and unproductive was so intense, that from this time for
many generations it continued to engage the most intelligent and active
minds. Paris, about the middle of the twelfth century, in the words of
the Benedictines of St. Maur, to whom we owe the Histoire Littéraire de
la France, was another Athens; the number of students (hyperbolically
speaking, as we must presume) exceeding that of the citizens. This
influx of scholars induced Philip Augustus, some time afterwards, to
enlarge the boundaries of the city; and this again brought a fresh
harvest of students, for whom, in the former limits, it had been
difficult to find lodgings. Paris was called, as Rome had been, the
country of all the inhabitants of the world, and we may add, as, for
very different reasons, it still claims to be.[30]
[28] Crevier, i. 3.
[29] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. xii. Brucker, iii. 750.
[30] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 78. Crevier, i. 274.
|Universities founded.|
|Oxford.|
20. Colleges with endowments for poor scholars were founded in the
beginning of the thirteenth century, or even before, at Paris and
Bologna, as they were afterwards at Oxford and Cambridge, by munificent
patrons of letters; charters incorporating the graduates and students
collectively under the name of universities were granted by sovereigns,
with privileges perhaps too extensive, but such as indicated the dignity
of learning, and the countenance it received.[31] It ought, however, to
be remembered, that these foundations were not the cause, but the effect
of that increasing thirst for knowledge, or the semblance of knowledge,
which had anticipated the encouragement of the great. The schools of
Charlemagne were designed to lay the basis of a learned education, for
which there was at that time no sufficient desire.[32] But in the
twelfth century, the impetuosity with which men rushed to that source of
what they deemed wisdom, the great university of Paris, did not depend
upon academical privileges or eleemosynary stipends, which came
afterwards, though these were undoubtedly very effectual in keeping it
up. The university created patrons, and was not created by them. And
this may be said also of Oxford and Cambridge in their incorporate
character, whatever the former may have owed, if in fact it owed
anything, to the prophetic munificence of Alfred. Oxford was a school of
great resort in the reign of Henry II., though its first charter was
only granted by Henry III. Its earlier history is but obscure, and
depends chiefly on a suspicious passage in Ingulfus, against which we
must set the absolute silence of other writers.[33] It became in the
thirteenth century second only to Paris in the multitude of its
students, and the celebrity of its scholastic disputations. England
indeed, and especially through Oxford, could show more names of the
first class in this line than any other country.[34]
[31] Fleury, xvii. 13, 17. Crevier, Tiraboschi, &c. A University,
universitas doctorum et scholarium, was so called either from its
incorporation, or from its professing to teach all subjects, as
some have thought. Meiners, ii. 405. Fleury, xvii. 15. This
excellent discourse of Fleury, the fifth, relates to the
ecclesiastical literature of the later middle ages.
[32] These schools, established by the Carlovingian princes in
convents and cathedrals, declined, as it was natural to expect,
with the rise of the universities. Meiners, ii. 406. Those of
Paris, Oxford, and Bologna contained many thousand students.
[33] Giraldus Cambrensis, about 1180, seems the first unequivocal
witness to the resort of students to Oxford, as an established seat
of instruction. But it is certain that Vacarius read there on the
civil law in 1149, which affords a presumption that it was already
assuming the character of a university. John of Salisbury, I think,
does not mention it. In a former work, I gave more credence to its
foundation by Alfred than I am now inclined to do. Bologna, as well
as Paris, was full of English students about 1200. Meiners, ii. 428.
[34] Wood expatiates on what he thought the glorious age of the
university. “What university, I pray, can produce an invincible
Hales, an admirable Bacon, an excellent well-grounded Middleton, a
subtle Scotus, an approved Burley, a resolute Baconthorpe, a
singular Ockham, a solid and industrious Holcot, and a profound
Bradwardin? all which persons flourished within the compass of one
century. I doubt that neither Paris, Bologna, or Rome, that grand
mistress of the Christian world, or any place else, can do what the
renowned Bellosite (Oxford) hath done. And without doubt all
impartial men may receive it for an undeniable truth, that the most
subtle arguing in school divinity did take its beginning in England
and from Englishmen; and that also from thence it went to Paris,
and other parts of France, and at length into Italy, Spain, and
other nations, as is by one observed. So that though Italy boasteth
that Britain takes her Christianity first from Rome, England may
truly maintain that from her (immediately by France) Italy first
received her school divinity.” Vol. i. p. 159, A.D. 1168.
|Collegiate foundations not derived from the Saracens.|
21. Andrés is inclined to derive the institution of collegiate
foundations in universities from the Saracens. He finds no trace of
these among the ancients; while in several cities of Spain, as Cordova,
Granada, Malaga, colleges for learned education both existed and
obtained great renown. These were sometimes unconnected with each other,
though in the same city, nor had they, of course, those privileges which
were conferred in Christendom. They were therefore more like ordinary
schools of gymnasia than universities; and it is difficult to perceive
that they suggested anything peculiarly characteristic of the latter
institutions, which are much more reasonably considered as the
development of a native germ, planted by a few generous men, above all
by Charlemagne, in that inclement season which was passing away.[35]
[35] Andrés, ii. 129.
|Scholastic philosophy promoted by Mendicant Friars.|
22. The institution of the Mendicant orders of friars, soon after the
beginning of the thirteenth century, caused a fresh accession, in
enormous numbers, to the ecclesiastical state, and gave encouragement to
the scholastic philosophy. Less acquainted, generally, with grammatical
literature than the Benedictine monks, less accustomed to collect and
transcribe books, the disciples of Francis and Dominic betook themselves
to disputation, and found a substitute for learning in their own
ingenuity and expertness.[36] The greatest of the schoolmen were the
Dominican Thomas Aquinas, and the Franciscan Duns Scotus. They were
founders of rival sects, which wrangled with each other for two or three
centuries. But the authority of their writings, which were incredibly
voluminous, especially those of the former,[37] impeded, in some
measure, the growth of new men; and we find, after the middle of the
fourteenth century, a diminution of eminent names in the series of the
schoolmen, the last of whom, that is much remembered in modern times,
was William Ockham.[38] He revived the sect of the Nominalists,
formerly instituted by Roscelin, and, with some important variances of
opinion, brought into credit by Abelard, but afterwards overpowered by
the great weight of leading schoolmen on the opposite side,--that of the
Realists. The disciples of Ockham, as well as himself, being politically
connected with the party in Germany unfavourable to the high pretensions
of the Court of Rome, though they became very numerous in the
universities, passed for innovators in ecclesiastical, as well as
philosophical principles. Nominalism itself indeed was reckoned by the
adverse sect cognate to heresy. No decline however seems to have been as
yet perceptible in the spirit of disputation, which probably, at the end
of the fourteenth century, went on as eagerly at Paris, Oxford, and
Salamanca, the great scenes of that warfare, as before; and which, in
that age, gained much ground in Germany, through the establishment of
several universities.
[36] Meiners, ii. 615, 629.
[37] The works of Thomas Aquinas are published in seventeen volumes
folio; Rome, 1570; those of Duns Scotus in twelve; Lyon, 1639. It
is presumed that much was taken down from their oral lectures; some
part of these volumes is of doubtful authenticity. Meiners, ii.
718. Biogr. Univ.
[38] “In them (Scotus and Ockham), and in the later schoolmen
generally, down to the period of the reformation, there is more of
the parade of logic, a more formal examination of arguments, a more
burthensome importunity of syllogising, with less of the
philosophical power of arrangement and distribution of the subject
discussed. The dryness again irreparable from the scholastic method
is carried to excess in the later writers, and perspicuity of style
is altogether neglected.” Encyclopædia Metropol. part xxxvii. p. 805
The introduction of this excess of logical subtlety, carried to the
most trifling sophistry, is ascribed by Meiners to Petrus Hispanus
afterwards Pope John XXI., who died in 1271. ii. 705. Several
curious specimens of scholastic folly are given by him in this
place. They brought a discredit upon the name, which has adhered to
it, and involved men of fine genius, such as Aquinas himself, in
the common reproach.
The barbarism of style, which amounted almost to a new language,
became more intolerable in Scotus and his followers than it had
been in the older schoolmen. Meiners, 722. It may be alleged, in
excuse of this, that words are meant to express precise ideas; and
that it was as impossible to write metaphysics in good Latin, as
the modern naturalists have found it to describe plants and
animals.
|Character of this philosophy.|
|It prevails least in Italy.|
23. Tenneman has fairly stated the good and bad of the scholastic
philosophy. It gave rise to a great display of address, subtlety, and
sagacity in the explanation and distinction of abstract ideas, but at
the same time to many trifling and minute speculations, to a contempt of
positive and particular knowledge, and to much unnecessary
refinement.[39] Fleury well observes, that the dry technical style of
the schoolmen, affecting a geometrical method and closeness, is in fact
more prolix and tedious, than one more natural, from its formality in
multiplying objections and answers.[40] And as their reasonings commonly
rest on disputable postulates, the accuracy they affect is of no sort of
value. But their chief offences were the interposing obstacles to the
revival of polite literature, and to the free expansion of the mind.
Italy was the land where the schoolmen had least influence; many of the
Italians who had a turn for those discussions repaired to Paris,[41] and
it was accordingly from Italy that the light of philological learning
spread over Europe. Public schools of theology were not opened in Italy
till after 1360.[42] Yet we find the disciples of Averroes numerous in
the university of Padua about that time.
[39] Manuel de la Philosophie, i. 337. Eichhorn, ii. 396.
[40] See 5me discours, xvii. 30-50.
[41] Tiraboschi, v. 115.
[42] Id. 137, 160. De Sade, Vie de Pétrarque, iii. 757.
|Literature in modern languages.|
24. II. The universities were chiefly employed upon this scholastic
theology and metaphysics, with the exception of Bologna, which dedicated
its attention to the civil law, and of Montpelier, already famous as a
school of medicine. The laity in general might have remained in as gross
barbarity as before, while topics so removed from common utility were
treated in an unknown tongue. We must therefore look to the rise of a
truly native literature in the several languages of western Europe, as a
more essential cause of its intellectual improvement; and this will
render it necessary to give a sketch of the origin and early progress of
those languages and that new literature.
|Origin of the French, Spanish, and Italian languages.|
25. No one can require to be informed, that the Italian, Spanish, and
French languages are the principal of many dialects deviating from each
other in the gradual corruption of the Latin, once universally spoken by
the subjects of Rome in her western provinces. They have undergone this
process of change in various degrees, but always from similar causes;
partly from the retention of barbarous words belonging to their
aboriginal languages, or the introduction of others through the
settlement of the northern nations in the empire; but in a far greater
proportion, from ignorance of grammatical rules, or from vicious
pronunciation and orthography. It has been the labour of many
distinguished writers to trace the source and channels of these streams
which have supplied both the literature and the common speech of the
south of Europe; and perhaps not much will be hereafter added to
researches which, in the scarcity of extant documents, can never be
minutely successful. Du Cange, who led the way in the admirable preface
to his Glossary; Le Bœuf, and Bonamy, in several memoirs among the
transactions of the Academy of Inscriptions about the middle of
the last century; Muratory, in his 32d, 33d, and 40th dissertation on
Italian antiquities; and, with more copious evidence and successful
industry than any other, M. Raynouard, in the first and sixth volume of
his Choix des Poesies des Troubadours, have collected as full a history
of the formation of these languages as we could justly require.
|Corruption of colloquial Latin in the lower empire.|
26. The pure Latin language, as we read it in the best ancient authors,
possesses a complicated syntax, and many elliptical modes of expression
which give vigour and elegance to style, but are not likely to be
readily caught by the people. If, however, the citizens of Rome had
spoken it with entire purity, it is to be remembered, that Latin, in the
later times of the republic, or under the empire, was not like the Greek
of Athens, or the Tuscan of Florence, the idiom of a single city, but a
language spread over countries in which it was not originally
vernacular, and imposed by conquest upon many parts of Italy, as it was
afterwards upon Spain and Gaul. Thus we find even early proofs, that
solecisms of grammar, as well as barbarous phrases, or words
unauthorised by use of polite writers, were very common in Rome itself;
and in every succeeding generation, for the first centuries after the
Christian æra, these became more frequent and inevitable. A vulgar Roman
dialect, called _quotidianus_ by Quintilian, _pedestris_ by
Vegetius, _usualis_ by Sidonius, is recognised as distinguishable
from the pure Latinity to which we give the name of classical. But the
more ordinary appellation of this inferior Latin was _rusticus_; it
was the country language or _patois_, corrupted in every manner,
and from the popular want of education, incapable of being restored,
because it was not perceived to be erroneous.[43] Whatever may have been
the case before the fall of the Western Empire, we have reason to
believe that in the sixth century the colloquial Latin had undergone, at
least in France, a considerable change even with the superior class of
ecclesiastics. Gregory of Tours confesses that he was habitually falling
into that sort of error, the misplacing inflexions and prepositions,
which constituted the chief original difference of the rustic tongue
from pure Latinity. In the opinion, indeed, of Raynouard, if we take his
expressions in their natural meaning, the Romance language, or that
which afterwards was generally called Provençal, is as old as the
establishment of the Franks in Gaul. But this is, perhaps, not
reconcileable with the proofs we have of a longer continuance of Latin.
In Italy, it seems probable that the change advanced more slowly.
Gregory the Great, however, who has been reckoned as inveterate an enemy
of learning as ever lived, speaks with superlative contempt of a regard
to grammatical purity in writing. It was a crime in his eyes for a
clergyman to teach grammar; yet the number of laymen who were competent
or willing to do so had become very small.
[43] Du Cange, preface, pp. 13, 29. Rusticum igitur sermonem non
humiliorem paulo duntaxat, et qui sublimi opponitur, appellabant;
sed eum etiam, qui magis reperet, barbarismis solæcismisque
scateret, quam apposite Sidonius squamam sermonis Celtici, &c.,
vocat.--Rusticum, qui nullis vel grammaticæ vel orthographiæ
legibus astringitur. This is nearly a definition of the early
Romance language; it was Latin without grammar or orthography.
The squama sermonis Celtici, mentioned by Sidonius, has led Gray,
in his valuable remarks on rhyme, vol. ii. p. 53, as it has some
others, into the erroneous notion that a real Celtic dialect, such
as Cæsar found in Gaul, was still spoken. But this is incompatible
with the known history of the French language; and Sidonius is one
of those loose declamatory writers, whose words are never to be
construed in their proper meaning: the common fault of Latin
authors from the third century. Celticus sermo was the patois of
Gaul, which, having once been Gallia Celtica, he still called such.
That a few proper names, or similar words in French are Celtic, is
well known.
Quintilian has said, that a vicious orthography must bring on a
vicious pronunciation. Quod male scribitur, male etiam dici necesse
est. But the converse of this is still more true, and was in fact
the great cause of giving the new Romance language its
_visible_ form.
27. It may render this more clear, if we mention a few of the growing
corruptions, which have in fact transformed the Latin into French and
the sister tongues.--The prepositions were used with no regard to the
proper inflexions of nouns and verbs. These were known so inaccurately,
and so constantly put one for another, that it was necessary to have
recourse to prepositions instead of them. Thus _de_ and _ad_ were made
to express the genitive and dative cases, which is common in charters
from the sixth to the tenth century. It is a real fault in the Latin
language, that it wants both the definite and indefinite article; _ille_
and _unus_, especially the former, were called in to help this
deficiency. In the forms of Marculfus, published towards the end of the
seventh century, _ille_ continually occurs as an article; and it appears
to have been sometimes used in the sixth. This of course, by an easy
abbreviation, furnished the articles in French and Italian. The people
came soon to establish more uniformity of case in the noun, either by
rejecting inflexions, or by diminishing their number.--Raynouard gives a
long list of old French nouns formed from the Latin accusative by
suppressing _em_ or _am_.[44] The active auxiliary verb, than which
nothing is more distinctive of the modern languages from the Latin, came
in from the same cause, the disuse, through ignorance, of several
inflexions of the tenses; to which we must add, that here also the Latin
language is singularly deficient, possessing no means of distinguishing
the second perfect from the first, or ‘I have seen’ from ‘I saw.’ The
auxiliary verb was early applied, in France and Italy, to supply this
defect; and some have produced what they think occasional instances of
its employment even in the best classical authors.
[44] See a passage of Quintilian, l. 9, c. 4, quoted in Hallam’s Middle
Ages, iii. 316.
In the grammar of Cassiodorus, a mere compilation from old writers,
and in this instance from one Cornutus, we find another remarkable
passage, which I do not remember to have seen quoted, though
doubtless it has been so, on the pronunciation of the letter
_M_. To utter this final consonant, he says, before a word
beginning with a vowel, is wrong, durum ac barbarum sonat; but it
is an equal fault to omit it before one beginning with a consonant;
par enim atque idem est vitium, ita cum vocali sicut cum consonanti
_M_ literam, exprimere. Cassiodorus, De orthographia, cap. 1.
Thus we perceive that there was a nicety as to the pronunciation of
this letter, which uneducated persons would naturally not regard.
Hence in the inscriptions of a low age, we frequently find this
letter omitted; as in one quoted by Muratori, Ego L. Contius me
bibo [vivo] archa [archam] feci, and it is very easy to multiply
instances. Thus the neuter and the accusative terminations were
lost.
|Continuance of Latin in seventh century.|
28. It seems impossible to determine the progress of these changes, the
degrees of variation between the polite and popular, the written and
spoken Latin, in the best ages of Rome, in the decline of the empire,
and in the kingdoms founded upon its ruins; or finally, the exact epoch
when the grammatical language ceased to be generally intelligible. There
remains, therefore, some room still for hypothesis and difference of
opinion. The clergy preached in Latin early in the seventh century, and
we have a popular song of the same age on the victory obtained by
Clotaire II. in 622 over the Saxons.[45] This has been surmised by some
to be a translation, merely because the Latin is better than they
suppose to have been spoken. But, though the words are probably not
given quite correctly, they seem reducible, with a little emendation, to
short verses of an usual rythmical cadence.[46]
[45] Le Bœuf, in Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscript. vol. xvii.
[46] Turner, in Archæologia, vol. xiv. 173. Hallam’s Middle Ages, iii.
326. Bouterwek, Gesch. der Französen Poesie, p. 18, observes,
that there are many fragments of popular Latin songs preserved. I
have not found any quoted, except one, which he gives from La
Revaillère, which is simple and rather pretty; but I know not
whence it is taken. It seems the song of a female slave, and is
perhaps nearly as old as the destruction of the empire.
At quid jubes, pusiole,
Quare mandas, filiole,
Carmen dulce me cantare
Cum sim longe exul valde
Intra mare,
O cur jubes canere?
Intra seems put for trans. The metre is rhymed trochaic; but that
is consistent with antiquity. It is, however, more pleasing than
most of the Latin verse of this period, and is more in the tone of
the modern languages. As it is not at all a hackneyed passage, I
have thought it worthy of quotation.
|It is changed to a new language in eighth and ninth.|
29. But in the middle of the eighth century, we find the rustic language
mentioned as distinct from Latin;[47] and in the council of Tours held
in 813 it is ordered that homilies shall be explained to the people in
their own tongue, whether rustic Roman or Frankish. In 842 we find the
earliest written evidence of its existence, in the celebrated oaths
taken by Louis of Germany and his brother Charles the Bald, as well as
by their vassals, the former in Frankish or early German, the latter in
their own current dialect. This, though with somewhat of a closer
resemblance to Latin, is accounted by the best judges a specimen of the
language spoken south of the Loire; afterwards variously called the
Langue d’oc, Provençal, or Limousin, and essentially the same with the
dialects of Catalonia and Valencia.[48] It is decidedly the opinion of
M. Raynouard, as it was of earlier inquirers, that the general
language of France in the ninth century was the southern dialect, rather
than that of the north, to which we now give the exclusive name of
French, and which they conceive to have deviated from it afterwards.[49]
And he has employed great labour to prove, that, both in Spain and
Italy, this language was generally spoken with hardly as much difference
from that of France, as constitutes even a variation of dialect; the
articles, pronouns, and auxiliaries being nearly identical; most
probably not with so much difference as would render the native of one
country by any means unintelligible in another.[50]
[47] Acad. des. Inscript. xvii. 713.
[48] Du Cange, p. 35. Raynouard, passim. M. de la Rue has called it,
“un Latin expirant.” Recherches sur les Bardes d’Armorique. Between
this and “un Français naissant” there may be only a verbal
distinction; but, in accuracy of definition, I should think M.
Raynouard much more correct. The language of this oath cannot be
called Latin without a violent stretch of words: no Latin scholar,
as such, would understand it, except by conjecture. On the other
hand, most of the words, as we learn from M. R., are Provençal of
the twelfth century. The passage has been often printed, and
sometimes incorrectly. M. Roquefort, in the preface to his
Glossaire de la Langue Romane, has given a tracing from an ancient
manuscript of Nitard, the historian of the ninth century, to whom
we owe this important record of language.
[49] The chief difference was in orthography; the Northerns wrote
Latin words with an _e_ where the South retained _a_; as charitet,
caritat: veritet, veritat; appelet, apelat. Si l’on rétablissait
dans les plus anciens textes Français les _a_ primitifs en place
des _e_, on aurait identiquement la langue des troubadours.
Raynouard, Observations sur le Roman du Rou, 1829, p. 5.
[50] The proofs of this similarity occupy most part of the first and
sixth volumes in M. Raynouard’s excellent work.
It is a common error to suppose that French and Italian had a
double source, barbaric as well as Latin; and that the northern
nations, in conquering those regions, brought in a large share of
their own language. This is like the opinion, that the Norman
Conquest infused the French we now find in our own tongue. There
are certainly Teutonic words, both in French and Italian, but not
sufficient to affect the proposition that these languages are
merely Latin in their origin. These words in many instances express
what Latin could not; thus _guerra_ was by no means synonymous
with _bellum_. Yet even Roquefort talks of “un jargon composé
de mots Tudesques et Romains.” Discours Preliminaire, p. 19;
forgetting which, he more justly remarks afterwards, on the oath of
Charles the Bald, that it shows “la langue Romane est entièrement
composée de Latin.” A long list could, no doubt, be made of French
and Italian words that cannot easily be traced to any Latin with
which we are acquainted; but we may be surprised that it is not
still longer.
|Early specimens of French.|
|Poem on Boethius.|
30. Thus, in the eighth and ninth centuries, if not before, France had
acquired a language unquestionably nothing else than a corruption of
Latin, (for the Celtic or Teutonic words that entered into it were by no
means numerous, and did not influence its structure), but become so
distinct from its parent, through modes of pronunciation as well as
grammatical changes, that it requires some degree of practice to trace
the derivation of words in many instances. It might be expected that we
should be able to adduce, or at least prove to have existed, a series of
monuments in this new form of speech. It might naturally appear that
poetry, the voice of the soul, would have been heard wherever the joys
and sufferings, the hopes and cares of humanity, wherever the
countenance of nature, or the manners of social life, supplied their
boundless treasures to its choice; and among untutored nations it has
been rarely silent. Of the existence of verse, however, in this early
period of the new languages, we find scarce any testimony, a doubtful
passage in a Latin poem of the ninth century excepted,[51] till we come
to a production on the captivity of Boethius, versified chiefly from
passages in his Consolation, which M. Raynouard, though somewhat wishing
to assign a higher date, places about the year 1000. This is printed by
him from a manuscript formerly in the famous abbey of Fleury, or St.
Benoit-sur-Loire, and now in the public library of Orleans. It is a
fragment of 250 lines, written in stanzas of six, seven, or a greater
number of verses of ten syllables, sometimes deviating to eleven or
twelve; and all the lines in each stanza rhyming masculinely with each
other. It is certainly by much the earliest specimen of French
verse;[52] even if it should only belong, as Le Bœuf thought,
to the eleventh century.
[51] In a Latin eclogue quoted by Paschasius Radbert (ob. 865) in the
life of St. Adalhard, abbot of Corbie (ob. 826), the romance poets
are called upon to join the Latins in the following lines: “Rustica
concelebret Romana Latinaque lingua, Saxo, qui, pariter plangens,
pro carmine dicat; Vertite huc cuncti, cecinit quam maximus ille,
Et tumulum facite, et tumulo superaddite carmen.”
Raynouard, Choix des Poésies, vol. ii. p. cxxxv. These lines are
scarcely intelligible; but the quotation from Virgil, in the ninth
century, perhaps deserves remark, though, in one of Charlemagne’s
monasteries, it is not by any means astonishing. Nennius, a Welsh
monk of the same age, who can hardly write Latin at all, has quoted
another line; “Purpurea intexti tollant aulæa a Britanni;” which is
more extraordinary, and almost leads us to suspect an
interpolation, unless he took it from Bede. Gale, xv. Scriptores,
iii. 102.
[52] Raynouard, vol. ii. pp. 5, 6, and preface, p. cxxvii.
|Provençal grammar.|
31. M. Raynouard has asserted what will hardly bear dispute, that “there
has never been composed any considerable work in any language, till it
has acquired determinate forms of expressing the modifications of ideas
according to time, number, and person,” or, in other words, the elements
of grammar.[53] But whether the Provençal or Romance language were in
its infancy so defective, he does not say; nor does the grammar he has
given lead us to that inference. This grammar, indeed, is necessarily
framed, in great measure, out of more recent materials. It may be
suspected, perhaps, that a language formed by mutilating the words of
another, could not for many ages be rich or flexible enough for the
variety of poetic expression. And the more ancient forms would long
retain their prerogative in writing: or, perhaps, we can only say, that
the absence of poetry was the effect, as well as the evidence, of that
intellectual barrenness, more characteristic of the dark ages than their
ignorance.
[53] Observations philogiques et grammaticales, sur le Roman de Rou
(1829), p. 26. Two ancient Provençal grammars, one by Raymond Vidal
in the twelfth century, are in existence. The language therefore
must have had its determinate rules before that time.
M. Raynouard has shown, with a prodigality of evidence, the
regularity of the French or Romance language in the twelfth
century, and its retention of Latin forms, in cases when it had not
been suspected. Thus it is a fundamental rule, that, in nouns
masculine, the nominative ends in s in the singular, but wants it
in the plural; while the oblique cases lose it in the singular, but
retain it in the plural. This is evidently derived from the second
declension in Latin. As, for example--
Sing. Li princes est venus, et a este sacrez rois.
Plur. Li evesque et li plus noble baron se sont assemble.
Thus also the possessive pronoun is always _mes_, _tes_,
_ses_, (meus, tuus, suus) in the nominative singular;
_mon_, _ton_, _son_, (meum, &c.), in the oblique
regimen. It has been through ignorance of such rules that the old
French poetry has seemed capricious, and destitute of strict
grammar; and, in a philosophical sense, the simplicity and
extensiveness of M. Raynouard’s discovery entitle it to the
appellation of beautiful.
|Latin retained in use longer in Italy.|
32. In Italy, where we may conceive the corruption of language to have
been less extensive, and where the spoken patois had never acquired a
distinctive name, like _lingua Romana_ in France, we find two
remarkable proofs, as they seem, that Latin was not wholly
unintelligible in the ninth and tenth centuries, and which therefore
modify M. Raynouard’s hypothesis as to the simultaneous origin of the
Romance tongue. The one is a popular song of the soldiers, on their
march to rescue the Emperor Louis II. in 881, from the violent detention
in which he had been placed by the duke of Benevento; the other, a
similar exhortation to the defenders of Modena in 924, when that city
was in danger of siege from the Hungarians. Both of these were published
by Muratori, in his fortieth dissertation on Italian Antiquities; and
both have been borrowed from him by M. Sismondi, in his Littérature du
Midi.[54] The former of these poems is in a loose trochaic measure,
totally destitute of regard to grammatical inflections. Yet some of the
leading peculiarities of Italian, the article and the auxiliary verb, do
not appear. The latter is in accentual iambics, with a sort of
monotonous termination in the nature of rhyme; and in very much superior
Latinity, probably the work of an ecclesiastic.[55] It is difficult to
account for either of these, especially the former, which is merely a
military song, except on the supposition that the Latin language was not
grown wholly out of popular use.
[54] Vol. i. pp. 23, 27.
[55] I am at a loss to know what Muratori means by saying, “Son versi
di dodici sillabe, ma computata la ragione de’ tempi, vengono ad
essere uguali a gli endecasillabi.” p. 551. He could not have
understood the metre, which is perfectly regular, and even
harmonious, on the condition only, that no “ragione de’ tempi”
except such as accentual pronunciation observes, shall be demanded.
The first two lines will serve as a specimen:--
“O tu, qui servas armis ista mænia,
Noli dormire, moneo, sed vigila.”
This is like another strange observation of Muratori in the same
dissertation, that, in the well-known lines of the emperor Adrian
to his soul, “Animula vagula, blandula,” which could perplex no
schoolboy, he cannot discover “un’esatta norma di metro;” and
therefore takes them to be merely rhythmical.
|French of eleventh century.|
33. In the eleventh century, France still affords us but few extant
writings. Several, indeed, can be shown to have once existed. The
Romance language, comprehending the two divisions of Provençal and
Northern French, by this time distinctly separate from each other, was
now, say the authors of the Histoire Littéraire de la France, employed
in poetry, romances, translations, and original works in different kinds
of literature; sermons were preached in it, and the code, called
the Assizes de Jerusalem, was drawn up under Godfrey of Bouillon in
1100.[56] Some part of this is doubtful, and especially the age of these
laws. They do not mention those of William the Conqueror, recorded in
French by Ingulfus. Doubts have been cast by a distinguished living
critic on the age of this French code, and upon the authenticity of the
History of Ingulfus itself; which he conceives, upon very plausible
grounds, to be a forgery of Richard II.’s time: the language of the laws
indeed appears to be very ancient, but not probably distinguishable at
this day from the French of the twelfth century. It may be said, in
general, that, except one or two translations from books of Scripture,
very little now extant has been clearly referred to an earlier
period.[57] Yet it is impossible to doubt that the language was much
employed in poetry, and had been gradually ramifying itself by the
shoots of invention and sentiment; since, at the close of this age, or
in the next, we find a constellation of gay and brilliant versifiers,
the Troubadours of southern France, and a corresponding class to the
north of the Loire.
[56] Vol. vii. p. 107.
[57] Roquefort, Glossaire de la Langue Romane, p. 25, and État de la
Poésie Française, p. 42, and 206, mentions several religious works
in the royal library, and also a metrical romance in the British
Museum, lately published in France on the fabulous voyage of
Charlemagne to Constantinople. Raynouard has collected a few
fragments in Provençal. But I must dissent from this excellent
writer in referring the famous poem of the Vaudois, La Nobla
Leyczon, to the year 1100. Choix des Poésies des Troubadours, vol.
ii. p. cxxxvii. I have already observed, that the two lines which
contain what he calls la date de l’an 1100, are so loosely
expressed, as to include the whole ensuing century. (Hallam’s
Middle Ages, iii. 467.) And I am now convinced that the poem is not
much older than 1200. It seems probable that they reckoned 1100
years, on a loose computation, not from the Christian era, but from
the time when the passage of Scripture to which these lines allude
was written. The allusion may be to 1 Pet. i. 20. But it is clear
that, at the time of the composition of this poem, not only the
name of _Vaudois_ had been imposed on those sectaries, but they had
become subject to persecution. We know nothing of this till near
the end of the century. This poem was probably written in the south
of France, and carried afterwards to the Alpine valleys of
Piedmont, from which it was brought to Geneva and England in the
seventeenth century. La Nobla Leyczon is published at length by
Raynouard. It consists of 479 lines, which seem to be rhythmical or
aberrant Alexandrines; the rhymes uncertain in number, chiefly
masculine. The poem censures the corruptions of the church, but
contains little that would be considered heretical; which agrees
with what contemporary historians relate of the original Waldenses.
Any doubts as to the authenticity of this poem are totally
unreasonable. M. Raynouard, an indisputably competent judge,
observes, “Les personnes qui l’examineront avec attention jugeront
que le manuscrit n’a pas été interpolé,” p. cxliii.
I will here reprint more accurately than before the two lines
supposed to give the poem the date of 1100:--
“Ben ha mil et cent ancz compli entièrement,
Que fo scripta l’ora car sen al derier temps.”
Can M. Raynouard, or any one else, be warranted by this in saying,
_La date de l’an 1100_, qu’on lit dans ce poème, merite toute
confiance?
|Metres of modern languages.|
34. These early poets in the modern languages chiefly borrowed their
forms of versification from the Latin. It is unnecessary to say, that
metrical composition in that language, as in Greek, was an arrangement
of verses corresponding by equal or equivalent feet; all syllables being
presumed to fall under a known division of long and short, the former
passing for strictly the double of the latter in quantity of time. By
this law of pronunciation all verse was measured; and to this not only
actors, who were assisted by an accompaniment, but the orators also
endeavoured to conform. But the accented, or, if we choose rather to
call them so, emphatic syllables, being regulated by a very different
though uniform law, the uninstructed people, especially in the decline
of Latinity, pronounced, as we now do, with little or no regard to the
metrical quantity of syllables, but according to their accentual value.
And this gave rise to the popular or rhythmical poetry of the lower
empire; traces of which may be found in the second century, and even
much earlier, but of which we have abundant proofs after the age of
Constantine.[58] All metre, as Augustin says, was rhythm, but all rhythm
was not metre: in rhythmical verse, neither the quantity of syllables,
that is, the time allotted to each by metrical rule, nor even, in some
degree, their number, was regarded, so long as a cadence was retained in
which the ear could recognise a certain approach to uniformity. Much
popular poetry, both religious and profane, and the public hymns
of the church, were written in this manner; the distinction of long and
short syllables, even while Latin remained a living tongue, was lost in
speech, and required study to attain it. The accent or emphasis, both of
which are probably, to a certain extent, connected with quantity and
with each other, supplied its place; the accented syllable being,
perhaps, generally lengthened in ordinary speech; though this is not the
sole cause of length, for no want of emphasis or lowness of tone can
render a syllable of many letters short. Thus we find two species of
Latin verse: one metrical, which Prudentius, Fortunatus, and others
aspired to write; the other rhythmical, somewhat licentious in number of
syllables, and wholly accentual in its pronunciation. But this kind was
founded on the former, and imitated the ancient syllabic arrangements.
Thus the trochaic, or line, in which the stress falls on the uneven
syllables, commonly alternating by eight and seven, a very popular metre
from its spirited flow, was adopted in military songs, such as that
already mentioned of the Italian soldiers in the ninth century. It was
also common in religious chants. The line of eight syllables, or dimeter
iambic, in which the cadence falls on the even places, was still more
frequent in ecclesiastical verse. But these are the most ordinary forms
of versification in the early French or Provençal, Spanish, and Italian
languages. The line of eleven syllables, which became in time still more
usual than the former, is nothing else than the ancient hendecasyllable;
from which the French, in what they call masculine rhymes, and ourselves
more generally, from a still greater deficiency of final vowels, have
been forced to retrench the last syllable. The Alexandrine of twelve
syllables might seem to be the trimeter iambic of the ancients. But
Sanchez has very plausibly referred its origin to a form more usual in
the dark ages, the pentameter; and shown it in some early Spanish
poetry.[59] The Alexandrine, in the southern languages, had generally a
feminine termination, that is, in a short vowel, thus becoming of
thirteen syllables, the stress falling on the penultimate, as is the
usual case in a Latin pentameter verse, accentually read in our present
mode. The variation of syllables in these Alexandrines, which run from
twelve to fourteen, is accounted for by the similar numerical variety in
the pentameter.
[58] The well-known lines of Adrian to Florus, and his reply, “Ego
nolo Florus esse,” &c., are accentual trochaics, but not wholly so;
for the last line, Scythicas pati pruinas, requires the word pati
to be sounded as an iambic. They are not the earliest instance
extant of disregard to quantity, for Suetonius quotes some
satirical lines on Julius Cæsar.
[59] The break in the middle of the Alexandrine, it will occur to
every competent judge, has nothing analogous to it in the trimeter
iambic, but exactly corresponds to the invariable law of the
pentameter.
|Origin of rhyme in Latin.|
35. I have dwelt, perhaps tediously, on this subject, because vague
notions of a derivation of modern metrical arrangements, even in the
languages of Latin origin, from the Arabs or Scandinavians, have
sometimes gained credit.[60] It has been imagined also that the peculiar
characteristic of the new poetry, rhyme, was borrowed from the Saracens
of Spain.[61] But the Latin language abounds so much in consonances,
that those who have been accustomed to write verses in it well know the
difficulty of avoiding them, as much as an ear formed on classical
models demands; and as this gingle is certainly pleasing in itself, it
is not wonderful that the less fastidious vulgar should adopt it in
their rhythmical songs. It has been proved by Muratori, Gray, and
Turner, beyond the possibility of doubt, that rhymed Latin verse was in
use from the end of the fourth century.[62]
[60] Roquefort, Essai sur la Poésie Française dans le 12me et 13me
siècles, p. 66. Galvani, Osservazioni sulla poesia de’ Trovatori.
(Modena, 1829) Sanchez, Poesias Castellanas anteriores al 15mo
siglo, vol. i. p. 122.
Tyrwhitt had already observed, “The metres which the Normans used,
and which we seem to have borrowed from them, were plainly copied
from the Latin rhythmical verses, which, in the declension of that
language, were current in various forms among those who either did
not understand, or did not regard, the true quantity of syllables;
and the practice of rhyming is probably to be deduced from the same
original.” Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer, p.
51.
[61] Andrès, with a partiality to the Saracens of Spain, whom, by an
odd blunder, he takes for his countrymen, manifested in almost
every page, does not fail to urge this. It had been said long
before by Huet, and others who lived before these subjects had been
thoroughly investigated. Origine e Progresso, &c., ii. 194. He has
been copied by Ginguéné and Sismondi.
[62] Muratori, Antichità Italiane dissert., 40. Turner, in Archæologia,
vol. xiv., and Hist. of England, vol. iv. pp. 328, 653. Gray has
gone as deeply as any one into this subject; and, though writing at
what may be called an early period of metrical criticism, he has
fallen into a few errors, and been too easy of credence,
unanswerably proves the Latin origin of rhyme. Gray’s Works by
Mathias, vol. ii. p. 30-54.
|Provençal and French poetry.|
36. Thus, about the time of the first crusade, we find two dialects of
the same language, differing by that time not inconsiderably from each
other, the Provençal and French, possessing a regular grammar,
established forms of versification (and the early troubadours added
several to those borrowed from the Latin[63]), and a flexibility which
gave free scope to the graceful turns of poetry. William, duke of
Guienne, has the glory of leading the van of surviving Provençal
songsters. He was born in 1070, and may possibly have composed some of
his little poems before he joined the crusaders in 1096. If these are
genuine, and no doubt of them seems to be entertained, they denote a
considerable degree of previous refinement in the language.[64] We do
not, I believe, meet with any other troubadour till after the middle of
the twelfth century. From that time till about the close of the
thirteenth, they were numerous almost as the gay insects of spring;
names of illustrious birth are mingled in the list with those whom
genius has saved from obscurity; they were the delight of a luxurious
nobility, the pride of southern France, while the great fiefs of
Toulouse and Guienne were in their splendour. Their style soon extended
itself to the northern dialect. Abelard was the first of recorded name,
who taught the banks of the Seine to resound a tale of love; and it was
of Eloise that he sung.[65] “You composed,” says that gifted and
noble-spirited woman, in one of her letters to him, “many verses in
amorous measure, so sweet both in their language and their melody, that
your name was incessantly in the mouths of all, and even the most
illiterate could not be forgetful of you. This it was chiefly that made
women admire you. And as most of these songs were on me and my love,
they made me known in many countries, and caused many women to envy me.
Every tongue spoke of your Eloise; every street, every house resounded
with my name.”[66] These poems of Abelard are lost; but in the Norman,
or northern French language, we have an immense number of poets
belonging to the twelfth, and the two following centuries. One hundred
and twenty-seven are known by name in the twelfth alone.[67] Thibault,
king of Navarre and count of Champagne, about the middle of the next, is
accounted the best, as well as noblest of French poets.
[63] See Raynouard, Roquefort, and Galvini, for the Provençal and
French metres, which are very complicated.
[64] Raynouard, Choix des Poésies des Troubadours, vol. ii. Auguis,
Recueil des Anciens Poètes Français, vol. i.
[65] Bouterwek, on the authority of La Ravaillere, seems to doubt
whether these poems of Abelard were in French or Latin. Gesch. der
Französen Poesie, p. 18. I believe this would be thought quite
paradoxical by any critic at present.
[66] Duo autem, fateor, tibi specialiter inerant, quibus feminarum
quarumlibet animos statim allicere poteras, dictandi videlicet et
cantandi gratia; quæ cæteros minimè philosophos assecutos esse
novimus. Quibus quidem quasi ludo quodam laborem exercitii recreans
philosophici pleraque amatorio metro vel rithmo composita
reliquisti carmina, quæ præ nimiâ suavitate tam dictaminis quam
cantus sæpius frequentata tuum in ore omnium nomen incessanter
tenebant, ut etiam illiteratos melodiæ dulcedo tui non sineret
immemores esse. Atque hinc maxime in amorem tui feminæ suspirabant.
Et cum horum pars maxima carminum nostros decantaret amores, multis
me regionibus brevi tempore nunciavit, et multarum in me feminarum
accendit invidiam. And in another place: Frequenti carmine tuam in
ore omnium Heloissam ponebas: me plateæ omnes, me domus singulæ
resonabant. Epist. Abælardi et Heloissæ. These epistles of Abelard
and Eloisa, especially those of the latter, are, as far as I know,
the first book that gives any pleasure in reading which had been
produced in Europe for 600 years, since the Consolation of
Boethius, But I do not press my negative judgment. We may at least
say that the writers of the dark ages, if they have left anything
intrinsically very good, have been ill-treated by the learned, who
have failed to extract it. Pope, it may be here observed, has done
great injustice to Eloisa in his unrivalled Epistle, by putting the
sentiments of a coarse and abandoned woman into her mouth. Her
refusal to marry Abelard arose not from an abstract predilection
for the name of mistress above that of wife, but from her
disinterested affection, which would not deprive him of the
prospect of ecclesiastical dignities, to which his genius and
renown might lead him. She judged very unwisely, as it turned out,
but from an unbounded generosity of character. He was, in fact,
unworthy of her affection, which she expresses in the tenderest
language. Deum testem invoco, si me Augustus universo præsidens
mundo matrimonii honore dignaretur, totumque mihi orbem confirmaret
in perpetuum præsidendum, charius mihi et dignius videretur tua
dici meretrix quam illius imperatrix.
[67] Auguis, Discours Préliminaire, p. 2. Roquefort, Etat de la Poésie
Française aux 12me et 13me siècles.
37. In this French and Provençal poetry, if we come to the consideration
of it historically, descending from an earlier period, we are at once
struck by the vast preponderance of amorous ditties. The Greek and Roman
muses, especially the latter, seem frigid as their own fountain in
comparison. Satires on the great, and especially, on the clergy,
exhortations to the crusade, and religious odes, are intermingled in the
productions of the troubadours; but love is the prevailing theme.
This tone they could hardly have borrowed from the rhythmical Latin
verses, of which all that remain are without passion or energy. They
could as little have been indebted to their predecessors for a peculiar
gracefulness, an indescribable charm of gaiety and ease, which many of
their lighter poems display. This can only be ascribed to the polish of
chivalrous manners, and to the influence of feminine delicacy on public
taste. The well-known dialogue, for example, of Horace and Lydia, is
justly praised; nothing extant of this amœbean character, from Greece
or Rome, is nearly so good. But such alternate stanzas, between speakers
of different sexes, are very common in the early French poets; and it
would be easy to find some quite equal to Horace in grace and spirit.
They had even a generic name, _tensons_, contentions; that is,
dialogues of lively repartee, such as we are surprised to find in the
twelfth century, an age accounted by many almost barbarous. None of
these are prettier than what are called _pastourelles_, in which
the poet is feigned to meet a shepherdess, whose love he solicits, and
by whom he is repelled, (not always finally,) in alternate stanzas.[68]
Some of these may be read in Roquefort, Etat de la Poésie Française,
dans le 12me et 13me siècles; others in Raynouard, Choix des Poésies des
Troubadours; in Auguis, Recueil des Anciens Poètes Français; or in
Galvani, Osservazioni sulla Poesia de’ Trovatori.
[68] These have, as Galvani has observed, an ancient prototype in the
twenty-seventh pastoral of Theocritus, which Dryden has translated
with no diminution of its freedom. Some of the Pastourelles are
also rather licentious; but that is not the case with the greater
part. M. Raynouard, in an article of the Journal des Savans for
1824, p. 613, remarks the superior decency of the southern poets,
scarcely four or five transgressing in that respect; while many of
the fabliaux in the collections of Barbazan and Méon are of the
most coarse and stupid ribaldry; and such that even the object of
exhibiting ancient manners and language scarcely warranted their
publication in so large a number.
38. In all these light compositions which gallantry or gaiety inspired,
we perceive the characteristic excellencies of French poetry, as
distinctly as in the best vaudeville of the age of Louis XV. We can
really sometimes find little difference, except an obsoleteness of
language, which gives them a kind of poignancy. And this style, as I
have observed, seems to have been quite original in France, though it
was imitated by other nations.[69] The French poetry, on the other hand,
was deficient in strength and ardour. It was also too much filled with
monotonous commonplaces; among which the tedious descriptions of spring,
and the everlasting nightingale, are eminently to be reckoned. These,
perhaps, are less frequent in the early poems, most of which are short,
than they became in the prolix expansion adopted by the allegorical
school in the fourteenth century. They prevail, as is well known, in
Chaucer, Dunbar, and several other of our own poets.
[69] Andrès, as usual, derives the Provençal style of poetry from the
Arabians; and this has been countenanced, in some measure, by
Ginguéné and Sismondi. Some of the peculiarities of the Trobadours,
their tensons, or contentions, and the envoi, or termination of a
poem, by an address to the poem itself or the reader, are said to
be of Arabian origin. In assuming that rhyme was introduced by the
same channel, these writers are probably mistaken. But I have seen
too little of oriental, and, especially, of Hispano-Saracenic
poetry, to form any opinion how far the more essential
characteristics of Provençal verse may have been derived from it.
One seems to find more of oriental hyperbole in the Castilian
poetry.
|Metrical romances. Havelok the Dane.|
39. The metrical romances, far from common in Provençal,[70] but forming
a large portion of what was written in the northern dialect, though
occasionally picturesque, graceful, or animated, are seldom free from
tedious or prosaic details. The earliest of these extant seems to be
that of Havelok the Dane, of which an abridgment was made by Geoffrey
Gaimar, before the middle of the twelfth century. The story is certainly
a popular legend from the Danish part of England, which the French
versifier has called, according to the fashion of romances, “a Breton
lay.” If this word meant anything more than relating to Britain, it is a
plain falsehood; and upon either hypothesis, it may lead us to doubt, as
many other reasons may also, what has been so much asserted of late
years, as to the Armorican origin of romantic fictions; since the word
Breton, which some critics refer to Armorica, is here applied to a story
of mere English birth.[71] It cannot, however, be doubted, from
the absurd introduction of Arthur’s name in this romance of Havelok,
that it was written after the publication of the splendid fables of
Geoffrey.[72]
[70] It has been denied that there are any metrical romances in
Provençal. But one called the Philomena, on the fabulous history of
Charlemagne, is written after 1173, but not much later than 1200.
Journal des Savans, 1824.
[71] The Recherches sur les Bardes d’Armorique, by that respectable
veteran, M. de la Rue, are very unsatisfactory. It does not appear
that the Bretons have so much as a national tradition of any
romantic poetry; nor any writings in their language older than
1450. The authority of Warton, Leyden, Ellis, Turner, and Price
have rendered this hypothesis of early Armorican romance popular;
but I cannot believe that so baseless a fabric will endure much
longer. Is it credible that tales of aristocratic splendour and
courtesy sprung up in so poor and uncivilised a country as
Bretagne? Traditional stories they might, no doubt, possess, and
some of these may be found in the lais de Marie, and other early
poems; but not romances of chivalry. I do not recollect, though
speaking without confidence, that any proof has been given of
Armorican traditions about Arthur, earlier than the history of
Geoffrey: for it seems too much to interpret the word _Britones_ of
them rather than of the Welsh. Mr. Turner, I observe, without
absolutely recanting, has much receded from his opinion of the
Armorican prototype of Geoffrey of Monmouth.
[72] The romance of Havelok was printed by Sir Frederick Madden in
1829; but not for sale. His Introduction is of considerable value.
The story of Havelok is that of Curan and Argentile, in Warner’s
Albion’s England, upon which Mason founded a drama. Sir F. Madden
refers the English translation to some time between 1270 and 1290.
The manuscript is in the Bodleian Library. The French original has
since been reprinted in France, as I learn from Brunet’s Supplement
au Manuel du Libraire. Both this and its abridgment, by Geoffrey
Gaimar, are in the British Museum.
|Diffusion of French language.|
40. Two more celebrated poems are by Wace, a native of Jersey; one, a
free version of the history lately published by Geoffrey of Monmouth;
the other, a narrative of the Battle of Hastings and Conquest of
England. Many other romances followed. Much has been disputed for some
years concerning them, and the lays and fabliaux of the northern
trouveurs; it is sufficient here to observe, that they afforded a
copious source of amusement and interest to those who read or listened,
as far as the French language was diffused; and this was far beyond the
boundaries of France. Not only was it the common spoken tongue of what
is called the court, or generally of the superior ranks, in England, but
in Italy and in Germany, at least throughout the thirteenth century.
Brunetto Latini wrote his philosophical compilation, called Le Tresor,
in French, “because,” as he says, “the language was more agreeable and
usual than any other.” Italian, in fact, was hardly employed in prose at
that time. But for those whose education had not gone so far, the
romances and tales of France began to be rendered into German, as early
as the latter part of the twelfth century, as they were long afterwards
into English, becoming the basis of those popular songs, which
illustrate the period of the Swabian emperors, the great house of
Hohenstauffen, Frederic Barbarossa, Henry VI., and Frederic II.
|German poetry of Swabian period.|
41. The poets of Germany, during this period of extraordinary fertility
in versification, were not less numerous than those of France and
Provence.[73] From Henry of Veldek to the last of the lyric poets, soon
after the beginning of the fourteenth century, not less than two hundred
are known by name. A collection made in that age by Rudiger von Manasse
of Zurich contains the productions of one hundred and forty; and modern
editors have much enlarged the list.[74] Henry of Veldek is placed by
Eichhorn about 1170, and by Bouterwek twenty years later; so that at the
utmost we cannot reckon the period of their duration more than a century
and a half. But the great difference perceptible between the poetry of
Henry and that of the old German songs proves him not to have been the
earliest of the Swabian school: he is as polished in language and
versification as any of his successors; and though a northern, he wrote
in the dialect of the house of Hohenstauffen. Wolfram von Eschenbach, in
the first years of the next century, is, perhaps, the most eminent name
of the Minne-singers, as the lyric poets were denominated, and is also
the translator of several romances. The golden age of German poetry was
before the fall of the Swabian dynasty, at the death of Conrad IV., in
1254. Love, as the word denotes, was the peculiar theme of the
Minne-singers; but it was chiefly from the northern or southern dialects
of France, especially the latter, that they borrowed their amorous
strains.[75] In the latter part of the thirteenth century, we
find less of feeling and invention, but a more didactic and moral tone,
sometimes veiled in Æsopic fables, sometimes openly satirical. Conrad of
Wurtzburg is the chief of the latter school; but he had to lament the
decline of taste and manners in his own age.
[73] Bouterwek, p. 95.
[74] Id. p. 98. This collection was published in 1758, by Bodmer.
[75] Herder, Zerstreute Blätter, vol. v. p. 206. Eichhorn, Allg.
Geschichte der Cultur. vol. i. p. 226. Heinsius, Teut, oder
Lehrbuch der Deutschen. Sprachwissenschaft, vol. iv. pp. 32-80.
Weber’s Illustrations of Northern Antiquities, 1814. This work
contains the earliest analysis, I believe, of the Nibelungen Lied.
But above all, I have been indebted to the excellent account of
German poetry by Bouterwek, in the ninth volume of his great work,
the History of Poetry and Eloquence since the thirteenth century.
In this volume the mediæval poetry of Germany occupies nearly four
hundred closely printed pages. I have since met with a pleasing
little volume, on the Lays of the Minne-singers, by Mr. Edgar
Taylor. It contains an account of the chief of those poets, with
translations, perhaps in too modern a style, though it may be true
that no other would suit our modern taste.
A species of love song, peculiar, according to Weber (p. 9), to the
Minne-singers, are called Watchmen’s Songs. These consist in a
dialogue between a lover and the sentinel who guards his mistress.
The latter is persuaded to imitate “Sir Pandarus of Troy;” and when
morning breaks, summons the lover to quit his lady; who, in her
turn, maintains that “it is the nightingale, and not the lark,”
with almost the pertinacity of Juliet.
Mr. Taylor remarks, that the German poets do not go so far in their
idolatry of the fair as the Provençals, p. 127. I do not concur
altogether in his reasons; but as the Minne-singers imitated the
Provençals, this deviation is remarkable. I should rather ascribe
it to the hyperbolical tone which the Troubadours had borrowed from
the Arabians, or to the susceptibility of their temperament.
42. No poetry, however, of the Swabian period is so national as the epic
romances, which drew their subjects from the highest antiquity, if they
did not even adopt the language of primæval bards, which, perhaps,
though it has been surmised, is not compatible with their style. In the
two most celebrated productions of this kind, the Helden Buch, or Book
of Heroes, and the Nibelungen Lied, the Lay of the Nibelungen, a
fabulous people, we find the recollections of an heroic age, wherein the
names of Attila and Theodoric stand out as witnesses of traditional
history, clouded by error and coloured by fancy. The Nibelungen Lied, in
its present form, is by an uncertain author, perhaps, about the year
1200;[76] but it comes, and as far as we can judge, with little or no
interpolation of circumstances, from an age anterior to Christianity, to
civilisation, and to the more refined forms of chivalry. We cannot well
think the stories later than the sixth or seventh centuries. The German
critics admire the rude grandeur of this old epic: and its fables,
marked with a character of barbarous simplicity wholly unlike that of
later romance, are become, in some degree, familiar to ourselves.
[76] Weber says,--“I have no doubt whatever that the romance itself
is of very high antiquity, at least of the eleventh century,
though, certainly, the present copy has been considerably
modernised.” Illustrations of Northern Romances, p. 26. But
Bouterwek does not seem to think it of so ancient a date; and I
believe it is commonly referred to about the year 1200. Schlegel
ascribes it to Henry von Offerdingen. Heinsius, iv. 52.
It is highly probable that the “babara et antiquissima carmina,”
which, according to Eginhard, Charlemagne caused to be reduced to
writing, were no other than the legends of the Nibelungen Lied, and
similar traditions of the Gothic and Burgundian time. Weber, p. 6.
I will here mention, as I believe it is little known in England, a
curious Latin epic poem on the wars of Attila, published by Fischer
in 1780. He conceives it to be of the sixth century; but others
have referred it to the eighth. The heroes are Franks; but the
whole is fabulous, except the name of Attila and his Huns. I do not
know whether this has any connection with a French poem on Attila,
by a writer named Casola, existing in manuscript at Modena. A
translation into Italian was published by Rossi at Ferrara in 1568:
it is one of the scarcest books in the world. Weber’s
Illustrations, p. 23. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 178. Galvani,
Osservazioni sulla poesia de’ trovatori, p. 16.
The Nibelungen Lied seems to have been less popular in the middle
ages than other romances; evidently because it relates to a
different state of manners. Bouterwek, p. 141. Heinsius observes
that we must consider this poem as the most valuable record of
German antiquity, but that to overrate its merit, as some have been
inclined to do, can be of no advantage.
|Decline of German poetry.|
43. The loss of some accomplished princes, and of a near intercourse
with the south of France and with Italy, the augmented independence of
the German nobility, to be maintained by unceasing warfare, rendered
their manners, from the latter part of the thirteenth century, more rude
than before. They ceased to cultivate poetry, or to think it honourable
in their rank. Meantime a new race of poets, chiefly burghers of towns,
sprung up about the reign of Rodolph of Hapsburgh, before the lays of
the Minne-singers had yet ceased to resound. These prudent, though not
inspired, votaries of the muse, chose the didactic and moral style as
more salutary than the love songs, and more reasonable than the
romances. They became known in the fourteenth century, by the name of
meister-singers, but are traced to the institutions of the twelfth
century, called Singing-schools, for the promotion of popular music, the
favourite recreation of Germany. What they may have done for music I am
unable to say: it was in an evil hour for the art of poetry that
they extended their jurisdiction over her. They regulated verse by the
most pedantic and minute laws, such as a society with no idea of
excellence but conformity to rule would be sure to adopt; though nobler
institutions have often done the same, and the Master-burghers were but
prototypes of the Italian academicians. The poetry was always moral and
serious, but flat. These meister-singers are said to have originated at
Mentz, from which they spread to Augsburg, Strasburg, and other cities,
and in none were more renowned than Nuremberg. Charles IV., in 1378,
incorporated them by the name of Meistergenoss-schaft, with armorial
bearings and peculiar privileges. They became, however, more conspicuous
in the sixteenth century; scarce any names of meister-singers before
that age are recorded; nor does it seem that much of their earlier
poetry is extant.[77]
[77] Bouterwek, ix. 271-291. Heinsius, iv. 85-98. See also the
Biographie Universelle, art. Folez; and a good article in the
Retrospective Review, vol. x. p. 113.
|Poetry of France and Spain.|
44. The French versifiers had by this time, perhaps, become less
numerous, though several names in the same style of amatory song do some
credit to their age. But the romances of chivalry began now to be
written in prose; while a very celebrated poem, the Roman de la Rose,
had introduced an unfortunate taste for allegory into verse, from which
France did not extricate herself for several generations. Meanwhile, the
Provençal poets, who, down to the close of the thirteenth century, had
flourished in the south, and whose language many Lombards adopted, came
to an end; after the reunion of the fief of Toulouse to the crown, and
the possession of Provence by a northern line of princes, their ancient
and renowned tongue passed for a dialect, a patois of the people. It had
never been much employed in prose, save in the kingdom of Aragon, where,
under the name of Valencian, it continued for two centuries to be a
legitimate language, till political circumstances of the same kind
reduced it, as in southern France, to a provincial dialect. The
Castilian language, which, though it has been traced higher in written
fragments, may be considered to have begun, in a literary sense, with
the poem of the Cid, not later than the middle of the twelfth century,
was employed by a few extant poets in the next two ages, and in the
fourteenth was as much the established vehicle of many kinds of
literature in Spain as the French was on the other side of the
mountains.[78] The names of Portuguese poets not less early than any in
Castile are recorded; fragments are mentioned by Bouterwek as old as the
twelfth century, and there exists a collection of lyric poetry in the
style of the Troubadours, which is referred to no late part of the next
age.[79] Nothing has been published in the Castilian language of
this amatory style older than 1400.
[78] Sanchez, Collection de poesias Castellanas anteriores al siglo
15mo. Velasquez, Historia della poesia Español; which I only know
by the German translation of Dieze, (Göttingen, 1769,) who has
added many notes. Andrès, Origine d’ogni litteratura, ii. 158.
Bouterwek’s History of Spanish and Portuguese Literature. I shall
quote the English translation of this work, which, I am sorry to
say, is sold by the booksellers at scarce a third of its original
price. It is a strange thing, that while we multiply encyclopædias
and indifferent compilations of our own, there is no demand for
translations from the most learned productions of Germany that will
indemnify a publisher.
[79] This very curious fact in literary history has been brought to
light by Lord Stuart of Rothsay, who printed at Paris, in 1823,
twenty-five copies of a collection of ancient Portuguese songs,
from a manuscript in the library of the College of Nobles at
Lisbon. An account of this book by M. Raynouard, will be found in
the Journal des Savans for August, 1825; and I have been favoured
by my noble friend the editor with the loan of a copy; though my
ignorance of the language prevented me from forming an exact
judgment of its contents. In the preface the following
circumstances are stated. It consists of seventy-five folios, the
first part having been torn off, and the manuscript attached to a
work of a wholly different nature. The writing appears to be of the
fourteenth century, and in some places older. The idiom seems older
than the writing; it may be called, if I understand the meaning of
the preface, as old as the beginning of the thirteenth century, and
certainly older than the reign of Denis, pode appellidarse coevo do
seculo xiii., e de certo he anterior ao reynado de D. Deniz. Denis
king of Portugal reigned from 1279 to 1325. It is regular in
grammar, and for the most part in orthography; but contains some
gallicisms, which show either a connection between France and
Portugal in that age, or a common origin in the southern tongues of
Europe; since certain idioms found in this manuscript are preserved
in Spanish, Italian, and Provençal, yet are omitted in Portuguese
dictionaries. A few poems are translated from Provençal, but the
greater part are strictly Portuguese, as the mention of places,
names, and manners shows. M. Raynouard, however, observes, that the
thoughts and forms of versification are similar to those of the
Troubadours. The metres employed are usually of seven, eight, and
ten syllables, the accent falling on the last; but some lines occur
of seven, eight, or eleven syllables accented on the penultimate,
and these are sometimes interwoven, at regular intervals, with the
others.
The songs, as far as I was able to judge, are chiefly, if not
wholly, amatory: they generally consist of stanzas, the first of
which is written (and printed) with intervals for musical notes,
and in the form of prose, though really in metre. Each stanza has
frequently a burden of two lines. The plan appeared to be something
like that of the Castilian glosas of the fifteenth century, the
subject of the first stanza being repeated, and sometimes expanded,
in the rest. I do not know that this is found in any Provençal
poetry. The language, according to Raynouard, resembles Provençal
more than the modern Portuguese does. It is a very remarkable
circumstance, that we have no evidence, at least from the letter of
the Marquis of Santillana early in the fifteenth century, that the
Castilians had any of these love songs till long after the date of
this Cancioneiro; and that we may rather collect from it, that the
Spanish amatory poets chose the Galician or Portuguese dialect in
preference to their own. Though the very ancient collection to
which this note refers seems to have been unknown, I find mention
of one by Don Pedro, Count of Barcelos, natural son of King Denis,
in Dieze’s notes on Velasquez. Gesch. der Span. Dichtkunst, p. 70.
This must have been in the first part of the fourteenth century.
|Early Italian language.|
45. Italy came last of those countries where Latin had been spoken to
the possession of an independent language and literature. No industry
has hitherto retrieved so much as a few lines of real Italian till near
the end of the twelfth century;[80] and there is not much before the
middle of the next. Several poets, however, whose versification is not
wholly rude, appeared soon afterwards. The Divine Comedy of Dante seems
to have been commenced before his exile from Florence in 1304. The
Italian language was much used in prose, during the times of Dante and
Petrarch, though very little before.
[80] Tiraboschi, iii. 323, doubts the authenticity of some inscriptions
referred to the twelfth century. The earliest genuine Italian seems
to be a few lines by Ciullo d’Alcamo, a Sicilian, between 1187 and
1193, vol. iv. p. 340.
|Dante and Petrarch.|
46. Dante and Petrarch are, as it were, the morning stars of our modern
literature. I shall say nothing more of the former in this place: he
does not stand in such close connection as Petrarch with the fifteenth
century; nor had he such influence over the taste of his age. In this
respect Petrarch has as much the advantage over Dante, as he was his
inferior in depth of thought and creative power. He formed a school of
poetry, which, though no disciple comparable to himself came out of it,
gave a character to the taste of his country. He did not invent the
sonnet; but he, perhaps, was the cause that it has continued in fashion
for so many ages.[81] He gave purity, elegance, and even stability to
the Italian language, which has been incomparably less changed during
near five centuries since his time, than it was in one between the age
of Guido Guinizzeli and his own. And none have denied him the honour of
having restored a true feeling of classical antiquity in Italy, and
consequently in Europe.
[81] Crescimbeni (Storia della vulgar poesia, vol. ii. p. 269) asserts
the claim of Guiton d’Arezzo to the invention of the regular
sonnet, or at least the perfection of that in use among the
Provençals.
|Change of Anglo-Saxon to English.|
47. Nothing can be more difficult, except by an arbitrary line, than to
determine the commencement of the English language; not so much, as in
those of the continent, because we are in want of materials, but rather
from an opposite reason, the possibility of tracing a very gradual
succession of verbal changes that ended in a change of denomination. We
should probably experience a similar difficulty, if we knew equally well
the current idiom of France or Italy in the seventh and eighth
centuries. For when we compare the earliest English of the thirteenth
century with the Anglo-Saxon of the twelfth, it seems hard to pronounce,
why it should pass for a separate language, rather than a modification
or simplification of the former. We must conform, however, to usage, and
say that the Anglo-Saxon was converted into English: 1. by contracting
or otherwise modifying the pronunciation and orthography of words; 2. by
omitting many inflections, especially of the noun, and consequently
making more use of articles and auxiliaries; 3. by the introduction of
French derivatives; 4. by using less inversion and ellipsis, especially
in poetry. Of these the second alone, I think, can be considered as
sufficient to describe a new form of language; and this was brought
about so gradually, that we are not relieved from much of our
difficulty, whether some compositions shall pass for the latest
offspring of the mother, or the earliest fruits of the daughter’s
fertility.[82]
[82] It is a proof of this difficulty that the best masters of our
ancient language have lately introduced the word semi-Saxon, which
is to cover everything from 1150 to 1250. See Thorpe’s preface to
Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, and many other recent books.
48. The Anglo-Norman language is a phrase not quite so unobjectionable
as the Anglo-Norman constitution; and as it is sure to deceive, we might
better lay it aside altogether.[83] In the one instance, there was a
real fusion of laws and government, to which we can find but a remote
analogy, or rather none at all, in the other. It is probable, indeed,
that the converse of foreigners might have something to do with those
simplifications of the Anglo-Saxon grammar, which appear about the reign
of Henry II., more than a century after the Conquest; though it is also
true, that languages of a very artificial structure, like that of
England before that revolution, often became less complex in their
forms, without any such violent process as an amalgamation of two
different races.[84] What is commonly called the Saxon Chronicle is
continued to the death of Stephen, in 1154, and in the same language,
though with some loss of its purity. Besides the neglect of several
grammatical rules, French words now and then obtrude themselves, but not
very frequently, in the latter pages of this Chronicle. Peterborough,
however, was quite an English monastery; its endowments, its abbots,
were Saxon; and the political spirit the Chronicle breathes, in some
passages, is that of the indignant subjects, _servi ancor
frementi_, of the Norman usurpers. If its last compilers, therefore,
gave way to some innovations of language, we may presume that these
prevailed more extensively in places less secluded, and especially in
London.
[83] A popular and pleasing writer has drawn a little upon his
imagination in the following account of the language of our
forefathers after the Conquest:--“The language of the church was
Latin; that of the king and nobles, Norman; that of the people,
Anglo-Saxon; _the Anglo-Norman jargon was only employed in the
commercial intercourse between the conquerors and the
conquered_.” Ellis’s Specimens of Early English Poets, vol. i.
p. 17. What was this jargon? and where do we find a proof of its
existence? and what was the commercial intercourse hinted at? I
suspect Ellis only meant, what has often been remarked, that the
animals which bear a Saxon name in the fields acquire a French one
in the shambles. But even this is more ingenious than just; for
muttons, beeves, and porkers are good old words for the living
quadrupeds.
[84] “Every branch of the low German stock from whence the Anglo-Saxon
sprung, displays the same simplification of its grammar.” Price’s
Preface to Warton, p. 110. He therefore ascribes little influence
to the Norman conquest or to French connections.
|Layamon.|
49. We find evidence of a greater change in Layamon, a translator of
Wace’s romance of Brut from the French. Layamon’s age is uncertain; it
must have been after 1155, when the original poem was completed, and can
hardly be placed below 1200. His language is accounted rather
Anglo-Saxon than English; it retains most of the distinguishing
inflections of the mother-tongue, yet evidently differs considerably
from that older than the Conquest by the introduction, or at least more
frequent employment, of some new auxiliary forms, and displays very
little of the characteristics of the ancient poetry, its periphrases,
its ellipses, or its inversions. But though translation was the means by
which words of French origin were afterwards most copiously introduced,
very few occur in the extracts from Layamon hitherto published; for we
have not yet the expected edition of the entire work. He is not a mere
translator, but improves much on Wace. The adoption of the plain and
almost creeping style of the metrical French romance, instead of the
impetuous dithyrambics of Saxon song, gives Layamon at first sight a
greater affinity to the new English language than in mere grammatical
structure he appears to bear.[85]
[85] See a long extract from Layamon in Ellis’s Specimens. This writer
observes, that, “it contains no word which we are under the
necessity of referring to a French root.” _Duke_ and _Castle_ seem
exceptions: but the latter word occurs in the Saxon Chronicle
before the Conquest, A.D. 1052.
|Progress of English language.|
50. Layamon wrote in a monastery on the Severn; and it is agreeable to
experience, that an obsolete structure of language should be retained in
a distant province, while it has undergone some change among the less
rugged inhabitants of a capital. The disuse of Saxon forms crept on by
degrees; some metrical lives of saints, apparently written not far from
the year 1250,[86] may be deemed English; but the first specimen
of it that bears a precise date is a proclamation of Henry III.,
addressed to the people of Huntingdonshire in 1258, but doubtless
circular throughout England.[87] A triumphant song, composed probably in
London, on the victory obtained at Lewes by the confederate barons in
1264, and the capture of Richard Earl of Cornwall, is rather less
obsolete in its style than this proclamation, as might naturally be
expected. It could not have been written later than that year, because
in the next the tables were turned on those who now exulted, by the
complete discomfiture of their party in the battle of Evesham. Several
pieces of poetry, uncertain as to their precise date, must be referred
to the latter part of this century. Robert of Gloucester, after the year
1297, since he alludes to the canonisation of St. Louis,[88] turned the
chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth into English verse; and on comparing
him with Layamon, a native of the same county, and a writer on the same
subject, it will appear that a great quantity of French had flowed into
the language since the loss of Normandy. The Anglo-Saxon inflections,
terminations, and orthography, had also undergone a very considerable
change. That the intermixture of French words was very slightly owing to
the Norman conquest will appear probable, by observing at least as
frequent an use of them in the earliest specimens of the Scottish
dialect, especially a song on the death of Alexander III. in 1285. There
is a good deal of French in this, not borrowed, probably, from England,
but directly from the original sources of imitation.
[86] Ritson’s Dissertat. on Romance. Madden’s Introduction to Havelok.
Notes of Price, in his edition of Warton. Warton himself is of no
authority in this matter. Price inclines to put most of the poems
quoted by Warton near the close of the thirteenth century.
It should here be observed, that the language underwent its
metamorphosis into English by much less rapid gradations in some
parts of the kingdom than in others. Not only the popular dialect
of many counties, especially in the north, retained long, and still
retains, a larger proportion of the Anglo-Saxon peculiarities, but
we have evidence that they were not everywhere disused in writing.
A manuscript in the Kentish dialect, if that phrase is correct,
bearing the date of 1340, is more Anglo-Saxon than any of the poems
ascribed to the thirteenth century, which we read in Warton, such
as the legends of saints or the Ormulum. This very curious fact was
first made known to the public by Mr. Thorpe, in his translation of
Cædmon, preface, p. xii.; and an account of the manuscript itself,
rather fuller than that of Mr. T., has since been given in the
catalogue of the Arundel MSS. in the British Museum.
[87] Henry’s Hist. of Britain, vol. viii., appendix. “Between 1244 and
1258,” says Sir F. Madden, “we know, was written the versification
of part of a meditation of St. Augustine, as proved by the age of
the prior, who gave the manuscript to the Durham library,” p. 49.
This, therefore, will be strictly the oldest piece of English, to
the date of which we can approach by more than conjecture.
[88] Madden’s Havelock, p. 52.
|English of the fourteenth century. Chaucer. Gower.|
51. The fourteenth century was not unproductive of men, both English and
Scots, gifted with the powers of poetry. Laurence Minot, an author
unknown to Warton, but whose poems on the wars of Edward III. are
referred by their publisher Ritson to 1352, is perhaps the first
original poet in our language that has survived; since such of his
predecessors as are now known appear to have been merely translators, or
at best amplifiers of a French or Latin original. The earliest
historical or epic narrative is due to John Barbour, archdeacon of
Aberdeen, whose long poem in the Scots dialect, The Bruce, commemorating
the deliverance of his country, seems to have been completed in 1373.
But our greatest poet of the middle ages, beyond comparison, was
Geoffrey Chaucer; and I do not know that any other country, except
Italy, produced one of equal variety in invention, acuteness in
observation, or felicity of expression. A vast interval must be made
between Chaucer and any other English poet; yet Gower, his contemporary,
though not, like him, a poet of nature’s growth, had some effect in
rendering the language less rude, and exciting a taste for verse; if he
never rises, he never sinks low; he is always sensible, polished,
perspicuous, and not prosaic in the worst sense of the word. Longlands,
the supposed author of Piers Plowman’s Vision, with far more imaginative
vigour, has a more obsolete and unrefined diction.
|General disuse of French in England.|
52. The French language was spoken by the superior classes of society in
England from the conquest to the reign of Edward III.; though it seems
probable that they were generally acquainted with English, at least in
the latter part of that period. But all letters, even of a private
nature, were written in Latin till the beginning of the reign of Edward
I., soon after 1270, when a sudden change brought in the use of
French.[89] In grammar schools boys were made to construe their Latin
into French; and in the statutes of Oriel College, Oxford, we find, in a
regulation so late as 1328, that the students shall converse together,
if not in Latin, at least in French.[90] The minutes of the corporation
of London, recorded in the Town Clerk’s office, were in French, as well
as the proceedings in parliament, and in the courts of justice;
and oral discussions were perhaps carried on in the same language,
though this is not a necessary consequence. Hence the English was seldom
written, and hardly employed in prose till after the middle of the
fourteenth century. Sir John Mandeville’s travels were written in 1356.
This is our earliest English book. Wicliffe’s translation of the Bible,
a great work that enriched the language, is referred to 1383, Trevisa’s
version of the Polychronicon of Higden was in 1385, and the Astrolabe of
Chaucer in 1392. A few public instruments were drawn up in English under
Richard II.; and about the same time, probably, it began to be employed
in epistolary correspondence of a private nature. Trevisa informs us,
that, when he wrote (1385), even gentlemen had much left off to have
their children taught French, and names the schoolmaster (John Cornwall)
who soon after 1350 brought in so great an innovation as the making his
boys read Latin into English.[91] This change from the common use of
French in the upper ranks seems to have taken place as rapidly as a
similar revolution has lately done in Germany. By a statute of 1362, (36
E. 3, c. 15,) all pleas in courts of justice are directed to be pleaded
and judged in English, on account of French being so much unknown. But
the laws, and, generally speaking, the records of parliament, continued
to be in the latter language for many years; and we learn from Sir John
Fortescue, a hundred years afterwards, that this statute itself was but
partially enforced.[92] The French language, if we take his words
literally, even in the reign of Edward IV., was spoken in affairs of
mercantile account, and in many games, the vocabulary of both being
chiefly derived from it.[93]
[89] I am indebted for this fact, which I have ventured to generalise,
to the communication of Mr. Stevenson, sub-commissioner of public
records.
[90] Si qua inter se proferant, colloquio Latino vel saltem Gallico
perfruantur. Warton, i. 6. In Merton College statutes, given in
1271, Latin alone is prescribed.
[91] The passage may be found quoted in Warton, ubi suprà, or in many
other books.
[92] “In the courts of justice they formerly used to plead in French,
till, in pursuance of a law to that purpose, that custom was
_somewhat restrained_, but not hitherto quite disused, de Laudibus
Legum Angliæ, c. xlviii.” I quote from Waterhouse’s translation;
but the Latin runs _quam plurimum_ restrictus est.
[93] Ibid.
|State of European languages about 1400.|
53. Thus by the year 1400, we find a national literature subsisting in
seven European languages, three spoken in the Spanish peninsula, the
French, the Italian, the German, and the English; from which last, the
Scots dialect need not be distinguished. Of these the Italian was the
most polished, and had to boast of the greatest writers; the French
excelled in their number and variety. Our own tongue, though it had
latterly acquired much copiousness in the hands of Chaucer and Wicliffe,
both of whom lavishly supplied it with words of French and Latin
derivation, was but just growing into a literary existence. The German,
as well as that of Valencia, seemed to decline. The former became more
precise, more abstract, more intellectual, (_geistig_), and less
sensible (_sinnlich_), (to use the words of Eichhorn), and of
consequence less fit for poetry; it fell into the hands of lawyers and
mystical theologians. The earliest German prose, a few very ancient
fragments excepted, is the collection of Saxon laws (Sachsenspiegel),
about the middle of the thirteenth century; the next the Swabian
collection (Schwabenspiegel), about 1282.[94] But these forming hardly a
part of literature, though Bouterwek praises passages of the latter for
religious eloquence, we may deem John Tauler, a Dominican friar of
Strasburg, whose influence in propagating what was called the mystical
theology, gave a new tone to his country, to be the first German writer
in prose. “Tauler,” says a modern historian of literature, “in his
German sermons, mingled many expressions invented by himself, which were
the first attempt at a philosophical language, and displayed surprising
eloquence for the age wherein he lived. It may be justly said of him,
that he first gave to prose that direction in which Luther afterwards
advanced so far.”[95] Tauler died in 1361. Meantime, as has been said
before, the nobility abandoned their love of verse, which the burghers
took up diligently, but with little spirit or genius; the common
language became barbarous and neglected, of which the strange fashion of
writing half Latin, half German, verses, is a proof.[96] This had been
common in the darker ages: we have several instances of it in
Anglo-Saxon; but it was late to adopt it in the fourteenth century.
[94] Bouterwek, p. 163. There are some novels at the end of the
thirteenth, or beginning of the fourteenth century. Ibid.
[95] Heinsius, iv. 76.
[96] Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch., i. 240.
|Ignorance of reading and writing in darker ages.|
54. The Latin writers of the middle ages were chiefly ecclesiastics. But
of these in the living tongues a large proportion were laymen. They
knew, therefore, how to commit their thoughts to writing; and hence the
ignorance characteristic of the darker ages must seem to be
passing away. This, however, is a very difficult, though interesting
question, when we come to look nearly at the gradual progress of
rudimentary knowledge. I can offer but an outline, which those who turn
more of their attention towards the subject will be enabled to correct
and supply. Before the end of the eleventh century, and especially after
the ninth, it was rare to find laymen in France who could read and
write.[97] The case was probably not better anywhere else, except in
Italy. I should incline to except Italy, on the authority of a passage
in Wippo, a German writer soon after the year 1000, who exhorts the
Emperor Henry II. to cause the sons of the nobility to be instructed in
letters, using the example of the Italians, with whom, according to him,
it was a universal practice.[98] The word clerks or clergymen became in
this and other countries synonymous with one who could write or even
read; we all know the original meaning of benefit of clergy, and the
test by which it was claimed. Yet from about the end of the eleventh, or
at least of the twelfth century, many circumstances may lead us to
believe that it was less and less a conclusive test, and that the laity
came more and more into possession of the simple elements of literature.
[97] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 2. Some nobles sent their children
to be educated in the schools of Charlemagne, especially those of
Germany, under Raban, Notker, Bruno, and other distinguished
abbots. But they were generally destined for the church. Meiners,
ii. 377. The signatures of laymen are often found to deeds of the
eighth century, and sometimes of the ninth. Nouv. Traité de la
Diplomatique, ii. 422. The ignorance of the laity, according to
this authority, was not strictly parallel to that of the church.
[98]
Tunc fac edictum per terram Teutonicorum
Quilibet ut dives sibi natos instruat omnes
Litterulis, legemque suam persuadeat illis,
Ut cum principibus placitandi venerit usus,
Quisque suis libris exemplum proferat illis.
Moribus his dudum vivebat Roma decenter,
His studiis tantos potuit vincere tyrannos.
Hoc servant Itali post prima crepundia cuncti.
I am indebted for this quotation to Meiners, ii. 344.
|Reasons for supposing this to have diminished after 1100.|
55. I. It will of course be admitted that all who administered or
belonged to the Roman law were masters of reading and writing, though we
do not find that they were generally ecclesiastics, even in the lowest
sense of the word, by receiving the tonsure. Some indeed were such. In
countries where the feudal law had passed from unwritten custom to
record and precedent, and had grown into as much subtlety by diffuseness
as the Roman, which was the case of England from the time of Henry II.,
the lawyers, though laymen, were unquestionably clerks or learned. II.
The convenience of such elementary knowledge to merchants, who, both in
the Mediterranean and in these parts of Europe, carried on a good deal
of foreign commerce, and indeed to all traders, may render it probable
that they were not destitute of it; though it must be confessed that the
word clerk rather seems to denote that their deficiency was supplied by
those employed under them. I do not, however, conceive that the clerks
of citizens were ecclesiastics.[99] III. If we could rely on a passage
in Ingulfus, the practice in grammar schools of construing Latin into
French was as old as the reign of the Conqueror;[100] and it seems
unlikely that this should have been confined to children educated for
the English church. IV. The poets of the north and south of France were
often men of princely or noble birth, sometimes ladies; their
versification is far too artificial to be deemed the rude product of an
illiterate mind; and to these, whose capacity of holding the pen few
will dispute, we must surely add a numerous class of readers, for whom
their poetry was designed. It may be surmised, that the itinerant
minstrels answered this end, and supplied the ignorance of the nobility.
But many ditties of the troubadours were not so well adapted to the
minstrels, who seem to have dealt more with metrical romances. Nor do I
doubt that these also were read in many a castle of France and Germany.
I will not dwell on the story of Francesca of Rimini, because no one,
perhaps, is likely to dispute that a Romagnol lady in the age of Dante
would be able to read the tale of Lancelot. But that romance had long
been written; and other ladies doubtless had read it, and possibly had
left off reading it in similar circumstances, and as little to their
advantage. The fourteenth century abounded with books in French prose;
the extant copies of some are not very few; but no argument against
their circulation could be urged from their scarcity in the
present day. It is not of course pretended that they were diffused as
extensively as printed books have been. V. The fashion of writing
private letters in French instead of Latin, which, as has been
mentioned, came in among us soon after 1270, affords perhaps a
presumption that they were written in a language intelligible to the
correspondent, because he had no longer occasion for assistance in
reading them; though they were still generally from the hand of a
secretary. But at what time this disuse of Latin began on the Continent
I cannot exactly determine. The French and Castilians, I believe, made
general use of their own languages in the latter half of the thirteenth
century.
[99] The earliest recorded bills of exchange, according to Beckmann,
Hist. of Inventions, iii. 430, are in a passage of the jurist
Baldus, and bear date 1328. But they were by no means in common use
till the next century. I do not mention this as bearing much on the
subject of the text.
[100] Et pueris etiam in scholis principia literarum Gallicè et non
Anglicè traderentur.
|Increased knowledge of writing in fourteenth century.|
56. The art of reading does not imply that of writing; it seems likely
that the one prevailed before the other. The latter was difficult to
acquire, in consequence of the regularity of characters preserved by the
clerks, and their complex system of abbreviations, which rendered the
cursive handwriting, introduced about the end of the eleventh century,
almost as operose to those who had not much experience of it as the more
stiff characters of older manuscripts. It certainly appears that even
autograph signatures are not found till a late period. Philip the Bold,
who ascended the French throne in 1272, could not write, though this is
not the case with any of his successors. I do not know that equal
ignorance is recorded of any English sovereign, though we have I think
only a series of autographs beginning with Richard II. It is said by the
authors of Nouveau Traité de la Diplomatique, Benedictines of laborious
and exact erudition, that the art of writing had become rather common
among the laity of France before the end of the thirteenth century: out
of eight witnesses to a testament in 1277 five could write their names;
at the beginning of that age, it is probable, they think, that not one
could have done so.[101] Signatures to deeds of private persons,
however, do not begin to appear till the fourteenth, and were not in
established use in France till about the middle of the fifteenth
century.[102] Indorsements upon English deeds, as well as mere
signatures, by laymen of rank, bearing date in the reign of Edward II.,
are in existence; and there is an English letter from the lady of Sir
John Pelham to her husband in 1399, which is probably one of the
earliest instances of female penmanship. By the badness of the grammar
we may presume it to be her own.[103]
[101] Vol. ii. p. 423.
[102] Ibid. p. 434, et post.
[103] I am indebted for a knowledge of this letter to the Rev. Joseph
Hunter, who recollected to have seen it in an old edition of
Collins’s Peerage. Later editions have omitted it as an unimportant
redundancy though interesting even for its contents, independently
of the value it acquires from the language. On account of its
scarcity, being only found in old editions now not in request, I
shall insert it here; and till anything else shall prefer a claim,
it may pass for the oldest private letter in the English language.
I have not kept the orthography, but have left several incoherent
and ungrammatical phrases as they stand. It was copied by Collins
from the archives of the Newcastle family.
My dear Lord,
I recommend me to your high lordship with heart and body and
all my poor might, and with all this I thank you as my dear
lord dearest and best beloved of all earthly lords I say for
me, and thank you my dear lord with all this that I say before
of your comfortable letter that ye sent me from Pontefract
that come to me on Mary Magdalene day; for by my troth I was
never so glad as when I heard by your letter that ye were
strong enough with the grace of God for to keep you from the
malice of your enemies. And dear lord if it like to your high
lordship that as soon as ye might that I might hear of your
gracious speed; which as God Almighty continue and increase.
And my dear lord if it like you for to know of my fare, I am
here by laid in manner of a siege with the county of Sussex,
Surrey, and a great parcel of Kent, so that I may nought out
no none victuals get me but with much hard. Wherefore my dear
if it like you by the advice of your wise counsel for to get
remedy of the salvation of your castle and withstand the
malice of the shires aforesaid. And also that ye be fully
informed of their great malice workers in these shires which
that haves so despitefully wrought to you, and to your castle,
to your men, and to your tenants for this country have yai
[sic] wasted for a great while. Farewell my dear lord, the
Holy Trinity you keep from your enemies, and ever send me good
tidings of you. Written at Pevensey in the castle on St. Jacob
day last past,
By your own poor
J. PELHAM.
_To my true Lord._
|Average state of knowledge in England.|
57. Laymen, among whom Chaucer and Gower are illustrious examples,
received occasionally a learned education; and indeed the great number
of gentlemen who studied in the inns of court is a conclusive proof that
they were not generally illiterate. The common law required some
knowledge of two languages. Upon the whole we may be inclined to think,
that in the year 1400, or at the accession of Henry IV., the
average instruction of an English gentleman of the first class would
comprehend common reading and writing, a tolerable familiarity with
French, and a slight tincture of Latin; the latter retained or not,
according to his circumstances and character, as school learning is at
present. This may be rather a favourable statement; but after another
generation it might be assumed, as we shall see, with more confidence as
a fair one.[104]
[104] It might be inferred from a passage in Richard of Bury, about
1343, that none but ecclesiastics could read at all. He deprecates
the putting of books into the hands of _laici_, who do not know one
side from another. And in several places it seems that he thought
they were meant for “the tonsured” alone. But a great change took
place in the ensuing half century; and I do not believe he can be
construed strictly even as to his own time.
|Invention of paper.|
58. A demand for instruction in the art of writing would increase with
the frequency of epistolary correspondence, which, where of a private or
secret nature, no one would gladly conduct by the intervention of a
secretary. Better education, more refined manners, a closer intercourse
of social life, were the primary causes of this increase in private
correspondence. But it was greatly facilitated by the invention, or,
rather, extended use, of paper as the vehicle of writing instead of
parchment; a revolution, as it may be called, of high importance,
without which both the art of writing would have been much less
practised, and the invention of printing less serviceable to mankind.
After the subjugation of Egypt by the Saracens, the importation of the
papyrus, previously in general use, came in no long time to an end; so
that, though down to the end of the seventh century all instruments in
France were written upon it, we find its place afterwards supplied by
parchment; and under the house of Charlemagne, there is hardly an
instrument upon any other material.[105] Parchment, however, a much more
durable and useful vehicle than papyrus,[106] was expensive, and its
cost not only excluded the necessary waste which a free use of writing
requires, but gave rise to the unfortunate practice of erasing
manuscripts in order to replace them with some new matter. This was
carried to a great extent, and has occasioned the loss of precious
monuments of antiquity, as is now demonstrated by instances of their
restoration.
[105] Montfaucon, in Acad. des Inscript., vol. vi. But Muratori says
that the papyrus was little used in the seventh century, though
writings on it may be found as late as the tenth, Dissert. xliii.
This dissertation relates to the condition of letters in Italy as
far as the year 1100; as the xlivth does to their subsequent
history.
[106] Heeren justly remarks (I do not know that others have done the
same), of how great importance the introduction of parchment, to
which, and afterwards to paper, the old perishable papyraceous
manuscripts were transferred, has been to the preservation of
literature. P. 74.
|Linen paper when first used.|
|Cotton paper.|
59. The date of the invention of our present paper, manufactured from
linen rags, or of its introduction into Europe, has long been the
subject of controversy. That paper made from cotton was in use sooner,
is admitted on all sides. Some charters written upon that kind not later
than the tenth century were seen by Montfaucon; and it is even said to
be found in papal bulls of the ninth.[107] The Greeks, however, from
whom the west of Europe is conceived to have borrowed this sort of
paper, did not much employ it in manuscript books, according to
Montfaucon, till the twelfth century, from which time it came into
frequent use among them. Muratori had seen no writing upon this material
older than 1100, though, in deference to Montfaucon, he admits its
employment earlier.[108] It certainly was not greatly used in Italy
before the thirteenth century. Among the Saracens of Spain, on the other
hand, as well as those of the East, it was of much greater antiquity.
The Greeks called it _charta Damascena_, having been manufactured
or sold in the city of Damascus. And Casiri, in his catalogue of the
Arabic manuscripts in the Escurial, desires us to understand that they
are written on paper of cotton or linen, but generally the latter,
unless the contrary be expressed.[109] Many in this catalogue were
written before the thirteenth, or even the twelfth century.
[107] Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscriptions, vi. 604. Nouveau Traité de
Diplomatique, i. 517. Savigny, Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii.
534.
[108] Dissert. xliii.
[109] Materiæ, nisi membraneus sit codex, nulla mentio: cæteros
bombycinos, ac, maximam partem, chartaceos esse colligas.
Præfatio, p. 7.
|Linen paper as old as 1100.|
60. This will lead us to the more disputed question as to the antiquity
of linen paper. The earliest distinct instance I have found, and which I
believe has hitherto been overlooked, is an Arabic version of the
aphorisms of Hippocrates, the manuscript bearing the date of 1100. This
Casiri observes to be on linen paper, not as in itself remarkable, but
as accounting for its injury by wet. It does not appear whether
it were written in Spain, or, like many in that catalogue, brought from
Egypt or the East.[110]
[110] Casiri, N. 787. Codex anno Christi 1100, chartaceus, &c.
|Known to Peter of Clugni.|
61. The authority of Casiri must confirm beyond doubt a passage in Peter
Abbot of Clugni, which has perplexed those who place the invention of
linen paper very low. In a treatise against the Jews, he speaks of
books, ex pellibus arietum, hircorum, vel vitulorum, sive ex biblis vel
juncis Orientalium paludum, aut ex _rasuris veterum pannorum_, seu
ex aliâ qualibet, forte viliore materia compactos. A late English writer
contends that nothing can be meant by the last words, “unless that all
sorts of inferior substances capable of being so applied, among them,
perhaps, hemp and the remains of cordage, were used at this period in
the manufacture of paper.”[111] It certainly at least seems reasonable
to interpret the words “ex rasuris veterum pannorum,” of linen rags; and
when I add that Peter Cluniacensis passed a considerable time in Spain
about 1141, there can remain, it seems, no rational doubt that the
Saracens of the peninsula were acquainted with that species of paper,
though perhaps it was as yet unknown in every other country.
[111] See a memoir on an ancient manuscript of Aratus, by Mr. Ottley,
in Archæeologia, vol. xxvi.
|And in 12th and 13th centuries.|
62. Andrès asserts, on the authority of the Memoirs of the Academy of
Barcelona, that a treaty between the kings of Arragon and Castile,
bearing the date of 1178, and written upon linen paper, is extant in the
archives of that city.[112] He alleges several other instances in the
next age; when Mabillon, who denies that paper of linen was then used in
charters, which, indeed, no one is likely to maintain, mentions, as the
earliest specimen he had seen in France, a letter of Joinville to St.
Louis, which must be older than 1270. Andrès refers the invention to the
Saracens of Spain, using the fine flax of Valencia and Murcia; and
conjectures that it was brought into use among the Spaniards themselves
by Alfonso of Castile.[113]
[112] Vol. ii. p. 73. Andrès has gone much at length into this subject,
and has collected several important passages which do not appear in
my text. The letter of Joinville has been supposed to be addressed
to Louis Hutin in 1314, but this seems inconsistent with the
writer’s age.
[113] Id. p. 84. He cannot mean that it was never employed before
Alfonso’s time, of which he has already given instances.
|Paper of mixed materials.|
63. In the opinion of the English writer to whom we have above referred,
paper, from a very early period, was manufactured of mixed materials,
which have sometimes been erroneously taken for pure cotton. We have in
the Tower of London a letter addressed to Henry III. by Raymond, son of
Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, and consequently between 1216 and 1222,
when the latter died, upon very strong paper, and certainly made, in Mr.
Ottley’s judgment, of mixed materials; while in several of the time of
Edward I., written upon genuine cotton paper of no great thickness, the
fibres of cotton present themselves everywhere at the backs of the
letters so distinctly that they seem as if they might even now be spun
into thread.[114]
[114] Archæologia, ibid. I may however observe, that a gentleman as
experienced as Mr. Ottley himself, inclines to think the letter of
Raymond written on paper wholly made of cotton, though of better
manufacture than usual.
|Invention of paper placed by some too low.|
64. Notwithstanding this last statement, which I must confirm by my own
observation, and of which no one can doubt who has looked at the letters
themselves, several writers of high authority, such as Tiraboschi and
Savigny, persist not only in fixing the invention of linen paper very
low, even after the middle of the fourteenth century, but in maintaining
that it is undistinguishable from that made of cotton, except by the eye
of a manufacturer.[115] Were this indeed true, it would be sufficient
for the purpose we have here in view, which is not to trace the origin
of a particular discovery, but the employment of a useful vehicle of
writing. If it be true that cotton paper was fabricated in Italy of so
good a texture that it cannot be discerned from linen, it must be
considered as of equal utility. It is not the case with the
letters on cotton paper in our English repositories; most, if not all,
of which were written in France or Spain. But I have seen in the Chapter
House at Westminster a letter written from Gascony about 1315, to Hugh
Despencer, upon thin paper, to all appearance made like that now in use,
and with a water mark. Several others of a similar appearance, in the
same repository, are of rather later time. There is also one in the
King’s Remembrancer’s Office of the 11th of Edward III. (1337 or 1338),
containing the accounts of the King’s ambassadors to the court of
Holland and probably written in that country. This paper has a water
mark, and if it is not of linen, is at least not easily distinguishable.
Bullet declares that he saw at Besançon a deed of 1302 on linen paper:
several are alleged to exist in Germany before the middle of the
century; and Lambinet mentions, though but on the authority of a
periodical publication, a register of expenses from 1323 to 1354, found
in a church at Caen, written on two hundred and eight sheets of that
substance.[116] One of the Cottonian manuscripts (Galba, B. I.) is
called Codex Chartaceus in the catalogue. It contains a long series of
public letters, chiefly written in the Netherlands, from an early part
of the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry IV. But upon examination I
find the title not quite accurate; several letters, and especially the
earliest, are written on parchment, and paper does not appear at soonest
till near the end of Edward’s reign.[117] Sir Henry Ellis has said that
“very few instances indeed occur before the fifteenth century of letters
written upon paper.”[118] The use of cotton paper was by no means
general, or even, I believe, frequent, except in Spain and Italy,
perhaps also in the south of France. Nor was it much employed even in
Italy for books. Savigny tells us there are few manuscripts of law books
among the multitude that exist which are not written on parchment.
[115] Tiraboschi, v. 85. Savigny, Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii.
534. He relies on a book I have not seen, Wehrs vom Papier. Hall,
1789. This writer, it is said, contends that the words of Peter of
Clugni, ex rasuris veterum pannorum, mean cotton paper. Heeren, p.
208. Lambinet, on the other hand, translates them, without
hesitation, “chiffons de linge,” Hist. de l’Origine de
l’Imprimerie, i. 93.
Andrès has pointed out, p. 70, that Maffei merely says he has seen
no paper of linen earlier than 1300, and no instrument on that
material older than one of 1367, which he found among his own
family deeds. Tiraboschi, overlooking this distinction, quotes
Maffei for his own opinion as to the lateness of the invention.
[116] Lambinet, ubi suprà.
[117] Andrès, p. 68, mentions a note written in 1342, in the Cotton
library, as the earliest English specimen of linen paper. I do not
know to what this refers; in the above-mentioned Codex Chartaceus
is a letter of 1341, but it is on parchment.
[118] Ellis’s Original Letters, i. 1.
|Not at first very important.|
65. It will be manifest from what has been said how greatly Robertson
has been mistaken in his position, that “in the eleventh century the art
of making paper, in the manner now become universal, was invented, by
means of which not only the number of manuscripts increased but the
study of the sciences was wonderfully facilitated.”[119] Even Ginguéné,
better informed on such subjects than Robertson, has intimated something
of the same kind. But paper, whenever, or wherever invented, was very
sparingly used, and especially in manuscript books, among the French,
Germans, or English, or linen paper, even among the Italians, till near
the close of the period which this chapter comprehends. Upon the “study
of the sciences” it could as yet have had very little effect. The vast
importance of the invention was just beginning to be discovered. It is
to be added, as a remarkable circumstance, that the earliest linen paper
was of very good manufacture, strong and handsome, though perhaps too
much like card for general convenience; and every one is aware that the
first printed books are frequently beautiful in the quality of their
paper.
[119] Hist. of Charles V. vol. i. note 10. Heeren inclines to the same
opinion, p. 200.
|Importance of legal studies.|
66. III. The application of general principles of justice to the
infinitely various circumstances which may arise in the disputes of men
with each other is in itself an admirable discipline of the moral and
intellectual faculties. Even where the primary rules of right and policy
have been obscured in some measure by a technical and arbitrary system,
which is apt to grow up, perhaps inevitably, in the course of
civilisation, the mind gains in precision and acuteness, though at the
expense of some important qualities; and a people wherein an artificial
jurisprudence is cultivated, requiring both a regard to written
authority, and the constant exercise of a discriminating judgment upon
words, must be deemed to be emerging from ignorance. Such was the
condition of Europe in the twelfth century. The feudal customs, long
unwritten, though latterly become more steady by tradition, were in some
countries reduced into treatises: we have our own Glanvil in the reign
of Henry II., and in the next century much was written upon the national
laws in various parts of Europe. Upon these it is not my intention to
dwell; but the importance of the civil law in its connection with
ancient learning, as well as with moral and political science, renders
it deserving of a place in any general account either of mediæval or
modern literature.
|Roman laws never wholly unknown.|
67. That the Roman laws, such as they subsisted in the western empire at
the time of its dismemberment in the fifth century, were received
in the new kingdoms of the Gothic, Lombard, and Carlovingian dynasties,
as the rule of those who by birth and choice submitted to them, was
shown by Muratori and other writers of the last century. This subject
has received additional illustration from the acute and laborious
Savigny, who has succeeded in tracing sufficient evidence of what had
been, in fact, stated by Muratori, that not only an abridgment of the
Theodosian code, but that of Justinian, and even the Pandects, were
known in different parts of Europe long before the epoch formerly
assigned for the restoration of that jurisprudence.[120] The popular
story, already much discredited, that the famous copy of the Pandects,
now in the Laurentian library at Florence, was brought to Pisa from
Amalfi, after the capture of that city by Roger king of Sicily with the
aid of a Pisan fleet in 1135, and became the means of diffusing an
acquaintance with that portion of the law through Italy, is shown by him
not only to rest on very slight evidence, but to be unquestionably, in
the latter and more important circumstance, destitute of all
foundation.[121] It is still indeed an undetermined question whether
other existing manuscripts of the Pandects are not derived from this
illustrious copy, which alone contains the entire fifty books, and which
has been preserved with a traditional veneration indicating some
superiority; but Savigny has shown, that Peter of Valence, a jurist of
the eleventh century, made use of an independent manuscript; and it is
certain that the Pandects were the subject of legal studies before the
siege of Amalfi.
[120] It can be no disparagement to Savigny, who does not claim
perfect originality, to say that Muratori, in his 44th
dissertation, gives several instances of quotations from the
Pandects in writers older than the capture of Amalfi.
[121] Savigny, Geschichte des Römischen Rechts in mittel alter, iii. 83.
|Irnerius, his first successors.|
68. Irnerius, by universal testimony, was the founder of all learned
investigation into the laws of Justinian. He gave lectures upon them at
Bologna his native city, not long, in Savigny’s opinion, after the
commencement of the century.[122] And besides this oral instruction, he
began the practice of making glosses, or short marginal explanations, on
the law books, with the whole of which he was acquainted. We owe also to
him, according to ancient opinion, though much controverted in later
times, an epitome, called the Authentica, of what Gravina calls the
prolix and difficult (salebrosis atque garrulis) Novels of Justinian,
arranged according to the titles of the Code. The most eminent
successors of this restorer of the Roman law during the same century
were Martinus Gosias, Bulgarus, and Placentinus. They were, however, but
a few among many interpreters, whose glosses have been partly, though
very imperfectly preserved. The love of equal liberty and just laws in
the Italian cities rendered the profession of jurisprudence exceedingly
honourable; the doctors of Bologna and other universities were
frequently called to the office of podestà, or criminal judge, in these
small republics; in Bologna itself they were officially members of the
smaller or secret council; and their opinions, which they did not render
gratuitously, were sought with the respect that had been shown at Rome
to their ancient masters of the age of Severus.
[122] Vol. iv. p. 16. Some have erroneously thought Irnerius a German.
|Their glosses.|
69. A gloss, γλωσσα [glôssa], properly meant a word from a foreign
language, or an obsolete or poetical word, or whatever requires
interpretation. It was afterwards used for the interpretation itself;
and this sense, which is not strictly classical, maybe found in Isidore,
though some have imagined Irnerius himself to have first employed
it.[123] In the twelfth century, it was extended from a single word to
an entire expository sentence. The first glosses were interlinear; they
were afterwards placed in the margin, and extended finally in some
instances to a sort of running commentary on an entire book. These were
called an Apparatus.[124]
[123] Alcuim defines glossa, “unius verbi vel nominis interpretatio.”
Ducange, præfat. in Glossar., p. 38.
[124] Savigny, iii. 519.
|Abridgments of laws. Accursius’s Corpus Glossatum.|
70. Besides these glosses on obscure passages, some lawyers attempted to
abridge the body of the law. Placentinus wrote a summary of the Code and
Institutes. But this was held inferior to that of Azo, which appeared
before 1220. Hugolinus gave a similar abridgment of the Pandects. About
the same time, or a little after, a scholar of Azo, Accursius of
Florence, undertook his celebrated work, a collection of the glosses,
which, in the century that had elapsed since the time of Irnerius, had
grown to an enormous extent, and were of course not always consistent.
He has inserted little, probably, of his own, but exercised a
judgment, not perhaps a very enlightened one, in the selection of his
authorities. Thus was compiled his Corpus Juris Glossatum, commonly
called Glossa, or Glossa Ordinaria: a work, says Eichhorn, as remarkable
for its barbarous style and gross mistakes in history as for the
solidity of its judgments and practical distinctions. Gravina, after
extolling the conciseness, acuteness, skill, and diligence in comparing
remote passages, and in reconciling apparent inconsistencies, which
distinguished Accursius, remarks the injustice of some moderns, who
reproach his work with the ignorance inevitable in his age, and seem to
think the chance of birth which has thrown them into more enlightened
times, a part of their personal merit.[125]
[125] Origines Juris, p. 184.
|Character of early jurists.|
71. Savigny has taken still higher ground in his admiration, as we may
call it, of the early jurists, those from the appearance of Irnerius to
the publication of the Accursian body of glosses. For the execution of
this work indeed he testifies no very high respect; Accursius did not
sufficient justice to his predecessors; and many of the most valuable
glosses are still buried in the dust of unpublished manuscripts.[126]
But the men themselves deserve our highest praise. The school of
Irnerius rose suddenly; for in earlier writers we find no intelligent
use, or critical interpretation, of the passages they cite. To reflect
upon every text, to compare it with every clause or word that might
illustrate its meaning in the somewhat chaotic mass of the Pandects and
Code, was reserved for these acute and diligent investigators.
“Interpretation,” says Savigny, “was considered the first and most
important object of glossers, as it was of oral instructors. By an
unintermitting use of the original law-books, they obtained that full
and lively acquaintance with their contents, which enabled them to
compare different passages with the utmost acuteness, and with much
success. It may be reckoned a characteristic merit of many glossers,
that they keep the attention always fixed on the immediate subject of
explanation, and, in the richest display of comparisons with other
passages of the law, never deviate from their point into anything too
indefinite and general; superior often in this to the most learned
interpreters of the French and Dutch schools, and capable of giving a
lesson even to ourselves. Nor did the glossers by any means slight the
importance of laying a sound critical basis for interpretation, but on
the contrary, laboured earnestly in the recension and correction of the
text.”[127]
[126] Vol. v. pp. 258-267.
[127] Vol. v. pp. 199-211.
72. These warm eulogies afford us an instance, to which there are many
parallels, of such vicissitudes in literary reputation, that the wheel
of fame, like that of fortune, seems never to be at rest. For a long
time, it had been the fashion to speak in slighting terms of these early
jurists; and the passage above quoted from Gravina is in a much more
candid tone than was usual in his age. Their trifling verbal
explanations of _etsi_ by _quamvis_, or _admodum_ by _valde_; their
strange ignorance in deriving the name of the Tiber from the Emperor
Tiberius, in supposing that Ulpian and Justinian lived before Christ, in
asserting that Papinian was put to death by Mark Antony, and even in
interpreting _pontifex_ by _papa_ or _episcopus_, were the topics of
ridicule to those whom Gravina has so well reproved.[128] Savigny, who
makes a similar remark, that we learn, without perceiving it, and
without any personal merit, a multitude of things which it was
impossible to know in the twelfth century, defends his favourite
glossers in the best manner he can, by laying part of the blame on the
bad selection of Accursius, and by extolling the mental vigour which
struggled through so many difficulties.[129] Yet he has the candour to
own, that this rather enhances the respect due to the men, than the
value of their writings; and, without much acquaintance with the ancient
glossers, one may presume to think, that in explaining the Pandects, a
book requiring, beyond any other that has descended to us, an extensive
knowledge of the language and antiquities of Rome, their deficiencies,
if to be measured by the instances we have given, or by the general
character of their age, must require a perpetual exercise of our lenity
and patience.
[128] Gennari, author of Respublica Jurisconsultorum, a work of the
last century, who under colour of a fiction, gives rather an
entertaining account of the principal jurists, exhibits some
curious specimens of the ignorance of the Accursian interpreters,
such as those in the text. See too the article Accursius in Bayle.
[129] v. 213.
|Decline of jurists after Accursius.|
73. This great compilation of Accursius made an epoch in the annals of
jurisprudence. It put an end in great measure to the oral explanations
of lecturers which had prevailed before. It restrained at the same time
the ingenuity of interpretation. The glossers became the sole
authorities so that it grew into a maxim,--No one can go wrong who
follows a gloss: and some said, a gloss was worth a hundred texts.[130]
In fact, the original was continually unintelligible to a student. But
this was accompanied, according to the distinguished historian of
mediæval jurisprudence, by a decline of the science. The jurists in the
latter part of the thirteenth century are far inferior to the school of
Irnerius. It might be possible to seek a general cause, as men are now
always prone to do, in the loss of self-government in many of the
Italian republics. But Savigny, superior to this affectation of
philosophy, admits that this is neither a cause adequate in itself, nor
chronologically parallel to the decline of jurisprudence. We must
therefore look upon it as one of those revolutions, so ordinary and so
unaccountable, in the history of literature, where, after a period
fertile in men of great talents, there ensues, perhaps with no
unfavourable change in the diffusion of knowledge, a pause in that
natural fecundity, without which all our endeavours to check a
retrograde movement of the human mind will be of no avail. The
successors of Accursius in the thirteenth century contented themselves
with an implicit deference to the glosses; but this is rather a proof of
their inferiority than its cause.[131]
[130] Bayle, ubi suprà. Eichhorn, Gesch. der Litteratur, ii. 461.
Savigny, v. 268.
[131] Savigny, v. 320.
|Respect paid to him at Bologna.|
74. It has been the peculiar fortune of Accursius, that his name has
always stood in a representative capacity, to engross the praise, or
sustain the blame, of the great body of glossers from whom he compiled.
One of those proofs of national gratitude and veneration was paid to his
memory, which it is the more pleasing to recount, that, from the
fickleness and insensibility of mankind, they do not very frequently
occur. The city of Bologna was divided into the factions of Lambertazzi
and Gieremei. The former, who were Ghibelins, having been wholly
overthrown, and excluded, according to the practice of Italian
republics, from all civil power, a law was made in 1306, that the family
of Accursius, who had been on the vanquished side, should enjoy all the
privileges of the victorious Guelf party, in regard to the memory of one
“by whose means the city had been frequented by students, and its fame
had been spread through the whole world.”[132]
[132] Ib. v. 268.
|Scholastic jurists. Bartolus.|
75. In the next century a new race of lawyers arose, who, by a different
species of talent, almost eclipsed the greatest of their predecessors.
These have been called the scholastic jurists, the glory of the
schoolmen having excited an emulous desire to apply their dialectic
methods in jurisprudence.[133] Of these the most conspicuous were
Bartolus and Baldus, especially the former, whose authority became still
higher than that of the Accursian glossers. Yet Bartolus, if we may
believe Eichhorn, content with the glosses, did not trouble himself
about the text, which he was too ignorant of Roman antiquity, and even
of the Latin language, unless he is much belied, to expound.[134] “He is
so fond of distinctions,” says Gravina, “that he does not divide his
subject, but breaks it to pieces, so that the fragments are, as it were,
dispersed by the wind. But, whatever harm he might do to the just
interpretation of the Roman law as a positive code, he was highly useful
to the practical lawyer by the number of cases his fertile mind
anticipated; for though many of these were unlikely to occur, yet his
copiousness and subtlety of distinction is such that he seldom leaves
those who consult him quite at a loss.”[135] Savigny, who rates Bartolus
much below the older lawyers, gives him credit for original thoughts, to
which his acquaintance with the practical exercise of justice gave rise.
The older jurists were chiefly professors of legal science, rather than
conversant with forensic causes; and this has produced an opposition
between theory and practice in the Roman law, to which we have not much
analogous in our own, but the remains of which are said to be still
discernible in the continental jurisprudence.[136]
[133] The employment of logical forms in law is not new; instances of
it may be found in the earlier jurists. Savigny, v. 330; vi. 6.
[134] Gesch. der Litteratur, ii. 449. Bartolus even said, de _verbibus_
non curat jurisconsultus. Eichhorn gives no authority for this, but
Meiners, from whom perhaps he took it, quotes Comnenus, Historia
Archigymnasii Patavini. Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 646. It seems,
however, incredible.
[135] Origines Juris, p. 191.
[136] Savigny, vi. 138; v. 201. Of Bartolus and his school it is said
by Grotius, Temporum suorum infelicitas impedimento sæpe fuit, quo
minus recte leges illas intelligerent; satis solertes alioqui ad
indagandam æqui bonique naturam; quo factum ut sæpe optimi sint
condendi juris auctores, etiam tunc cum conditi juris mali sunt
interpretes. Prolegomena in Jus Belli et Pacis.
|Inferiority of jurists in fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.|
76. The later expositors of law, those after the age of Accursius, are
reproached with a tedious prolixity, which the scholastic refinements of
disputation were apt to produce. They were little more conversant with
philological and historical literature than their predecessors, and had
less diligence in that comparison of texts, by which an acute
understanding might compensate the want of subsidiary learning. In the
use of language, the jurists, with hardly any exceptions, are uncouth
and barbarous. The great school of Bologna sent out all the earlier
glossers. In the fourteenth century this famous university fell rather
into decline; the jealousy of neighbouring states subjected its
graduates to some disadvantage; and while the study of jurisprudence was
less efficacious, it was more diffused. Italy alone had produced great
masters of the science; the professors in France and Germany during the
middle ages have left no great reputation.[137]
[137] In this slight sketch of the early lawyers, I have been chiefly
guided, as the reader will have perceived, by Gravina and Savigny,
and also by a very neat and succinct sketch in Eichhorn, Gesch. der
Litteratur, ii. 448-464. The Origines Juris of the first have
enjoyed a considerable reputation. But Savigny says with severity,
that Gravina has thought so much more of his style than his
subject, that all he says of the old jurists is perfectly worthless
through its emptiness and want of criticism. iii. 72. Of
Terrasson’s Histoire de la Jurisprudence Romaine he speaks in still
lower terms.
|Classical literature and taste in dark ages.|
77. IV. The universities however, with their metaphysics derived from
Aristotle through the medium of Arabian interpreters who did not
understand him, and with the commentaries of Arabian philosophers who
perverted him,[138] the development of the modern languages with their
native poetry, much more the glosses of the civil lawyers, are not what
is commonly meant by the revival of learning. In this we principally
consider the increased study of the Latin and Greek languages, and in
general of what we call classical antiquity. In the earliest of the dark
ages, as far back as the sixth century, the course of liberal
instruction was divided into the trivium and the quadrivium; the former
comprising grammar, logic, and rhetoric; the latter music, arithmetic,
geometry, and astronomy. But these sciences, which seem tolerably
comprehensive, were in reality taught most superficially, or not at all.
The Latin grammar, in its merest rudiments, from a little treatise
ascribed to Donatus and extracts of Priscian,[139] formed the only
necessary part of the trivium in ecclesiastical schools. Even this seems
to have been introduced afresh by Bede and the writers of the eighth
century, who much excel their immediate predecessors in avoiding gross
solecisms of grammar.[140] It was natural that in England, where Latin
had never been a living tongue, it should be taught better than in
countries which still affected to speak it. From the time of Charlemagne
it was lost on the continent in common use, and preserved only through
glossaries, of which there were many. The style of Latin in the dark
period, independently of its want of verbal purity, is in very bad
taste; and none seem to have been more inflated and empty than the
English.[141] The distinction between the ornaments adapted to poetry
and to prose had long been lost, and still more the just sense of
moderation in their use. It cannot be wondered at that a vicious
rhetoric should have overspread the writings of the seventh and eighth
centuries, when there is so much of it in the third and fourth.
[138] It has been a subject of controversy, whether the physical and
metaphysical writings of Aristotle were made known to Europe at the
beginning of the thirteenth century, through Constantinople, or
through Arabic translations. The former supposition rests certainly
on what seems good authority, that of Rigord, a contemporary
historian. But the latter is now more generally received, and is
said to be proved in a dissertation which I have not seen, by M.
Jourdain. Tennemann, Manuel de l’Hist. de la Philos., i. 355. These
Arabic translations were themselves not made directly from the
Greek, but from the Syriac. It is thought by Buhle that the logic
of Aristotle was known in Europe sooner.
[139] Fleury, xvii. 18. Andrès, ix. 284.
[140] Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 73. The reader is requested to
distinguish, at least if he cares about references, Eichhorn’s
Allgemeine Geschichte der Cultur, from his Geschichte der
Litteratur, with which, in future, we shall have more concern.
[141] Fleury, xvii. 23. Ducange, preface to Glossary, p. 10. The
Anglo-Saxon charters are distinguished for their pompous absurdity;
and it is the general character of our early historians. One
Ethelwerd is the worst; but William of Malmsbury himself, perhaps
in some measure by transcribing passages from others, sins greatly
in this respect.
|Improvement in tenth and eleventh centuries.|
78. Eichhorn fixes upon the latter part of the tenth century, as an
epoch from which we are to deduce, in its beginnings, the restoration of
classical taste; it was then that the scholars left the meagre
introductions to rhetoric formerly used for the works of Cicero
and Quintilian.[142] In the school of Paderborn, not long after 1000,
Sallust and Statius, as well as Virgil and Horace, appear to have been
read.[143] Several writers, chiefly historical, about this period, such
as Lambert of Aschaffenburg, Ditmar, Wittikind, are tolerably exempt
from the false taste of preceding times, and, if they want a truly
classical tone, express themselves with some spirit.[144] Gerbert, who
by an uncommon quickness of parts shone in very different provinces of
learning, and was beyond question the most accomplished man of the dark
ages, displays in his epistles a thorough acquaintance with the best
Latin authors and a taste for their excellencies.[145] He writes with
the feelings of Petrarch, but in a less auspicious period. Even in
England, if we may quote again the famous passage of Ingulfus, the
rhetorical works of Cicero, as well as some book which he calls
Aristotle, were read at Oxford under Edward the Confessor. But we have
no indisputable name in the eleventh century, not even that of John de
Garlandia, whose Floretus long continued to be a text-book in schools.
This is a poor collection of extracts from Latin authors. It is
uncertain whether or not the compiler were an Englishman.[146]
[142] Allg. Gesch., ii. 79.
[143] Viguit Horatius magnus atque Virgilius, Crispus et Sallustius,
et Urbanus Statius, ludusque fuit omnibus insudare versibus et
dictaminibus jucundisque cantibus. Vita Meinwerci in Leibnitz
Script. Brunsvic. apud Eichhorn, ii. 399.
[144] Eichhorn, Gesch. der Litteratur, i. 807. Heeren, p. 157.
[145] Heeren, p. 165. It appears that Cicero de republicâ was extant
in his time.
[146] Hist. Litt. de la France, viii. 84. They give very inconclusive
reasons for robbing England of this writer, who certainly taught
here under William the Conqueror, if not before, but it is possible
enough that he came over from France. They say there is no such
sirname in England as Garland, which happens to be a mistake; but
the native English did not often bear sirnames in that age.
The Anglo-Saxon clergy were inconceivably ignorant, ut cæteris
esset stupori qui grammaticam didicisset. Will. Malmsbury, p. 101.
This leads us to doubt the Aristotle and Cicero of Ingulfus.
|Lanfranc, and his schools.|
79. It is admitted on all hands, that a remarkable improvement both in
style and in the knowledge of Latin antiquity was perceptible towards
the close of the eleventh century. The testimony of contemporaries
attributes an extensively beneficial influence to Lanfranc. This
distinguished person, born at Pavia in 1005, and early known as a
scholar in Italy, passed into France about 1042 to preside over a school
at Bec in Normandy. It became conspicuous under his care for the studies
of the age, dialectics and theology. It is hardly necessary to add, that
Lanfranc was raised by the Conqueror to the primacy of England, and thus
belongs to our own history. Anselm, his successor both in the monastery
of Bec and the see of Canterbury, far more renowned than Lanfranc for
metaphysical acuteness, has shared with him the honour of having
diffused a better taste for philological literature over the schools of
France. It has, however, been denied by a writer of high authority, that
either any knowledge, or any love of classical literature, can be traced
in the works of the two archbishops. They are in this respect, he says,
much inferior to those of Lupus, Gerbert, and others of the preceding
ages.[147] His contemporaries, who extol the learning of Lanfranc in
hyperbolical terms, do so in very indifferent Latin of their own; but it
appears indeed more than doubtful whether the earliest of them meant to
praise him for this peculiar species of literature.[148] The
Benedictines of St. Maur cannot find much to say for him in this
respect. They allege that he and Anselm wrote better than was then
usual; a very moderate compliment. Yet they ascribe a great influence to
their public lectures, and to the schools which were formed on the model
of Bec.[149] And perhaps we could not without injustice deprive Lanfranc
of the credit he has obtained for the promotion of polite letters. There
is at least sufficient evidence that they had begun to revive in France
not long after his time.
[147] Heeren, p. 185. There seems certainly nothing above the common in
Lanfranc’s epistles.
[148] Milo Crispinus, Abbot of Westminster, in his life of Lanfranc
says of him, “Fuit quidam vir magnus Italia oriundus, quem
Latinitas in antiquum scientiæ statum ab eo restituta tota supremum
debito cum amore et honore agnoscit magistrum, nomine Lanfrancus.”
This passage, which is frequently quoted, surely refers to his
eminence in dialectics. The words of William of Malmsbury go
farther. “Is literatura perinsignis liberales artes quæ jamdudum
sorduerant, a Latio in Gallias vocans acumine suo expolivit.”
[149] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 17, 107; viii. 304. The seventh
volume of this long and laborious work begins with an excellent
account of the literary condition of France in the eleventh
century. At the beginning of the ninth volume we have a similar
view of the twelfth. The continuation, of which four volumes have
already been published at Paris, I have not seen. It has but begun
to break ground, if I may so say, in the thirteenth century, as I
find from the Journal des Savans. The laboriousness of the French,
as well as the encouragement they receive from their government,
are above all praise, and should be our own shame; but their
prolixity now and then defeats the object. The magnificent work,
the Ordonnances des Rois de France, is a proof of this; time gains
a march on the successive volumes, and the laws of four years are
published at the end of five.
|Italy--Vocabulary of Papias.|
80. The signs of gradual improvement in Italy during the eleventh
century are very perceptible; several schools, among which those of
Milan and the convent of Monte Cassino are most eminent, were
established; and some writers such as Peter Damiani and Humbert, have
obtained praise for rather more elegance and polish of style than had
belonged to their predecessors.[150] The Latin vocabulary of Papias was
finished in 1053. This is a compilation from the grammars and glossaries
of the sixth and seventh centuries; but though many of his words are of
very low Latinity, and his etymologies, which are those of his masters,
absurd, he both shows a competent degree of learning, and a regard to
profane literature, unusual in the darker ages, and symptomatic of a
more liberal taste.[151]
[150] Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’Italia dopo il mille. Tiraboschi,
iii. 248.
[151] The date of the vocabulary of Papias had been placed by Scaliger,
who says he has as many errors as words, in the thirteenth century.
But Gaspar Barthius, in his Adversaria, c. i., after calling him,
“veterum Glossographorum compactor non semper futilis,” observes,
that Papias mentions an Emperor, Henry II., as then living, and
thence fixes the æra of his book in the early part of the eleventh
century, in which he is followed by Bayle, art. Balbi. It is rather
singular that neither of those writers recollected the usage of the
Italians to reckon as Henry II. the prince whom the Germans call
Henry III., Henry the Fowler not being included by them in the
imperial list: and Bayle himself quotes a writer, unpublished in
the age of Barthius, who places Papias in the year 1053. This date
I believe is given by Papias himself. Tiraboschi, iii. 300. A
pretty full account of the Latin glossaries before and after Papias
will be found in the preface to Ducange, p. 38.
|Influence of Italy upon Europe.|
81. It may be said with some truth, that Italy supplied the fire, from
which other nations in this first, as afterwards in the second æra of
the revival of letters, lighted their own torches. Lanfranc, Anselm,
Peter Lombard, the founder of systematic theology in the twelfth
century, Irnerius, the restorer of jurisprudence, Gratian, the author of
the first compilation of canon law, the school of Salerno, that guided
medical art in all countries, the first dictionaries of the Latin
tongue, the first treatise of algebra, the first great work that makes
an epoch in anatomy, are as truly and exclusively the boast of Italy, as
the restoration of Greek literature and of classical taste in the
fifteenth century.[152] But if she were the first to propagate an
impulse towards intellectual excellence in the rest of Europe, it must
be owned, that France and England, in this dawn of literature and
science, went in many points of view far beyond her.
[152] Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’Italia, p. 71.
|Increased copying of manuscripts.|
82. Three religious orders, all scions from the great Benedictine stock,
that of Clugni, which dates from the first part of the tenth century,
the Carthusians, founded in 1084, and the Cistercians, in 1098,
contributed to propagate classical learning.[153] The monks of these
foundations exercised themselves in copying manuscripts; the arts of
calligraphy, and, not long afterwards, of illumination, became their
pride; a more cursive handwriting and a more convenient system of
abbreviations were introduced; and thus from the twelfth century we find
a great increase of manuscripts, though transcribed mechanically, as a
monastic duty, and often with much incorrectness. The abbey of Clugni
had a rich library of Greek and Latin authors. But few monasteries of
the Benedictine rule were destitute of one; it was their pride to
collect, and their business to transcribe, books.[154] These were, in a
vast proportion, such as we do not highly value at the present day; yet
almost all we do possess of Latin classical literature, with the
exception of a small number of more ancient manuscripts, is owing to the
industry of these monks. In that age, there was perhaps less zeal for
literature in Italy, and less practice in copying, than in France.[155]
This shifting of intellectual exertion from one country to another is
not peculiar to the middle ages; but, in regard to them, it has not
always been heeded by those who, using the trivial metaphor of light and
darkness, which it is not easy to avoid, have too much considered Europe
as a single point under a receding or advancing illumination.
[153] Fleury. Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 113.
[154] Ibid. ix. 139.
[155] Heeren, p. 197.
|John of Salisbury.|
83. France and England were the only countries where any revival of
classical taste was perceived. In Germany no sensible improvement in
philological literature can be traced, according to Eichhorn and
Heeren, before the invention of printing, though I think this must be
understood with exceptions; and that Otho of Frisingen, Saxo
Grammaticus, and Gunther, author of the poem entitled Ligurinus (who
belongs to the first years of the thirteenth century), might stand on
equal terms with any of their contemporaries. But, in the schools which
are supposed to have borrowed light from Lanfranc and Anselm, a more
keen perception of the beauties of the Latin language, as well as an
exacter knowledge of its idiom, was imparted. John of Salisbury, himself
one of their most conspicuous ornaments, praises the method of
instruction pursued by Bernard of Chartres about the end of the eleventh
century, who seems indeed to have exercised his pupils vigorously in the
rules of grammar and rhetoric. After the first grammatical instruction
out of Donatus and Priscian, they were led forward to the poets,
orators, and historians of Rome; the precepts of Cicero and Quintilian
were studied, and sometimes observed with affectation.[156] An
admiration of the great classical writers, an excessive love of
philology, and disdain of the studies that drew men from it, shine out
in the two curious treatises of John of Salisbury. He is perpetually
citing the poets, especially Horace, and had read most of Cicero. Such
at least is the opinion of Heeren, who bestows also a good deal of
praise upon his Latinity.[157] Eichhorn places him at the head of all
his contemporaries. But no one has admired his style so much as Meiners,
who declares that he has no equal in the writers of the third, fourth,
or fifth centuries, except Lactantius and Jerome.[158] In this I cannot
but think there is some exaggeration; the style of John of Salisbury,
far from being equal to that of Augustin, Eutropius, and a few more of
those early ages, does not appear to me by any means elegant; sometimes
he falls upon a good expression, but the general tone is not very
classical. The reader may judge from the passage in the note.[159]
[156] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 16.
[157] P. 203. Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 47. Peter of Blois
also possessed a very respectable stock of classical literature.
[158] Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 586. He says nearly as much of Saxo
Grammaticus and William of Malmsbury. If my recollection of the
former does not deceive me, he is a better writer than our monk of
Malmsbury.
[159] One of the most interesting passages in John of Salisbury is that
above cited, in which he gives an account of the method of
instruction pursued by Bernard of Chartres, whom he calls
exundantissimus modernis temporibus fons literarum in Gallia. John
himself was taught by some who trod in the steps of this eminent
preceptor. Ad hujus magistri formam præceptores mei in grammatica,
Gulielmus de Conchis, et Richardus cognomento Episcopus, officio
nunc archidiaconus Constantiensis, vita et conversatione vir bonus,
suos discipulos aliquando informaverunt. Sed postmodum ex quo
opinio veritati præjudicium fecit, et homines videri quam esse
philosophi maluerunt, professoresque artium se totam philosophiam
brevius quam triennio aut quadriennio transfusuros auditoribus
pollicebantur, impetu multitudinis imperitæ victi cesserunt. Exinde
autem minus temporis et diligentiæ in grammaticæ studio impensum
est. Ex quo contigit ut qui omnes artes, tam liberales quam
mechanicas profitentur, nec primam noverint, sine qua frustra quis
progredietur ad reliquas. Licet autem et aliæ disciplinæ ad
literaturam proficiant, hæc tamen privilegio singulari facere
dicitur literatum. Metalog., lib. i. c. 24.
|Improvement of classical taste in twelfth century.|
84. It is generally acknowledged that in the twelfth century we find
several writers, Abelard, Eloisa, Bernard of Clairvaux, Saxo
Grammaticus, William of Malmsbury, Peter of Blois, whose style, though
never correct, which, in the absence of all better dictionaries than
that of Papias, was impossible, and sometimes affected, sometimes too
florid and diffuse, is not wholly destitute of spirit, and even of
elegance;[160] the Latin poetry, instead of Leonine rhymes, or attempts
at regular hexameters almost equally bad, becomes, in the hands of
Gunther, Gualterus de Insulis, Gulielmus Brito, and Joseph Iscanus, to
whom a considerable number of names might be added, always tolerable,
sometimes truly spirited;[161] and amidst all that still demands the
most liberal indulgence, we cannot but perceive the real progress of
classical knowledge, and the development of a finer taste in
Europe.[162]
[160] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 146. The Benedictines are scarcely
fair towards Abelard (xii. 147), whose style, as far as I have
seen, which is not much, seems equal to that of his contemporaries.
[161] Warton has done some justice to the Anglo Latin poets of this
century, who have lately been published at Paris. The Trojan War
and Antiocheis of Joseph Iscanus, he calls “a miracle in this age
of classical composition.” The style, he says, is a mixture of
Ovid, Statius, and Claudian. Vol. i. p. 163. The extracts Warton
gives seem to me a close imitation of the second. The Philippis of
William Brito must be of the thirteenth century, and Warton refers
the Ligurinus of Gunther to 1206.
[162] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. ix. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. der
Cultur, ii. 30, 62. Heeren. Meiners.
|Influence of increased number of clergy.|
85. The vast increase of religious houses in the twelfth century
rendered necessary more attention to the rudiments of literature.[163]
Every monk, as well as every secular priest, required a certain portion
of Latin. In the ruder and darker ages many illiterate persons had been
ordained; there were even kingdoms, as, for example, England, where this
is said to have been almost general. But the canons of the church
demanded of course such a degree of instruction as the continual use of
a dead language made indispensable; and in this first dawn of learning
there can be, I presume, no doubt that none received the higher orders,
or became professed in a monastery, for which the order of priesthood
was necessary, without some degree of grammatical knowledge. Hence this
kind of education in the rudiments of the Latin was imparted to a
greater number of individuals than at present.
[163] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 11.
|Decline of classical literature in thirteenth century.|
86. The German writers to whom we principally refer, have expatiated
upon the decline of literature after the middle of the twelfth century,
unexpectedly disappointing the bright promise of that age, so that for
almost two hundred years we find Europe fallen back in learning where we
might have expected her progress.[164] This, however, is hardly true, in
the most limited sense, of the latter part of the twelfth century, when
that purity of classical taste, which Eichhorn and others seem chiefly
to have had in their minds, was displayed in better Latin poetry than
had been written before. In a general view, the thirteenth century was
an age of activity and ardour, though not in every respect the best
directed. The fertility of the modern languages in versification, the
creation, we may almost say, of Italian and English in this period, the
great concourse of students to the universities, the acute, and
sometimes profound, reasonings of the scholastic philosophy, which was
now in its most palmy state, the accumulation of knowledge, whether
derived from original research, or from Arabian sources of information,
which we find in the geometers, the physicians, the natural philosophers
of Europe, are sufficient to repel the charge of having fallen back, or
even remained altogether stationary, in comparison with the preceding
century. But in politeness of Latin style, it is admitted that we find
an astonishing and permanent decline both in France and England. Such
complaints are usual in the most progressive times; and we might not
rely on John of Salisbury when he laments the decline of taste in his
own age.[165] But in fact it would have been rather singular, if a
classical purity had kept its ground. A stronger party, and one hostile
to polite letters, as well as ignorant of them,--that of the theologians
and dialecticians,--carried with it the popular voice in the church and
the universities. The time allotted by these to philological literature
was curtailed, that the professors of logic and philosophy might detain
their pupils longer. Grammar continued to be taught in the university of
Paris; but rhetoric, another part of the trivium, was given up; by which
it is to be understood, as I conceive, that no classical authors were
read, or, if at all, for the sole purpose of verbal explanation.[166]
The thirteenth century, says Heeren, was one of the most unfruitful for
the study of ancient literature.[167] He does not seem to except Italy,
though there, as we shall soon see, the remark is hardly just. But in
Germany the tenth century, Leibnitz declares, was a golden age of
learning, compared with the thirteenth;[168] and France itself is but a
barren waste in this period. The relaxation of manners among the
monastic orders, which, generally speaking, is the increasing theme of
complaint from the eleventh century, and the swarms of worse vermin, the
Mendicant Friars, who filled Europe with stupid superstition, are
assigned by Meiners and Heeren as the leading causes of the return of
ignorance.[169]
[164] Meiners, ii. 605. Heeren, p. 228. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. der
Litteratur, ii. 63-118.
The running title of Eichhorn’s section, Die Wissenschaften
verfallen in Barbarey, seems much too generally expressed.
[165] Metalogicus, l. i. c. 24. This passage has been frequently
quoted. He was very inimical to the dialecticians, as philologers
generally are.
[166] Crevier, ii. 376.
[167] P. 237.
[168] Introductio in Script. Brunwic., § lxiii., apud Heeren, et
Meiners, ii. 631. No one has dwelt more fully than this last writer
on the decline of literature in the thirteenth century, out of his
cordial antipathy to the schoolmen. P. 589, et post.
Wood, who has no prejudices against popery, ascribes the low state
of learning in England under Edward III. and Richard II. to the
misconduct of the mendicant friars, and to the papal provisions
that impoverished the church.
[169] Meiners, ii. 615. Heeren, 235.
|Relapse into barbarism.|
87. The writers of the thirteenth century display an incredible
ignorance, not only of pure idiom, but of the common grammatical
rules. Those who attempted to write verse have lost all prosody, and
relapse into Leonine rhymes and barbarous acrostics. The historians use
a hybrid jargon intermixed with modern words. The scholastic
philosophers wholly neglected their style, and thought it no wrong to
enrich the Latin, as in some degree a living language, with terms that
seemed to express their meaning. In the writings of Albertus Magnus, of
whom Fleury says that he can see nothing great in him but his volumes,
the grossest errors of syntax frequently occur, and vie with his
ignorance of history and science. Through the sinister example of this
man, according to Meiners, the notion that Latin should be written with
regard to ancient models, was lost in the universities for three hundred
years; an evil, however, slight in comparison with what he inflicted on
Europe by the credit he gave to astrology, alchemy, and magic.[170] Duns
Scotus and his disciples, in the next century, carried this much
farther, and introduced a most barbarous and unintelligible terminology,
by which the school metaphysics were rendered ridiculous in the revival
of literature.[171] Even the jurists, who more required an accurate
knowledge of the language, were hardly less barbarous. Roger Bacon, who
is not a good writer, stands at the head in this century.[172]
Fortunately, as has been said, the transcribing ancient authors had
become a mechanical habit in some monasteries. But it was done in an
ignorant and slovenly manner. The manuscripts of these latter ages,
before the invention of printing, are by far the most numerous, but they
are also the most incorrect, and generally of little value in the eyes
of critics.[173]
[170] Meiners, ii. 692. Fleury, 5me discours, in Hist. Eccles., xvii.
44. Buhle, i. 702.
[171] Meiners, ii. 721.
[172] Heeren, p. 245.
[173] Id. p. 304.
|No improvement in fourteenth century. Richard of Bury.|
88. The fourteenth century was not in the slightest degree superior to
the preceding age. France, England, and Germany were wholly destitute of
good Latin scholars in this period. The age of Petrarch and Boccaccio,
the age before the close of which classical learning truly revived in
Italy, gave no sign whatever of animation throughout the rest of Europe;
the genius it produced, and in this it was not wholly deficient,
displayed itself in other walks of literature.[174] We may justly praise
Richard of Bury for his zeal in collecting books, and still more for his
munificence in giving his library to the university of Oxford, with
special injunctions that they should be lent to scholars. But his
erudition appears crude and uncritical, his style indifferent, and his
thoughts superficial.[175] Yet I am not aware that he had any equal in
England during this century.
[174] Heeren, p. 300. Andrès, iii. 10.
[175] The Philobiblon of Richard Aungerville, often called Richard of
Bury, Chancellor of Edward III., is worthy of being read, as
containing some curious illustrations of the state of literature.
He quotes a wretched poem de Vetula as Ovid’s, and shows little
learning, though he had a great esteem for it. See a note of
Warton, History of English Poetry, i. 146, on Aungerville.
|Library formed by Charles V. at Paris.|
89. The patronage of letters, or collection of books, are not reckoned
among the glories of Edward III.; though, if any respect had been
attached to learning in his age and country, they might well have suited
his magnificent disposition. His adversaries, John, and especially
Charles V., of France, have more claims upon the remembrance of a
literary historian. Several Latin authors were translated into French by
their directions;[176] and Charles, who himself was not ignorant of
Latin, began to form the Royal Library of the Louvre. We may judge from
this of the condition of literature in his time. The number of volumes
was about 900. Many of these, especially the missals and psalters, were
richly bound and illuminated. Books of devotion formed the larger
portion of the library. The profane authors, except some relating to
French history, were in general of little value in our sight. Very few
classical works are in the list, and no poets except Ovid and
Lucan.[177] This library came, during the subsequent English wars, into
the possession of the duke of Bedford; and Charles VII. laid the
foundations of that which still exists.[178]
[176] Crevier, ii. 424. Warton has amassed a great deal of information,
not always very accurate, upon the subject of early French
translations. These form a considerable portion of the literature
of that country in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Hist. of
English Poetry, ii. 414-430. See also de Sade, Vie de Pétrarque,
iii. 548; and Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris, ii. 424.
[177] Warton adds Cicero to the classical list; and I am sorry to say
that, in my History of the Middle Ages, I have been led wrong by
him. Bouvin, his only authority, expressly says, pas un seuil
manuscrit de Ciceron. Mém. de l’Acad. des Inscrip., ii. 693.
[178] Id. 701.
|Some improvement in Italy during thirteenth century.|
|Catholicon of Balbi.|
90. This retrograde condition, however, of classical literature, was
only perceptible in Cisalpine Europe. By one of those shiftings
of literary illumination to which we have alluded, Italy, far lower in
classical taste than France in the twelfth century, deserved a higher
place in the next. Tiraboschi says that the progress in polite letters
was slow, but still that some was made; more good books were
transcribed, there were more readers, and of these some took on them to
imitate what they read; so that gradually the darkness which overspread
the land began to be dispersed. Thus we find that those who wrote at the
end of the thirteenth century were less rude in style than their
predecessors at its commencement.[179] A more elaborate account of the
state of learning in the thirteenth century will be found in the life of
Ambrogio Traversari, by Mehus; and several names are there mentioned,
among whom that of Brunetto Latini is the most celebrated. Latini
translated some of the rhetorical treatises of Cicero.[180] And we may
perhaps consider as a witness to some degree of progressive learning in
Italy at this time, the Catholicon of John Balbi, a Genoese monk, more
frequently styled Januensis. This book is chiefly now heard of, because
the first edition, printed by Gutenberg in 1460, is a book of uncommon
rarity and price. It is, however, deserving of some notice in the annals
of literature. It consists of a Latin grammar, followed by a dictionary,
both perhaps superior to what we should expect from the general
character of the times. They are at least copious; the Catholicon is a
volume of great bulk. Balbi quotes abundantly from the Latin classics,
and appears not wholly unacquainted with Greek; though I must own that
Tiraboschi and Eichhorn have thought otherwise. The Catholicon, as far
as I can judge from a slight inspection of it, deserves rather more
credit than it has in modern times obtained. In the grammar, besides a
familiarity with the terminology of the old grammarians, he will be
found to have stated some questions as to the proper use of words, with
_dubitari solet_, _multum quæritur_; which, though they are
superficial enough, indicate that a certain attention was beginning to
be paid to correctness in writing. From the great size of the
Catholicon, its circulation must have been very limited.[181]
[179] iv. 420. The Latin versifiers of the thirteenth century were
numerous, but generally very indifferent. Id. 378.
[180] Mehus, p. 157. Tiraboschi, p. 418.
[181] Libellum hunc (says Balbi at the conclusion) ad honorem Dei et
gloriosæ Virginis Mariæ, et beati Domini patris nostri et omnium
sanctorum electorum, necnon ad utilitatem meam et ecclesiæ sanctæ
Dei, ex diversis majorum meorum dictis multo labore et diligenti
studio compilavi. Operis quippe ac studii mei est et fuit multos
libros legere et ex plurimis diversos carpere flores.
Eichhorn speaks severely, and, I am disposed to think, unjustly, of
the Catholicon, as without order and plan, or any knowledge of
Greek, as the author himself confesses (Gesch. der Litteratur, ii.
238). The order and plan are alphabetical, as usual in a
dictionary; and though Balbi does not lay claim to much Greek, I do
not think he professes entire ignorance of it. Hoc difficile est
scire et minimè mihi non bene scienti linguam Græcam:--apud
Gradenigo, Litteratura Greco-Italianna, p. 104. I have observed
that Balbi calls himself _philocalus_, which indeed is no
evidence of much Greek erudition.
|Imperfection of early dictionaries.|
91. In the dictionary however of John of Genoa, as in those of Papias
and the other glossarists, we find little distinction made between the
different gradations of Latinity. The Latin tongue was to them, except
so far as the ancient grammarians whom they copied might indicate some
to be obsolete, a single body of words; and, ecclesiastics as they were,
they could not understand that Ambrose and Hilary were to be proscribed
in the vocabulary of a language which was chiefly learned for the sake
of reading their works. Nor had they the means of pronouncing, what it
has cost the labour of succeeding centuries to do, that there is no
adequate classical authority for innumerable words and idioms in common
use. Their knowledge of syntax also was very limited. The prejudice of
the church against profane authors had by no means wholly worn away:
much less had they an exclusive possession of the grammar-schools, most
of the books taught in which were modern. Papias, Uguccio, and other
indifferent lexicographers, were of much authority.[182] The general
ignorance in Italy was still very great. In the middle of the fourteenth
century we read of a man, supposed to be learned, who took Plato and
Cicero for poets, and thought Ennius a contemporary of Statius.[183]
[182] Mehus. Muratori, Dissert. 44.
[183] Mehus, p. 211. Tiraboschi, v. 82.
|Restoration of letters due to Petrarch.|
|Character of his style.|
92. The first real restorer of polite letters was Petrarch. His fine
taste taught him to relish the beauties of Virgil and Cicero, and his
ardent praises of them inspired his compatriots with a desire for
classical knowledge. A generous disposition to encourage letters began
to show itself among the Italian princes. Robert, king of Naples, in the
early part of this century, one of the first patrons of Petrarch,
and several of the great families of Lombardy, gave this proof of the
humanising effects of peace and prosperity.[184] It has been thought by
some, that but for his appearance and influence at that period, the
manuscripts themselves would have perished, as several had done in no
long time before; so forgotten and abandoned to dust and vermin were
those precious records in the dungeons of monasteries.[185] He was the
first who brought in that almost deification of the great ancient
writers, which, though carried in following ages to an absurd extent,
was the animating sentiment of solitary study; that through which its
fatigues were patiently endured, and its obstacles surmounted. Petrarch
tells us himself, that while his comrades at school were reading Æsop’s
Fables, or a book of one Prosper, a writer of the fifth century, his
time was given to the study of Cicero, which delighted his ear long
before he could understand the sense.[186] It was much at his heart to
acquire a good style in Latin. And, relatively to his predecessors of
the mediæval period, we may say that he was successful. Passages full of
elegance and feeling, in which we are at least not much offended by
incorrectness of style, are frequent in his writings. But the fastidious
scholars of later times contemned these imperfect endeavours at purity.
“He wants,” says Erasmus, “full acquaintance with the language, and his
whole diction shows the rudeness of the preceding age.”[187] An Italian
writer, somewhat earlier, speaks still more unfavourably. “His style is
harsh, and scarcely bears the character of Latinity. His writings are
indeed full of thought, but defective in expression, and display the
marks of labour without the polish of elegance.”[188] I incline to agree
with Meiners in rating the style of Petrarch somewhat more highly.[189]
Of Boccace the writer above quoted gives even a worse character.
“Licentious and inaccurate in his diction, he has no idea of selection.
All his Latin writings are hasty, crude, and unformed. He labours with
thought, and struggles to give it utterance; but his sentiments find no
adequate vehicle, and the lustre of his native talents is obscured by
the depraved taste of the times.” Yet his own mother tongue owes its
earliest model of grace and refinement to his pen.
[184] Tiraboschi, v. 20, et post. Ten universities were founded in
Italy during the fourteenth century, some of which did not last
long. Rome and Fermo in 1303; Perugia in 1307; Treviso about 1320;
Pisa in 1339; Pavia not long after; Florence in 1348; Siena in
1357; Lucca in 1369, and Ferrara in 1391.
[185] Heeren, 270.
[186] Et illa quidem ætate nihil intelligere poteram, sola me verborum
dulcedo quædam et sonoritas detinebat ut quicquid aliud vel legerem
vel audirem, raucum mihi dissonumque videretur. Epist. Seniles,
lib. xv., apud de Sade, i. 36.
[187] Ciceronianus.
[188] Paulus Cortesius de hominibus doctis. I take the translations
from Roscoe’s Lorenzo de’ Medici, c. vii.
[189] Vergleichung der Sitten, iii. 126. Meiners has expatiated for
fifty pages, pp. 94-147, on the merits of Petrarch in the
restoration of classical literature; he seems unable to leave the
subject. Heeren, though less diffuse, is not less panegyrical. De
Sade’s three quartos are certainly a little tedious.
|His Latin poetry.|
93. Petrarch was more proud of his Latin poem called Africa, the subject
of which is the termination of the second Punic war, than of the sonnets
and odes, which have made his name immortal, though they were not the
chief sources of his immediate renown. It is indeed written with
elaborate elegance, and perhaps superior to any preceding specimen of
Latin versification in the middle ages, unless we should think Joseph
Iscanus his equal. But it is more to be praised for taste than
correctness; and though in the Basle edition of 1554, which I have used,
the printer has been excessively negligent, there can be no doubt that
the Latin poetry of Petrarch abounds with faults of metre. His eclogues,
many of which are covert satires on the court of Avignon, appear to me
more poetical than the Africa, and are sometimes very beautifully
expressed. The eclogues of Boccaccio, though by no means indifferent, do
not equal those of Petrarch.
|John of Ravenna.|
|Gasparin of Barziza.|
94. Mehus, whom Tiraboschi avowedly copies, has diligently collected the
names, though little more than the names, of Latin teachers at Florence
in the fourteenth century.[190] But among the earlier of these there was
no good method of instruction, no elegance of language. The first who
revealed the mysteries of a pure and graceful style, was John
Malpaghino, commonly called John of Ravenna, one whom in his youth
Petrarch had loved as a son, and who not very long before the end of the
century taught Latin at Padua and Florence.[191] The best scholars of
the ensuing age were his disciples, and among them was Gasparin of
Barziza, or, as generally called of Bergamo, justly characterised by
Eichhorn as the father of a pure and elegant Latinity.[192] The
distinction between the genuine Latin language and that of the lower
empire was from this generally recognised; and the writers who had been
regarded as standards were thrown away with contempt. This is the proper
æra of the revival of letters, and nearly coincides with the beginning
of the fifteenth century.
[190] Vita Traversari, p. 348.
[191] A life of John Malpaghino of Ravenna is the first in Meiner’s
Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter männer, 3 vols., Zurich, 1795, but
it is wholly taken from Petrarch’s Letters, and from Mehus’s Life
of Traversari, p. 348. See also Tiraboschi, v. 554.
[192] Geschichte der Litteratur, ii. 241.
95. A few subjects, affording less extensive observation, we have
postponed to the next chapter, which will contain the literature of
Europe in the first part of the fifteenth century. Notwithstanding our
wish to preserve in general a strict regard to chronology, it has been
impossible to avoid some interruptions of it without introducing a
multiplicity of transitions incompatible with any comprehensive views;
and which, even as it must inevitably exist in a work of this nature, is
likely to diminish the pleasure, and perhaps the advantage, that the
reader might derive from it.
CHAPTER II.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1400 TO 1440.
_Cultivation of Latin in Italy--Revival of Greek Literature--Vestiges
of it during the Middle Ages--It is taught by Chrysoloras--his
Disciples--and by learned Greeks--State of Classical Learning in
other Parts of Europe--Physical Sciences--Mathematics--Medicine and
Anatomy--Poetry in Spain, France, and England--Formation of New Laws
of Taste in Middle Ages--Their Principles--Romances--Religious
Opinions._
|Zeal for classical literature in Italy.|
1. Ginguéné has well observed, that the fourteenth century left Italy in
the possession of the writings of three great masters, of a language
formed and polished by them, and of a strong relish for classical
learning. But this soon became the absorbing passion, fortunately, no
doubt, in the result, as the same author has elsewhere said, since all
the exertions of an age were required to explore the rich mine of
antiquity, and fix the standard of taste and purity for succeeding
generations. The ardour for classical studies grew stronger every day.
To write Latin correctly, to understand the allusions of the best
authors, to learn the rudiments at least of Greek, were the objects of
every cultivated mind.
|Poggio Bracciolini.|
|Latin style of that age indifferent.|
2. The first half of the fifteenth century, has been sometimes called
the age of Poggio Bracciolini, which it expresses not very inaccurately
as to his literary life, since he was born in 1381, and died in 1459;
but it seems to involve too high a compliment. The chief merit of Poggio
was his diligence, aided by good fortune, in recovering lost works of
Roman literature, that lay mouldering in the repositories of convents.
Hence we owe to this one man eight orations of Cicero, a complete
Quintilian, Columella, part of Lucretius, three books of Valerius
Flaccus, Silius Italicus, Ammianus Marcellinus, Tertullian, and several
less important writers: twelve comedies of Plautus were also recovered
in Germany through his directions.[193] Poggio besides this was
undoubtedly a man of considerable learning for his time, and still
greater sense and spirit as a writer, though he never reached a very
correct or elegant style.[194] And this applies to all those who
wrote before the year 1440, with the single exception of Gasparin; to
Coluccio Salutato, Guarino of Verona, and even Leonard Aretin.[195] Nor
is this any disparagement to their abilities and industry. They had
neither grammars nor dictionaries, in which the purest Latinity was
distinguishable from the worst; they had to unlearn a barbarous jargon,
made up with scraps of the Vulgate, and of ecclesiastical writers, which
pervades the Latin of the middle ages; they had great difficulty in
resorting to purer models, from the scarcity and high price of
manuscripts, as well as from their general incorrectness, which it
required much attention to set right. Gasparin of Barziza took the right
course, by incessantly turning over the pages of Cicero; and thus by
long habit gained an instinctive sense of propriety in the use of
language, which no secondary means at that time could have given him.
[193] Shepherd’s Life of Poggio. Tiraboschi. Corniani. Roscoe’s Lorenzo,
ch. i. Fabricius, in his Bibliotheca Latina mediæ et infimæ ætatis,
gives a list not quite the same; but Poggio’s own authority must be
the best. The work first above quoted is for the literary history
of Italy in the earlier half of the fifteenth century, what
Roscoe’s Lorenzo is for the latter. Ginguéné has not added much to
what these English authors and Tiraboschi had furnished.
[194] Mr. Shepherd has judged Poggio a little favourably, as became a
biographer, but with sense and discrimination. His Italian
translator, the Avvocato Tonelli (Firenze, 1825), goes much beyond
the mark in extolling Poggio above all his contemporaries, and
praising his “vastissima erudizione” in the strain of hyperbole too
familiar to Italians. This vast learning, even for that time,
Poggio did not possess; we have no reason to believe him equal to
Guarino, Filelfo, or Traversari, much less to Valla. Erasmus,
however, was led by his partiality to Valla into some injustice
towards Poggio, whom he calls rabula adeo indoctus, ut etiamsi
vacaret obscœnitate, tamen indignus esset qui legeretur, adeo autem
obscœnus ut etiamsi doctissimus esset, tamen esset a viris bonis
rejiciendus. Epist. ciii. This is said too hastily; but in his
Ciceronianus, where we have his deliberate judgment, he appreciates
Poggio more exactly. After one of the interlocutors has called him,
vividæ cujusdam eloquentiæ virum, the other replies:--Naturæ satis
erat, artis et eruditionis non multum; interim impuro sermonis
fluxu, si Laurentio Vallæ credimus. Bebel, a German of some
learning, rather older than Erasmus, in a letter quoted by Blount
(Censura Auctorum, in Poggio), praises Poggio very highly for his
style, and prefers him to Valla. Paulus Cortesius seems not much to
differ from Erasmus about Poggio, though he is more severe on Valla.
It should be added, that Tonelli’s notes on the life of Poggio are
useful; among other things he points out that Poggio did not learn
Greek of Emanuel Chrysoloras, as all writers on this part of
literary history had hitherto supposed, but about 1423, when he was
turned of forty.
[195] Coluccio Salutato belongs to the fourteenth century, and was
deemed one of its greatest ornaments in learning. Ma a dir vero,
says Tiraboschi, who admits his extensive erudition, relatively to
his age, benche lo stil di Coluccio abbia non rare volte energia e
forza maggiore che quello della maggior parti degli altri scrittori
di questi tempi, è certo però, che tanto è diverso da quello di
Cicerone nella prosa, e ne’ versi da quel di Virgilio, quanto
appunto è diversa una scimia da un uomo, v. 537.
Cortesius, in the dialogue quoted above, says of Leonard
Aretin:--Hic primus inconditam scribendi consuetudinem ad numerosum
quendam sonum inflexit, et attulit hominibus nostris aliquid certe
splendidius.... Et ego video hunc nondum satis esse limatum, nec
delicatiori fastidio tolerabilem. Atqui dialogi Joannis Ravennatis
vix semel leguntur, et Coluccii Epistolæ, quæ tum in honore erant,
non apparent; sed Boccacii Genealogiam legimus, utilem illam
quidem, sed non tamen cum Petrarchæ ingenio conferendam. At non
videtis quantum his omnibus desit? p. 12. Of Guarino he says
afterwards:--Genus tamen dicendi inconcinnum admodum est et
salebrosum; utitur plerumque imprudens verbis poeticis, quod est
maxime vitiosum; sed magis est in eo succus, quam color laudandus.
Memoria teneo, quendam familiarem meum solitum dicere, melius
Guarinum famæ suæ consuluisse, si nihil unquam scripsisset, p. 14.
|Gasparin of Barziza.|
3. This writer, often called Gasparin of Bergamo, his own birthplace
being in the neighbourhood of that city, was born about 1370, and began
to teach before the close of the century. He was transferred to Padua by
the Senate of Venice, in 1407; and in 1410 accepted the invitation of
Filippo Maria Visconti to Milan, where he remained till his death, in
1431. Gasparin had here the good fortune to find Cicero de Oratore, and
to restore Quintilian by the help of the manuscript brought from St.
Gall by Poggio, and another found in Italy by Leonard Aretin. His fame
as a writer was acquired at Padua, and founded on his diligent study of
Cicero.
|Merits of his style.|
4. It is impossible to read a page of Gasparin without perceiving that
he is quite of another order of scholars from his predecessors. He is
truly Ciceronian in his turn of phrases and structure of sentences,
which never end awkwardly, or with a wrong arrangement of words, as is
habitual with his contemporaries. Inexact expressions may of course be
found, but they do not seem gross or numerous. Among his works are
several orations which probably were actually delivered: they are the
earliest models of that classical declamation which became so usual
afterwards, and are elegant, if not very forcible. His Epistolæ ad
Exercitationem accommodatæ was the first book printed at Paris. It
contains a series of exercises for his pupils, probably for the sake of
double translation, and merely designed to exemplify Latin idioms.[196]
[196] Morhof, who says, primus in Italia aliquid balbutire cœpit
Gasparinus, had probably never seen his writings, which are a great
deal better, in point of language, than his own. Cortesius,
however, blames Gasparin for too elaborate a style; nimia cura
attenuabat orationem.
He once uses a Greek word in his letters; what he knew of the
language does not otherwise appear; but he might have heard Guarino
at Venice. He had not seen Pliny’s Natural History, nor did he
possess a Livy, but was in treaty for one. Epist. p. 200,
A.D. 1415.
|Victorin of Feltre.|
5. If Gasparin was the best writer of this generation, the most
accomplished instructor was Victorin of Feltre, to whom the marquis of
Mantua entrusted the education of his own children. Many of the Italian
nobility, and some distinguished scholars were brought up under the care
of Victorin in that city; and, in a very corrupt age, he was still more
zealous for their moral than their literary improvement. A pleasing
account of his method of discipline will be found in Tiraboschi, or more
fully in Corniani, from a life written by one of Victorin’s pupils,
named Prendilacqua.[197] “It could hardly be believed,” says Tiraboschi,
“that in an age of such rude manners, a model of such perfect education
could be found: if all to whom the care of youth is entrusted would make
it theirs, what ample and rich fruits they would derive from their
labours.” The learning of Victorin was extensive; he possessed a
moderate library, and rigidly demanding a minute exactness from his
pupils in their interpretation of ancient authors, as well as in their
own compositions, laid the foundations of a propriety in style, which
the next age was to display. Traversari visited the school of Victorin,
for whom he entertained a great regard, in 1433; it had then been for
some years established.[198] No writings of Victorin have been
preserved.
[197] Tiraboschi, vii. 306. Corniani, ii. 53. Heeren, p. 235. He is
also mentioned, with much praise for his mode of education, by his
friend Ambrogio Traversari, a passage from whose Hodopæricon will
be found in Heeren, p. 237. Victorin died in 1447, and was buried
at the public expense, his liberality in giving gratuitous
instruction to the poor having left him so.
[198] Mehus, p. 421.
|Leonard Aretin.|
6. Among the writers of these forty years, after Gasparin of Bergamo, we
may probably assign the highest place in politeness of style to Leonardo
Bruni, more commonly called Aretino, from his birthplace, Arezzo. “He
was the first,” says Paulus Cortesius, “who replaced the rude structure
of periods by some degree of rhythm, and introduced our countrymen to
something more brilliant than they had known before; though even he is
not quite as polished as a fastidious delicacy would require.” Aretin’s
history of the Goths, which, though he is silent on the obligation, is
chiefly translated from Procopius, passes for his best work. In the
constellation of scholars who enjoyed the sunshine of favour in the
palace of Cosmo de’ Medici, Leonard Aretin was one of the oldest and
most prominent. He died at an advanced age in 1444, and is one of the
six illustrious dead who repose in the church of Santa Croce.[199]
[199] Madame de Staël unfortunately confounded this respectable scholar,
in her Corinne, with Pietro Aretino; I remember well that Ugo
Foscolo could never contain his wrath against her for this mistake.
|Revival of Greek language in Italy.|
|Early Greek scholars of Europe.|
|Under Charlemagne and his successors.|
7. We come now to a very important event in literary history,--the
resuscitation of the study of the Greek language in Italy. During the
whole course of the middle ages we find scattered instances of scholars
in the west of Europe, who had acquired some knowledge of Greek; to what
extent it is often a difficult question to determine. In the earlier and
darker period, we begin with a remarkable circumstance, already
mentioned, of our own ecclesiastical history. The infant Anglo-Saxon
churches, desirous to give a national form to their hierarchy, solicited
the Pope Vitalian to place an archbishop at their head. He made choice
of Theodore, who not only brought to England a store of Greek
manuscripts, but, through the means of his followers, imparted a
knowledge of it to some of our countrymen. Bede half a century
afterwards, tells us, of course very hyperbolically, that there were
still surviving disciples of Theodore and Adrian, who understood the
Greek and Latin languages as well as their own.[200] From these he
derived, no doubt, his own knowledge, which may not have been
extensive; but we cannot expect more, in such very unfavourable
circumstances, than a superficial progress in so difficult a study. It
is probable that the lessons of Theodore’s disciples were not forgotten
in the British and Irish monasteries. Alcuin has had credit, with no
small likelihood, if not on positive authority, for an acquaintance with
Greek;[201] and as he, and perhaps others from these islands, were
active in aiding the efforts of Charlemagne for the restoration of
letters, the slight tincture of Greek that we find in the schools
founded by that emperor, may have been derived from their instruction.
It is, however, an equally probable hypothesis, that it was communicated
by Greek teachers, whom it was easy to procure. Charlemagne himself,
according to Eginhard, could read, though he could not speak, the Greek
language. Thegan reports the very same, in nearly the same words, of
Louis the Debonair.[202] The former certainly intended, that it should
be taught in some of his schools;[203] and the Benedictines of St. Maur,
in their long and laborious Histoire Littéraire de la France, have
enumerated as many as seventeen persons within France, or at least the
dominions of the Carlovingian house, to whom they ascribe, on the
authority of contemporaries, a portion of this learning.[204] These were
all educated in the schools of Charlemagne except the most eminent in
the list, John Scotus Erigena, for whom Scotland and Ireland contend,
the latter probably on the best grounds. It is not necessary by any
means to suppose that he had acquired by travel the Greek tongue, which
he possessed sufficiently to translate, though very indifferently, the
works attributed in that age to Dionysius the Areopagite.[205] Most
writers of the ninth century, according to the Benedictines, make use of
some Greek words. It appears by a letter of the famous Hincmar,
archbishop of Rheims, who censures his nephew Hincmar of Laon for doing
this affectedly, that glossaries, from which they picked those exotic
flowers, were already in use. Such a glossary in Greek and Latin,
compiled, under Charles the Bald, for the use of the church of Laon,
was, at the date of the publication of this Benedictine History, near
the middle of the last century, in the library of St. Germain des
Prés.[206] We may thus perceive the means of giving the air of more
learning than was actually possessed; and are not to infer from these
sprinklings of Greek in mediæval writings, whether in their proper
characters, or latinised, which is rather more frequent, that the poets
and profane, or even ecclesiastical, writers were accessible in a French
or English monastery. Neither of the Hincmars seems to have understood
it. Tiraboschi admits that he cannot assert any Italian writer of the
ninth century to be acquainted with Greek.[207]
[200] Hist. Eccles. l. v. c. 2. Usque hodie supersunt ex eorum
discipulis, qui Latinam Græcamque linguam æque ac propriam in qua
nati sunt, norunt. Bede’s own knowledge of Greek is attested by his
biographer Cuthbert: præter Latinam etiam Græcam comparaverat. He
once, and possibly more often, uses a Greek word; but we must
suspect his knowledge of it to have been trifling.
A manuscript in the British Museum (Cotton, Galba, i. 18,) is of
some importance in relation to this, if it be truly referred to the
eighth century. It contains the Lord’s prayer in Greek, written in
Anglo-Saxon characters, and appears to have belonged to king
Athelstan. Mr. Turner (Hist. of Angl.-Sax., vol. iii. p. 396) has
taken notice of this manuscript, but without mentioning its
antiquity. The manner in which the words are divided shows a
perfect ignorance of Greek in the writer; but the Saxon is curious
in another respect, as it proves the pronunciation of Greek in the
eighth century to have been modern or Romaic, and not what we hold
to be ancient.
[201] C’était un homme habile dans le Grec comme dans le Latin. Hist.
Litt. de la Fr. iv. 8.
[202] The passages will be found in Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 265 and
290. That concerning Charlemagne is quoted in many other books.
Eginhard says in the same place, that Charles prayed in Latin as
readily as in his own language; and Thegan, that Louis could speak
Latin perfectly.
[203] Osnabrug has generally been named as the place, where Charlemagne
peculiarly designed that Greek should be cultivated. It seems
however, on considering the passage in the Capitularies usually
quoted (Baluze, ii. 419) to have been only one out of many.
Eichhorn thinks that the existence of a Greek school at Osnabrug is
doubtful, but that there is more evidence in favour of Saltsburg
and Ratisbon. Allg. Gesch. der Cultur, ii. 383. The words of the
Capitulary are, Græcas et Latinas Scholas in perpetuum manere
ordinavimus.
[204] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. v. Launoy had commenced this
enumeration in his excellent treatise on the schools of
Charlemagne; but he has not carried it quite so far. See, too,
Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. ii. 420; and Gesch. der Litt. i. 824.
Meiners thinks that Greek was better known in the ninth century,
through Charlemagne’s exertions, than for five hundred years
afterwards. ii. 367.
[205] Eichhorn, ii. 227. Brucker. Guizot.
[206] Hist. Litt. de la France, vol. iv. Duncange, præf. in Glossar.
p. 40.
[207] iii. 206.
|In the tenth and eleventh centuries.|
8. The tenth century furnishes not quite so many proofs of Greek
scholarship. It was, however, studied by some brethren in the abbey of
St. Gall, a celebrated seat of learning for those times, and the library
of which still bears witness, in its copious collection of manuscripts,
to the early intercourse between the scholars of Ireland and those of
the continent. Baldric, bishop of Utrecht,[208] Bruno of Cologne, and
Gerbert, besides a few more whom the historians of St. Maur record,
possessed a tolerable acquaintance with the Greek language. They
mention a fact that throws light on the means by which it might
occasionally be learned. Some natives of that country, doubtless
expatriated catholics, took refuge in the diocese of Toul, under the
protection of the bishop, not long before 1000. They formed separate
societies, performing divine service in their own language, and with
their own rites.[209] It is probable, the Benedictines observe, that
Humbert, afterwards a cardinal, acquired from them that knowledge of the
language by which he distinguished himself in controversy with their
countrymen.[210] This great schism of the church, which the Latins
deeply felt, might induce some to study a language, from which alone
they could derive authorities in disputation with these antagonists. But
it had also the more unequivocal effect of drawing to the west some of
those Greeks who maintained their communion with the church of Rome. The
emigration of these in the diocese of Toul is not a single fact of the
kind; and it is probably recorded from the remarkable circumstance of
their living in community. We find from a passage in Heric, a prelate in
the reign of Charles the Bald, that this had already begun; at the
commencement, in fact, of the great schism.[211] Greek bishops and Greek
monks are mentioned as settlers in France during the early part of the
eleventh century. This was especially in Normandy, under the protection
of Richard II., who died in 1028. Even monks from Mount Sinai came to
Rouen to share in his liberality.[212] The Benedictines ascribe the
preservation of some taste for the Greek and oriental tongues to these
strangers. The list, however, of the learned in them is very short,
considering the erudition of these fathers, and their disposition to
make the most of all they met with. Greek books are mentioned in the few
libraries of which we read in the eleventh century.[213]
[208] Baldric lived under Henry the Fowler; his biographer says:--Nullum
fuit studiorum liberalium genus in omni Græca et Latina eloquentia
quod ingenio sui vivacitatem aufugeret Launoy, p. 117. Hist Litt.
vi. 50.
[209] Vol. vi. p. 57.
[210] Vol. vii. p. 528.
[211] Ducange, præfat. in Glossar. p. 41.
[212] Hist Litt. de la France, vii. 69, 124. et alibi. A Greek
manuscript in the royal library at Paris, containing the liturgy,
according to the Greek ritual, was written in 1022, by a monk named
_Helie_, (they do not give the Latin name,) who seems to have lived
in Normandy. If this stands for Elias, he was probably a Greek by
birth.
[213] Id. p. 48.
|In the twelfth.|
9. The number of Greek scholars seems not much more considerable in the
twelfth century, notwithstanding the general improvement of that age.
The Benedictines reckon about ten names, among which we do not find that
of St. Bernard.[214] They are inclined also to deny the pretensions of
Abelard;[215] but, as that great man finds a very hostile tribunal in
these fathers, we may pause about this, especially as they acknowledge
Eloise to have understood both the Greek and Hebrew languages. She
established a Greek mass for Whitsunday in the Paraclete convent, which
was sung as late as the fifteenth century; and a Greek missal in Latin
characters was still preserved there.[216] Heeren speaks more favourably
of Abelard’s learning, who translated passages from Plato.[217] The
pretensions of John of Salisbury are slighter; he seems proud of his
Greek, but betrays gross ignorance in etymology.[218]
[214] Hist. Litt. de la France, pp. 94, 151. Macarius, abbot of St.
Fleuri, is said to have compiled a Greek Lexicon, which has been
several times printed under the name of Beatus Benedictus.
[215] Id. xii. 147.
[216] Id. xii. 642.
[217] P. 204. His Greek was no doubt rather scanty, and not sufficient
to give him an insight into ancient philosophy; in fact, if his
learning had been greater, he could only read such manuscripts as
fell into his hands; and there were hardly any then in France.
[218] Ibid. John derives analytica from ανα [ana] and λεχις [lexis].
|In the thirteenth.|
10. The thirteenth century was a more inauspicious period for learning;
yet here we can boast, not only of John Basing, archdeacon of St.
Albans, who returned from Athens about 1240, laden, if we are bound to
believe this literally, with Greek books, but of Roger Bacon and Robert
Grostête, bishop of Lincoln. It is admitted that Bacon had some
acquaintance with Greek; and it appears by a passage in Matthew Paris,
that a Greek priest, who had obtained a benefice at St. Albans, gave
such assistance to Grostête as enabled him to translate the testament of
the twelve patriarchs into Latin.[219] This is a confirmation of what
has been suggested above, as the probable means by which a knowledge of
that language, in the total deficiency of scholastic education, was
occasionally imparted to persons of unusual zeal for learning. And it
leads us to another reflection, that by a knowledge of Greek, when we
find it asserted of a mediæval theologian like Grostête, we are not to
understand an acquaintance with the great classical authors, who were
latent in eastern monasteries, but the power of reading some petty
treatise of the fathers, or, as in this instance, an apocryphal legend,
or at best, perhaps, some of the later commentators on Aristotle.
Grostête was a man of considerable merit, but has had his share of
applause.
[219] Matt. Par. p. 520. See also Turner’s History of England, iv. 180.
It is said in some books that Grostête made a translation of
Suidas. But this is to be understood merely of a legendary story
found in that writer’s Lexicon. Pegge’s Life of Grostête, p. 291.
The entire work he certainly could not have translated, nor is it
at all credible that he had a copy of it. With respect to the doubt
I have hinted in the text as to the great number of manuscripts
said to be brought to England by John Basing, it is founded on
their subsequent disappearance. We find very few, if any, Greek
manuscripts in England at the end of the fifteenth century.
Michael Scot, “the wizard of dreaded fame,” pretended to translate
Aristotle; but is charged with having appropriated the labours of
one Andrew, a Jew, as his own. Meiners, ii. 664.
|Little appearance of it in the fourteenth century.|
11. The titles of mediæval works are not unfrequently taken from the
Greek language, as the Polycraticus and Metalogicus of John of
Salisbury, or the Philobiblon of Richard Aungerville of Bury. In this
little volume, written about 1343, I have counted five instances of
single Greek words. And, what is more important, Aungerville declares
that he had caused Greek and Hebrew grammars to be drawn up for
students.[220] But we have no other record of such grammars. It would be
natural to infer from this passage, that some persons, either in France
or England, were occupied in the study of the Greek language. And yet we
find nothing to corroborate this presumption; all ancient learning was
neglected in the fourteenth century; nor do I know that one man on this
side of the Alps, except Aungerville himself, is reputed to have been
versed in Greek during that period. I cannot speak positively as to
Berchœur, the most learned man in France. The council of Vienne,
indeed, in 1311, had ordered the establishment of professors in the
Greek, Hebrew, Chaldaic, and Arabic languages, at Avignon, and in the
universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. But this decree
remained a dead letter.
[220] C. x.
|Some traces of Greek in Italy.|
12. If we now turn to Italy, we shall find, as is not wonderful, rather
more frequent instances of acquaintance with a living language, in
common use with a great neighbouring people. Gradenigo, in an essay on
this subject,[221] has endeavoured to refute what he supposes to be the
universal opinion, that the Greek tongue was first taught in Italy by
Chrysoloras and Guarino at the end of the fourteenth century, contending
that, from the eleventh inclusive, there are numerous instances of
persons conversant with it; besides the evidence afforded by
inscriptions in Greek characters found in some churches, by the use of
Greek psalters and other liturgical offices, by the employment of Greek
painters in churches, and by the frequent intercourse between the two
countries. The latter presumptions have in fact considerable weight; and
those who should contend for an absolute ignorance of the Greek
language, oral as well as written, in Italy, would go too far. The
particular instances brought forward by Gradenigo are about thirty. Of
these, the first is Papias, who has quoted five lines of Hesiod.[222]
Lanfranc had also a considerable acquaintance with the language.[223]
Peter Lombard, in his Liber Sententiarum, the systematic basis of
scholastic theology, introduces many Greek words, and explains them
rightly.[224] But this list is not very long; and when we find the
surname Bifarius given to one Ambrose of Bergamo in the eleventh
century, on account of his capacity of speaking both languages, it may
be conceived that the accomplishment was somewhat rare. Mehus, in his
very learned life of Traversari, has mentioned two or three names, among
whom is the Emperor Frederic II. (not indeed strictly an Italian), that
do not appear in Gradenigo.[225] But Tiraboschi conceives, on the other
hand, that the latter has inserted some on insufficient grounds.
Christine of Pisa is mentioned, I think, by neither; she was the
daughter of an Italian astronomer, but lived at the court of Charles V.
of France, and was the most accomplished literary lady of that age.[226]
[221] Ragionamento istorico-critico opra la litteratura Greco-Italiana.
Brescia, 1759.
[222] P. 37. These are very corruptly given, through the fault of a
transcriber; for Papias has translated them into tolerable Latin
verse.
[223] Hist. Litt. de la France, vii. 144.
[224] Meiners, iii. 11.
[225] Pp. 155, 217, &c. Add to these authorities, Muratori, dissert.
44; Brucker, iii. 644, 647; Tiraboschi, v. 393.
[226] Tiraboschi, v. 388, vouches for Christine’s knowledge of Greek.
She was a good poetess in French, and altogether a very remarkable
person.
|Corruption of Greek language itself.|
13. The intercourse between Greece and the west of Europe, occasioned by
commerce and by the crusades, had little or no influence upon
literature. For, besides the general indifference to it in those
classes of society which were thus brought into some degree of contact
with the Eastern Empire, we must remember that, although Greek, even to
the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II., was a living language in
that city, spoken by the superior ranks of both sexes with tolerable
purity, it had degenerated among the common people, and almost
universally among the inhabitants of the provinces and islands, into
that corrupt form, or rather new language, which we call Romaic.[227]
The progress of this innovation went on by steps very similar to those
by which the Latin was transformed in the West, though it was not so
rapid or complete. A manuscript of the twelfth century, quoted by Du
Cange from the royal library at Paris, appears to be the oldest written
specimen of the modern Greek that has been produced; but the oral change
had been gradually going forward for several preceding centuries.[228]
[227] Filelfo says, in one of his epistles, dated 1441, that the
language spoken in Peloponnesus “ad eo est depravata, ut nihil
omnino sapiat priscæ ilius et eloquentissimo Græciæ.” At
Constantinople the case was better; “viri eruditi sunt nonnulli, et
culti mores, et sermo etiam nitidus.” In a letter of Coluccio
Salutato, near the end of the fourteenth century, he says that
Plutarch had been translated de Græco in Græcum vulgare. Mehus, p.
294. This seems to have been done at Rhodes. I quote this to remove
any difficulty others may feel, for I believe the Romaic Greek is
much older. The progress of corruption in Greek is sketched in the
Quarterly Review, vol. xxii., probably by the pen of the Bishop of
London. Its symptoms were very similar to those of Latin in the
West; abbreviation of words, and indifference to right inflexions.
See also Col. Leake’s Researches in the Morea. Eustathius has many
Romaic words; yet no one in the twelfth century had more learning.
[228] Du Cange, præfatio in Glossarium mediæ et infimæ Græcitatis.
|Character of Byzantine literature.|
14. The Byzantine literature was chiefly valuable by illustrating, or
preserving in fragments, the historians, philosophers, and, in some
measure, the poets of antiquity. Constantinople and her empire produced
abundantly men of erudition, but few of genius or of taste. But this
erudition was now rapidly on the decline. No one was left in Greece,
according to Petrarch, after the death of Leontius Pilatus, who
understood Homer; words not, perhaps, to be literally taken, but
expressive of what he conceived to be their general indifference to the
poet: and it seems very probable that some ancient authors, whom we
should most desire to recover, especially the lyric poets of the Doric
and Æolic dialects, have perished, because they had become
unintelligible to the transcribers of the lower empire; though this has
also been ascribed to the scrupulousness of the clergy. An absorbing
fondness for theological subtleties, far more trifling among the Greeks
than in the schools of the west, conspired to produce a neglect of
studies so remote as heathen poetry. Aurispa tells Ambrogio Traversari,
that he found they cared little about profane literature. Nor had the
Greek learning ever recovered the blow that the capture of
Constantinople by the crusaders in 1204, and the establishment for sixty
years of a Latin and illiterate dynasty, inflicted upon it.[229] We
trace many classical authors to that period, of whom we know nothing
later, and the compilations of ancient history by industrious Byzantines
came to an end. Meantime the language, where best preserved, had long
lost the delicacy and precision of its syntax; the true meaning of the
tenses, moods, and voices of the verb was overlooked or guessed at; a
kind of latinism, or something at least not ancient in structure and
rhythm, shows itself in their poetry; and this imperfect knowledge of
their once beautiful language is unfortunately too manifest in the
grammars of the Greek exiles of the fifteenth century, which have so
long been the groundwork of classical education in Europe.
[229] An enumeration, and it is a long one, of the Greek books not
wholly lost till this time will be found in Heeren, p. 125; and
also in his Essai sur les Croisades.
|Petrarch and Boccace learn Greek.|
15. We now come to the proper period of the restoration of Greek
learning. In the year 1339, Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, but long
resident in Greece, and deemed one of the most learned men of that age,
was entrusted by the emperor Cantacuzenus with a mission to Italy.[230]
Petrarch, in 1342, as Tiraboschi fixes the time, endeavoured to learn
Greek from him, but found the task too arduous, or rather, had not
sufficient opportunity to go on with it.[231] Boccaccio, some years
afterwards, succeeded better with the help of Leontius Pilatus, a
Calabrian also by birth,[232] who made a prose translation of Homer for
his use, and for whom he is said to have procured a public appointment
as teacher of the Greek language at Florence, in 1361. He remained here
about three years; but we read nothing of any other disciples; and the
man himself was of too unsocial and forbidding a temper to conciliate
them.[233]
[230] Mehus. Tiraboschi, v. 398. De Sade, i. 406. Biog. Univ., Barlaam.
[231] Incubueram alacri spe magnoque desiderio, sed peregrinan linguæ
novitas et festina præceptoris absentia præciderunt propositum
meum. It has been said, and probably with some truth, that Greek,
or at least a sort of Greek, was preserved as a living language in
Calabria; not because Greek colonies had once been settled in some
cities, but because that part of Italy was not lost to the
Byzantine empire till about three centuries before the time of
Barlaam and Pilatus. They, however, had gone to a better source;
and I should have great doubts as to the goodness of Calabrian
Greek in the fourteenth century, which of course are not removed by
the circumstance that in some places the church service was
performed in that language. Heeren, I find, is of the same opinion,
p. 287.
[232] Many have taken Pilatus for a native of Thessalonica: even Hody
has fallen into this mistake, but Petrarch’s letters show the
contrary.
[233] Hody. De Græcis Illustribus, p. 2. Mehus, 273. De Sade, iii. 625.
Gibbon has erroneously supposed this translation to have been made
by Boccace himself.
|Few acquainted with the language in their time.|
16. According to a passage in one of Petrarch’s letters, fancifully
addressed to Homer, there were at that time not above ten persons in
Italy who knew how to value the old father of the poets; five at the
most in Florence, one in Bologna, two in Verona, one in Mantua, one in
Perugia, but none at Rome.[234] Some pains have been thrown away in
attempting to retrieve the names of those to whom he alludes: the letter
shows at least, that there was very little pretension to Greek learning
in his age; for I am not convinced that he meant all these ten persons,
among whom he seems to reckon himself, to be considered as skilled in
that tongue. And we must not be led away by the instances partially
collected by Gradenigo out of the whole mass of extant records, to lose
sight of the great general fact, that Greek literature was lost in Italy
for 700 years, in the words of Leonard Aretin, before the arrival of
Chrysoloras. The language is one thing, and the learning contained in it
is another. For all the purposes of taste and erudition, there was no
Greek in western Europe during the middle ages: if we look only at the
knowledge of bare words, we have seen there was a very slender portion.
[234] De Sade, iii. 627. Tiraboschi, v. 371, 400. Heeren, 294.
|It is taught by Chrysoloras about 1395|.
|His disciples.|
17. The true epoch of the revival of Greek literature in Italy, these
attempts of Petrarch and Boccace having produced no immediate effect,
though they evidently must have excited a desire for learning, cannot be
placed before the year 1395,[235] when Emanuel Chrysoloras, previously
known as an ambassador from Constantinople to the western powers, in
order to solicit assistance against the Turks, was induced to return to
Florence as public teacher of Greek. He passed from thence to various
Italian universities, and became the preceptor of several early
Hellenists.[236] The first, and perhaps the most eminent and useful of
these, was Guarino Guarini of Verona, born in 1370. He acquired his
knowledge of Greek under Chrysoloras at Constantinople, before the
arrival of the latter in Italy. Gaurino, upon his return, became
professor of rhetoric, first at Venice and other cities of Lombardy,
then at Florence, and ultimately at Ferrara, where he closed a long life
of unremitting and useful labour in 1460. John Aurispa of Sicily came to
the field rather later, but his labours were not less profitable. He
brought back to Italy 238 manuscripts from Greece about 1423, and thus
put his country in possession of authors hardly known to her by name.
Among these were Plato, Plotinus, Diodorus, Arrian, Dio Cassius, Strabo,
Pindar, Callimachus, Appian. After teaching Greek at Bologna and
Florence, Aurispa also ended a length of days under the patronage of the
house of Este, at Ferrara. To these may be added, in the list of public
instructors in Greek before 1440, Filelfo, a man still more known by his
virulent disputes with his contemporaries than by his learning; who,
returning from Greece in 1427, laden with manuscripts, was not long
afterwards appointed to the chair of rhetoric, that is, of Latin and
Greek philology, at Florence; and, according to his own account, excited
the admiration of the whole city.[237] But his vanity was excessive, and
his contempt of others not less so. Poggio was one of his enemies; and
their language towards each other is a noble specimen of the decency
with which literary and personal quarrels were carried on.[238] It has
been observed, that Gianozzo Manetti, a contemporary scholar, is less
known than others, chiefly because the mildness of his character spared
him the altercations to which they owe a part of their celebrity.[239]
[235] This is the date fixed by Tiraboschi; others refer it to 1391,
1396, 1397, or 1399.
[236] Literæ per hujus belli intercapedines mirabile quantum per Italiam
increvere; accedente tunc primum cognitione literarum Græcarum quæ
septingentis jam annis apud nostras homines desierant esse in usu.
Retulit autem Græcam disciplinam ad nos Chrysoloras Byzantinus, vir
domi nobilis ac literarum Græcarum peritissimus. Leonard Aretin
apud Hody, p. 28. See also an extract from Manetti’s Life of
Boccace, in Hody, p. 61.
Satis constat Chrysoloram Byzantinum transmarinam illam disciplinam
in Italiam advexisse; quo doctore adhibito primum nostri homines
totius exercitationis atque artis ignari, cognitis Græcis literis,
vehementer sese ad eloquentiæ studia excitaverunt. P. Cortesius, De
Hominibus Doctis, p. 6.
The first visit of Chrysoloras had produced an inclination towards
the study of Greek. Coluccio Salutato, in a letter to Demetrius
Cydonius, who had accompanied Chrysoloras, says, Multorum animos ad
linguam Helladum accendisti, ut jam videre videar multos fore
Græcarum literarum post paucorum annorum curricula non tepide
studiosos. Mehus, p. 356.
The Erotemata of Chrysoloras, an introduction to Greek grammar, was
the first, and long the only, channel to a knowledge of that
language, save oral instruction. It was several times printed, even
after the grammars of Gaza and Lascaris had come more into use. An
abridgment by Guarino of Verona, with some additions of his own,
was printed at Ferrara in 1509. Ginguéné, iii. 283.
[237] Universa in me civitas conversa est; omnes me diligunt, honorant
omnes, ac summis laudibus in cœlum efferunt. Meum nomen in ore est
omnibus. Nec primarii cives modo, cum per urbem incedo, sed
nobilissimæ fœminæ honorandi mei gratiâ loco cedunt, tantumque mihi
deferunt, ut me pudeat tanti cultus. Auditores sunt quotidie ad
quadringentos, vel fortassis et amplius; et hi quidem magna in
parte viri grandiores et ex ordine senatorio. Phililph. Epist. ad
ann. 1428.
[238] Shepherd’s Life of Poggio, ch. vi. and viii.
[239] Hody was perhaps the first who threw much light on the early
studies of Greek in Italy; and his book, De Græcis Illustribus,
Linguæ Græcæ Instauratoribus, will be read with pleasure and
advantage by every lover of literature; though Mehus, who came with
more exuberant erudition to the subject, has pointed out a few
errors. But more is to be found as to its native cultivators, Hody
being chiefly concerned with the Greek refugees, in Bayle,
Fabricius, Niceron, Mehus, Zeno, Tiraboschi, Meiners, Roscoe,
Heeren, Shepherd, Corniani, Ginguéné, and the Biographie
Universelle, whom I name in chronological order.
As it is impossible to dwell on the subject within the limits of
these pages, I will refer the reader to the most useful of the
above writings, some of which, being merely biographical
collections, do not give the connected information he would
require. The lives of Poggio and of Lorenzo de’ Medici will make
him familiar with the literary history of Italy for the whole
fifteenth century, in combination with public events, as it is best
learned. I need not say that Tiraboschi is a source of vast
knowledge to those who can encounter two quarto volumes. Ginguéné’s
third volume is chiefly borrowed from these, and may be read with
great advantage. Finally, a clear, full, and accurate account of
those times will be found in Heeren. It will be understood that all
these works relate to the revival of Latin as well as Greek.
|Translations from Greek into Latin.|
18. Many of these cultivators of the Greek language devoted their
leisure to translating the manuscripts brought into Italy. The earliest
of these were Peter Paul Vergerio (commonly called the elder, to
distinguish him from a more celebrated man of the same names in the
sixteenth century), a scholar of Chrysoloras, but not till he was rather
advanced in years. He made, by order of the emperor Sigismund, and,
therefore, not earlier than 1410, a translation of Arrian, which is said
to exist in the Vatican library; but we know little of its merits.[240]
A more renowned person was Ambrogio Traversari, a Florentine monk of the
order of Camaldoli, who employed many years in this useful labour. No
one of that age has left a more respectable name for private worth; his
epistles breathe a spirit of virtue, of kindness to his friends, and of
zeal for learning. In the opinion of his contemporaries, he was placed,
not quite justly, on a level with Leonard Aretin for his knowledge of
Latin, and he surpassed him in Greek.[241] Yet neither his translations,
nor those of his contemporaries, Guarino of Verona, Poggio, Leonardo
Aretino, Filelfo, who with several others, rather before 1440, or not
long afterwards, rendered the historians and philosophers of Greece
familiar to Italy, can be extolled as correct, or as displaying what is
truly to be called a knowledge of either language. Vossius, Casaubon,
and Huet speak with much dispraise of most of these early translations
from Greek into Latin. The Italians knew not enough of the original, and
the Greeks were not masters enough of Latin. Gaza, upon the whole, than
whom no one is more successful, says Erasmus, whether he renders
Greek into Latin, or Latin into Greek, is reckoned the most elegant, and
Argyropulus the most exact. But George of Trebizond, Filelfo, Leonard
Aretin, Poggio, Valla, Perotti, are rather severely dealt with by the
sharp critics of later times.[242] For this reproach does not fall only
on the scholars of the first generation, but on their successors, except
Politian, down nearly to the close of the fifteenth century. Yet, though
it is necessary to point out the deficiencies of classical erudition at
this time, lest the reader should hastily conclude, that the praises
bestowed upon it are less relative to the previous state of ignorance,
and the difficulties with which that generation had to labour, than they
really are, this cannot affect our admiration and gratitude towards men
who, by their diligence and ardour in acquiring and communicating
knowledge, excited that thirst for improvement, and laid those
foundations of it, which rendered the ensuing age so glorious in the
annals of literature.
[240] Biogr. Univ., Vergerio. He seems to have written very good Latin,
if we may judge by the extracts in Corniani, ii. 61.
[241] The Hodopœricon of Traversari, though not of importance as a
literary work, serves to prove, according to Bayle (Camaldoli, note
D), that the author was an honest man, and that he lived in a very
corrupt age. It is an account of the visitation of some convents
belonging to his order. The life of Ambrogio Traversari has been
written by Mehus very copiously, and with abundant knowledge of the
times: it is a great source of the literary history of Italy. There
is a pretty good account of him in Niceron, vol. xix., and a short
one in Roscoe; but the fullest biography of the man himself will be
found in Meiners, Lebenbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, vol. ii.
pp. 222-307.
[242] Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 376, &c. Blount, Censura
Auctorum, in nominibus nuncupatis. Hody, sæpies. Niceron, vol. ix.
in Perotti. See also a letter of Erasmus in Jortin’s Life, ii. 425.
Filelfo tells us of a perplexity into which Ambrogio Traversari and
Carlo Marsuppini, perhaps the two principal Greek scholars in Italy
after himself and Guarino, were thrown by this line of Homer:--
Βούλομ᾽ ἐγὼ λαὸν σόον ἔμμεναι, ἢ ἀπόλεσθαι.
[Boulom egô laon soon emmenai, ê apolesthai.]
The first thought it meant populum aut salvum esse aut perire;
which Filelfo justly calls, inepta interpretatio et prava.
Marsuppini said ἢ ἀπόλεσθαι [ê apolesthai] was, aut ipsum perire.
Filelfo, after exulting over them, gives the true meaning.
Philelph. Epist. ad ann. 1440.
Traversari complains much, in one of his letters, of the difficulty
he found in translating Diogenes Laertius, lib. vii. epis. ii.; but
Meiners, though admitting many errors, thinks this one of the best
among the early translations, ii. 290.
|Public encouragement delayed.|
19. They did not uniformly find any great public encouragement in the
early stages of their teaching. On the contrary, Aurispa met with some
opposition to philological literature at Bologna.[243] The civilians and
philosophers were pleased to treat the innovators as men who wanted to
set showy against solid learning. Nor was the state of Italy and of the
papacy, during the long schism, very favourable to their object.
Ginguéné remarks, that patronage was more indispensable in the fifteenth
century than it had been in the last. Dante and Petrarch shone out by a
paramount force of genius, but the men of learning required the
encouragement of power, in order to excite and sustain their industry.
[243] Tiraboschi, vii. 301.
|But fully accorded before 1440.|
20. That encouragement, however it may have been delayed, had been
accorded before the year 1440. Eugenius IV. was the Pope who displayed
an inclination to favour the learned. They found a still more liberal
patron in Alphonso, king of Naples, who, first of all European princes,
established the interchange of praise and pension, both, however, well
deserved, with Filelfo, Poggio, Valla, Beccatelli, and other eminent
men. This seems to have begun before 1440, though it was more
conspicuous afterwards until his death in 1458. The earliest literary
academy was established at Naples by Alphonso, of which Antonio
Beccatelli, more often called Panormita, from his birthplace, was the
first president, as Pontana was the second. Nicolas of Este, marquis of
Ferrara, received literary men in his hospitable court. But none were so
celebrated or useful in this patronage of letters as Cosmo de’ Medici,
the Pericles of Florence, who, at the period with which we are now
concerned, was surrounded by Traversari, Niccolo Niccolì, Leonardo
Aretino, Poggio; all ardent to retrieve the treasures of Greek and Roman
learning. Filelfo alone, malignant and irascible, stood aloof from the
Medicean party, and poured his venom in libels on Cosmo and the chief of
his learned associates. Niccolì, a wealthy citizen of Florence, deserves
to be remembered among these; not for his writings,--since he left none;
but on account of his care for the good instruction of youth, which has
made Meiners call him the Florentine Socrates, and for his liberality as
well as diligence in collecting books and monuments of antiquity. The
public library of St. Mark was founded on a bequest by Niccolì, in 1437,
of his own collection of eight hundred manuscripts. It was, too, at his
instigation, as has been said, and that of Traversari, that Cosmo
himself, about this time, laid the foundation of that which, under his
grandson, acquired the name of the Laurentian library.[244]
[244] I refer to the same authorities, but especially to the life of
Traversari in Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen, ii. 294. The suffrages
of older authors are collected by Baillet and Blount.
|Emigration of learned Greeks to Italy.|
21. As the dangers of the eastern empire grew more imminent, a few that
had still endeavoured to preserve in Greece the purity of their
language, and the speculations of ancient philosophy, turned their eyes
towards a haven that seemed to solicit the glory of protecting them. The
first of these, that is well known, was Theodore Gaza, who fled from his
birthplace, Thessalonica, when it fell under the Turkish yoke in 1430.
He rapidly acquired the Latin language by the help of Victorin of
Feltre.[245] Gaza became afterwards, but not, perhaps, within the period
to which this chapter is limited, rector of the university of Ferrara.
In this city, Eugenius IV. held a council in 1438, removed next year, on
account of sickness, to Florence, in order to reconcile the Greek and
Latin churches. Though it is well known that the appearances of success
which attended this hard bargain of the strong with the weak were very
fallacious, the presence of several Greeks, skilled in their own
language, and even in their ancient philosophy, Pletho, Bessarion, Gaza,
stimulated the noble love of truth and science that burned in the bosoms
of enlightened Italians. Thus, in 1440, the spirit of ancient learning
was already diffused on that side the Alps: the Greek language might be
learned in at least four or five cities, and an acquaintance with it was
a recommendation to the favour of the great; while the establishment of
universities at Pavia, Turin, Ferrara, and Florence, since the beginning
of the present century, or near the close of the last, bore witness to
the generous emulation which they served to redouble and concentrate.
[245] Victorin perhaps exchanged instruction with his pupil; for we
find by a letter of Traversari (p. 421, edit. Mehus), that he was
himself teaching Greek in 1433.
|Causes of enthusiasm for antiquity in Italy.|
22. It is an interesting question, What were the causes of this
enthusiasm for antiquity which we find in the beginning of the fifteenth
century?--a burst of public feeling that seems rather sudden, but
prepared by several circumstances that lie farther back in Italian
history. The Italians had for some generations learned more to identify
themselves with the great people that had subdued the world. The fall of
the house of Swabia, releasing their necks from a foreign yoke, had
given them a prouder sense of nationality; while the name of Roman
emperor was systematically associated by one party with ancient
tradition; and the study of the civil law, barbarously ignorant as its
professors often were, had at least the effect of keeping alive a
mysterious veneration for antiquity. The monuments of ancient Italy were
perpetual witnesses; their inscriptions were read; it was enough that a
few men like Petrarch should animate the rest; it was enough that
learning should become honourable, and that there should be the means of
acquiring it. The story of Rienzi, familiar to every one, is a proof
what enthusiasm could be kindled by ancient recollections. Meantime the
laity became better instructed; a mixed race, ecclesiastics, but not
priests, and capable alike of enjoying the benefices of the church, or
of returning from it to the world, were more prone to literary than
theological pursuits. The religious scruples which had restrained
churchmen, in the darker ages, from perusing heathen writers, by degrees
gave way, as the spirit of religion itself grew more objective, and
directed itself more towards maintaining the outward church in its
orthodoxy of profession, and in its secular power, than towards
cultivating devout sentiments in the bosom.
|Advanced state of society.|
23. The principal Italian cities became more wealthy and more luxurious
after the middle of the thirteenth century. Books, though still very
dear, comparatively with the present value of money, were much less so
than in other parts of Europe.[246] In Milan, about 1300, there were
fifty persons who lived by copying them. At Bologna, it was also a
regular occupation at fixed prices.[247] In this state of social
prosperity, the keen relish of Italy for intellectual excellence had
time to develop itself. A style of painting appeared in the works
of Giotto and his followers, rude and imperfect, according to the
skilfulness of later times, but in itself pure, noble, and expressive,
and well adapted to reclaim the taste from the extravagance of romance
to classic simplicity. Those were ready for the love of Virgil, who had
formed their sense of beauty by the figures of Giotto and the language
of Dante. The subject of Dante is truly mediæval; but his style, the
clothing of poetry, bears the strongest marks of his acquaintance with
antiquity. The influence of Petrarch was far more direct, and has
already been pointed out.
[246] Savigny thinks the price of books in the middle ages has been
much exaggerated; and that we are apt to judge by a few instances
of splendid volumes, which give us no more notion of ordinary
prices than similar proofs of luxury in collectors do at present.
Thousands of manuscripts are extant, and the sight of most of them
may convince us, that they were written at no extraordinary cost.
He then gives a long list of law books, the prices of which he has
found recorded. Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, iii. 519. But unless
this were accompanied with a better standard of value than a mere
monetary one, which last Savigny has given very minutely, it can
afford little information. The impression left on my mind, without
comparing these prices closely with those of other commodities, was
that books were in real value very considerably dearer (that is, in
the ratio of several units to one) than at present, which is
confirmed by many other evidences.
[247] Tiraboschi, iv. 72-80. The price for copying a bible was eighty
Bolognese livres; three of which were equal to two gold florins.
|Exclusive study of antiquity.|
24. The love of Greek and Latin absorbed the minds of these Italian
scholars, and effaced all regard to every other branch of literature.
Their own language was nearly silent; few condescended so much as to
write letters in it; as few gave a moment’s attention to physical
science, though we find it mentioned, perhaps as remarkable, in Victorin
of Feltre, that he had some fondness for geometry, and had learned to
understand Euclid.[248] But even in Latin they wrote very little that
can be deemed worthy of remembrance, or even that can be mentioned at
all. The ethical dialogues of Francis Barbaro, a noble Venetian, on the
married life (De Re Uxoria),[249] and of Poggio on nobility, are almost
the only books that fall within this period, except declamatory
invectives or panegyrics, and other productions of circumstance. Their
knowledge was not yet exact enough to let them venture upon critical
philology; though Niccolì and Traversari were silently occupied in the
useful task of correcting the text of manuscripts, faulty beyond
description in the later centuries. Thus we must consider Italy as still
at school, active, acute, sanguine, full of promise, but not yet become
really learned, or capable of doing more than excite the emulation of
other nations.
[248] Meiners, Lebensbesch, ii. 293.
[249] Barbaro was a scholar of Gasparin in Latin. He had probably
learned Greek of Guarino, for it is said that, on the visit of the
emperor John Paleologus to Italy in 1423, he was addressed by two
noble Venetians, Leonardo Guistiniani and Francesco Barbaro, in as
good language as if they had been born in Greece. Andrès, iii. 33.
The treatise De Re Uxoria, which was published about 1417, made a
considerable impression in Italy. Some account of it may be found
in Shepherd’s Life of Poggio, ch. iii., and in Corniani, ii. 137;
who thinks it the only work of moral philosophy in the fifteenth
century, which is not a servile copy of some ancient system. He was
grandfather of the more celebrated Hermolaus Barbarus.
|Classical learning in France low.|
25. But we find very little corresponding sympathy with this love of
classical literature in other parts of Europe; not so much owing to the
want of intercourse, as to a difference of external circumstances, and,
still more, of national character and acquired habits. Clemangis,
indeed, rather before the end of the fourteenth century, is said by
Crevier to have restored the study of classical antiquity in France,
after an intermission of two centuries;[250] and Eichhorn deems his
style superior to that of most contemporary Italians.[251] Even the
Latin verses of Clemangis are praised by the same author, as the first
that had been tolerably written on this side the Alps for two hundred
years. But we do not find much evidence that he produced any effect upon
Latin literature in France. The general style was as bad as before.
Their writers employed not only the barbarous vocabulary of the schools,
but even French words with Latin terminations adapted to them.[252] We
shall see that the renovation of polite letters in France must be dated
long afterwards. Several universities were established in that kingdom;
but even if universities had been always beneficial to literature, which
was not the case during the prevalence of scholastic disputation, the
civil wars of one unhappy reign, and the English invasions of another,
could not but retard the progress of all useful studies. Some Greeks,
about 1430, are said to have demanded a stipend, in pursuance of a
decree of the council of Vienne in the preceding century, for teaching
their language in the university of Paris. The nation of France, one of
the four into which that university was divided, assented to this
suggestion; but we find no other steps taken in relation to it. In 1455,
it is said, that the Hebrew language was publicly taught.[253]
[250] Hist. de l’Université de Paris, iii. 189.
[251] Gesch. der Litteratur, ii. 242. Meiners (Vergleich. der Sitten,
iii. 33) extols Clemangis in equally high terms. He is said to have
read lectures on the rhetoric of Cicero and Aristotle. Id. ii. 647.
Was there a translation of the latter so early?
[252] Bulæus. Hist. Univ. Paris, apud Heeren, p. 118.
[253] Crevier, iv. 43. Heeren, p. 121.
|Much more so in England.|
26. Of classical learning in England we can tell no favourable story.
The Latin writers of the fifteenth century, few in number, are still
more insignificant in value; they possess scarce an ordinary
knowledge of grammar; to say that they are full of barbarisms and
perfectly inelegant, is hardly necessary. The university of Oxford was
not less frequented at this time than in the preceding century, though
it was about to decline; but its pursuits were as nugatory and
pernicious to real literature as before.[254] Poggio says, more than
once, in writing from England about 1420, that he could find no good
books, and is not very respectful to our scholars. “Men given up to
sensuality we may find in abundance; but very few lovers of learning;
and those barbarous, skilled more in quibbles and sophisms than in
literature. I visited many convents; they were all full of books of
modern doctors, whom we should not think worthy so much as to be heard.
They have few works of the ancients, and those are much better with us.
Nearly all the convents of this island have been founded within four
hundred years: but that was not a period in which either learned men, or
such books as we seek, could be expected, for they had been lost
before.”[255]
[254] No place was more discredited for bad Latin. “Oxoniensis loquendi
mos” became a proverb. This means that, being disciples of Scotus
and Ockham, the Oxonians talked their master’s jargon.
[255] Pogg. Epist. p. 43. (edit. 1832.)
|Library of Duke of Gloucester.|
27. Yet books began to be accumulated in our public libraries:
Aungerville, in the preceding century, gave part of his collection to a
college at Oxford; and Humphry, duke of Gloucester, bequeathed six
hundred volumes, as some have said, or one hundred and twenty-nine only,
according to another account, to that university.[256] But these books
were not of much value in a literary sense, though some may have been
historically useful. I am indebted to Heeren for a letter of thanks from
the duke of Gloucester to Decembrio, an Italian scholar of considerable
reputation, who had sent him a translation of Plato de Republica. It
must have been written before July, 1447, the date of Humphry’s death,
and was probably as favourable a specimen of our Latinity as the kingdom
could furnish.[257]
[256] The former number is given by Warton; the latter I find in a
short tract on English monastic libraries (1831), by the Rev.
Joseph Hunter. In this there is also a catalogue of the library in
the priory of Bretton in Yorkshire, consisting of about 150
volumes. No date is given; but I suppose it was about the first
part of the sixteenth century.
[257] Hoc uno nos longe felicem judicamus, quod tu totque florentissimi
viri Græcis et Latinis literis peritissimi, quot illic apud vos
sunt nostris temporibus, habeantur, quibus nesciamus quid laudum
digne satis possit excogitari. Mitto quod facundiam priscam illam
et priscis viris dignam, quæ prorsus perierat, huic sæculo
renovatis; nec id vobis satis fuit, et Græcas literas scrutati
estis, ut et philosophos Græcas et vivendi magistros, qui nostris
jam obliterati erant et occulti, reseratis, et eos Latinos
facientes in propatulum adducitis. Heeren quotes this, p. 135, from
Sassi de studiis Mediolanensibus. Warton also mentions the letter,
ii. 388. The absurd idiom exemplified in “nos felicem judicamus”
was introduced affectedly by the writers of the twelfth century.
Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 146.
|Gerard Groot’s college at Deventer.|
28. Among the Cisalpine nations, the German had the greatest tendency to
literary improvement, as we may judge by subsequent events, rather than
by much that was apparent so early as 1440. Their writers in Latin were
still barbarous, nor had they partaken in the love of antiquity which
actuated the Italians. But the German nation displayed its best
characteristic,--a serious, honest, industrious disposition, loving
truth and goodness, and glad to pursue whatever path seemed to lead to
them. A proof of this character was given in an institution of
considerable influence both upon learning and religion, the college, or
brotherhood, of Deventer, planned by Gerard Groot, but not built and
inhabited till 1400, fifteen years after his death. The associates of
this, called by different names, but more usually Brethren of the Life
in Common (Gemeineslebens), or Good Brethren and Sisters, were dispersed
in different parts of Germany and the Low Countries, but with their head
college at Deventer. They bore an evident resemblance to the modern
Moravians, by their strict lives, their community, at least a partial
one, of goods, their industry in manual labour, their fervent devotion,
their tendency to mysticism. But they were as strikingly distinguished
from them by the cultivation of knowledge, which was encouraged in
brethren of sufficient capacity, and promoted by schools both for
primary and for enlarged education. “These schools were,” says Eichhorn,
“the first genuine nurseries of literature in Germany, so far as it
depended on the knowledge of languages; and in them was first taught the
Latin, and in the process of time the Greek and eastern tongues.”[258]
It will be readily understood, that Latin only could be taught in
the period with which we are now concerned; and, according to Lambinet,
the brethren did not begin to open public schools till near the middle
of the century.[259] These schools continued to flourish till the civil
wars of the Low Countries and the progress of the Reformation broke them
up. Groningen had also a school, St. Edward’s, of considerable
reputation. Thomas à Kempis, according to Meiners, whom Eichhorn and
Heeren have followed, presided over a school at Zwoll, wherein Agricola,
Hegius, Langius, and Dringeberg, the restorers of learning in Germany,
were educated. But it seems difficult to reconcile this with known
dates, or with other accounts of that celebrated person’s history.[260]
The brethren Gemeineslebens had forty-five houses in 1430, and in 1460
more than thrice the number. They are said by some to have taken regular
vows, though I find a difference in my authorities as to this, and to
have professed celibacy. They were bound to live by the labour of their
hands, observing the ascetic discipline of monasteries, and not to beg;
which made the mendicant orders their enemies. They were protected,
however, against these malignant calumniators by the favour of the pope.
The passages quoted by Revius, the historian of Deventer, do not quite
bear out the reputation for love of literature which Eichhorn has given
them; but they were much occupied in copying and binding books.[261]
Their house at Bruxelles began to print books instead of copying them,
in 1474.[262]
[258] Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, ii. 311-324.
Lambinet, Origines de l’Imprimerie, ii. 170. Eichhorn, Geschichte
der Litteratur, ii. 134, iii. 882. Revius, Daventria Illustrata.
Mosheim, cent. xv. c. 2, § 22. Biog. Univ., Gerard, Kempis.
[259] Origines de l’Imprimerie, p. 180.
[260] Meiners, p. 323. Eichhorn, p. 137. Heeren, p. 145. Biog. Univ.,
Kempis. Revius, Davent. Illust.
[261] Daventria Illustrata, p. 35.
[262] Lambinet.
|Physical sciences in middle ages.|
|Arabian numerals and method.|
29. We have in the last chapter made no mention of the physical
sciences, because little was to be said, and it seemed expedient to
avoid breaking the subject into unnecessary divisions. It is well known
that Europe had more obligations to the Saracens in this, than in any
other province of research. They indeed had borrowed much from Greece,
and much from India; but it was through their language that it came into
use among the nations of the west. Gerbert, near the end of the tenth
century, was the first who, by travelling into Spain, learned something
of Arabian science. A common literary tradition ascribes to him the
introduction of their numerals, and of the arithmetic founded on them,
into Europe. This has been disputed, and again re-asserted, in modern
times.[263] It is sufficient to say here, that only a very unreasonable
scepticism has questioned the use of Arabic numerals in calculation
during the thirteenth century; the positive evidence on this side
cannot be affected by the notorious fact, that they were not employed in
legal instruments, or in ordinary accounts; such an argument, indeed,
would be equally good in comparatively modern times. These numerals are
found, according to Andrès, in Spanish manuscripts of the twelfth
century; and, according both to him and Cossali, who speak from actual
inspection, in the treatise of arithmetic and algebra by Leonard
Fibonacci Pisa, written in 1202.[264] This has never been printed. It is
by far our earliest testimony to the knowledge of algebra in Europe; but
Leonard owns that he learned it among the Saracens. “This author
appears,” says Hutton, or rather Cossali, from whom he borrows, “to be
well skilled in the various ways of reducing equations to their final
simple state by all the usual methods.” His algebra includes the
solution of quadratics.
[263] See Andrès, the Archæologia, vol. viii., and the Encyclopædias,
Britannic and Metropolitan, on one side, against Gerbert; Montucla,
i. 502, and Kästner, Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 35, and ii. 695,
in his favour. The latter relies on a well-known passage in William
of Malmsbury concerning Gerbert: Abacum certe primus a Saracenis
rapiens, regulas dedit, quæ a sudantibus abacistis vix
intelliguntur; upon several expressions in his writings, and upon a
manuscript of his geometry, seen and mentioned by Pez, who refers
it to the twelfth century, in which Arabic numerals are introduced.
It is answered, that the language of Malmsbury is indefinite, that
Gerbert’s own expressions are equally so, and that the copyist of
the manuscript may have inserted the cyphers.
It is evident that the use of the numeral signs does not of itself
imply an acquaintance with the Arabic calculation, though it was a
necessary step to it. Signs bearing some resemblance to these (too
great for accident) are found in MSS. of Boethius, and are
published by Montucla, (vol. i. planch. ii.) In one MS. they appear
with names written over each of them, not Greek, or Latin, or
Arabic, or in any known language. These singular names, and nearly
the same forms, are found also in a manuscript well deserving of
notice,--No. 343 of the Arundel MSS., in the British Museum, and
which is said to have belonged to a convent at Mentz. This has been
referred by some competent judges to the twelfth, and by others to
the very beginning of the thirteenth century. It purports to be an
introduction to the art of multiplying and dividing numbers;
quicquid ab abacistis excerpere potui, compendiose collegi. The
author uses nine digits, but none for ten, or zero, as is also the
case in the MS. of Boethius. Sunt vero integri novem sufficientes
ad infinitam multiplicationem, quorum nomina singulis sunt
superjecta. A gentleman of the British Museum, who had the
kindness, at my request, to give his attention to this hitherto
unknown evidence in the controversy, is of opinion that the
rudiments, at the very least, of our numeration are indicated in
it, and that the author comes within one step of our present
system, which is no other than supplying an additional character
for zero. His ignorance of this character renders his process
circuitous, as it does not contain the principle of juxtaposition
for the purpose of summing; but it does contain the still more
essential principle, a decuple increase of value for the same sign,
in a progressive series of location from right to left. I shall be
gratified if this slight notice should cause the treatise, which is
very short, to be published, or more fully explained.
[264] Montucla, whom several other writers have followed, erroneously
places this work in the beginning of the fifteenth century.
|Proofs of them in thirteenth century.|
30. In the thirteenth century, we find Arabian numerals employed in the
tables of Alfonso X., king of Castile, published about 1252. They are
said to appear also in the Treatise of the Sphere, by John de Sacro
Bosco, probably about twenty years earlier; and there is an unpublished
treatise, De Algorismo, ascribed to him, which treats expressly of this
subject.[265] Algorismus was the proper name for the Arabic notation and
method of reckoning. Matthew Paris, after informing us that John Basing
first made Greek numeral figures known in England, observes, that in
these any number may be represented by a single figure, which is not the
case “in Latin nor in Algorism.”[266] It is obvious that in some few
numbers only this is true of the Greek; but the passage certainly
implies an acquaintance with that notation, which had obtained the name
of Algorism. It cannot, therefore, be questioned that Roger Bacon knew
these figures; yet he has, I apprehend, never mentioned them in his
writings: for a calendar, bearing the date 1292, which has been
blunderingly ascribed to him, is expressly declared to have been framed
at Toledo. In the year 1282, we find a single Arabic figure 3 inserted
in a public record; not only the first indisputable instance of their
employment in England, but the only one of their appearance in so solemn
an instrument.[267] But I have been informed that they have been found
in some private documents before the end of the century. In the
following age, though they were still by no means in common use among
accountants, nor did they begin to be so till much later, there can be
no doubt that mathematicians were thoroughly conversant with them, and
instances of their employment in other writings may be adduced.[268]
[265] Several copies of this treatise are in the British Museum.
Montucla has erroneously said that this arithmetic of Sacro Bosco
is written in verse. Wallis, his authority, informs us only that
some verses, two of which he quotes, are subjoined to the treatise.
This is not the case in the manuscripts I have seen. I should add,
that only one of them bears the name of Sacro Bosco, and that in a
later handwriting.
[266] Hic insuper magister Joannes figuras Græcorum numerales, et
earum notitiam et significationes in Angliam portavit, et
familiaribus suia declaravit. Per quas figuras etiam literæ
repræsentantur. De quibus figuris hoc maxime admirandum, quod unica
figura quilibet numerus representatur; quod non est in Latino, vel
in Algorismo. Matt. Paris, A.D. 1252, p. 721.
[267] Parliamentary Writs, i. 232, edited under the Record Commission
by Sir Francis Palgrave. It was probably inserted for want of room,
not enough having been left for the word IIIum. It will not be
detected with ease, even by the help of this reference.
[268] Andrès, ii. 92, gives on the whole the best account of the
progress of numerals. The article by Leslie in the Encyclopædia
Britannica is too dogmatical in denying their antiquity. That in
the Encyclopædia Metropolitana, by Mr. Peacock, is more learned.
Montucla is as superficial as usual; and Kästner has confined
himself to the claims of Gerbert, admitting which, he is too
indifferent about subsequent evidence.
|Mathematical treatises.|
31. Adelard of Bath, in the twelfth century, translated the elements of
Euclid from the Arabic, and another version was made by Campanus in the
next age. The first printed editions are of the latter. The writings of
Ptolemy became known through the same channel; and the once celebrated
treatise on the Sphere by John de Sacro Bosco (Holywood, or, according
to Leland, Halifax) about the beginning of the thirteenth century, is
said to be but an abridgment of the Alexandrian geometer.[269] It has
been frequently printed, and was even thought worthy of a commentary by
Clavius. Jordan of Namur (Nemorarius) near the same time, shows a
considerable insight into the properties of numbers.[270] Vitello, a
native of Poland, not long afterwards, first made known the principles
of optics in a treatise in ten books, several times printed in the
sixteenth century, and indicating an extensive acquaintance with
the Greek and Arabian geometers. Montucla has charged Vitello with
having done no more than compress and arrange a work on the same subject
by Alhazen; which Andrès, always partial to the Arabian writers, has not
failed to repeat. But the author of an article on Vitello in the
Biographie Universelle repels this imputation, which could not, he says,
have proceeded from any one who had compared the two writers. A more
definite judgment is pronounced by the laborious German historian of
mathematics, Kästner. “Vitello,” he says, “has with diligence and
judgment collected, as far as lay in his power, what had been previously
known; and, avoiding the tediousness of Arabian verbosity, is far more
readable, perspicuous, and methodical than Alhazen; he has also gone
much farther in the science.”[271]
[269] Montucla, i. 506. Biogr. Univ., Kästner.
[270] Montucla. Kästner.
[271] Gesch. der Mathem. ii. 263. The true name is Vitello, as Playfair
has remarked (Dissertat. in Encycl. Brit.), but Vitello is much
more common. Kästner is correct, always copying the old editions.
|Roger Bacon.|
32. It seems hard to determine whether or not Roger Bacon be entitled to
the honours of a discoverer in science; that he has not described any
instrument analogous to the telescope, is now generally admitted; but he
paid much attention to optics, and has some new and important notions on
that subject. That he was acquainted with the explosive powers of
gunpowder, it seems unreasonable to deny: the mere detonation of nitre
in contact with an inflammable substance, which of course might be
casually observed, is by no means adequate to his expressions in the
well-known passage on that subject.[272] But there is no ground for
doubting that the Saracens were already conversant with gunpowder.
[272] This has been suggested by Professor Leslie, in the article on
arithmetic above quoted; a great chemical authority, but who had
not taken the trouble to look at Bacon, and forgot that he mentions
charcoal and sulphur as well as nitre.
|His resemblance to Lord Bacon.|
33. The mind of Roger Bacon was strangely compounded of almost prophetic
gleams of the future course of science, and the best principles of the
inductive philosophy, with a more than usual credulity in the
superstitions of his own time. Some have deemed him overrated by the
nationality of the English.[273] But if we may have sometimes given him
credit for discoveries to which he has only borne testimony, there can
be no doubt of the originality of his genius. I have in another place
remarked the singular resemblance he bears to Lord Bacon, not only in
the character of his philosophy, but in several coincidences of
expression. This has since been followed up by a later writer,[274]
(with no knowledge, probably, of what I had written, since he does not
allude to it), who plainly charges Lord Bacon with having borrowed much,
and with having concealed his obligations. The Opus Majus of Roger Bacon
was not published till 1733, but the manuscripts were not uncommon, and
Selden had thoughts of printing the work. The quotations from the
Franciscan and the Chancellor, printed in parallel columns by Mr.
Forster, are sometimes very curiously similar; but he presses the
resemblance too far; and certainly the celebrated distinction, in the
Novum Organum, of four classes of _Idola_ which mislead the
judgment, does not correspond in meaning, as he supposes, with the
causes of error assigned by Roger Bacon.
[273] Meiners, of all modern historians of literature, is the least
favourable to Bacon, on account of his superstition and credulity
in the occult sciences. Vergleichung der Sitten, ii. 710, and iii.
232. Heeren, p. 244, speaks more candidly of him. It is impossible,
I think, to deny that credulity is one of the points of resemblance
between him and his namesake.
[274] Hist. of Middle Ages, iii. 539. Forster’s Mahometanism Unveiled,
ii. 312.
|English mathematicians of fourteenth century.|
34. The English nation was not at all deficient in mathematicians during
the fourteenth century; on the contrary, no other in Europe produced
nearly so many. But their works have rarely been published. The great
progress of physical science, since the invention of printing, has
rendered these imperfect treatises interesting only to the curiosity of
a very limited class of readers. Thus Richard Suisset, or Swineshead,
author of a book entitled the Calculator, of whom Cardan speaks in such
language as might be applied to himself, is scarcely known, except by
name, to literary historians; and though it has once been printed, the
book is of the extremest rarity.[275] But the most conspicuous of
our English geometers was Thomas Bradwardin, archbishop of Canterbury;
yet more for his rank, and for his theological writings, than for the
arithmetical and geometrical speculations which give him a place in
science. Montucla, with a carelessness of which there are too many
instances in his valuable work, has placed Bradwardin, who died in 1348,
at the beginning of the sixteenth century, though his work was printed
in 1495.[276]
[275] The character of Suisset’s book given by Brucker, iii. 852, who
had seen it, does not seem to justify the wish of Leibnitz that it
should be republished. It is a strange medley of arithmetical and
geometrical reasoning with the scholastic philosophy. Kästner
(Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 50) seems not to have looked at
Brucker, and, like Montucla, has a very slight notion of the nature
of Suisset’s book. His suspicion that Cardan had never seen the
book he so much extols, because he calls the author the Calculator,
which is the title of the work itself, seems unwarrantable. Suisset
probably had obtained the name from his book, which is not
uncommon; and Cardan was not a man to praise what he had never read.
[276] It may be considered a proof of the attention paid to geometry in
England, that two books of Euclid were read at Oxford about the
middle of the fifteenth century. Churton’s Life of Smyth, p. 151,
from the University Register. We should not have expected to find
this.
|Astronomy.|
|Alchemy.|
35. It is certain that the phenomena of physical astronomy were never
neglected; the calendar was known to be erroneous, and Roger Bacon has
even been supposed by some to have divined the method of its
restoration, which has long after been adopted. The Arabians understood
astronomy well, and their science was transfused more or less into
Europe. Nor was astrology the favourite superstition of both the eastern
and western world, without its beneficial effect upon the observation
and registering of the planetary motions. Thus too, alchemy, which,
though the word properly means but chemistry, was generally confined to
the mystery all sought to penetrate, the transmutation of metals into
gold, led more or less to the processes by which a real knowledge of the
component parts of substances has been attained.[277]
[277] I refer to Dr. Thomson’s History of Chemistry for much curious
learning on the alchemy of the Middle Ages. In a work like the
present, it is impossible to follow up every subject; and I think
that a general reference to a book of reputation and easy
accessibility, is better than an attempt to abridge it.
|Medicine.|
36. The art of medicine was cultivated with great diligence by the
Saracens both of the east and of Spain, but with little of the
philosophical science that had immortalised the Greek school. The
writings, however, of these masters were translated into Arabic; whether
correctly or not, has been disputed among oriental scholars; and Europe
derived her acquaintance with the physic of the mind and body, with
Hippocrates as well as Aristotle, through the same channel. But the
Arabians had eminent medical authorities of their own; Rhases, Avicenna,
Albucazi who possessed greater influence. In modern times, that is,
since the revival of Greek science, the Arabian theories have been in
general treated with much scorn. It is admitted, however, that pharmacy
owes a long list of its remedies to their experience, and to their
intimacy with the products of the east. The school of Salerno,
established as early as the eleventh century,[278] for the study of
medicine, from whence the most considerable writers of the next ages
issued, followed the Arabians in their medical theory. But these are
deemed rude, and of little utility at present.
[278] Meiners refers it to the tenth, ii. 413; and Tiraboschi thinks
it may be as ancient, iii. 347.
|Anatomy.|
37. In the science of anatomy an epoch was made by the treatise of
Mundinus, a professor at Bologna, who died in 1326. It is entitled
Anatome omnium humani corporis interiorum membrorum. This book had one
great advantage over those of Galen, that it was founded on the actual
anatomy of the human body. For Galen is supposed to have only dissected
apes, and judged of mankind by analogy; and though there may be reason
to doubt whether this were altogether the case, it is certain that he
had very little practice in human dissection. Mundinus seems to have
been more fortunate in his opportunities of this kind than later
anatomists, during the prevalence of a superstitious prejudice, have
found themselves. His treatise was long the text-book of the Italian
universities, till, about the middle of the sixteenth century, Mundinus
was superseded by greater anatomists. The statutes of the university of
Padua prescribed, that anatomical lecturers should adhere to the literal
text of Mundinus. Though some have treated this writer as a mere copier
of Galen, he has much, according to Portal, of his own. There were also
some good anatomical writers in France during the fourteenth
century.[279]
[279] Tiraboschi, v. 209-244, who is very copious for a non-medical
writer. Portal, Hist, de l’Anatomie. Biogr. Univ., Mondino,
Chauliac. Eichhorn, Gesch. der Litt. ii. 416-447.
|Encyclopædic works of middle ages.|
|Vincent of Beauvais.|
38. Several books of the later middle ages, sometimes of great size,
served as collections of natural history, and, in fact, as encyclopædias
of general knowledge. The writings of Albertus Magnus belong, in
part, to this class. They have been collected, in twenty-one volumes
folio, by the Dominican Peter Jammi, and published at Lyons in 1651.
After setting aside much that is spurious, Albert may pass for the most
fertile writer in the world. He is reckoned by some the founder of the
schoolmen; but we mention him here as a compiler, from all accessible
sources, of what physical knowledge had been accumulated in his time. A
still more comprehensive contemporary writer of this class was Vincent
de Beauvais, in the Speculum naturale, morale, doctrinale et historiale,
written before the middle of the thirteenth century. The second part of
this vast treatise in ten volumes folio, usually bound in four, Speculum
morale, seems not to be written by Vincent de Beauvais, and is chiefly a
compilation from Thomas Aquinas, and other theologians of the same age.
The first, or Speculum naturale, follows the order of creation as an
arrangement; and after pouring out all the author could collect on the
heavens and earth, proceeds to the natural kingdoms; and, finally, to
the corporeal and mental structure of man. In the third part of this
encyclopædia, under the title Speculum doctrinale, all arts and sciences
are explained; and the fourth contains an universal history.[280] The
sources of this magazine of knowledge are of course very multifarious.
In the Speculum naturale, at which alone I have looked, Aristotle’s
writings, especially the history of animals, those of other ancient
authors, of the Arabian physicians, and of all who had treated the same
subjects in the middle ages, are brought together in a comprehensive,
encyclopædic manner, and with vast industry, but with almost a studious
desire, as we might now fancy, to accumulate absurd falsehoods. Vincent,
like many, it must be owned, in much later times, through his haste to
compile, does not give himself the trouble to understand what he copies.
But, in fact, he relied on others to make extracts for him, especially
from the writings of Aristotle, permitting himself or them, as he tells
us, to change the order, condense the meaning, and explain the
difficulties.[281] It may be easily believed that neither Vincent of
Beauvais, nor his amanuenses, were equal to this work of abridging and
transposing their authors. Andrès, accordingly, has quoted a passage
from the Speculum naturale, and another to the same effect from Albertus
Magnus, relating, no doubt, in the Arabian writer from whom they
borrowed, to the polarity of the magnet, but so strangely turned into
nonsense, that it is evident they could not have understood in the least
what they wrote. Probably, as their language is nearly the same, they
copied a bad translation.[282]
[280] Biogr. Univ., Vincentius Bellovacensis.
[281] A quibusdam fratribus excerpta susceperam; non eodem penitus
verborum schemate, quo in originalibus suis jacent, sed ordine
plerumque transposito, non nunquam etiam mutata perpaululum ipsorum
verborum forma, manente tamen auctoris sententia; prout ipsa vel
prolixitatis abbreviandæ vel multitudinis in unam colligendæ, vel
etiam obscuritatis explanandæ necessitas exigebat.
[282] Andrès, ii. 112. See also xiii. 141.
|Berchorius.|
39. In the same class of compilation with the Speculum of Vincent of
Beauvais, we may place some later works, the Trésor of Brunetto Latini,
written in French about 1280, the Reductorium, Repertorium, et
Dictionarium morale of Berchorius, or Berchœur, a monk, who died at
Paris in 1362,[283] and a treatise by Bartholomew Glanvil, De
Proprietatibus Rerum, soon after that time. Reading all they could find,
extracting from all they read, digesting their extracts under some
natural, or, at worst, alphabetical classification, these laborious men
gave back their studies to the world with no great improvement of the
materials, but sometimes with much convenience in their disposition.
This, however, depended chiefly on their ability as well as diligence;
and in the mediæval period, the want of capacity to discern probable
truth was a very great drawback from the utility of their compilations.
[283] This book, according to De Sade, Vie de Pétrarque, iii. 550,
contains a few good things among many follies. I have never seen it.
|Spanish ballads.|
40. It seems to be the better opinion, that very few only of the Spanish
romances or ballads founded on history or legend, so many of which
remain, belong to a period anterior to the fifteenth century. One may be
excepted, which bears the name of Don Juan Manuel, who died in
1364.[284] Most of them should be placed still lower. Sanchez has
included none in his collection of Spanish poetry, limited by its title
to that period; though he quotes one or two fragments which he would
refer to the fourteenth century.[285] Some, however, have conceived,
perhaps with little foundation, that several, in the general collections
of romances, have been modernised in language from more ancient lays.
They have all a highly chivalrous character; every sentiment congenial
to that institution, heroic courage, unsullied honour, generous pride,
faithful love, devoted loyalty, were displayed in Castilian verse, not
only in their real energy, but sometimes with an hyperbolical
extravagance to which the public taste accommodated itself, and which
long continued to deform the national literature. The ballad of the
Conde de Alarcos, which may be found in Bouterwek, or in Sismondi, and
seems to be one of the most ancient, will serve as a sufficient
specimen.[286]
[284] Don Juan Manuel, a prince descended from Ferdinand III., was the
most accomplished man whom Spain produced in his age. One of the
earliest specimens of Castilian prose, El Conde Lucanor, places him
high in the literature of his country. It is a moral fiction, in
which, according to the custom of novelists, many other tales are
interwoven. “In every passage of the book,” says Bouterwek, “the
author shows himself a man of the world and an observer of human
nature.”
[285] The Marquis of Santillana, early in the fifteenth century, wrote
a short letter on the state of poetry in Spain to his own time.
Sanchez has published this with long and valuable notes.
[286] Bouterwek’s History of Spanish and Portuguese Poetry, i. 55.
See also Sismondi, Littérature du Midi, iii. 228, for the romance
of the Conde de Alarcos.
Sismondi refers it to the fourteenth century; but perhaps no strong
reason for this could be given. I find, however, in the Cancionero
General, a “romance viejo,” containing the first two lines of the
Conde de Alarcos, continued on another subject. It was not uncommon
to build romances on the stocks of old ones, taking only the first
lines; several other instances occur among those in the Cancionero,
which are not numerous.
|Metres of Spanish poetry.|
41. The very early poetry of Spain (that published by Sanchez) is marked
by a rude simplicity, a rhythmical, and not very harmonious
versification, and, especially in the ancient poem of the Cid, written,
probably, before the middle of the twelfth century, by occasional vigour
and spirit. This poetry is in that irregular Alexandrine measure, which,
as has been observed, arose out of the Latin pentameter. It gave place
in the fifteenth century to a dactylic measure, called _versos de arte
mayor_, generally of eleven syllables, the first, fourth, seventh,
and tenth being accented, but subject to frequent licences, especially
that of an additional short syllable at the beginning of the line. But
the favourite metre in lyric songs and romances was the redondilla, the
type of which was a line of four trochees, requiring, however,
alternately, or at the end of a certain number, one deficient in the
last syllable, and consequently throwing an emphasis on the close. By
this a poem was sometimes divided into short stanzas, the termination of
which could not be mistaken by the ear. It is no more, where the lines
of eight and seven syllables alternate, than that English metre with
which we are too familiar to need an illustration. Bouterwek has
supposed that this alternation, which is nothing else than the trochaic
verse of Greek and Latin poetry, was preserved traditionally in Spain
from the songs of the Roman soldiers. But it seems by some Arabic lines
which he quotes, in common characters, that the Saracens had the line of
four trochees, which, in all languages where syllables are strongly
distinguished in time and emphasis, has been grateful to the ear. No one
can fail to perceive the sprightliness and grace of this measure, when
accompanied by simple melody. The lighter poetry of the southern nations
is always to be judged with some regard to its dependence upon a sister
art. It was not written to be read, but to be heard; and to be heard in
the tones of song, and with the notes of the lyre or the guitar. Music
is not at all incapable of alliance with reasoning or descriptive
poetry; but it excludes many forms which either might assume, and
requires a rapidity as well as intenseness of perception, which language
cannot always convey. Hence the poetry designed for musical
accompaniment is sometimes unfairly derided by critics, who demand what
it cannot pretend to give; but it is still true, that, as it cannot give
all which metrical language is able to afford, it is not poetry of the
very highest class.
|Consonant and assonant rhymes.|
42. The Castilian language is rich in perfect rhymes. But in their
lighter poetry the Spaniards frequently contented themselves with
_assonances_, that is, with the correspondence of final syllables,
wherein the vowel alone was the same, though with different consonants,
as _duro_ and _humo_, _boca_ and _cosa_. These were often intermingled
with perfect or consonant rhymes. In themselves, unsatisfactory as they
may seem at first sight to our prejudices, there can be no doubt but
that the assonances contained a musical principle, and would soon give
pleasure to and be required by the ear. They may be compared to the
alliteration so common in the northern poetry, and which constitutes
almost the whole regularity of some of our oldest poems. But though
assonances may seem to us an indication of a rude stage of poetry, it is
remarkable that they belong chiefly to the later period of Castilian
lyric poetry, and that consonant rhymes, frequently with the recurrence
of the same syllable, are reckoned, if I mistake not, a presumption of
the antiquity of a romance.[287]
[287] Bouterwek’s Introduction. Velasquez, in Dieze’s German
translation, p. 288. The assonance is peculiar to the Spaniards.
|Nature of the gloss.|
43. An analogy between poetry and music, extending beyond the mere laws
of sound, has been ingeniously remarked by Bouterwek in a very favourite
species of Spanish composition, the _glosa_. In this a few lines,
commonly well known and simple, were glosed, or paraphrased, with as
much variety and originality as the poet’s ingenuity could give, in a
succession of stanzas, so that the leading sentiment should be preserved
in each, as the subject of an air runs through its variations. It was
often contrived that the chief words of the glosed lines should recur
separately in the course of each stanza. The two arts being incapable of
a perfect analogy, this must be taken as a general one; for it was
necessary that each stanza should be conducted so as to terminate in the
lines, or a portion of them, which form the subject of the gloss.[288]
Of these artificial, though doubtless, at the time, very pleasing
compositions, there is nothing, as far as I know, to be found beyond the
Peninsula;[289] though, in a general sense, it may be said, that all
lyric poetry, wherein a burthen or repetition of leading verses recurs,
must originally be founded on the same principle, less artfully and
musically developed. The burthen of a song can only be an impertinence,
if its sentiment does not pervade the whole.
[288] Bouterwek, p. 118.
[289] They appear with the name Grosas in the Cancionero General of
Resende; and there seems, as I have observed already, to be
something much of the same kind in the older Portuguese collection
of the thirteenth century.
|The Cancionero General.|
44. The Cancionero General, a collection of Spanish poetry written
between the age of Juan de la Mena, near the beginning of the fifteenth
century, and its publication by Castillo in 1517, contains the
productions of one hundred and thirty-six poets, as Bouterwek says; and
in the edition of 1520 I have counted one hundred and thirty-nine. There
is also much anonymous. The volume is in two hundred and three folios,
and includes compositions by Villena, Santillana, and the other poets of
the age of John II., besides those of later date. But I find also the
name of Don Juan Manuel, which, if it means the celebrated author of the
Conde Lucanor, must belong to the fourteenth century, though the preface
of Castello seems to confine his collection to the age of Mena. A small
part only are strictly love songs (canciones); but the predominant
sentiment of the larger portion is amatory. Several romances occur in
this collection; one of them is Moorish, and, perhaps, older than the
capture of Granada; but it was long afterwards that the Spanish
romancers habitually embellished their fictions with Moorish manners.
These romances, as in the above instance, were sometimes glosed, the
simplicity of the ancient style readily lending itself to an expansion
of the sentiment. Some that are called romances contain no story; as the
Rosa Fresca and the Fonte Frida, both of which will be found in
Bouterwek and Sismondi.
|Bouterwek’s character of Spanish songs.|
45. “Love songs,” says Bouterwek, “form by far the principal part of the
old Spanish cancioneros. To read them regularly through would require a
strong passion for compositions of this class, for the monotony of the
authors is interminable. To extend and spin out a theme as long as
possible, though only to seize a new modification of the old ideas and
phrases, was, in their opinion, essential to the truth and sincerity of
their poetic effusions of the heart. That loquacity which is an
hereditary fault of the Italian canzone, must also be endured in
perusing the amatory flights of the Spanish redondillas, while in them
the Italian correctness of expression would be looked for in vain. From
the desire, perhaps, of relieving their monotony by some sort of
variety, the authors have indulged in even more witticisms and plays of
words than the Italians, but they also sought to infuse a more emphatic
spirit into their compositions than the latter. The Spanish poems of
this class exhibit, in general, all the poverty of the compositions of
the troubadours, but blend with the simplicity of these bards the pomp
of the Spanish national style in its utmost vigour. This resemblance to
the troubadour songs was not, however, produced by imitation; it arose
out of the spirit of romantic love, which at that period, and for
several preceding centuries, gave to the south of Europe the same
feeling and taste. Since the age of Petrarch, this spirit had
appeared in classical perfection in Italy. But the Spanish amatory poets
of the fifteenth century had not reached an equal degree of cultivation;
and the whole turn of their ideas required rather a passionate than a
tender expression. The sighs of the languishing Italians became cries in
Spain. Glowing passion, despair, and violent ecstacy were the soul of
the Spanish love songs. The continually recurring picture of the contest
between reason and passion is a peculiar characteristic of these songs.
The Italian poets did not attach so much importance to the triumph of
reason. The rigidly moral Spaniard was, however, anxious to be wise even
in the midst of his folly. But this obtrusion of wisdom in an improper
place frequently gives an unpoetical harshness to the lyric poetry of
Spain, in spite of all the softness of its melody.”[290]
[290] Vol. i. p. 109.
|John II.|
|Poets of his court.|
46. It was in the reign of John II., king of Castile from 1407 to 1454,
that this golden age of lyric poetry commenced.[291] A season of peace
and regularity, a monarchy well limited, but no longer the sport of
domineering families, a virtuous king, a ministry too haughty and
ambitious, but able and resolute, were encouragements to that light
strain of amorous poetry which a state of ease alone can suffer mankind
to enjoy. And Portugal, for the whole of this century, was in as
flourishing a condition as Castile during this single reign. But we
shall defer the mention of her lyric poetry, as it seems chiefly to be
of a later date. In the court of John II. were found three men, whose
names stand high in the early annals of Spanish poetry,--the marquises
of Villena and Santillana, and Juan de Mena. But, except for their zeal
in the cause of letters, amidst the dissipations of a court, they have
no pretensions to compete with some of the obscure poets to whom we owe
the romances of chivalry. A desire, on the contrary, to show needless
learning, and to astonish the vulgar by an appearance of profundity, so
often the bane of poetry, led them into prosaic and tedious details, and
into affected refinements.[292]
[291] Velasquez, pp. 165, 442. (in Dieze), mentions, what has escaped
Bouterwek, a more ancient Cancionero than that of Castillo,
compiled in the reign of John II., by Juan Alfonso de Baena, and
hitherto, or at least in his time, unpublished. As it is entitled
Cancionero di Poetas Antiguos, it may be supposed to contain some
earlier than the year 1400. I am inclined to think, however, that
few would be found to ascend much higher. I do not find the name of
Don Juan Manuel, which occurs in the Cancionero of Castillo. A copy
of this manuscript Cancionero of Baena, was lately sold (1836),
among the MSS. of Mr. Heber, and purchased for 120l., by the king
of France.
[292] Bouterwek, p. 78.
|Charles, duke of Orleans.|
47. Charles, duke of Orleans, long prisoner in England after the battle
of Agincourt, was the first who gave polish and elegance to French
poetry. In a more enlightened age, according to Goujet’s opinion, he
would have been among their greatest poets.[293] Except a little
allegory in the taste of his times, he confined himself to the kind of
verse called rondeaux, and to slight amatory poems, which, if they aim
at little, still deserve the praise of reaching what they aim at. The
easy turns of thought, and graceful simplicity of style, which these
compositions require, came spontaneously to the Duke of Orleans. Without
as much humour as Clément Marot long afterwards displayed, he is much
more of a gentleman, and would have been in any times, if not quite what
Goujet supposes, a great poet, yet the pride and ornament of the
court.[294]
[293] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, ix. 233.
[294] The following very slight vaudeville will show the easy style of
the Duke of Orleans. It is curious to observe how little the manner
of French poetry, in such productions, has been changed since the
fifteenth century.
Petit mercier, petit panier:
Pourtant si je n’ai marchandize
Qui soit du tout à votre quise
Ne blamez pour ce mon mestier;
Je gagne denier à denier;
C’est loin du trésor de Vénise.
Petit mercier, petit panier,
Et tandis qu’il est jour, ouvrier,
Le temps perds, quand a vous devise,
Je vais parfaire mon emprise,
Et parmi les rues crier:
Petit mercier, petit panier.
(Recueil des anciens poètes Français, ii. 196.)
|English poetry.|
|Lydgate.|
|James I. of Scotland.|
48. The English language was slowly refining itself, and growing into
general use. That which we sometimes call pedantry and innovation, the
forced introduction of French words by Chaucer, though hardly more by
him than by all his predecessors who translated our neighbours’ poetry,
and the harsh latinisms that began to appear soon afterwards, has given
English a copiousness and variety which perhaps no other language
possesses. But as yet there was neither thought nor knowledge sufficient
to bring out its capacities. After the death of Chaucer, in 1400,
a dreary blank of long duration occurs in our annals. The poetry of
Hoccleve is wretchedly bad, abounding with pedantry, and destitute of
all grace or spirit.[295] Lydgate, the monk of Bury, nearly of the same
age, prefers doubtless a higher claim to respect. An easy versifier, he
served to make poetry familiar to the many, and may sometimes please the
few. Gray, no light authority, speaks more favourably of Lydgate than
either Warton or Ellis, or than the general complexion of his poetry
would induce most readers to do.[296] But great poets have often the
taste to discern, and the candour to acknowledge, those beauties which
are latent amidst the tedious dulness of their humbler brethren.
Lydgate, though probably a man of inferior powers of mind to Gower, has
more of the minor qualities of a poet; his lines have sometimes more
spirit, more humour, and he describes with more graphic minuteness. But
his diffuseness becomes generally feeble and tedious; the attention
fails in the schoolboy stories of Thebes and Troy; and he had not the
judgment to select and compress the prose narratives from which he
commonly derived his subject. It seems highly probable, that Lydgate
would have been a better poet in satire upon his own times, or
delineation of their manners; themes which would have gratified us much
more than the fate of princes. The King’s Quair, by James I. of
Scotland, is a long allegory, polished and imaginative, but with some of
the tediousness usual in such productions. It is uncertain whether he or
a later sovereign, James V., were the author of a lively comic poem,
Christ’s Kirk o’ the Green; the style is so provincial, that no
Englishman can draw any inference as to its antiquity. It is much more
removed from our language than the King’s Quair. Whatever else could be
mentioned as deserving of praise is anonymous and of uncertain date. It
seems to have been early in the fifteenth century that the ballad of the
northern minstrels arose. But none of these that are extant could be
placed with much likelihood so early as 1440.[297]
[295] Warton, ii. 348.
[296] Warton, ii. 361-407. Gray’s works, by Mathias, ii. 55-73. These
remarks on Lydgate show what the history of English poetry would
have been in the hands of Gray, as to sound and fair criticism.
[297] Chevy Chace seems to be the most ancient of those ballads that
has been preserved. It may possibly have been written while Henry
VI. was on the throne, though a late critic would bring it down to
the reign of Henry VIII. Brydges’ Brit. Bibliography, iv. 97. The
style is often fiery, like the old war songs, and much above the
feeble, though natural and touching manner of the later ballads.
One of the most remarkable circumstances about this celebrated lay
is, that it relates a totally fictitious event with all historical
particularity, and with real names. Hence it was probably not
composed while many remembered the days of Henry IV., when the
story is supposed to have occurred.
|Restoration of classical learning due to Italy.|
49. We have thus traced in outline the form of European literature, as
it existed in the middle ages and in the first forty years of the
fifteenth century. The result must be to convince us of our great
obligations to Italy for her renewal of classical learning. What might
have been the intellectual progress of Europe if she had never gone back
to the fountains of Greek and Roman genius, it is impossible to
determine; certainly, nothing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
give prospect of a very abundant harvest. It would be difficult to find
any man of high reputation in modern times, who has not reaped benefit,
directly or through others, from the revival of ancient learning. We
have the greatest reason to doubt whether, without the Italians of these
ages, it would ever have occurred. The trite metaphors of light and
darkness, of dawn and twilight, are used carelessly by those who touch
on the literature of the middle ages, and suggest by analogy an
uninterrupted progression, in which learning, like the sun, has
dissipated the shadows of barbarism. But with closer attention, it is
easily seen that this is not a correct representation; that, taking
Europe generally, far from being in a more advanced stage of learning at
the beginning of the fifteenth century than two hundred years before,
she had, in many respects, gone backwards, and gave little sign of any
tendency to recover her ground. There is, in fact, no security, as far
as the past history of mankind assures us, that any nation will be
uniformly progressive in science, arts, and letters; nor do I perceive,
whatever may be the current language, that we can expect this with much
greater confidence of the whole civilised world.
50. Before we proceed to a more minute and chronological history, let us
consider for a short time some of the prevailing trains of sentiment and
opinion which shaped the public mind at the close of the mediæval
period.
|Character of classical poetry lost.|
51. In the early European poetry, the art sedulously cultivated by so
many nations, we are struck by characteristics that distinguish
it from the remains of antiquity, and belong to social changes which we
should be careful to apprehend. The principles of discernment as to
works of imagination and sentiment, wrought up in Greece and Rome by a
fastidious and elaborate criticism, were of course effaced in the total
oblivion of that literature to which they had been applied. The Latin
language, no longer intelligible except to a limited class, lost that
adaptation to popular sentiment, which its immature progeny had not yet
attained. Hence, perhaps, or from some other cause, there ensued, as has
been shown in the last chapter, a kind of palsy of the inventive
faculties, so that we cannot discern for several centuries any traces of
their vigorous exercise.
|New schools of criticism of modern languages.|
52. Five or six new languages, however, besides the ancient German,
became gradually flexible and copious enough to express thought and
emotion with more precision and energy; metre and rhyme gave poetry its
form; a new European literature was springing up, fresh and lively, in
gay raiment, by the side of that decrepid latinity, which, rather
ostentatiously, wore its threadbare robes of more solemn dignity than
becoming grace. But in the beginning of the fifteenth century, the
revival of ancient literature among the Italians seemed likely to change
again the scene, and threatened to restore a standard of critical
excellence by which the new Europe would be disadvantageously tried. It
was soon felt, if not recognised in words, that what had delighted
Europe for some preceding centuries depended upon sentiments fondly
cherished, and opinions firmly held, but foreign, at least in the forms
they presented, to the genuine spirit of antiquity. From this time we
may consider as beginning to stand opposed to each other two schools of
criticism, latterly called the classical and romantic; names which
should not be understood as absolutely exact, but, perhaps, rather more
apposite in the period to which these pages relate than in the
nineteenth century.
|Effect of chivalry on poetry.|
53. War is a very common subject of fiction; and the warrior’s character
is that which poets have ever delighted to pourtray. But the spirit of
chivalry, nourished by the laws of feudal tenure and limited monarchy,
by the rules of honour, courtesy, and gallantry, by ceremonial
institutions and public shows, had rather artificially modified the
generous daring which always forms the basis of that character. It must
be owned that the heroic ages of Greece furnished a source of fiction
not unlike those of romance; that Perseus, Theseus, or Hercules answer
pretty well to knights errant, and that many stories of the poets are in
the very style of Amadis or Ariosto. But these form no great part of
what we call classical poetry; though they show that the word, in its
opposition to the latter style, must not be understood to comprise
everything that has descended from antiquity. Nothing could less
resemble the peculiar tone of chivalry, than Greece in the republican
times, or Rome in any times.
|Effect of gallantry towards women.|
54. The popular taste had been also essentially affected by changes in
social intercourse, rendering it more studiously and punctiliously
courteous, and especially by the homage due to women under the modern
laws of gallantry. Love, with the ancient poets, is often tender,
sometimes virtuous, but never accompanied by a sense of deference or
inferiority. This elevation of the female sex through the voluntary
submission of the stronger, though a remarkable fact in the
philosophical history of Europe, has not, perhaps, been adequately
developed. It did not originate, or at least very partially, in the
Teutonic manners, from which it has sometimes been derived. The love
songs again, and romances of Arabia, where others have sought its
birthplace, display, no doubt, a good deal of that rapturous adoration
which distinguishes the language of later poetry, and have, perhaps, in
some measure, been the models of the Provençal troubadours; yet this
seems rather consonant to the hyperbolical character of oriental works
of imagination, than to a state of manners where the usual lot of women
is seclusion, if not slavery. The late editor of Warton has thought it
sufficient to call “that reverence and adoration of the female sex which
has descended to our own times, the offspring of the Christian
dispensation.”[298] But until it can be shown that Christianity
establishes any such principle, we must look a little farther down for
its origin.
[298] Preface, p. 123.
|Its probable origin.|
55. Without rejecting, by any means, the influence of these collateral
and preparatory circumstances, we might ascribe more direct efficacy to
the favour shown towards women in succession to lands through
inheritance or dower, by the later Roman law, and by the customs of the
northern nations; to the respect which the clergy paid them (a subject
which might bear to be more fully expanded); but, above all, to
the gay idleness of the nobility, consuming the intervals of peace in
festive enjoyments. In whatever country the charms of high-born beauty
were first admitted to grace the banquet or give brilliancy to the
tournament,--in whatever country the austere restraints of jealousy were
most completely laid aside,--in whatever country the coarser, though
often more virtuous, simplicity of unpolished ages was exchanged for
winning and delicate artifices,--in whatever country, through the
influence of climate or polish, less boisterousness and intemperance
prevailed,--it is there that we must expect to find the commencement of
so great a revolution in society.
|It is not shown in old Teutonicpoetry; but appears in the stories of
Arthur.|
56. Gallantry, in this sense of a general homage to the fair, a
respectful deference to woman independent of personal attachment, seems
to have first become a perceptible element of European manners in the
south of France, and, probably, not later than the end of the tenth
century,[299] it was not at all in unison with the rough habits of the
Carlovingian Franks, or of the Anglo-Saxons. There is little, or, as far
as I know, nothing of it in the poem of Beowulf, or in the oldest
Teutonic fragments, or in the Nibelungen Lied;[300] love may appear as a
natural passion, but not as a conventional idolatry. It appears, on the
other hand, fully developed in the sentiments as well as the usages of
northern France, when we look at the tales of the court of Arthur, which
Geoffrey of Monmouth gave to the world about 1128. Whatever may be
thought of the foundation of this famous romance,--whatever of legendary
tradition he may have borrowed from Wales or Britany, the position that
he was merely a faithful translator appears utterly incredible.[301]
Besides the numerous allusions to Henry I. of England, and to the
history of his times, which Mr. Turner and others have indicated, the
chivalrous gallantry, with which alone we are now concerned, is not
characteristic of so rude a people as the Welsh or Armoricans. Geoffrey
is almost our earliest testimony to these manners; and this gives the
chief value to his fables. The crusades were probably the great means of
inspiring an uniformity of conventional courtesy into the European
aristocracy, which still constitutes the common character of gentlemen;
but it may have been gradually wearing away their national peculiarities
for some time before.
[299] It would be absurd to assign an exact date for that which in its
nature must be gradual. I have a suspicion, that sexual respect,
though not with all the refinements of chivalry, might be traced
earlier in the south of Europe than the tenth century; but it would
require a long investigation to prove this.
A passage, often quoted, of Radulphus Glaber, on the affected and
effeminate manners, as he thought them, of the southern nobility
who came in the train of Constance, daughter of the Count of
Toulouse, on her marriage with Robert, king of France, in 999,
indicates that the roughness of the Teutonic character, as well
perhaps as some of its virtues, had yielded to the arts and
amusements of peace. It became a sort of proverb; Franci ad bella,
Provinciales ad victualia. Eichhorn, Allg. Gesch. i. Append. 73.
The social history of the tenth and eleventh centuries is not
easily recovered. We must judge from probabilities founded on
single passages, and on the general tone of civil history. The
kingdom of Arles was more tranquil than the rest of France.
[300] Von eigentlicher galanterie ist in dem nibelungen Lied wenig zu
finden, von Christlichen mysticismus fast gar nichts. Bouterwek,
ix. 147. I may observe that the positions in the text, as to the
absence of gallantry in the old Teutonic poetry, are borne out by
every other authority; by Weber, Price, Turner, and Eichhorn. The
last writer draws rather an amusing inference as to the want of
politeness towards the fair sex from the frequency of abductions in
Teutonic and Scandinavian story, which he enumerates. Allg. Gesch.
i. 37. Append. p. 37.
[301] See, in Mr. Turner’s Hist. of England, iv. 256-269, two
dissertations on the romantic histories of Turpin and of Geoffrey,
wherein the relation between the two, and the motives with which
each was written, seem irrefragably demonstrated.
|Romances of chivalry, of two kinds.|
57. The condition and the opinions of a people stamp a character on its
literature; while that literature powerfully reacts upon and moulds
afresh the national temper from which it has taken its distinctive type.
This is remarkably applicable to the romances of chivalry. Some have
even believed, that chivalry itself, in the fulness of proportion
ascribed to it by these works, had never existence beyond their pages;
others, with more probability, that it was heightened and preserved by
their influence upon a state of society which had given them birth. A
considerable difference is perceived between the metrical romances,
contemporaneous with or shortly subsequent to the crusades, and those in
prose after the middle of the fourteenth century. The former are more
fierce, more warlike, more full of abhorrence of infidels; they display
less of punctilious courtesy, less of submissive deference to woman,
less of absorbing and passionate love, less of voluptuousness and
luxury; their superstition has more of interior belief, and less
of ornamental machinery, than those to which Amadis de Gaul and other
heroes of the later cycles of romance furnished a model. The one
reflect, in a tolerably faithful mirror, the rough customs of the feudal
aristocracy in their original freedom, but partially modified by the
gallant and courteous bearing of France; the others represent to us,
with more of licensed deviation from reality, the softened features of
society, in the decline of the feudal system through the cessation of
intestine war, the increase of wealth and luxury, and the silent growth
of female ascendency. This last again was, no doubt, promoted by the
tone given to manners through romance; the language of respect became
that of gallantry; the sympathy of mankind was directed towards the
success of love; and, perhaps, it was thought, that the sacrifices which
this laxity of moral opinion cost the less prudent of the fair, were but
the price of the homage that the whole sex obtained.
|Effect of difference of religion upon poetry.|
58. Nothing, however, more showed a contrast between the old and the new
trains of sentiment in points of taste than the difference of religion.
It would be untrue to say, that ancient poetry is entirely wanting in
exalted notions of the Deity; but they are rare in comparison with those
which the Christian religion has inspired into very inferior minds, and
which, with more or less purity, pervaded the vernacular poetry of
Europe. They were obscured in both by an enormous superstructure of
mythological machinery; but so different in names and associations,
though not always in spirit, or even in circumstances, that those who
delighted in the fables of Ovid usually scorned the Golden Legend of
James de Voragine, whose pages were turned over with equal pleasure by a
credulous multitude, little able to understand why any one should relish
heathen stories which he did not believe. The modern mythology, if we
may include in it the saints and devils, as well as the fairy and goblin
armies, which had been retained in service since the days of paganism,
is so much more copious, and so much more easily adapted to our ordinary
associations than the ancient, that this has given an advantage to the
romantic school in their contention, which they have well known how to
employ and to abuse.
|General tone of romance.|
59. Upon these three columns,--chivalry, gallantry, and religion,--repose
the fictions of the middle ages, especially those usually designated as
romances. These, such as we now know them, and such as display the
characteristics above mentioned, were originally metrical, and chiefly
written by natives of the north of France. The English and Germans
translated or imitated them. A new æra of romance began with the Amadis
de Gaul, derived, as some have thought, but upon insufficient evidence,
from a French metrical original, but certainly written in Portugal,
though in the Castilian language, by Vasco de Lobeyra, whose death is
generally fixed in 1325.[302] This romance is in prose; and though a
long interval seems to have elapsed before those founded on the story of
Amadis began to multiply, many were written in French during the latter
part of the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries, derived from other
legends of chivalry, which became the popular reading, and superseded
the old metrical romances, already somewhat obsolete in their forms of
language.[303]
[302] Bouterwek, Hist. of Spanish Literature, p. 48.
[303] The oldest prose romance, which also is partly metrical, appears
to be Tristan of Leonois, one of the cycle of the round table,
written or translated by Lucas de Gast, about 1170. Roquefort, Etat
de la Poésie Française, p. 147.
|Popular moral fictions.|
60. As the taste of a chivalrous aristocracy was naturally delighted
with romances, that not only led the imagination through a series of
adventures, but presented a mirror of sentiments to which they
themselves pretended, so that of mankind in general found its
gratification, sometimes in tales of home growth, or transplanted from
the east, whether serious or amusing, such as the Gesta Romanorum, the
Dolopathos, the Decameron (certainly the most celebrated and best
written of these inventions), the Pecorone; sometimes in historical
ballads, or in moral fables, a favourite style of composition,
especially with the Teutonic nations; sometimes, again, in legends of
saints, and the popular demonology of the age. The experience and
sagacity, the moral sentiments, the invention and fancy of many obscure
centuries may be discerned more fully and favourably in these various
fictions than in their elaborate treatises. No one of the European
nations stands so high in this respect as the German; their ancient
tales have a raciness and truth which has been only imitated by others.
Among the most renowned of these we must place the story of Reynard the
Fox; the origin of which, long sought by literary critics, recedes, as
they prolong the inquiry, into greater depths of antiquity. It
was supposed to be written, or at least first published, in German
rhyme, by Henry of Alkmaar, in 1498; but earlier editions, in the
Flemish language, have since been discovered. It has been found written
in French verse by Jaquemars Gielée, of Lille, near the end, and in
French prose by Peter of St. Cloud, near the beginning, of the
thirteenth century. Finally, the principal characters are mentioned in a
Provençal song by Richard Cœur de Lion.[304] But though we thus bring
the story to France, where it became so popular as to change the very
name of the principal animal, which was always called goupil (vulpes)
till the fourteenth century, when it assumed, from the hero of the tale,
the name of Renard,[305] there seems every reason to believe that it is
of German origin; and, according to probable conjecture, a certain
Reinard of Lorraine, famous for his vulpine qualities in the ninth
century, suggested the name to some unknown fabulist of the empire.
[304] Recueil des anciens poètes, i. 21. M. Raynouard observes that
the Troubadours, and, first of all, Richard Cœur de Lion, have
quoted the story of Renard, sometimes with allusions not referrible
to the present romance. Journal des Sav. 1826, p. 340. A great deal
has been written about this story; but I shall only quote
Bouterwek, ix. 347; Heinsius, iv. 104, and the Biographie
Universelle; arts. Gielée. Alkmaar.
[305] Something like this nearly happened in England: bears have had
a narrow escape of being called only bruins, from their
representative in the fable.
|Exclusion of politics from literature.|
61. These moral fictions, as well as more serious productions, in what
may be called the ethical literature of the middle ages, towards which
Germany contributed a large share, speak freely of the vices of the
great. But they deal with them as men responsible to God, and subject to
natural law, rather than as members of a community. Of political
opinions, properly so called, which have in later times so powerfully
swayed the conduct of mankind, we find very little to say in the
fifteenth century. In so far as they were not merely founded on
temporary circumstances, or at most on the prejudices connected with
positive institutions in each country, the predominant associations that
influenced the judgment were derived from respect for birth, of which
opulence was as yet rather the sign than the substitute. This had long
been, and long continued to be, the characteristic prejudice of European
society. It was hardly ever higher than in the fifteenth century; when
heraldry, the language that speaks to the eye of pride, and the science
of those who despise every other, was cultivated with all its ingenious
pedantry; and every improvement in useful art, every creation in
inventive architecture, was made subservient to the grandeur of an
elevated class in society. The burghers, in those parts of Europe which
had become rich by commerce, emulated in their public distinctions, as
they did ultimately in their private families, the ensigns of patrician
nobility. This prevailing spirit of aristocracy was still but partially
modified by the spirit of popular freedom on one hand, or of respectful
loyalty on the other.
|Religious opinions.|
|Attacks on the church.|
62. It is far more important to observe the disposition of the public
mind in respect of religion, which not only claims to itself one great
branch of literature, but exerts a powerful influence over almost every
other. The greater part of literature in the middle ages, at least from
the twelfth century, may be considered as artillery levelled against the
clergy: I do not say against the church, which might imply a doctrinal
opposition by no means universal. But if there is one theme upon which
the most serious as well as the lightest, the most orthodox as the most
heretical writers are united, it is ecclesiastical corruption. Divided
among themselves, the secular clergy detested the regular; the regular
monks satirised the mendicant friars; who, in their turn, after exposing
both to the ill-will of the people, incurred a double portion of it
themselves. In this most important respect, therefore, the influence of
mediæval literature was powerful towards change. But it rather loosened
the associations of ancient prejudice, and prepared mankind for
revolutions of speculative opinion, than brought them forward.
|Three lines of religious opinion in fifteenth century.|
|Treatise de Imitatione Christi.|
63. It may be said in general, that three distinct currents of religious
opinion are discernible, on this side of the Alps, in the first part of
the fifteenth century. 1. The high pretensions of the Church of Rome to
a sort of moral, as well as theological, infallibility, and to a
paramount authority even in temporal affairs, when she should think fit
to interfere with them, were maintained by a great body in the monastic
and mendicant orders, and had still, probably, a considerable influence
over the people in most parts of Europe. 2. The councils of Constance
and Basle, and the contentions of the Gallican and German Churches
against the encroachments of the holy see, had raised up a strong
adverse party, supported occasionally by the government, and more
uniformly by the temporal lawyers and other educated laymen. It derived,
however, its greatest force from a number of sincere and earnest
persons, who set themselves against the gross vices of the time, and the
abuses grown up in the church through self-interest or connivance. They
were disgusted, also, at the scholastic systems, which had turned
religion into a matter of subtle dispute, while they laboured to found
it on devotional feeling and contemplative love. The mystical theology,
which, from seeking the illuminating influence and piercing love of the
Deity, often proceeded onward to visions of complete absorption in his
essence, till that itself was lost, as in the east, from which this
system sprung, in an annihilating pantheism, had never wanted, and can
never want, its disciples. Some, of whom Bonaventura is the most
conspicuous, opposed its enthusiastic emotions to the icy subtleties of
the schoolmen. Some appealed to the hearts of the people in their own
language. Such was Tauler, whose sermons were long popular and have
often been printed; and another was the unknown author of The German
Theology, a favourite work with Luther, and known by the Latin version
of Sebastian Castalio. Such, too, were Gerson and Clemangis, and such
were the numerous brethren who issued from the college of Deventer.[306]
One, doubtless of this class, whenever he may have lived, was author of
the celebrated treatise De Imitatione Christi (a title which has been
transferred from the first chapter to the entire work), commonly
ascribed to Thomas von Kempen or à Kempis, one of the Deventer society,
but the origin of which has been, and will continue to be, the subject
of strenuous controversy. Besides Thomas à Kempis, two candidates have
been supported by their respective partisans; John Gerson, the famous
chancellor of the university of Paris, and John Gersen, whose name
appears in one manuscript, and whom some contend to have been abbot of a
monastery at Vercelli in the thirteenth century, while others hold him
an imaginary being, except as a misnomer of Gerson. Several French
writers plead for their illustrious countrymen, and especially M. Gence,
one of the last who has revived the controversy; while the German and
Flemish writers, to whom the Sorbonne acceded, have always contended for
Thomas à Kempis, and Gersen has had the respectable support of
Bellarmin, Mabillon, and most of the Benedictine order.[307] The book
itself is said to have gone through 1800 editions, and has probably been
more read than any one work after the Scriptures. 3. A third religious
party consisted of the avowed or concealed heretics, some disciples of
the older sectaries, some of Wicliffe or Huss, resembling the school of
Gerson and Gerard Groot in their earnest piety, but drawing a more
decided line of separation between themselves and the ruling power, and
ripe for a more complete reformation than the others were inclined to
desire. It is not possible, however, for us to pronounce on all the
shades of opinion that might be secretly cherished in the fifteenth
century.
[306] Eichhorn, vi. 1-136, has amply and well treated the theological
literature of the fifteenth century. Mosheim is less satisfactory,
and Milner wants extent of learning; yet both will be useful to the
English reader. Eichhorn seems well acquainted with the mystical
divines, in p. 97, et post.
[307] I am not prepared to state the external evidence upon this keenly
debated question with sufficient precision. In a few words, it may,
I believe, be said, that in favour of Thomas à Kempis has been
alleged the testimony of many early editions bearing his name,
including one about 1471, which appears to be the first, as well as
a general tradition from his own time, extending over most of
Europe, which has led a great majority, including the Sorbonne
itself, to determine the cause in his favour. It is also said that
a manuscript of the treatise De Imitatione bears these words at the
conclusion: Finitus et completus per manum Thomæ de Kempis, 1441;
and that in this manuscript are so many erasures and alterations,
as give it the appearance of his original autograph. Against Thomas
à Kempis it is urged, that he was a professed caligrapher or
copyist for the college of Deventer; that the chronicle of St.
Agnes, a contemporary work, says of him: Scripsit Bibliam nostram
totaliter, et multos alios libros pro domo et pro pretio; that the
entry above mentioned is more like that of a transcriber than of an
author; that the same chronicle makes no mention of his having
written the treatise De Imitatione, nor does it appear in an early
list of works ascribed to him. For Gerson are brought forward a
great number of early editions in France, and still more in Italy,
among which is the first that bears a date (Venice, 1483), both in
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; and some other probabilities
are alleged. But this treatise is not mentioned in a list of his
writings given by himself. As to Gersen, his claim seems to rest on
a manuscript of great antiquity, which ascribes it to him, and
indirectly on all those manuscripts which are asserted to be older
than the time of Gerson and Thomas à Kempis. But, as I have before
observed, I do not profess to give a full view of the external
evidence, of which I possess but a superficial knowledge.
From the book itself, two remarks, which I do not pretend to be
novel, have suggested themselves. 1. The Gallicisms or Italicisms
are very numerous, and strike the reader at once; such as, Scientia
sine timore Dei quid importat?--Resiste in principio inclinationi
tuæ--Vigilia serotina--Homo passionatus--Vivere cum nobis
contrariantibus--Timoratior in cunctis actibus--Sufferentia crusis.
It seems strange that these barbarous adaptations of French or
Italian should have occurred to any one, whose native language was
Dutch; unless it can be shown, that through St. Bernard, or any
other ascetic writer, they had become naturalised in religious
style. 2. But, on the other hand, it seems impossible to resist the
conviction, that the author was an inhabitant of a monastery, which
was not the case with Gerson, originally a secular priest at Paris,
and employed for many years in active life, as chancellor of the
university, and one of the leaders of the Gallican church. The
whole spirit breathed by the treatise De Imitatione Christi is that
of a solitary ascetic:--Vellem me pluries tacuisse et inter homines
non fuisse--Sed quare tam libenter loquimur, et invicem fabulamur,
cum raro sine læsione conscientiæ ad silentium redimus.--Cella
continuata dulcescit, et male custodita tædium generat. Si in
principio conversionis tuæ bene eam incolueris et custodieris, erit
tibi posthac dilecta, amica, et gratissimum solatium.
As the former consideration seems to exclude Thomas à Kempis, so
the latter is unfavourable to the claims of Gerson. It has been
observed, however, that in one passage, l. i. c. 24, there is an
apparent allusion to Dante; which, if intended, must put an end to
Gersen, abbot of Vercelli, whom his supporters place in the first
part of the thirteenth century. But the allusion is not
indisputable. Various articles in the Biographie Universelle, from
the pen of M. Gence, maintain his favourite hypothesis; and M.
Daunou, in the Journal des Savans for 1826, and again in the volume
for 1827, seems to incline the same way. This is in the review of a
defence of the pretensions of Gersen, by M. Gregory, who adduces
some strong reasons to prove that the work is older than the
fourteenth century.
The book contains great beauty and heart-piercing truth in many of
its detached sentences, but places its rule of life in absolute
seclusion from the world, and seldom refers to the exercise of any
social, or even domestic duty. It has naturally been less a
favourite in Protestant countries, both from its monastic
character, and because those who incline towards Calvinism do not
find in it the phraseology to which they are accustomed. The
translations are very numerous, but there seems to be an inimitable
expression in its concise and energetic, though barbarous Latin.
|Scepticism. Defences of Christianity.|
64. Those of the second class were, perhaps, comparatively rare at this
time in Italy, and those of the third much more so. But the extreme
superstition of the popular creed, the conversation of Jews and
Mahometans, the unbounded admiration of pagan genius and virtue, the
natural tendency of many minds to doubt and to perceive difficulties,
which the schoolmen were apt to find everywhere, and nowhere to solve,
joined to the irreligious spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy,
especially as modified by Averroes, could not but engender a secret
tendency towards infidelity, the course of which may be traced with ease
in the writings of those ages. Thus the tale of the three rings in
Bocacce, whether original or not, may be reckoned among the sports of a
sceptical philosophy. But a proof, not less decisive, that the blind
faith we ascribe to the middle ages was by no means universal, results
from the numerous vindications of Christianity written in the fifteenth
century. Eichhorn, after referring to several passages in the works of
Petrarch, mentions defences of religion by Marcilius Ficinus, Alfonso de
Spina, a converted Jew, Savanarola, Æneas Sylvius, Picus of Mirandola.
He gives an analysis of the first, which, in its course of argument,
differs little from modern apologies of the same class.[308]
[308] Vol. vi. p. 24.
|Raimond de Sebonde.|
65. These writings, though by men so considerable as most of those he
has named, are very obscure at present; but the treatise of Raimond de
Sebonde is somewhat better known, in consequence of the chapter in
Montaigne entitled an apology for him. Montaigne had previously
translated into French the Theologia Naturalis of this Sebonde,
professor of medicine at Barcelona in the early part of the fifteenth
century. This has been called by some the first regular system of
natural theology; but, even if nothing of that kind could be found in
the writings of the schoolmen, which is certainly not the case, such an
appellation, notwithstanding the title, seems hardly due to Sebonde’s
book, which is intended, not so much to erect a fabric of religion
independent of revelation, as to demonstrate the latter by proofs
derived from the order of nature.
|His views misunderstood.|
66. Dugald Stewart, in his first dissertation prefixed to the
Encyclopædia Britannica, observes, that “the principal aim of Sebonde’s
book, according to Montaigne, is to show that Christians are in the
wrong to make human reasoning the basis of their belief, since the
object of it is only conceived by faith, and by a special inspiration of
the divine grace.” I have been able to ascertain that the excellent
author was not misled in this passage by any carelessness of his own,
but by confiding in Cotton’s translation of Montaigne, which absolutely
perverts the sense. Far from such being the aim of Sebonde, his book is
wholly devoted to the rational proofs of religion: and what Stewart, on
Cotton’s authority, has taken for a proposition of Sebonde himself, is
merely an objection which, according to Montaigne, some were apt to make
against his mode of reasoning. The passage is so very clear, that every
one who looks at Montaigne (l. ii. c. 12) must instantaneously perceive
the oversight which the translator has made; or he may satisfy himself
by the article on Sebonde in Bayle.
|His real object.|
67. The object of Sebonde’s book, according to himself, is to develop
those truths as to God and man, which are latent in nature, and through
which the latter may learn everything necessary; and especially may
understand Scripture, and have an infallible certainty of its truth.
This science is incorporate in all the books of the doctors of the
church, as the alphabet is in their words. It is the first science, the
basis of all others, and requiring no other to be previously known. The
scarcity of the book will justify an extract; which, though in very
uncouth Latin, will serve to give a notion of what Sebonde really aimed
at; but he labours with a confused expression, arising, partly, from the
vastness of his subject.[309]
[309] Duo sunt libri nobis dati a Deo: scilicet liber universitatis
creaturarum, sive liber naturæ, et alius est liber sacræ scripturæ.
Primus liber fuit datus homini a principio, dum universitas rerum
fuit condita, quoniam quælibet creatura non est nisi quædam litera
digito Dei scripta, et ex pluribus creaturis sicut ex pluribus
literis componitur liber. Ita componitur liber creaturarum, in quo
libro etiam continetur homo; et est principalior litera ipsius
libri. Et sicut literæ et dictiones factæ ex literis important et
includunt scientiam et diversas significationes et mirabiles
sententias: ita conformiter ipsæ creaturæ simul conjunctæ et ad
invicem comparatæ important et significant diversas significationes
et sententias, et continent scientiam homini necessariam. Secundus
autem liber scripturæ datus est homini secundo, et hoc in defectu
primi libri; eo quia homo nesciebat in primo legere, quia erat
cœcus; sed tamen primus liber creaturarum est omnibus communis,
quia solum clerici legere sciunt in eo [_i.e._ secundo].
Item primus liber, scilicet naturæ, non potest falsificari, nec
deleri, neque false interpretari; ideo hæretici non possunt eum
false intelligere, nec aliquis potest in eo fieri hæreticus. Sed
secundus potest falsificari et false interpretari et male
intelligi. Attamen uterque liber est ab eodem, quia idem Dominus et
creaturas condidit, et sacram Scripturam revelavit. Et ideo
conveniunt ad invicem, et non contradicit unus alteri, sed tamen
primus est nobis connaturalis, secundus supernaturalis. Præterea
cum homo sit naturaliter rationalis, et susceptibilis disciplinæ et
doctrinæ; et cum naturaliter a sua creatione nullam habeat actu
doctrinam neque scientiam, sit tamen aptus ad suscipiendum eam; et
cum doctrina et scientia sine libro, in quo scripta sit, non possit
haberi, convenientissimum fuit, ne frustra homo esset capax
doctrinæ et scientiæ, quod divina scientia homini librum creaverit,
in quo per se et sine magistro possit studere doctrinam
necessariam; propterea hoc totum istum mundum visibilem sibi
creavit, et dedit tanquam librum proprium et naturalem et
infallibilem, Dei digito scriptum, ubi singulæ creaturæ quasi
literæ sunt, non humano arbitrio sed divino juvante judicio ad
demonstrandum homini sapientiam et doctrinam sibi necessariam ad
salutem. Quam quidem sapientiam nullus potest videre, neque legere
per se in dicto libro semper aperto, nisi fuerit a Deo illuminatus
et a peccato originali mundatus. Et ideo nullus antiquorum
philosophorum paganorum potest legere hanc scientiam, quia erant
excæcati quantum ad propriam salutem, quamvis in dicto libro
legerunt aliquam scientiam, et omnem quam habuerunt ab eodem
contraxerunt; sed veram sapientiam quæ ducit ad vitam æternam,
quamvis fuerat in eo scripta, legere non potuerunt.
Ista autem scientia non est aliud nisi cogitare et videre
sapientiam scriptam in creaturis, et extrahere ipsam ab illis, et
ponere in animâ, et videre significationem creaturarum. Et sic
comparando ad aliam et conjungere sicut dictionem dictioni, et ex
tali conjunctione resultat sententia et significatio vera, dum
tamen scia homo intelligere et cognoscere.
|Nature of his arguments.|
68. Sebonde seems to have had floating in his mind, as this extract will
suggest, some of those theories as to the correspondence of the moral
and material world, which were afterwards propounded, in their cloudy
magnificence, by the Theosophists of the next two centuries. He
afterwards undertakes to prove the Trinity from the analogy of nature.
His argument is ingenious enough, if not quite of orthodox tendency,
being drawn from the scale of existence, which must lead us to a being
immediately derived from the First Cause. He proceeds to derive other
doctrines of Christianity from principles of natural reason; and after
this, which occupies about half a volume of 779 closely printed pages,
he comes to direct proofs of revelation: first, because God, who does
all for his own honour, would not suffer an impostor to persuade the
world that he was equal to God, which Mahomet never pretended;
and afterwards by other arguments more or less valid or ingenious.
69. We shall now adopt a closer and more chronological arrangement than
before, ranging under each decennial period the circumstances of most
importance in the general history of literature, as well as the
principal books published within it. This course we shall pursue till
the channels of learning become so various, and so extensively diffused
through several kingdoms, that it will be found convenient to deviate in
some measure from so strictly chronological a form, in order to
consolidate better the history of different sciences, and diminish, in
some measure, what can never wholly be removed from a work of this
nature--the confusion of perpetual change of subject.
CHAPTER III.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1440 TO THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH
CENTURY.
SECT. I. 1440-1450.
_Classical Literature in Italy--Nicolas V.--Laurentius Valla._
|The year 1440 not chosen as an epoch.|
1. The reader is not to consider the year 1440 as a marked epoch in the
annals of literature. It has sometimes been treated as such, by those
who have referred the invention of printing to this particular epoch.
But it is here chosen as an arbitrary line, nearly coincident with the
complete development of an ardent thirst for classical, and especially
Grecian, literature in Italy, as the year 1400 was with its first
manifestation.
|Continual progress of learning.|
|Nicolas V.|
2. No very conspicuous events belong to this decennial period. The
spirit of improvement, already so powerfully excited in Italy, continued
to produce the same effects in rescuing ancient manuscripts from the
chances of destruction, accumulating them in libraries, making
translations from the Greek, and by intense labour in the perusal of the
best authors, rendering both their substance and their language familiar
to the Italian scholar. The patronage of Cosmo de’ Medici, Alfonso king
of Naples, and Nicolas of Este, has already been mentioned. Lionel,
successor of the last prince, was by no means inferior to him in love of
letters. But they had no patron so important as Nicolas V. (Thomas of
Sarzana), who became Pope in 1447; nor has any later occupant of that
chair, without excepting Leo X., deserved equal praise as an encourager
of learning. Nicolas founded the Vatican library, and left it, at his
death in 1455, enriched with 5000 volumes; a treasure far exceeding that
of any other collection in Europe. Every scholar who needed maintenance,
which was of course the common case, found it at the court of Rome;
innumerable benefices, all over Christendom, which had fallen into the
grasp of the holy see, and frequently required of their incumbents, as
is well known, neither residence, nor even the priestly character,
affording the means of generosity, which have seldom been so laudably
applied. Several Greek authors were translated into Latin by direction
of Nicolas V., among which are the history of Diodorus Siculus, and
Xenophon’s Cyropædia, by Poggio,[310] who still enjoyed the office of
apostolical secretary, as he had under Eugenius IV., and with still more
abundant munificence on the part of the pope; Herodotus and Thucydides
by Valla, Polybius by Peroti, Appian by Decembrio, Strabo by Gregory of
Tiferno and Guarino of Verona, Theophrastus by Gaza, Plato de Legibus,
Ptolemy’s Almagest, and the Præparatio Evangelica of Eusebius, by George
of Trebizond.[311] These translations, it has been already
observed, will not bear a very severe criticism, but certainly there was
an extraordinary cluster of learning round the chair of this excellent
pope.
[310] This translation of Diodorus has been ascribed by some of our
writers, even since the error has been pointed out, to John Free,
an Englishman, who had heard the lectures of the younger Guarini in
Italy. Quod opus, Leland observes, Itali Poggio vanissime
attribuunt Florentino. De Scriptor. Britann. p. 462. But it bears
the name of Poggio in the two editions printed in 1472 and 1493;
and Leland seems to have been deceived by some one who had put
Free’s name on a manuscript of the translation. Poggio, indeed, in
his preface, declares that he undertook it by command of Nicolas V.
See Niceron, ix. 158; Zeno, Dissertazioni Vossiane, i. 41;
Ginguéné, iii. 245. Pits follows Leland in ascribing a translation
of Diodorus to Free, and quotes the first words: thus, if it still
should be suggested that this may be a different work, there are
the means of proving it.
[311] Heeren, p. 72.
|Justice due to his character.|
3. Corniani remarks, that if Nicolas V., like some popes, had raised a
distinguished family, many pens would have been employed to immortalise
him; but not having surrounded himself with relations, his fame has been
much below his merits. Gibbon, one of the first to do full justice to
Nicolas, has made a similar observation. How striking the contrast
between this pope and his famous predecessor Gregory I., who, if he did
not burn and destroy heathen authors, was at least anxious to discourage
the reading of them! These eminent men, like Michael Angelo’s figures of
Night and Morning, seem to stand at the two gates of the middle ages,
emblems and heralds of the mind’s long sleep, and of its awakening.
|Poggio on the ruins of Rome.|
4. Several little treatises by Poggio, rather in a moral than political
strain, display an observing and intelligent mind. Such are those on
nobility, and on the unhappiness of princes. For these, which were
written before 1440, the reader may have recourse to Shepherd, Corniani,
or Ginguéné. A later essay, if we may so call it, on the vicissitudes of
fortune, begins with rather an interesting description of the ruins of
Rome. It is an enumeration of the more conspicuous remains of the
ancient city; and we may infer from it that no great devastation or
injury has taken place since the fifteenth century. Gibbon has given an
account of this little tract, which is not, as he shows, the earliest
description of the ruins of Rome. Poggio, I will add, seems not to have
known some things with which we are familiar; as the Cloaca Maxima, the
fragments of the Servian wall, the Mamertine prison, the temple of
Nerva, the Giano Quadrifonte; and, by some odd misinformation, believes
that the tomb of Cecilia Metella, which he had seen entire, was
afterwards destroyed.[312] This leads to a conjecture that the treatise
was not finished during his residence at Rome, and consequently not
within the present decennium.
[312] Ad calcem postea majore ex parte exterminatum.
|Account of the East, by Conti.|
5. In the fourth book of this treatise, De Varietate Fortunæ, Poggio has
introduced a remarkable narration of travels by a Venetian, Nicolo di
Conti, who, in 1419, had set off from his country, and after passing
many years in Persia and India, returned home in 1444. His account of
those regions, in some respects the earliest on which reliance could be
placed, will be found rendered into Italian from a Portuguese version of
Poggio, in the first volume of Ramusio. That editor seems not to have
known that the original was in print.
|Laurentius Valla.|
6. A far more considerable work by Laurentius Valla, on the graces of
the Latin language, is rightly, I believe, placed within this period;
but it is often difficult to determine the dates of books published
before the invention of printing. Valla, like Poggio, had long earned
the favour of Alfonso, but, unlike him, had forfeited that of the court
of Rome. His character was very irascible and overbearing; a fault too
general with the learned of the fifteenth century; but he may, perhaps,
be placed at the head of the literary republic at this time; for, if
inferior to Poggio, as probably he was, in vivacity and variety of
genius, he was undoubtedly above him in what was then most valued and
most useful, grammatical erudition.
|His attack on the court of Rome.|
7. Valla began with an attack on the court of Rome, in his declamation
against the donation of Constantine. Some have in consequence reckoned
him among the precursors of Protestantism; while others have imputed to
the Roman see, that he was pursued with its hostility for questioning
that pretended title to sovereignty. But neither of these
representations is just. Valla confines himself altogether to the
temporal principality of the pope; but in this his language must be
admitted to have been so abusive as to render the resentment of the
court of Rome not unreasonable.[313]
[313] A few lines will suffice as a specimen. O Romani pontifices,
exemplum facinorum omnium cæteris pontificibus, et improbissimi
scribæ et pharisæi, qui sedetis super cathedram Moysi, et opera
Dathan et Abyron facitis, itane vestimenta apparatûs, pompa
equitatus, omnis denique vita Cæsaris, vicarium Christi decebit?
The whole tone is more like Luther’s violence, than what we should
expect from an Italian of the fifteenth century. But it is with the
ambitious spirit of aggrandisement as temporal princes, that he
reproaches the pontiffs; nor can it be denied, that Martin and
Eugenius had given provocation for his invective. Nec amplius
horrenda vox audiatur, partes contra ecclesiam; ecclesia contra
Perusinos pugnat, contra Bononienses. Non contra Christianos pugnat
ecclesia, sed papa. Of the papal claim to temporal sovereignty by
prescription, Valla writes indignantly. Præscripsit Romana
ecclesia; o imperiti, o divini juris ignari. Nullus quantumvis
annorum numerus verum abolere titulum potest. Præscripsit Romana
ecclesia. Tace, nefaria lingua. Præscriptionem quæ fit de rebus
mutis atque irrationalibus, ad hominem transfers; cujus quo
diuturnior in servitute possessio, eo detestabilior.
|His treatise on the Latin language.|
8. The more famous work of Valla, De Elegantiis Latinæ Linguæ, begins
with too arrogant an assumption. “These books,” he says, “will contain
nothing that has been said by any one else. For many ages past, not only
no man has been able to speak Latin, but none have understood the Latin
they read: the studious of philosophy have had no comprehension of the
philosophers,--the advocates of the orators,--the lawyers of the
jurists,--the general scholar of any writers of antiquity.” Valla,
however, did at least incomparably more than any one who had preceded
him; and it would probably appear, that a great part of the distinctions
in Latin syntax, inflection, and synonymy, which our best grammars
contain, may be traced to his work. It is to be observed, that he made
free use of the ancient grammarians, so that his vaunt of originality
must be referred to later times. Valla is very copious as to synonyms,
on which the delicate, and even necessary understanding of a language
mainly depends. If those have done most for any science who have carried
it furthest from the point whence they set out, philology seems to owe
quite as much to Valla as to any one who has come since. The treatise
was received with enthusiastic admiration, continually reprinted,
honoured with a paraphrase by Erasmus, commented, abridged, extracted,
and even turned into verse.[314]
[314] Corniani, ii. 221. The editions of Valla de Elegantiis, recorded
by Panzer, are twenty-eight in the fifteenth century, beginning in
1471, and thirty-one in the first thirty-six years of the next.
|Its defects.|
9. Valla, however, self-confident and of no good temper, in censuring
the language of others, fell not unfrequently into mistakes of his own.
Vives and Budæus, coming in the next century, and in a riper age of
philology, blame the hypercritical disposition of one who had not the
means of pronouncing negatively on Latin words and phrases, from his
want of sufficient dictionaries: his fastidiousness became what they
call superstition, imposing captious scruples and unnecessary
observances on himself and the world.[315] And of this species of
superstition there has been much since his time in philology.
[315] Vives, De Tradendis Disciplinis, i. 478. Budæus observes: Ego
Laurentium Vallensem, egregii spiritus virum, existimo sæculi sui
imperitia offensum primum Latine loquendi consuetudinem constituere
summa religione institisse; deinde judicii cerimonia singulari, cum
profectus quoque diligentiam æquasset, in eam superstitionem sensim
delapsum esse, ut et sese ipse et alios captiosis observationibus
scribendique legibus obligaret. Commentar. in Ling. Græc. p. 26.
(1529). But sometimes, perhaps, Valla is right, and Budæus wrong in
censuring him; as, where he disputes the former’s rule, that two
epithets, not being placed as predicates, cannot be joined in Latin
prose to a substantive without a copula, on no better grounds than
such an usage of the pronoun suus, or a phrase like privata res
maritima in Cicero, where res maritima is in the nature of a single
word, like res publica. The rule is certainly a good one, even if a
few better exceptions can be found.
|Heeren’s praise of it.|
10. Heeren, one of the few who have, in modern times, spoken of this
work from personal knowledge, and with sufficient learning, gives it a
high character. “Valla was, without doubt, the best acquainted with
Latin of any man in his age; yet, no pedantic Ciceronian, he had studied
in all the classical writers of Rome. His Elegantiæ are a work on
grammar; they contain an explanation of refined turns of expression;
especially where they are peculiar to Latin. They display not only an
exact knowledge of that tongue, but often also a really philosophical
study of language in general. In an age when nothing was so much valued
as a good Latin style, yet when the helps, of which we now possess so
many, were all wanting, such a work must obtain a great success, since
it relieved a necessity which every one felt.”[316]
[316] P. 220.
|Valla’s annotations on the New Testament.|
11. We have to give this conspicuous scholar a place in another line of
criticism, that on the text and interpretation of the New Testament. His
annotations are the earliest specimen of explanations founded on the
original language. In the course of these, he treats the Vulgate with
some severity. But Valla is said to have had but a slight knowledge of
Greek;[317] and it must also be owned, that with all his merit as
a Latin critic, he wrote indifferently, and with less classical spirit
than his adversary Poggio. The invectives of these against each other do
little honour to their memory, and are not worth recording in this
volume, though they could not be omitted in a legitimate history of the
Italian scholars.
[317] Annis abhinc ducentis Herodotum et Thucydidem Latinis literis
exponebat Laurentius Valla, in ea bene et eleganter dicendi copia,
quam totis voluminibus explicavit, inelegans tamen, et pæne
barbarus, Græcis ad hoc literis leviter tinctus, ad auctorum
sententias parum attentus, oscitans sæpe, et alias res agens, fidem
apud eruditos decoxit. Huet de claris interpretibus, apud Blount.
Daunou, however, in the Biographie Universelle, art. Thucydides,
asserts that Valla’s translation of that historian is generally
faithful. This would show no inconsiderable knowledge of Greek for
that age.
SECT. II. 1450-1460.
_Greeks in Italy--Invention of Printing._
|Fresh arrival of Greeks in Italy.|
12. The capture of Constantinople in 1453 drove a few learned Greeks,
who had lingered to the last amidst the crash of their ruined empire, to
the hospitable and admiring Italy. Among these have been reckoned
Argyropulus and Chalcondyles, successively teachers of their own
language, Andronicus Callistus, who is said to have followed the same
profession both there and at Rome, and Constantine Lascaris, of an
imperial family, whose lessons were given for several years at Milan,
and afterwards at Messina. It seems, however, to be proved that
Argyropulus had been already for several years in Italy.[318]
[318] Hody. Tiraboschi. Roscoe.
|Platonists and Aristotelians.|
13. The cultivation of Greek literature gave rise about this time to a
vehement controversy, which had some influence on philosophical opinions
in Italy. Gemistus Pletho, a native of the Morea, and one of those who
attended the council of Florence in 1439, being an enthusiastic votary
of the Platonic theories in metaphysics and natural theology
communicated to Cosmo de’ Medici part of his own zeal; and from that
time the citizen of Florence formed a scheme of establishing an academy
of learned men, to discuss and propagate the Platonic system. This seems
to have been carried into effect early in the present decennial period.
|Their controversy.|
14. Meantime, a treatise by Pletho, wherein he not only extolled the
Platonic philosophy, which he mingled, as was then usual, with that of
the Alexandrian school, and of the spurious writings attributed to
Zoroaster and Hermes, but inveighed without measure against Aristotle
and his disciples, had aroused the Aristotelians of Greece, where, as in
western Europe, their master’s authority had long prevailed. It seems
not improbable that the Platonists were obnoxious to the orthodox party,
for sacrificing their own church to that of Rome; and there is also
strong ground for ascribing a rejection of Christianity to Pletho. The
dispute, at least, began in Greece, where Pletho’s treatise met with an
angry opponent in Gennadius, patriarch of Constantinople.[319] It soon
spread to Italy; Theodore Gaza embracing the cause of Aristotle with
temper and moderation,[320] and George of Trebizond, a far inferior man,
with invectives against the Platonic philosophy and its founder. Others
replied in the same tone; and whether from ignorance or from rudeness,
this controversy appears to have been managed as much with abuse of the
lives and characters of two philosophers, dead nearly two thousand
years, as with any rational discussion of their tenets. Both sides,
however, strove to make out, what in fact was the ultimate object, that
the doctrine they maintained was more consonant to the Christian
religion than that of their adversaries. Cardinal Bessarion, a man of
solid and elegant learning, replied to George of Trebizond in a book
entitled Adversus Calumniatorem Platonis; one of the first books that
appeared from the Roman press, in 1470. This dispute may possibly have
originated, at least in Greece, before 1450; and it was certainly
continued beyond 1460, the writings both of George and Bessarion
appearing to be rather of later date.[321]
[319] Pletho’s death, in an extreme old age, is fixed by Brucker, on
the authority of George of Trebizond, before the capture of
Constantinople. A letter, indeed, of Bessarion, in 1462 (Mém. de
l’Acad. des Inscript. vol. ii.), seems to imply that he was then
living; but this cannot have been the case. Gennadius, his enemy,
abdicated the patriarchate of Constantinople in 1458, having been
raised to it in 1453. The public burning of Pletho’s book was in
the intermediate time; and it is agreed that this was done after
his death.
[320] Hody, p. 79, doubts whether Gaza’s vindication of Aristotle were
not merely verbal, in conversation with Bessarion; which is however
implicitly contradicted by Boivin and Tiraboschi, who assert him to
have written against Pletho. The comparison of Plato and Aristotle
by George of Trebizond was published at Venice in 1523, as Heeren
says, on the authority of Fabricius.
[321] The best account, and that from which later writers have freely
borrowed, of this philosophical controversy, is by Boivin, in the
second volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Inscriptions, p. 15.
Brucker, iv. 40, Buhle, ii. 107, and Tiraboschi, vi. 303, are my
other authorities.
15. Bessarion himself was so far from being as unjust towards Aristotle
as his opponent was towards Plato, that he translated his
metaphysics. That philosopher, though almost the idol of the schoolmen,
lay still in some measure under the ban of the church, which had very
gradually removed the prohibition she laid on his writings in the
beginning of the thirteenth century. Nicholas V. first permitted them to
be read without restriction in the universities.[322]
[322] Launoy, De Varia Aristotelis Fortuna in Academia Parisiensi,
p. 44.
|Marsilius Ficinus.|
16. Cosmo de’ Medici selected Marsilius Ficinus, as a youth of great
promise, to be educated in the mysteries of Platonism, that he might
become the chief and preceptor of the new academy; nor did the devotion
of the young philosopher fall short of the patron’s hope. Ficinus
declares himself to have profited as much by the conversation of Cosmo
as by the writings of Plato; but this is said in a dedication to
Lorenzo, and the author has not, on other occasions, escaped the
reproach of flattery. He began as early as 1456, at the age of
twenty-three, to write on the Platonic philosophy; but being as yet
ignorant of Greek, prudently gave way to the advice of Cosmo and
Landino, that he should acquire more knowledge before he imparted it to
the world.[323]
[323] Brucker, iv. 50. Roscoe.
|Invention of printing.|
17. The great glory of this decennial period is the invention of
printing, or at least, as all must allow, its application to the
purposes of useful learning. The reader will not expect a minute
discussion of so long and unsettled a controversy as that which the
origin of this art has furnished. For those who are little conversant
with the subject, a very few particulars may be thought necessary.
|Block-books.|
18. About the end of the fourteenth century we find a practice of taking
impressions from engraved blocks of wood, sometimes for playing cards,
which came into use not long before that time; sometimes for rude cuts
of saints.[324] The latter were frequently accompanied by a few lines of
letters cut in the block. Gradually entire pages were impressed in this
manner; and thus began what are called block books, printed in fixed
characters, but never exceeding a very few leaves. Of these there exist
nine or ten, often reprinted, as it is generally thought, between 1400
and 1440.[325] In using the word printed, it is of course not intended
to prejudice the question as to the real art of printing. These block
books seem to have been all executed in the Low Countries. They are said
to have been followed by several editions of the short grammar of
Donatus in wooden stereotype.[326] These also were printed in Holland.
This mode of printing from blocks of wood has been practised in China
from time immemorial.
[324] Heinekke and others have proved that playing cards were known in
Germany as early as 1299; but these were probably painted.
Lambinet, Origines de l’Imprimerie. Singer’s History of Playing
Cards. The earliest cards were on parchment.
[325] Lambinet, Singer, Ottley, Dibdin, &c.
[326] Lambinet.
|Gutenberg and Costar’s claims.|
19. The invention of printing, in the modern sense, from moveable
letters, has been referred by most to Gutenberg, a native of Mentz, but
settled at Strasburg. He is supposed to have conceived the idea before
1440, and to have spent the next ten years in making attempts at
carrying it into effect, which some assert him to have done in short
fugitive pieces, actually printed from his moveable wooden characters
before 1450. But of the existence of these there seems to be no
evidence.[327] Gutenberg’s priority is disputed by those who deem
Lawrence Costar, of Haarlem, the real inventor of the art. According to
a tradition, which seems not to be traced beyond the middle of the
sixteenth century, but resting afterwards upon sufficient testimony to
prove its local reception, Costar substituted moveable for fixed letters
as early as 1430; and some have believed that a book called Speculum
Humanæ Salvationis, of very rude wooden characters, proceeded from the
Haarlem press before any other that is generally recognised.[328] The
tradition adds, that an unfaithful servant having fled with the secret,
set up for himself at Strasburg, or Mentz; and this treachery was
originally ascribed to Gutenberg or Fust, but seems, since they have
been manifestly cleared of it, to have been laid on one Gensfleisch,
reputed to be the brother of Gutenberg.[329] The evidence, however,
as to this, is highly precarious; and even if we were to admit
the claims of Costar, there seems no fair reason to dispute that
Gutenberg might also have struck out an idea, that surely did not
require any extraordinary ingenuity, and which left the most important
difficulties to be surmounted, as they undeniably were, by himself and
his coadjutors.[330]
[327] Mémoires de l’Acad. des Inscript. xvii. 762. Lambinet, p. 113.
[328] In Mr. Ottley’s History of Engraving, the claims of Costar are
strongly maintained, though chiefly on the authority of Meerman’s
proofs, which go to establish the local tradition. But the evidence
of Ludovico Guicciardini is an answer to those who treat it as a
forgery of Hadrian Junius. Santander, Lambinet, and most recent
investigators are for Mentz against Haarlem.
[329] Gensfleisch seems to have been the name of that branch of the
Gutenberg family to which the inventor of printing belonged. Biogr.
Univ., art. Gutenberg.
[330] Lambinet, p. 315.
|Progress of the invention.|
20. It is agreed by all, that about 1450, Gutenberg, having gone to
Mentz, entered into partnership with Fust, a rich merchant of that city,
for the purpose of carrying the invention into effect, and that Fust
supplied him with considerable sums of money. The subsequent steps are
obscure. According to a passage in the Annales Hirsargienses of
Trithemius, written sixty years afterwards, but on the authority of a
grandson of Peter Schæffer, their assistant in the work, it was about
1452 that the latter brought the art to perfection, by devising an
easier mode of casting types.[331] This passage has been interpreted,
according to a lax construction, to mean, that Schæffer invented the
method of casting types in a matrix; but seems more strictly to mean,
that we owe to him the great improvement in letter-casting, namely, the
punches of engraved steel, by which the matrices or moulds are struck,
and without which, independent of the economy of labour, there could be
no perfect uniformity of shape. Upon the former supposition, Schæffer
may be reckoned the main inventor of the art of printing; for moveable
wooden letters, though small books may possibly have been printed by
means of them, are so inconvenient, and letters of cut metal so
expensive, that few great works were likely to have passed through the
press, till cast types were employed. Van Praet, however, believes the
psalter of 1457 to have been printed from wooden characters; and some
have conceived letters of cut metal to have been employed both in that
and in the first Bible. Lambinet, who thinks “the essence of the art of
printing is in the engraved punch,” naturally gives the chief credit to
Schæffer;[332] but this is not the more usual opinion.
[331] Petrus Opilio de Gernsheim, tunc famulus inventoris primi Joannis
Fust, homo ingeniosus et prudens, faciliorem modum fundendi
characteras excogitavit, et artem, ut nunc est, complevit.
Lambinet, i. 101. See Daunou contra. Id. 417.
[332] ii. 213. In another place, he divides the praise better: Gloire
donc à Gutenberg, qui, le premier, conçut l’idée de la typographie,
en imaginant la mobilité des caractères, qui en est l’âme; gloire à
Fust, qui en fît usage avec lui, et sans lequel nous ne jouirions
peut-être pas de ce bienfait; gloire à Schæffer, à qui nous devons
tout le mécanisme, et toutes les merveilles de l’art. i. 119.
|First printed Bible.|
21. The earliest book, properly so called, is now generally believed to
be the Latin Bible, commonly called the Mazarin Bible, a copy having
been found, about the middle of the last century, in Cardinal Mazarin’s
library at Paris.[333] It is remarkable, that its existence was unknown
before; for it can hardly be called a book of very extraordinary
scarcity, nearly twenty copies being in different libraries, half of
them in those of private persons in England.[334] No date appears in
this Bible, and some have referred its publication to 1452, or even to
1450, which few perhaps would at present maintain; while others have
thought the year 1455 rather more probable.[335] In a copy belonging to
the royal library at Paris, an entry is made, importing that it was
completed in binding and illuminating at Mentz, on the feast of the
Assumption (Aug. 15), 1456. But Trithemius, in the passage above quoted,
seems to intimate that no book had been printed in 1452; and,
considering the lapse of time that would naturally be employed in such
an undertaking during the infancy of the art, and that we have no other
printed book of the least importance to fill up the interval till 1457,
and also that the binding and illuminating the above-mentioned copy is
likely to have followed the publication at no great length of time, we
may not err in placing its appearance in the year 1455, which will
secure its hitherto unimpeached priority in the records of
bibliography.[336]
[333] The Cologne chronicle says: Anno Domini 1450, qui jubilæus erat,
cœptum est imprimi, primusque liber, qui excudebatur, biblia fuere
Latina.
[334] Bibliotheca Sussexiana, i. 293. (1827.) The number there
enumerated is eighteen; nine in public, and nine in private
libraries; three of the former, and all the latter, English.
[335] Lambinet thinks it was probably not begun before 1453, nor
published till the end of 1455. i. 130. See, on this Bible, an
article by Dr. Dibdin, in Valpy’s Classical Journal, No. 8; which
collects the testimonies of his predecessors.
[336] It is very difficult to pronounce on the means employed in the
earliest books, which are almost all controverted. This bible is
thought by Fournier, himself a letter founder, to be printed from
wooden types; by Meerman, from types cut in metal; by Heinekke and
Daunou from cast types, which is most probable. Lambinet, i. 417.
Daunou does not believe that any book was printed with types cut
either in wood or metal; and that, after block books, there were
none but with cast letters like those now in use, invented by
Gutenberg, perfected by Schæffer, and first employed by them and
Fust in the Mazarin Bible. Id. p. 423.
|Beauty of the book.|
22. It is a very striking circumstance, that the high-minded inventors
of this great art tried at the very outset so bold a flight as the
printing an entire Bible, and executed it with astonishing success. It
was Minerva leaping on earth in her divine strength and radiant armour,
ready at the moment of her nativity to subdue and destroy her enemies.
The Mazarin Bible is printed, some copies on vellum, some on paper of
choice quality, with strong, black, and tolerably handsome characters,
but with some want of uniformity, which has led, perhaps unreasonably,
to a doubt whether they were cast in a matrix. We may see in imagination
this venerable and splendid volume leading up the crowded myriads of its
followers, and imploring, as it were, a blessing on the new art, by
dedicating its first fruits to the service of Heaven.
|Early printed sheets.|
23. A metrical exhortation, in the German language, to take arms against
the Turks, dated in 1454, has been retrieved in the present century. If
this date unequivocally refers to the time of printing, which does not
seem a necessary consequence, it is the earliest loose sheet that is
known to be extant. It is said to be in the type of what is called the
Bamberg Bible, which we shall soon have to mention. Two editions of
Letters of Indulgence from Nicolas V., bearing the date of 1454, are
extant in single printed sheets, and two more editions of 1455;[337] but
it has justly been observed, that, even if published before the Mazarin
Bible, the printing of that great volume must have commenced long
before. An almanac for the year 1457 has also been detected; and as
fugitive sheets of this kind are seldom preserved, we may justly
conclude that the art of printing was not dormant, so far as these light
productions are concerned. A Donatus, with Schæffer’s name, but no date,
may or may not be older than a psalter published in 1457 by Fust and
Schæffer (the partnership with Gutenberg having been dissolved in
November, 1455, and having led to a dispute and litigation), with a
colophon, or notice, subjoined in the last page, in these words:
Psalmorum codex venustate capitalium decoratus, rubricationibusque
sufficienter distinctus, adinventione artificiosa imprimendi ac
caracterizandi, absque calami ulla exaratione sic effigiatus, et ad
eusebiam Dei industrie est summatus. Per Johannem Fust, civem
Moguntinum, et Petrum Schæffer de Gernsheim, anno Domini millesimo
cccclvii. In vigilia Assumptionis.[338]
A colophon, substantially similar, is subjoined to several of the
Fustine editions. And this seems hard to reconcile with the story that
Fust sold his impressions at Paris, as late as 1463, for manuscripts.
[337] Brunet, Supplément au Manuel du Libraire. It was not known till
lately that more than one edition out of these four was in
existence, Santander thinks their publication was after 1460. Dict.
Bibliographique du 15me Siècle, i. 92. But this seems improbable,
from the transitory character of the subject. He argues from a
resemblance in the letters to those used by Fust and Schæffer in
the Durandi Rationale of 1459.
[338] Dibdin’s Bibliotheca Spenceriana. Biogr. Univ., Gutenberg, &c.
In the Donatus above mentioned, the method of printing is also
mentioned: Explicit Donatus arte nova imprimendi seu caracterizandi
per Petrum de Gernsheim in urbe Moguntina effigiatus. Lambinet
considers this and the Bible to be the first specimens of
typography, for he doubts the Literæ Indulgentiarum, though
probably with no cause.
|Psalter of 1459. Other early books.|
24. Another psalter was printed by Fust and Schæffer with similar
characters in 1459; and in the same year, Durandi Rationale, a treatise
on the liturgical offices of the church; of which Van Praet says, that
it is perhaps the earliest with cast types to which Fust and Schæffer
have given their name and a date.[339] The two psalters he conceives to
have been printed from wood. But this would be disputed by other eminent
judges.[340] In 1460, a work of considerable size, the Catholicon of
Balbi, came out from an opposition press, established at Mentz by
Gutenberg. The Clementine Constitutions, part of the canon law, were
also printed by him in the same year.
[339] Lambinet, i. 154.
[340] Lambinet, Dibdin. The former thinks the inequality of letters
observed in the psalter of 1457 may proceed from their being cast
in a matrix of plaster or clay, instead of metal.
|Bible of Pfister.|
25. These are the only monuments of early typography acknowledged to
come within the present decennium. A Bible without a date, supposed by
some to have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg, though ascribed by
others to Gutenberg himself, is reckoned by good judges certainly prior
to 1462, and perhaps as early as 1460. Daunou and others refer it to
1461. The antiquities of typography, after all the pains bestowed upon
them, are not unlikely to receive still further elucidation in the
course of time.
|Greek first taught at Paris.|
26. On the 19th of January, 1458, as Crevier, with a minuteness becoming
the subject, informs us, the university of Paris received a petition
from Gregory, a native of Tiferno, in the kingdom of Naples, to be
appointed teacher of Greek. His request was granted, and a salary of one
hundred crowns assigned to him, on condition that he should teach
gratuitously, and deliver two lectures every day, one on the Greek
language, and the other on the art of rhetoric.[341] From this
auspicious circumstance Crevier deduces the restoration of ancient
literature in the university of Paris, and consequently in the kingdom
of France. For above two hundred years, the scholastic logic and
philosophy had crushed polite letters. No mention is made of rhetoric,
that is, of the art that instructs in the ornaments of style, in any
statute or record of the university since the beginning of the
thirteenth century. If the Greek language, as Crevier supposes, had not
been wholly neglected, it was, at least, so little studied, that entire
neglect would have been practically the same.
[341] Crevier, Hist. de l’Univ. de Paris, iv. 243.
|Leave unwillingly granted.|
27. This concession was, perhaps, unwillingly made, and, as frequently
happens in established institutions, it left the prejudices of the
ruling party rather stronger than before. The teachers of Greek and
rhetoric were specially excluded from the privileges of regency by the
faculty of arts. These branches of knowledge were looked upon as
unessential appendages to a good education, very much as the modern
languages are treated in our English schools and universities at this
day. A bigoted adherence to old systems, and a lurking reluctance that
the rising youth should become superior in knowledge to ourselves, were
no peculiar evil spirits that haunted the university of Paris, though
none ever stood more in need of a thorough exorcism. For many years
after this time, the Greek and Latin languages were thus taught by
permission, and with very indifferent success.
|Purbach; his mathematical discoveries.|
28. Purbach, or Peurbach, native of a small Austrian town of that name,
has been called the first restorer of mathematical science in Europe.
Ignorant of Greek, and possessing only a bad translation of Ptolemy,
lately made by George of Trebizond,[342] he yet was able to explain the
rules of physical astronomy and the theory of the planetary motions far
better than his predecessors. But his chief merit was in the
construction of trigonometrical tables. The Greeks had introduced the
sexagesimal division, not only of the circle, but of the radius, and
calculated chords according to this scale. The Arabians, who, about the
ninth century, first substituted the sine, or half chord of the double
arch, in their tables, preserved the same graduation. Purbach made one
step towards a decimal scale, which the new notation by Arabic numerals
rendered highly convenient, by dividing the radius, or sinus totus, as
it was then often called, into 600,000 parts, and gave rules for
computing the sines of arcs; which he himself also calculated, for every
minute of the quadrant, as Delambre and Kästner think, or for every ten
minutes, according to Gassendi and Hutton, in parts of this radius. The
tables of Albaten the Arabian geometer, the inventor, as far as appears,
of sines, had extended only to quarters of a degree.[343]
[342] Montucla, Biogr. Univ. It is however certain, and is admitted by
Delambre, the author of this article in the Biog. Univ., that
Purbach made considerable progress in abridging and explaining the
text of this translation, which, if ignorant of the original, he
must have done by his mathematical knowledge. Kästner, ii. 521.
[343] Montucla, Hist. des Mathématiques, i. 539. Hutton’s Mathematical
Dictionary, and his Introduction to Logarithms. Gassendi, Vita
Purbachii. Biogr. Univ. Peurbach (by Delambre). Kästner, Geschichte
der Mathematik, i. 529-543, 572; ii. 319. Gassendi twice gives
6,000,000 for the parts of Purbach’s radius. None of these writers
seem comparable in accuracy to Kästner.
|Other mathematicians.|
29. Purbach died young, in 1461, when, by the advice of Cardinal
Bessarion, he was on the point of setting out for Italy, in order to
learn Greek. His mantle descended on Regiomontanus, a disciple, who went
beyond his master, though he has sometimes borne away his due credit. A
mathematician rather earlier than Purbach, was Nicolas Cusanus, raised
to the dignity of cardinal in 1448. He was by birth a German, and
obtained a considerable reputation for several kinds of knowledge.[344]
But he was chiefly distinguished for the tenet of the earth’s motion,
which, however, according to Montucla, he proposed only as an ingenious
hypothesis. Fioravanti, of Bologna, is said, on contemporary authority,
to have removed, in 1455, a tower with its foundation, to a
distance of several feet, and to have restored to the perpendicular one
at Cento seventy-five feet high, which had swerved five feet.[345]
[344] A work upon statics, or rather upon the weight of bodies in
water, by Cusanus, seems chiefly remarkable, as it shows both a
disposition to ascertain physical truths by experiment, and an
extraordinary misapprehension of the results. See Kästner, ii. 122.
It is published in an edition of Vitruvius, Strasburg, 1550.
[345] Tiraboschi. Montucla. Biogr. Univ.
SECT. III. 1460-1470.
_Progress of Art of Printing--Learning in Italy and rest of Europe._
|Progress of printing in Germany.|
30. The progress of that most important invention, which illustrated the
preceding ten years, is the chief subject of our consideration in the
present. Many books, it is to be observed, even of the superior class,
were printed, especially in the first thirty years after the invention
of the art, without date of time or place; and this was, of course, more
frequently the case with smaller or fugitive pieces. A catalogue,
therefore, of books that can be certainly referred to any particular
period must always be very defective. A collection of fables in German
was printed at Bamberg in 1461, and another book in 1462, by Pfister, at
the same place.[346] The Bible which bears his name has been already
mentioned. In 1462 Fust published a Bible, commonly called the Mentz
Bible, and which passed for the earliest till that in the Mazarin
library came to light. But in the same year, the city having been taken
by Adolphus count of Nassau, the press of Fust was broken up, and his
workmen, whom he had bound by an oath to secrecy, dispersed themselves
into different quarters. Released thus, as they seem to have thought,
from their obligation, they exercised their skill in other places. It is
certain, that the art of printing, soon after this, spread into the
towns near the Rhine; not only Bamberg, as before mentioned, but
Cologne, Strasburg, Augsburg, and one or two more places, sent forth
books before the conclusion of these ten years. Nor was Mentz altogether
idle, after the confusion occasioned by political events had abated. Yet
the whole number of books printed with dates of time and place, in the
German empire, from 1461 to 1470, according to Panzer, was only
twenty-four; of which five were Latin, and two German, Bibles. The only
known classical works are two editions of Cicero de Officiis, at Mentz,
in 1465 and 1466, and another about the latter year at Cologne, by Ulric
Zell; perhaps also the treatise de Finibus, and that de Senectute, at
the same place. There is also reason to suspect that a Virgil, a
Valerius Maximus, and a Terence, printed by Mentelin at Strasburg,
without a date, are as old as 1470; and the same has been thought of one
or two editions of Ovid de Arte Amandi, by Zell of Cologne. One book,
Joannis de Turrecremata Explanatio in Psalterium, was printed by Zainer,
at Cracow, in 1465. This is remarkable, as we have no evidence of the
Polish press from that time till 1500. Several copies of this book are
said to exist in Poland; yet doubts of its authenticity have been
entertained. Zainer settled soon afterwards at Augsburg.[347]
[346] Lambinet.
[347] Panzer, Annales Typographici. Biographie Universelle, Zainer.
|Introduced into France.|
31. It was in 1469 that Ulric Gering, with two more, who had been
employed as pressmen by Fust at Mentz, were induced by Fitchet and
Lapierre, rectors of the Sorbonne, to come to Paris, where several books
were printed in 1470 and 1471. The epistles of Gasparin of Barziza
appear, by some verses subjoined, to have been the earliest among
these.[348] Panzer has increased to eighteen the list of books printed
before the close of 1472.[349]
[348] The last four of these lines are the following:
Primos ecce libros quos hæc industria finxit,
Francorum in terris, ædibus atque tuis.
Michael, Udalricus, Martinusque magistri
Hos impresserunt, et facient alios.
[349] See Greswell’s Early Parisian Press.
|Caxton’s first works.|
32. But there seem to be unquestionable proofs that a still earlier
specimen of typography is due to an English printer, the famous Caxton.
His Recueil des Histoires de Troye appears to have been printed during
the life of Philip duke of Burgundy, and consequently before June 15,
1467. The place of publication, certainly within the duke’s dominions,
has not been conjectured. It is, therefore, by several years the
earliest printed book in the French language. A Latin speech by Russell,
ambassador of Edward IV. to Charles of Burgundy, in 1469, is the next
publication of Caxton. This was also printed in the Low Countries.[350]
[350] Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities. This is not noticed in the
Biographie Universelle, nor in Brunet; an omission hardly excusable.
|Printing exercised in Italy.|
33. A more splendid scene was revealed in Italy. Sweynheim and Pannartz,
two workmen of Fust, set up a press, doubtless with encouragement and
patronage, at the monastery of Subiaco in the Apennines, a place
chosen either on account of the numerous manuscripts it contained, or
because the monks were of the German nation; and hence an edition of
Lactantius issued in October, 1465, which one, no longer extant, of
Donatus’s little grammar is said to have preceded. An edition of Cicero
de Officiis, without a date, is referred by some to the year 1466. In
1467, after printing Augustin de Civitate Dei, and Cicero de Oratore,
the two Germans left Subiaco for Rome, where they sent forth not less
than twenty-three editions of ancient Latin authors before the close of
1470. Another German, John of Spire, established a press at Venice, in
1469, beginning with Cicero’s Epistles. In that and the next year,
almost as many classical works were printed at Venice as at Rome, either
by John and his brother Vindelin, or by a Frenchman, Nicolas Jenson.
Instances are said to exist of books printed by unknown persons at
Milan, in 1469; and in 1470, Zarot, a German, opened there a fertile
source of typography, though but two Latin authors were published that
year. An edition of Cicero’s Epistles appeared also in the little town
of Foligno. The whole number of books that had issued from the press in
Italy at the close of that year amounts, according to Panzer, to
eighty-two; exclusive of those which have no date, some of which may be
referrible to this period.
|Lorenzo de’ Medici.|
34. Cosmo de’ Medici died in 1464. But the happy impulse he had given to
the restoration of letters was not suspended; and in the last year of
the present decade, his wealth and his influence over the republic of
Florence had devolved on a still more conspicuous character, his
grandson Lorenzo, himself worthy, by his literary merits, to have done
honour to any patron, had not a more prosperous fortune called him to
become one.
|Italian poetry of fifteenth century.|
35. The epoch of Lorenzo’s accession to power is distinguished by a
circumstance hardly less honourable than the restoration of classical
learning,--the revival of native genius in poetry, after the slumber of
near a hundred years. After the death of Petrarch, many wrote verses,
but none excelled in the art; though Muratori has praised the poetry
down to 1400, especially that of Guisto di Conti, whom he does not
hesitate to place among the first poets of Italy.[351] But that of the
fifteenth century is abandoned by all critics as rude, feeble, and ill
expressed. The historians of literature scarcely deign to mention a few
names, or the editors of selections to extract a few sonnets. The
romances of chivalry in rhyme, Buovo d’Antona, la Spagna, l’Ancroja, are
only deserving to be remembered as they led in some measure to the great
poems of Boiardo and Ariosto. In themselves they are mean and prosaic.
It is vain to seek a general cause for the sterility in the cultivation
of Latin and Greek literature, which we know did not obstruct the
brilliancy of Italian poetry in the next age. There is only one cause
for the want of great men in any period;--nature does not think fit to
produce them. They are no creatures of education and circumstance.
[351] Muratori della Perfetta Poesia, p. 193. Bouterwek, Gesch. der
Ital. Poesie. i. 216.
|Italian prose of same age.|
36. The Italian prose literature of this interval from the age of
Petrarch would be comprised in a few volumes. Some historical memoirs
may be found in Muratori, but far the chief part of his collection is in
Latin. Leonard Aretin wrote lives of Dante and Petrarch in Italian,
which, according to Corniani, are neither valuable for their information
nor for their style. The Vita Civile of Palmieri seems to have been
written some time after the middle of the fifteenth century; but of this
Corniani says, that having wished to give a specimen, on account of the
rarity of Italian in that age, he had abandoned his intention, finding
that it was hardly possible to read two sentences in the Vita Civile
without meeting some barbarism or incorrectness. The novelists
Sacchetti, and Ser Giovanni, author of the Pecorone, who belong to the
end of the fourteenth century, are read by some; their style is familiar
and idiomatic; but Crescimbeni praises that of the former. Corniani
bestows some praise on Passavanti and Pandolfini; the first a religious
writer, not much later than Boccaccio; the latter a noble Florentine,
author of a moral dialogue in the beginning of the fifteenth century.
Filelfo, among his voluminous productions, has an Italian commentary on
Petrarch, of which Corniani speaks very slightingly. The commentary of
Landino on Dante is much better esteemed; but it was not published till
1481.
|Giostra of Politian.|
37. It was on occasion of a tournament, wherein Lorenzo himself and his
brother Julian had appeared in the lists, that poems were composed by
Luigi Pulci, and by Politian, then a youth, or rather a boy, the latter
of which displayed more harmony, spirit, and imagination, than any that
had been written since the death of Petrarch.[352] It might thus
be seen, that there was no real incompatibility between the pursuits of
ancient literature and the popular language of fancy and sentiment; and
that, if one gave chastity and elegance of style, a more lively and
natural expression of the mind could best be attained by the other.
[352] Extracts from this poem will be found in Roscoe’s Lorenzo, and
in Sismondi, Littérature du Midi, ii. 43, who praises it highly, as
the Italian critics have done, and as by the passages quoted it
seems well to deserve. Roscoe supposes Politian to be only fourteen
years old when he wrote the Giostra di Giuliano. But the lines he
quotes allude to Lorenzo as chief of the republic, which could not
be said before the death of Pietro in December, 1469. If he wrote
them at sixteen, it is extraordinary enough; but these two years
make an immense difference. Ginguéné is of opinion, that they do
not allude to the tournament of 1468, but to one in 1473.
|Paul II. persecutes the learned.|
38. This period was not equally fortunate for the learned in other parts
of Italy. Ferdinand of Naples, who came to the throne in 1458, proved no
adequate representative of his father Alfonso. But at Rome they
encountered a serious calamity. A few zealous scholars, such as
Pomponius Lætus, Platina, Callimachus Experiens, formed an academy in
order to converse together on subjects of learning, and communicate to
each other the results of their private studies. Dictionaries, indexes,
and all works of compilation being very deficient, this was the best
substitute for the labour of perusing the whole body of Latin antiquity.
They took Roman names; an innocent folly, long after practised in
Europe. The pope, however, Paul II., thought fit, in 1468, to arrest all
this society on charges of conspiracy against his life, for which there
was certainly no foundation, and of setting up Pagan superstitions
against Christianity, of which, in this instance, there seems to have
been no proof. They were put to the torture, and kept in prison a
twelvemonth, when the tyrant, who is said to have vowed this in his
first rage, set them all at liberty; but it was long before the Roman
academy recovered any degree of vigour.[353]
[353] Tiraboschi, vi. 93. Ginguéné. Brucker. Corniani ii. 280. This
writer, inferior to none in his acquaintance with the literature of
the fifteenth century, but, though not an ecclesiastic, always
favourable to the court of Rome, seems to strive to lay the blame
on the imprudence of Platina.
|Mathias Corvinus.|
|His library.|
39. We do not discover as yet much substantial encouragement to
literature in any country on this side the Alps, with the exception of
one where it was least to be anticipated. Mathias Corvinus, king of
Hungary, from his accession in 1458 to his death in 1490, endeavoured to
collect round himself the learned of Italy, and to strike light into the
midst of the depths of darkness that encompassed his country. He
determined, therefore, to erect an university, which, by the original
plan, was to have been in a distinct city; but the Turkish wars
compelled him to fix it at Buda. He availed himself of the dispersion of
libraries, after the capture of Constantinople, to purchase Greek
manuscripts, and employed four transcribers at Florence, besides thirty
at Buda, to enrich his collection. Thus, at his death, it is said that
the royal library at Buda contained 50,000 volumes; a number that
appears wholly incredible.[354] Three hundred ancient statues are
reported to have been placed in the same repository. But when the city
fell into the hands of the Turks in 1527, these noble treasures were
dispersed, and in great measure destroyed. Though the number of books,
as is just observed, must have been exaggerated, it is possible that
neither the burning of the Alexandrian library by Omar, if it ever
occurred, nor any other single calamity recorded in history, except the
two captures of Constantinople itself, has been more fatally injurious
to literature; and, with due regard to the good intentions of Mathias
Corvinus, it is deeply to be regretted that the inestimable relics once
rescued from the barbarian Ottomans, should have been accumulated in a
situation of so little security against their devastating arms.[355]
[354] The library collected by Nicolas V. contained only 5,000
manuscripts. The volumes printed in Europe before the death of
Corvinus would probably be reckoned highly at 15,000. Heeren
suspects the number 50,000 to be hyperbolical; and in fact there
can be no doubt of it.
[355] Brucker. Roscoe. Gibbon. Heeren, p. 173, who refers to several
modern books expressly relating to the fate of this library. Part
of it, however, found its way to that of Vienna.
|Slight signs of literature in England.|
40. England under Edward IV. presents an appearance, in the annals of
publication, about as barren as under Edward the Confessor; there is, I
think, neither in Latin nor in English, a single book that we can refer
to this decennial period.[356] Yet we find a few symptoms, not to
be overlooked, of incipient regard for literature. Leland enumerates
some Englishmen who travelled to Italy, perhaps before 1460, in order to
become disciples of the younger Guarini at Ferrara: Robert Fleming,
William Gray, bishop of Ely, John Free, John Gunthorpe, and a very
accomplished nobleman, John Tiptoft, earl of Worcester. It is but
fairness to give credit to these men for their love of learning, and to
observe, that they preceded any whom we could mention on sure grounds
either in France or Germany. We trace, however, no distinct fruits from
their acquisitions. But, though very few had the means of attaining that
on which we set a high value in literature, the mere rudiments of
grammatical learning were communicated to many. Nor were munificent
patrons, testators, in the words of Burke, to a posterity which they
embraced as their own, wanting in this latter period of the middle ages.
William of Wykeham, chancellor of England under Richard II. and bishop
of Winchester, founded a school in that city, and a college at Oxford in
connection with it, in 1373.[357] Henry VI., in imitation of him, became
the founder of Eton school, and of King’s College, Cambridge, about
1442.[358] In each of these schools seventy boys, and in each college
seventy fellows and scholars, are maintained by these princely
endowments. It is unnecessary to observe, that they are still the
amplest, as they are much the earliest, foundations for the support of
grammatical learning in England. What could be taught in these, or any
other schools at this time, the reader has been enabled to judge; it
must have been the Latin language, through indifferent books of grammar,
and with the perusal of very few heathen writers of antiquity. In the
curious and unique collection of the Paston letters we find one from a
boy at Eton in 1468, wherein he gives two Latin verses, not very good,
of his own composition.[359] I am sensible that the mention of such a
circumstance may appear trifling, especially to foreigners: but it is
not a trifle to illustrate by any fact the gradual progress of knowledge
among the laity; first in the mere elements of reading and writing, as
we did in a former chapter; and now, in the fifteenth century, in such
grammatical instruction as could be imparted. This boy of the Paston
family was well born, and came from a distance; nor was he in training
for the church, since he seems by this letter to have had marriage in
contemplation.
[356] The University of Oxford, according to Wood, as well as the
church generally, stood very low about this time: the grammar
schools were laid aside; degrees were conferred on undeserving
persons for money. A.D. 1455, 1466. He had previously mentioned
those schools as kept up in the university under the
superintendence of masters of arts. A.D. 1442. The statutes of
Magdalen College, founded in the reign of Edward, provide for a
certain degree of learning.--Chandler’s Life of Waynflete, p. 200.
[357] Lowth’s Life of Wykeham. He permits in his statutes a limited
number of sons of gentlemen (gentilium) to be educated in his
school. Chandler’s Life of Waynflete, p. 5.
[358] Waynflete became the first head master of Eton in 1442. Chandler,
p. 26.
[359] Vol. i., p. 301. Of William Paston, author of these lines, it is
said, some years before, that he had “gone to school to a Lombard
called Karol Giles, to learn and to be read in poetry, or else in
French. He said, that he would be as glad and as fain of a good
book of French or of poetry as my master Falstaff would be to
purchase a fair manor,” p. 173. (1459).
|Paston letters.|
41. But the Paston letters are, in other respects, an important
testimony to the progressive condition of society; and come in as a
precious link in the chain of the moral history of England, which they
alone in this period supply. They stand indeed singly, as far as I know,
in Europe; for though it is highly probable that in the archives of
Italian families, if not in France or Germany, a series of merely
private letters equally ancient may be concealed, I do not recollect
that any have been published. They are all written in the reigns of
Henry VI., and Edward IV., except a few, that extend as far as Henry
VII., by different members of a wealthy and respectable, but not noble,
family; and are, therefore, pictures of the life of the English gentry
in that age.[360] We are merely concerned with their evidence as to the
state of literature. And this, upon the whole, is more favourable than,
from the want of authorship in those reigns, we should be led to
anticipate. It is plain that several members of the family, male and
female, wrote not only grammatically, but with a fluency and facility,
an epistolary expertness, which implies the habitual use of the pen.
Their expression is much less formal and quaint than that of modern
novelists, when they endeavour to feign the familiar style of ages much
later than the fifteenth century. Some of them mix Latin with their
English, very bad, and probably for the sake of concealment; and
Ovid is once mentioned as a book to be sent from one to another.[361] It
appears highly probable, that such a series of letters, with so much
vivacity and pertinence, would not have been written by any family of
English gentry in the reign of Richard II., and much less before. It is
hard to judge from a single case; but the letter of Lady Pelham, quoted
in the first chapter, is ungrammatical and unintelligible. The seed,
therefore, was now rapidly germinating beneath the ground; and thus we
may perceive that the publication of books is not the sole test of the
intellectual advance of a people. I may add, that although the middle of
the fifteenth century was the period in which the fewest books were
written, a greater number, in the opinion of experienced judges, were
transcribed in that than in any former age.
[360] This collection is in five quarto volumes, and has become scarce.
The length has been doubled by an injudicious proceeding of the
editor, in printing the original orthography and abbreviations of
the letters on each left-hand page, and a more legible modern form
on the right. As orthography is of little importance, and
abbreviations of none at all, it would have been sufficient to have
given a single specimen.
[361] “As to Ovid de Arte Amandi, I shall send him you next week, for I
have him not now ready.” iv. 175. This was between 1463 and 1469,
according to the editor. We do not know positively of any edition
of Ovid de Arte Amandi so early; but Zell of Cologne is supposed to
have printed one before 1470, as has been mentioned above. Whether
the book to be sent were in print, or manuscript, must be left to
the sagacity of critics.
|Low condition of public libraries.|
42. It may be observed here, with reference to the state of learning
generally in England down to the age immediately preceding the
Reformation, that Leland, in the fourth volume of his Collectanea, has
given several lists of books in colleges and monasteries, which do not
by any means warrant the supposition of a tolerable acquaintance with
ancient literature. We find, however, some of the recent translations
made in Italy from Greek authors. The clergy, in fact, were now
retrograding, while the laity were advancing; and when this was the
case, the ascendency of the former was near its end.
|Rowley.|
|Clotilde de Surville.|
43. I have said that there was not a new book written within these ten
years. In the days of our fathers, it would have been necessary at least
to mention as a forgery the celebrated poems attributed to Thomas
Rowley. But, probably, no one person living believes in their
authenticity; nor should I have alluded to so palpable a fabrication at
all, but for the curious circumstance that a very similar trial of
literary credulity has not long since been essayed in France. A
gentleman of the name of Surville published a collection of poems,
alleged to have been written by Clotilde de Surville, a poetess of the
fifteenth century. The muse of the Ardèche warbled her notes during a
longer life than the monk of Bristow; and having sung the relief of
Orleans by the Maid of Arc in 1429, lived to pour her swan-like chant on
the battle of Fornova in 1495. Love, however, as much as war, is her
theme; and it was a remarkable felicity that she rendered an ode of her
prototype Sappho into French verse, many years before any one else in
France could have seen it. But having, like Rowley, anticipated too much
the style and sentiments of a later period, she has, like him, fallen
into the numerous ranks of the dead who never were alive.[362]
[362] Auguis, Recueil des Poètes, vol. ii. Biogr. Univ., Surville.
Villemain, Cours de Littérature, vol. ii. Sismondi, Hist. des
Français, xiii. 593. The forgery is by no means so gross as that of
Chatterton; but, as M. Sismondi says, “We have only to compare
Clotilde with the Duke of Orleans, or Villon.” The following lines,
quoted by him, will give the reader a fair specimen:--
Suivons l’amour, tel en soit le danger;
Cy nous attend sur lits charmans de mousse.
A des rigueurs; qui voudroit s’en venger?
Qui (meme alors que tout désir s’émousse)
Au prix fatal de ne plus y songer?
Règne sur moi, cher tyran, dont les armes
Ne me sauroient porter coups trop puissans!
Pour m’epargner n’en crois onc a mes larmes;
Sont de plaisir, tant plus auront de charmes
Tes dards aigus, que seront plus cuisans.
It has been justly remarked, that the extracts from Clotilde in the
Recueil des Anciens Poètes occupy too much space, while the genuine
writers of the fifteenth century appear in very scanty specimens.
SECT. IV. 1471-1480.
_The same Subjects continued--Lorenzo de’ Medici--Physical
Controversy--Mathematical Sciences._
|Number of books printed in Italy.|
44. The books printed in Italy during these ten years amount, according
to Panzer, to 1297; of which 234 are editions of ancient classical
authors. Books without date are of course not included; and the list
must not be reckoned complete as to others.
45. A press was established at Florence by Lorenzo, in which Cennini, a
goldsmith, was employed; the first printer, except Caxton and Jenson,
who was not a German. Virgil was published in 1471. Several other
Italian cities began to print in this period. The first edition of Dante
issued from Foligno in 1472; it has been improbably, as well as
erroneously, referred to Mentz. Petrarch had been published in 1470, and
Boccace in 1471. They were reprinted several times before the close of
this decade.
|First Greek printed.|
46. No one had attempted to cast Greek types in sufficient number for an
entire book; though a few occur in the early publications by Sweynheim
and Pannartz;[363] while in those printed afterwards at Venice, Greek
words are inserted by the pen; till, in 1476, Zarot of Milan had the
honour of giving the Greek grammar of Constantine Lascaris to the
world.[364] This was followed in 1480 by Craston’s lexicon, a very
imperfect vocabulary; but which for many years continued to be the only
assistance of the kind to which a student could have recourse. The
author was an Italian.
[363] Greek types first appear in a treatise of Jerome, printed at Rome
in 1468. Heeren, from Panzer.
[364] Lascaris Grammatica Græca, Mediolani ex recognitione Demetrii
Cretensis per Dionysium Paravisinum, 4to. The characters in this
rare volume are elegant and of a moderate size. The earliest
specimens of Greek printing consist of detached passages and
citations, found in a very few of the first printed copies of Latin
authors, such as the Lactantius of 1465, the Aulus Gellius and
Apuleius of Sweynheim and Pannartz, 1469, and some works of
Bessarion about the same time. In all these it is remarkable that
the Greek typography is legibly and creditably executed, whereas
the Greek introduced into the Officia et Paradoxa of Cicero, Milan,
1474, by Zarot, is so deformed as to be scarcely legible. I am
indebted for the whole of this note to Greswell’s Early Parisian
Greek Press, i. 1.
|Study of antiquities.|
47. Ancient learning is to be divided into two great departments; the
knowledge of what is contained in the works of Greek and Roman authors,
and that of the matériel, if I may use the word, which has been
preserved in a bodily shape, and is sometimes known by the name of
antiquities. Such are buildings, monuments, inscriptions, coins, medals,
vases, instruments, which by gradual accumulation have thrown a powerful
light upon ancient history and literature. The abundant riches of Italy
in these remains could not be overlooked as soon as the spirit of
admiration for all that was Roman began to be kindled. Petrarch himself
formed a little collection of coins; and his contemporary Pastrengo was
the first who copied inscriptions; but in the early part of the
fifteenth century, her scholars and her patrons of letters began to
collect the scattered relics, which almost every region presented to
them.[365] Niccolo Niccolì, according to the funeral oration of Poggio,
possessed a series of medals, and even wrote a treatise in Italian,
correcting the common orthography of Latin words, on the authority of
inscriptions and coins. The love of collections increased from this
time; the Medici and other rich patrons of letters spared no expense in
accumulating these treasures of the antiquary. Ciriacus of Ancona, about
1440, travelled into the East in order to copy inscriptions; but he was
naturally exposed to deceive himself and to be deceived; nor has he
escaped the suspicion of imposture, or at least of excessive
credulity.[366]
[365] Tiraboschi, vols. v. and vi. Andrès, ix. 196.
[366] Tiraboschi. Andrès, ix. 199. Ciriaco has not wanted advocates;
some of the inscriptions he was accused of having forged have
turned out to be authentic; and it is presumed in his favour, that
others which do not appear may have perished since his time. Biogr.
Univ., Cyriaque. One that rests on his authority is that which is
supposed to record the persecution of the Christians in Spain under
Nero. See Lardner’s Jewish and Heathen Testimonies, vol. i, who,
though by no means a credulous critic, inclines to its genuineness.
|Works on that subject.|
48. The first who made his researches of this kind collectively known
to the world, was Biondo Flavio, or Flavio Biondo,--for the names may
be found in a different order, but more correctly in the
first,[367]--secretary to Eugenius IV., and to his successors. His long
residence at Rome inspired him with the desire, and gave him the
opportunity, of describing her imperial ruins. In a work, dedicated to
Eugenius IV., who died in 1447, but not printed till 1471, entitled,
Romæ Instauratæ libri tres, he describes, examines, and explains by the
testimonies of ancient authors, the numerous monuments of Rome. In
another, Romæ Triumphantis libri decem, printed about 1472, he treats of
the government, laws, religion, ceremonies, military discipline, and
other antiquities of the republic. A third work, compiled at the request
of Alfonso, king of Naples, and printed in 1474, called Italia
Illustrata, contains a description of all Italy, divided into its
ancient fourteen regions. Though Biondo Flavio was almost the first to
hew his way into the rock, which should cause his memory to be
respected, it has naturally happened, that, his works being imperfect
and faulty, in comparison with those of the great antiquaries of the
sixteenth century, they have not found a place in the collection of
Grævius, and are hardly remembered by name.[368]
[367] Zeno, Dissertazioni Vossiane, i. 229.
[368] A superior treatise of the same age on the antiquities of the
Roman city is by Bernard Rucellai (de Urbe Româ, in Rer. Ital.
Scrip. Florent., vol. ii.). But it was not published before the
eighteenth century. Rucellai wrote some historical works in a very
good Latin style, and was distinguished also in the political
revolutions of Florence. After the death of Lorenzo, he became the
protector of the Florentine academy, for the members of which he
built a palace with gardens. Corniani, iii. 143. Biogr. Univ.,
Rucellai.
|Publications in Germany.|
49. In Germany and the Low Countries the art of printing began to be
exercised at Deventer, Utrecht, Louvain, Basle, Ulm, and other places,
and in Hungary at Buda. We find, however, very few ancient writers; the
whole list of what can pass for classics being about thirteen. One or
two editions of parts of Aristotle in Latin, from translations lately
made in Italy, may be added. Yet it was not the length of manuscripts
that discouraged the German printers; for besides their editions of the
Scriptures, Mentelin of Strasburg published, in 1473, the great
encyclopædia of Vincent of Beauvais, in ten volumes folio, generally
bound in four; and, in 1474, a similar work of Berchorius, or
Berchœur, in three other folios. The contrast between these labours
and those of his Italian contemporaries is very striking.
|In France.|
50. Florus and Sallust were printed at Paris early in this decade, and
twelve more classical authors at the same place before its termination.
An edition of Cicero ad Herennium appeared at Angers in 1476, and one of
Horace at Caen, in 1480. The press of Lyons also sent forth several
works, but none of them classical. It has been said by French writers,
that the first book printed in their language is Le Jardin de Dévotion,
by Colard Mansion of Bruges, in 1473. This date has been questioned in
England; but it is of the less importance, as we have already seen that
Caxton’s Recueil des Histoires de Troye has the clear priority. Le Roman
de Baudouin comte de Flandres, Lyon, 1474, seems to be the earliest
French book printed in France. In 1476, Les Grands Chroniques de St.
Denis, an important and bulky volume, appeared at Paris.
|In England, by Caxton.|
51. We come now to our own Caxton, who finished a translation into
English of his Recueil des Histoires de Troye, by order of Margaret,
duchess of Burgundy, at Cologne, in September 1471. It was probably
printed there the next year.[369] But soon afterwards he came to England
with the instruments of his art; and in 1474, his Game of Chess, a
slight and short performance, is supposed to have been the first
specimen of English typography.[370] In almost every year from this time
to his death in 1483, Caxton continued to publish those volumes which
are the delight of our collectors. The earliest of his editions bearing
a date in England, is the “Dictes and Sayings,” a translation by Lord
Rivers from a Latin compilation, and published in 1477. In a literary
history it should be observed, that the Caxton publications are more
adapted to the general than the learned reader, and indicate, upon the
whole, but a low state of knowledge in England. A Latin translation,
however, of Aristotle’s ethics was printed at Oxford in 1479.
[369] This book at the Duke of Roxburgh’s famous sale brought 1060_l._
[370] The Expositio Sancti Hieronymi, of which a copy, in the public
library at Cambridge, bears the date of Oxford 1468 on the
title-page, is now generally given up. It has been successfully
contended by Middleton, and lately by Mr. Singer, that this date
should be 1478; the numeral letter x having been casually omitted.
Several similar instances occur, in which a pretended early book
has not stood the keen eye of criticism: as the Decor Puellarum
ascribed to Nicolas Jenson of Venice in 1461, for which we should
read 1471; a cosmography of Ptolemy with the date of 1462; a book
appearing to have been printed at Tours in 1467, &c.
|In Spain.|
52. The first book printed in Spain was on the very subject we might
expect to precede all others, the Conception of the Virgin. It should be
a very curious volume, being a poetical contest, on that sublime theme,
by thirty-six poets, four of whom had written in Spanish, one in
Italian, and the rest in Provençal or Valencian. It appeared at Valencia
in 1474. A little book on grammar followed in 1475, and Sallust was
printed the same year. In that year printing was also introduced at
Barcelona and Saragossa, in 1476 at Seville, in 1480 at Salamanca and
Burgos.
|Translations of Scripture.|
53. A translation of the Bible by Malerbi, a Venetian, was published in
1471, and two other editions of that, or a different version, the same
year. Eleven editions are enumerated by Panzer in the fifteenth century.
The German translation has already been mentioned; it was several times
reprinted in this decade; one in Dutch appeared in 1477, one in the
Valencian language, at that city, in 1478;[371] the New Testament
was printed in Bohemian, 1475, and in French, 1477; the earliest French
translation of the Old Testament seems to be about the same date. The
reader will of course understand, that all these translations were made
from the Vulgate Latin. It may naturally seem remarkable, that not only
at this period, but down to the Reformation, no attempt was made to
render any part of the Scriptures public in English. But, in fact, the
ground was thought too dangerous by those in power. The translation of
Wicliffe had taught the people some comparisons between the worldly
condition of the first preachers of Christianity and their successors,
as well as some other contrasts, which it was more expedient to avoid.
Long before the invention of printing it was enacted, in 1408, by a
constitution of Archbishop Arundel, in convocation, that no one should
thereafter “translate any text of Holy Scripture into English, by way of
a book, or little book or tract; and that no book should be read that
was composed lately in the time of John Wicliffe, or since his death.”
Scarcely any of Caxton’s publications are of a religious nature.
[371] This edition was suppressed or destroyed; no copy is known to
exist; but there is preserved a final leaf containing the names of
the translator and printer. M’Crie’s Reformation in Spain, p. 192.
Andrès says (xix. 154), that this translation was made early in the
fifteenth century, with the approbation of divines.
|Revival of literature in Spain.|
54. It would have been strange if Spain, placed on the genial shores of
the Mediterranean, and intimately connected through the Aragonese kings
with Italy, had not received some light from that which began to shine
so brightly. Her progress, however, in letters was but slow. Not but
that several individuals are named by compilers of literary biography in
the first part of the fifteenth century, as well as earlier, who are
reputed to have possessed a knowledge of languages, and to have stood at
least far above their contemporaries. Alfonsus Tostatus passes for the
most considerable; his writings are chiefly theological, but Andrès
praises his commentary on the Chronicle of Eusebius, at least as a bold
essay.[372] He contends that learning was not deficient in Spain during
the fifteenth century, though admitting that the rapid improvements made
at its close, and about the beginning of the next age, were due to
Lebrixa’s public instructions at Seville and Salamanca. Several
translations were made from Latin authors into Spanish, which, however,
is not of itself any great proof of Peninsular learning. The men to whom
Spain chiefly owes the advancement of useful learning, and who should
not be defrauded of their glory, were Arias Barbosa, a scholar of
Politian, and the more renowned, though not more learned or more early
propagator of Grecian literature, Antonio of Lebrixa, whose name was
latinised into Nebrissensis, by which he is commonly known. Of Arias,
who unaccountably has no place in the Biographie Universelle, Nicolas
Antonio gives a very high character.[373] He taught the Greek language
at Salamanca probably about this time. But his writings are not at all
numerous. For Lebrixa, instead of compiling from other sources, I shall
transcribe what Dr. M’Crie has said with his usual perspicuous brevity.
[372] ix. 151.
[373] In quo Antonium Nebrissensem socium habuit, qui tamen quicquid
usquam Græcarum literarum apud Hispanos esset, ab uno Aria emanâsse
in præfatione suarum Introductionum Grammaticarum ingenue
affirmavit. His duobus amplissimum illud gymnasium, indeque
Hispania tota debet barbariei, quæ longo apud nos bellorum dominatu
in immensum creverat, extirpationem, bonarumque omnium
disciplinarum divitias. Quas Arias noster ex antiquitatis penu per
vicennium integrum auditoribus suis larga et locuplete vena
communicavit, in poetica facultate Græcanicaque doctrina
Nebrissense melior, a quo tamen in varia multiplicique doctrina
superabatur. Bibl. Vetus.
|Character of Lebrixa.|
55. “Lebrixa, usually styled Nebrissensis, became to Spain what Valla
was to Italy, Erasmus to Germany, or Budæus to France. After a residence
of ten years in Italy, during which he had stored his mind with various
kinds of knowledge, he returned home, in 1473, by the advice of the
younger Philelphus and Hermolaus Barbarus, with the view of promoting
classical literature in his native country. Hitherto the revival of
letters in Spain was confined to a few inquisitive individuals, and had
not reached the schools and universities, whose teachers continued to
teach a barbarous jargon under the name of Latin, into which they
initiated the youth by means of a rude system of grammar, rendered
unintelligible, in some instances, by a preposterous intermixture of the
most abstruse questions in metaphysics. By the lectures which he read in
the universities of Seville, Salamanca, and Alcala, and by the
institutes which he published on Castilian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew
grammar, Lebrixa contributed in a wonderful degree to expel barbarism
from the seats of education, and to diffuse a taste for elegant and
useful studies among his countrymen. His improvements were warmly
opposed by the monks, who had engrossed the art of teaching, and
who, unable to bear the light themselves, wished to prevent all others
from seeing it; but, enjoying the support of persons of high authority,
he disregarded their selfish and ignorant outcries. Lebrixa continued to
an advanced age to support the literary reputation of his native
country.”[374]
[374] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Spain, p. 61. It is probable
that Lebrixa’s exertions were not very effectual in the present
decennium, nor perhaps in the next, but his Institutiones
Grammaticæ, a very scarce book, were printed at Seville in 1481.
|Library of Lorenzo.|
56. This was the brilliant æra of Florence, under the supremacy of
Lorenzo de’ Medici. The reader is probably well acquainted with this
eminent character, by means of a work of extensive and merited
reputation. The Laurentian library, still consisting wholly of
manuscripts, though formed by Cosmo, and enlarged by his son Pietro,
owed not only its name, but an ample increase of its treasures, to
Lorenzo, who swept the monasteries of Greece through his learned agent,
John Lascaris. With that true love of letters which scorns the
monopolising spirit of possession, Lorenzo permitted his manuscripts to
be freely copied for the use of other parts of Europe.
|Classics corrected and explained.|
57. It was an important labour of the learned at Florence to correct, as
well as elucidate, the text of their manuscripts, written generally by
ignorant and careless monks, or trading copyists (though the latter
probably had not much concern with ancient writers), and become almost
wholly unintelligible through the blunders of these transcribers.[375]
Landino, Merula, Calderino, and Politian were the most indefatigable in
this line of criticism during the age of Lorenzo. Before the use of
printing fixed the text of a whole edition--one of the most important of
its consequences--the critical amendments of these scholars could only
be made useful through their oral lectures. And these appear frequently
to have been the foundation of the valuable, though rather prolix,
commentaries we find in the old editions. Thus those of Landino
accompany many editions of Horace and Virgil, forming, in some measure,
the basis of all interpretative annotations on those poets. Landino in
these seldom touches on verbal criticism; but his explanations display a
considerable reach of knowledge. They are founded, as Heeren is
convinced, on his lectures, and consequently give us some notion of the
tone of instruction. In explaining the poets, two methods were pursued,
the grammatical and the moral, the latter of which consisted in
resolving the whole sense into allegory. Dante had given credit to a
doctrine, orthodox in this age, and long afterwards, that every great
poem must have a hidden meaning.[376]
[375] Meiners, Vergleich. der Sitten, iii. 108. Heeren, p. 293.
[376] Heeren, pp. 241, 287.
|Character of Lorenzo.|
58. The notes of Calderino, a scholar of high fame, but infected with
the common vice of arrogance, are found with those of Landino in the
early editions of Virgil and Horace. Regio commented upon Ovid,
Omnibonus Leonicenus upon Lucan, both these upon Quintilian, many upon
Cicero.[377] It may be observed, for the sake of chronological
exactness, that these labours are by no means confined, even
principally, to this decennial period. They are mentioned in connection
with the name of Lorenzo de’ Medici, whose influence over literature
extended from 1470 to his death in 1492. Nor was mere philology the
sole, or the leading, pursuit to which so truly noble a mind accorded
its encouragement. He sought in ancient learning something more elevated
than the narrow, though necessary, researches of criticism. In a villa
overhanging the towers of Florence, on the steep slope of that lofty
hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which
Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side,
he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic
philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the
most congenial accompaniment.
[377] Id. 297.
|Prospect from his villa at Fiesole.|
59. Never could the sympathies of the soul with outward nature be more
finely touched; never could more striking suggestions be presented to
the philosopher and the statesman. Florence lay beneath them; not with
all the magnificence that the later Medici have given her, but, thanks
to the piety of former times, presenting almost as varied an outline to
the sky. One man, the wonder of Cosmo’s age, Brunelleschi, had crowned
the beautiful city with the vast dome of its cathedral; a structure
unthought of in Italy before, and rarely since surpassed. It seemed,
amidst clustering towers of inferior churches, an emblem of the Catholic
hierarchy under its supreme head; like Rome itself, imposing, unbroken,
unchangeable, radiating in equal expansion to every part of the earth,
and directing its convergent curves to heaven. Round this were
numbered, at unequal heights, the Baptistery, with its gates worthy of
Paradise; the tall and richly decorated belfry of Giotto; the church of
the Carmine, with the frescos of Masaccio; those of Santa Maria Novella,
beautiful as a bride, of Santa Croce, second only in magnificence to the
cathedral, and of St. Mark; the San Spirito, another great monument of
the genius of Brunelleschi; the numerous convents that rose within the
walls of Florence, or were scattered immediately about them. From these
the eye might turn to the trophies of a republican government that was
rapidly giving way before the citizen-prince who now surveyed them; the
Palazzo Vecchio, in which the signiory of Florence held their councils,
raised by the Guelf aristocracy, the exclusive, but not tyrannous
faction that long swayed the city; or the new and unfinished palace
which Brunelleschi had designed for one of the Pitti family, before they
fell, as others had already done, in the fruitless struggle against the
house of Medici; itself destined to become the abode of the victorious
race, and to perpetuate, by retaining its name, the revolutions that had
raised them to power.
60. The prospect, from an elevation, of a great city in its silence, is
one of the most impressive, as well as beautiful, we ever behold. But
far more must it have brought home thoughts of seriousness to the mind
of one who, by the force of events, and the generous ambition of his
family, and his own, was involved in the dangerous necessity of
governing without the right, and, as far as might be, without the
semblance of power; one who knew the vindictive and unscrupulous
hostility which, at home and abroad, he had to encounter. If thoughts
like these could bring a cloud over the brow of Lorenzo, unfit for the
object he sought in that retreat, he might restore its serenity by other
scenes which his garden commanded. Mountains bright with various hues,
and clothed with wood, bounded the horizon, and, on most sides, at no
great distance; but embosomed in these were other villas and domains of
his own; while the level country bore witness to his agricultural
improvements, the classic diversion of a statesman’s cares. The same
curious spirit which led him to fill his garden at Careggi with exotic
flowers of the east, the first instance of a botanical collection in
Europe, had introduced a new animal from the same regions. Herds of
buffaloes, since naturalised in Italy, whose dingy hide, bent neck,
curved horns, and lowering aspect, contrasted with the greyish hue and
full mild eye of the Tuscan oxen, pastured in the valley, down which the
yellow Arno steals silently through its long reaches to the sea.[378]
[378]
Taliâ Fæsuleo lentus meditabar in antro,
Rure suburbano Medicum, qua mons sacer urbem
Mæoniam, longique volumina despicit Arni:
Qua bonus hospitium felix placidamque quietem
Indulget Laurens.
_Politiani Rusticus._
And let us from the top of Fiesole,
Whence Galileo’s glass by night observed
The phases of the moon, look round below
On Arno’s vale, where the dove-coloured steer
Is ploughing up and down among the vines,
While many a careless note is sung aloud,
Filling the air with sweetness--and on thee,
Beautiful Florence, all within thy walls,
Thy groves and gardens, pinnacles and towers,
Drawn to our feet.
It is hardly necessary to say that these lines are taken from my
friend Mr. Rogers’s Italy, a poem full of moral and descriptive
sweetness, and written in the chastened tone of fine taste. With
respect to the buffaloes, I have no other authority than these
lines of Politian, in his poem of Ambra, on the farm of Lorenzo at
Poggio Cajano.
Atque aliud nigris missum, quis credat? ab Indis,
Ruminat insuetas armentum discolor herbas.
But I must own, that Buffon tells us, though without quoting any
authority, that the buffalo was introduced into Italy as early as
the seventh century. I did not take the trouble of consulting
Aldrovandus, who would perhaps have confirmed him--especially as I
have a better opinion of my readers than to suppose they would care
about the matter.
|Platonic academy.|
61. The Platonic academy, which Cosmo had planned, came to maturity
under Lorenzo. The academicians were divided into three classes:--the
patrons (mecenati), including the Medici; the hearers (ascoltatori,
probably from the Greek word ἀκρόαται [akroatai]); and the novices, or
disciples, formed of young aspirants to philosophy. Ficino presided over
the whole. Their great festival was the 13th of November, being the
anniversary of the birth and death of Plato. Much of absurd mysticism,
much of frivolous and mischievous superstition, was mingled with their
speculations.[379]
[379] Roscoe. Corniani.
|Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino.|
62. The Disputationes Camaldulenses of Landino were published during
this period, though, perhaps, written a little sooner. They belong to a
class prominent in the literature of Italy in this and the succeeding
century; disquisitions on philosophy in the form of dialogue, with more
solicitude to present a graceful delineation of virtue, and to kindle a
generous sympathy for moral beauty, than to explore the labyrinths of
theory, or even to lay down clear and distinct principles of ethics. The
writings of Plato and Cicero, in this manner, had shown a track, in
which their idolators, with distant and hesitating steps, and more of
reverence than emulation, delighted to tread. These Disputations of
Landino, in which, according to the beautiful patterns of ancient
dialogue, the most honoured names of the age appear--Lorenzo and his
brother Julian; Alberti, whose almost universal genius is now best known
by his architecture; Ficino, and Landino himself--turn upon a comparison
between the active and contemplative life of man, to the latter of which
it seems designed to give the advantage, and are saturated with the
thoughtful spirit of Platonism.[380]
[380] Corniani and Roscoe have given this account of the
Disputationes Camaldulenses. I have no direct acquaintance with the
book.
|Philosophical dialogues.|
63. Landino was not, by any means, the first who had tried the theories
of ancient philosophy through the feigned warfare of dialogue. Valla,
intrepid and fond of paradox, had vindicated the Epicurean ethics from
the calumnious or exaggerated censure frequently thrown upon them,
contrasting the true methods by which pleasure should be sought with the
gross notions of the vulgar. Several other writings of the same
description, either in dialogue or regular dissertation, belong to the
fifteenth century, though not always published so early, such as
Franciscus Barbarus, De Re Uxoria,[381] Platina, De Falso et Vero Bono,
the Vita Civile of Palmieri, the moral treatises of Poggio, Alberti,
Pontano, and Matteo Bosso, concerning some of which little more than the
names are to be learned from literary history, and which it would not,
perhaps, be worth while to mention, except as collectively indicating a
predilection for this style, which the Italians long continued to
display.[382]
[381] This, which has been already mentioned, may be considered as much
the earliest, having been published about 1417. Shepherd’s Poggio,
c. 3. Barbaro was a noble Venetian, who had learned Latin under
Gasparin of Barziza. He was afterwards chiefly employed in public
life. This treatise De Re Uxoria, of which some account may be
found in Corniani (ii. 137) made a considerable impression at that
early time. Corniani thinks it the only work of moral philosophy in
the fifteenth century, which is not a servile copy of some ancient
system. The more celebrated Hermolaus was grandson of this Francis
Barbarus.
[382] Corniani is much fuller than Tiraboschi on these treatises.
Roscoe seems to have read the ethical writing of Matteo Bosso (Life
of Leo X., c. xx.), but hardly adverts to any of the rest I have
named. Some of them are very scarce.
|Paulus Cortesius.|
64. Some of these related to general criticism, or to that of single
authors. My knowledge of them is chiefly limited to the dialogue of
Paulus Cortesius, De Hominibus Doctis, written, I conceive, about 1490;
no unsuccessful imitation of Cicero, De Claris Oratoribus, from which
indeed modern Latin writers have always been accustomed to collect the
discriminating phrases of criticism. Cortesius, who was young at the
time of writing this dialogue, uses an elegant, if not always a correct
Latinity; characterising agreeably, and with apparent taste, the authors
of the fifteenth century. It may be read in conjunction with the
Ciceronianus of Erasmus, who, with no knowledge, perhaps, of Cortesius
has gone over the same ground in rather inferior language.
|Schools in Germany.|
65. It was about the beginning of this decade that a few Germans and
Netherlanders, trained in the college of Deventer, or that of Zwoll, or
of St. Edward’s near Groningen, were roused to acquire that extensive
knowledge of the ancient languages which Italy as yet exclusively
possessed. Their names should never be omitted in any remembrance of the
revival of letters; for great was their influence upon the subsequent
times. Wessel of Groningen, one of those who contributed most steadily
towards the purification of religion, and to whom the Greek and Hebrew
languages are said, but probably on no solid grounds, to have been
known, may be reckoned in this class. But others were more directly
engaged in the advancement of literature. Three schools, from which
issued the most conspicuous ornaments of the next generation, rose under
masters, learned for that time, and zealous in the good cause of
instruction. Alexander Hegius became, about 1475, rector of that at
Deventer, where Erasmus received his early education.[383] Hegius was
not wholly ignorant of Greek, and imparted the rudiments of it to
his illustrious pupil. I am inclined to ascribe the publication of a
very rare and curious book, the first endeavour to print Greek on this
side of the Alps, to no other person than Hegius.[384] Louis Dringeberg
founded, not perhaps before 1480, a still more distinguished seminary at
Schelstadt in Alsace. Here the luminaries of Germany in a more advanced
stage of learning, Conrad Celtes, Bebel, Rhenanus, Wimpheling
Pirckheimer, Simler, are said to have imbibed their knowledge.[385] The
third school was at Munster; and over this Rodolph Langius presided, a
man not any way inferior to the other two, and of more reputation as a
Latin writer, especially as a poet. The school of Munster did not come
under the care of Langius till 1483, or perhaps rather later; and his
strenuous exertions in the cause of useful and polite literature against
monkish barbarians extended into the next century. But his life was
long: the first, or nearly such, to awaken his countrymen, he was
permitted to behold the full establisment of learning, and to exult in
the dawn of the Reformation. In company with a young man of rank, and
equal zeal, Maurice, count of Spiegelberg, who himself became the
provost of a school at Emmerich, Langius visited Italy, and, as Meiners
supposes, though, I think, upon uncertain grounds, before 1460. But not
long afterwards, a more distinguished person than any we have mentioned,
Rodolph Agricola of Groningen, sought in that more genial land the taste
and correctness which no cisalpine nation could supply. Agricola passed
several years of this decade in Italy. We shall find the effects of his
example in the next.[386]
[383] Heeren, p. 149, says that Hegius began to preside over the school
of Deventer in 1480; but I think the date in the text is more
probable, as Erasmus left it at the age of fourteen, and was
certainly born in 1465. Though Hegius is said to have known but
little Greek, I find in Panzer the title of a book by him, printed
at Deventer in 1501, De Utilitate Lingua Græcæ. The life of Hegius
in Melchior Adam is interesting. Primus hic in Belgio literas
excitavit, says Revius, in Daventria Illustrata, p. 130. Mihi, says
Erasmus, admodum adhuc puero contigit uti præceptore hujus
discipulo Alexandro Hegio Westphalo, qui ludum aliquando celebrem
oppidi Daventriensis moderabatur, in quo nos olim admodum pueri
utriusque linguæ prima didicimus elementa. Adag. Chil. 1, cent. iv.
39. In another place he says of Hegius, ne hic quidem Græcarum
literarum omnino ignarus est. Epist. 411, in Appendice. Erasmus
left Deventer at the age of fourteen; consequently in 1479 or 1480,
as he tells us in an epistle, dated 17th Apr. 1519.
[384] This very rare book, unnoticed by most bibliographers, is of some
importance in the history of literature. It is a small quarto
tract, entitled, Conjugations verborum Græcæ, Daventriæ noviter
extremo labore et impressæ. No date or printer’s name appears. A
copy is in the British Museum, and another in Lord Spencer’s
library. It contains nothing but the word τυπτω [typtô] in all its
voices and tenses, with Latin explanations in Gothic letters. The
Greek types are very rude, and the characters sometimes misplaced.
It must, I should presume, seem probable to every one who considers
this book, that it is of the fifteenth century, and consequently
older than any known Greek on this side of the Alps; which of
itself should render it interesting in the eyes of bibliographers
and of every one else. But fully disclaiming all such acquaintance
with the technical science of typographical antiquity, as to
venture any judgment founded on the appearance of a particular
book, or on a comparison of it with others, I would, on other
grounds, suggest the probability that this little attempt at Greek
Grammar issued from the Deventer press about 1480. It appears clear
that whoever “collected with extreme labour” these forms of the
verb τυπτω [typtô], had never been possessed of a Greek and Latin
grammar. For would it not be absurd to use such expressions about a
simple transcription? Besides which, the word is not only given in
an arrangement different from any I have ever seen, but with a
nonexistent form of participle, τετυψαμενος [tetypsamenos] for
τυψαμενος [typsamenos], which could not surely have been found in
any prior grammar. Now the grammar of Lascaris was published with a
Latin translation by Craston in 1480. It is indeed highly probable
that this book would not reach Deventer immediately after its
impression; but it does seem as if there could not long have been
any extreme difficulty in obtaining a correct synopsis of the verb
τυπτω [typtô].
We have seen that Erasmus, about 1477, acquired a very slight
tincture of Greek under Alexander Hegius at Deventer. And here, as
he tells us, he saw Agricola, returning probably from Italy to
Groningen. Quem mihi puero, ferme duodecim annos nato, Daventriæ
videre contigit, nec aliud contigit. (Jortin, ii. 416.) No one
could be so likely as Hegius to attempt a Greek grammar; nor do we
find that his successors in that college were men as distinguished
for learning as himself. But in fact at a later time it could not
have been so extraordinarily imperfect. We might perhaps conjecture
that he took down these Greek tenses from the mouth of Agricola,
since we must presume oral communication rather than the use of
books. Agricola, repeating from memory, and not thoroughly
conversant with the language, might have given the false tense
τετυψαμενος [tetypsamenos]. The tract was probably printed by
Pafroet, some of whose editions bear as early a date as 1477. It
has long been extremely scarce; for Revius does not include it in
the list of Pafroet’s publications he has given in Deventria
Illustrata, nor will it be found in Panzer. Beloe was the first to
mention it in his Anecdotes of scarce books; and it is referred by
him to the fifteenth century; but apparently without his being
aware there was anything remarkable in that antiquity. Dr. Dibdin,
in Bibliotheca Spenceriana, has given a fuller account; and from
him Brunet has inserted it in the Manuel du Libraire. Neither Beloe
nor Dibdin seems to have known that there is a copy in the Museum;
they speak only of that belonging to Lord Spencer.
If it were true that Reuchlin, during his residence at Orleans, had
published, as well as compiled, a Greek grammar, we should not need
to have recourse to the hypothesis of this note, in order to give
the antiquity of the present decade to Greek typography. Such a
grammar is asserted by Meiners, in his Life of Reuchlin, to have
been printed at Poitiers: and Eichhorn positively says, without
reference to the place of publication, that Reuchlin was the first
German who published a Greek grammar. (Gesch. der Litt. iii. 275.)
Meiners, however, in a subsequent volume (iii. 10), retracts this
assertion, and says it has been proved that the Greek grammar of
Reuchlin was never printed. Yet I find in the Bibliotheca
Universalis of Gesner: Joh. Capnio [Reuchlin] scripsit de
diversitate quatuor idiomatum Græcæ linguæ, lib. i. No such book
appears in the list of Reuchlin’s works in Niceron, vol. xxv., nor
in any of the bibliographies. If it ever existed, we may place it
with more probability at the very close of this century, or at the
beginning of the next.
[385] Eichhorn, iii. 231. Meiners, ii. 369. Eichhorn carelessly follows
a bad authority in counting Reuchlin among these pupils of the
Schelstadt school.
[386] See Meiners, vol. ii., Eichhorn, and Heeren, for the revival of
learning in Germany; or something may be found in Brucker.
|Study of Greek at Paris.|
66. Meantime a slight impulse seems to have been given to the university
of Paris by the lessons of George Tifernas; for from some disciples of
his Reuchlin, a young German of great talents and celebrity, acquired,
probably about the year 1470, the first elements of the Greek language.
This knowledge he improved by the lessons of a native Greek, Andronicus
Cartoblacas, at Basle. In that city he had the good fortune, rare on
this side of the Alps, to find a collection of Greek manuscripts, left
there at the time of the council by a cardinal Nicolas of Ragusa. By the
advice of Cartoblacas, he taught Greek himself at Basle. After the lapse
of some years, Reuchlin went again to Paris, and found a new teacher,
George Hermonymus of Sparta, who had settled there about 1472. From
Paris he removed to Orleans and Poitiers; he is said to have taught,
perhaps not the Greek language, in the former city, and to have written
a Greek grammar in the second. It seems, however, now to be ascertained,
that this grammar was never printed.[387]
[387] Meiners, i. 46. Besides Meiners, Brucker, iv. 358, as well as
Heeren, have given pretty full accounts of Reuchlin; and a good
life of him will be found in the 25th volume of Niceron: but the
Epistolæ ad Reuchlinum throw still more light on the man and his
contemporaries.
|Controversy of Realists and Nominalists.|
|Scotus.|
67. The classical literature which delighted Reuchlin and Agricola was
disregarded as frivolous by the wise of that day in the university of
Paris; but they were much more keenly opposed to innovation and
heterodoxy in their own peculiar line, the scholastic metaphysics. Most
have heard of the long controversies between the Realists and
Nominalists concerning the nature of universals, or the genera and
species of things. The first, with Plato and Aristotle, maintained their
objective or external reality; either, as it was called, _ante
rem_, as eternal archetypes in the Divine Intelligence, or _in
re_, as forms inherent in matter; the second, with Zeno, gave them
only a subjective existence as ideas conceived by the mind, and have
hence in later times acquired the name of Conceptualists.[388] Roscelin,
the first of the modern Nominalists, went farther than this, and denied,
as Hobbes and Berkeley, with many others, have since done, all
universality except to words and propositions. Abelard, who inveighs
against the doctrine of Roscelin as false logic and false theology, and
endeavours to confound it with the denial of any objective reality even
in singular things,[389] may be esteemed the restorer of the
Conceptualist school. We do not know his doctrines, however, by his own
writings, but by the testimony of John of Salisbury, who seems not well
to have understood the subject. The words Realist and Nominalist came
into use about the end of the twelfth century. But in the next, the
latter party by degrees disappeared; and the great schoolmen, Aquinas
and Scotus, in whatever else they might disagree, were united on the
Realist side. In the fourteenth century William Ockham revived the
opposite hypothesis with considerable success. Scotus and his disciples
were the great maintainers of Realism. If there were no substantial
forms, he argued, that is, nothing real, which determines the mode of
being in each individual, men and brutes would be of the same substance;
for they do not differ as to matter, nor can extrinsic accidents make a
substantive difference. There must be a substantial form of a horse,
another of a lion, another of a man. He seems to have held the
immateriality of the soul, that is, the substantial form of man. But no
other form, he maintained, can exist without matter naturally, though it
may, supernaturally, by the power of God. Socrates and Plato agree more
than Socrates and an ass. They have, therefore, something in common,
which an ass has not. But this is not numerically the same; it must,
therefore, be something universal, namely, human nature.[390]
[388] I am chiefly indebted for the facts in the following paragraphs
to a dissertation by Meiners, in the transactions of the Göttingen
Academy, vol. xii.
[389] Hic sicut pseudo-dialecticus, ita pseudo-christianus--ut eo loco
quo dicitur Dominus partem piscis assi comedisse, partem hujus
vocis, quæ est piscis assi, non partem rei intelligere cogatur.
Meiners, p. 27. This may serve to show the cavilling tone of
scholastic disputes; and Meiners may well say: Quicquid Roscelinus
peccavit, non adeo tamen insanisse pronuntiandum est, ut Abelardus
ilium fecisse invidiose fingere sustinuit.
[390] Id. p. 89.
68. These reasonings, which are surely no unfavourable specimen of the
“subtle philosopher,” as Scotus was called, were met by Ockham with
others which sometimes appear more refined and obscure. He confined
reality to objective things, denying it to the host of abstract entities
brought forward by Scotus. He defines a universal to be “a particular
intention (meaning probably idea or conception) of the mind itself,
capable of being predicated of many things, not for what it probably is
itself, but for what those things are; so that, in so far as it has this
capacity, it is called universal, but inasmuch as it is one form really
existing in the mind, it is called singular.”[391] I have not examined
the writings of Ockham, and am unable to determine whether his
Nominalism extends beyond that of Berkeley or Stewart, which is
generally asserted by the modern inquirers into scholastic philosophy;
that is, whether it amounts to Conceptualism; the foregoing definition,
as far as I can judge, might have been given by them.
[391] Unam intentionem sìngularem ipsius animæ, natam prædicari de
pluribus, non prose, sed pro ipsis rebus; ita quod per hoc, quod
ipsa nata est prædicari de pluribus, non pro se sed pro illis
pluribus, illa dicitur universalis; propter hoc autem, quod est una
forma existens realiter in intellectu, dicitur singulare. P. 42.
|Nominalists in university of Paris.|
69. The later Nominalists of the scholastic period, Buridan, Biel, and
several others mentioned by the historians of philosophy, took all their
reasonings from the storehouse of Ockham. His doctrine was prohibited at
Paris by pope John XXII., whose theological opinions, as well as secular
encroachments, he had opposed. All masters of arts were bound by oath
never to teach Ockhamism. But after the pope’s death the university
condemned a tenet of the Realists, that many truths are eternal, which
are not God; and went so far towards the Nominalist theory, as to
determine that our knowledge of things is through the medium of
words.[392] Peter d’Ailly, Gerson, and other principal men of their age
were Nominalists; the sect was very powerful in Germany, and may be
considered, on the whole, as prevalent in this century. The Realists,
however, by some management gained the ear of Louis XI., who, by an
ordinance in 1473, explicitly approves the doctrines of the great
Realist philosophers, condemns that of Ockham and his disciples, and
forbids it to be taught, enjoining the books of the Nominalists to be
locked up from public perusal, and all present as well as future
graduates in the university to swear to the observation of this
ordinance. The prohibition, nevertheless, was repealed in 1481; the
guilty books set free from their chains, and the hypothesis of the
Nominalists virtually permitted to be held, amidst the acclamations of
the university, and especially one of its four nations, that of Germany.
Some of their party had, during this persecution, taken refuge in that
empire and in England, both friendly to their cause; and this
metaphysical contention of the fifteenth century suggests and typifies
the great religious convulsion of the next. The weight of ability,
during this later and less flourishing period of scholastic philosophy,
was on the Nominalist side; and though the political circumstances to
which we have alluded were not immediately connected with their
principle, this metaphysical sect facilitated in some measure the
success of the Reformation.
[392] Id. p. 45, scientiam habemus de rebus, sed mediantibus terminis.
|Low state of learning in England.|
70. We should still look in vain to England for either learning or
native genius. The reign of Edward IV. may be reckoned one of the lowest
points in our literary annals. The universities had fallen in reputation
and in frequency of students; where there had been thousands, according
to Wood, there was not now one; which must be understood as an
hyperbolical way of speaking. But the decline of the universities,
frequented as they had been by indigent vagabonds withdrawn from useful
labour, and wretched as their pretended instruction had been, was so far
from an evil in itself, that it left clear the path for the approaching
introduction of real learning. Several colleges were about this
time founded at Oxford and Cambridge, which, in the design of their
munificent founders, were to become, as they have done, the instruments
of a better discipline than the barbarous schoolmen afforded. We have
already observed, that England was like seed fermenting in the ground
through the fifteenth century. The language was becoming more vigorous,
and more capable of giving utterance to good thoughts, as some
translations from Caxton’s press show, such as the Dicts of
Philosophers, by Lord Rivers. And perhaps the best exercise for a
schoolboy people is that of schoolboys. The poetry of two Scotsmen,
Henryson and Mercer, which is not without merit, may be nearly referred
to the present decade.[393]
[393] Campbell’s Specimens of British Poets, vol. i.
|Mathematics.|
|Regiomontanus.|
71. The progress of mathematical science was regular, though not rapid.
We might have mentioned before the gnomon erected by Toscanelli in the
cathedral at Florence, which is referred to 1468; a work, it has been
said, which, considering the times, has done as much honour to his
genius as that so much renowned to Bologna at Cassini.[394] The greatest
mathematician of the fifteenth century, Muller, or Regiomontanus, a
native of Königsberg, or Königshoven, a small town in Franconia, whence
he derived his latinised appellation, died prematurely, like his master
Purbach, in 1476. He had begun at the age of fifteen to assist the
latter in astronomical observations; and having, after Purbach’s death,
acquired a knowledge of Greek in Italy, and devoted himself to the
ancient geometers, after some years spent with distinction in that
country, and at the court of Mathias Corvinus, he settled finally at
Nuremberg; where a rich citizen, Bernard Walther, both supplied the
means of accurate observations, and became the associate of his
labours.[395] Regiomontanus died at Rome, whither he had been called to
assist in rectifying the calendar. Several of his works were printed in
this decade, and among others his ephemerides, or calculations of the
places of the sun and moon, for the ensuing thirty years; the best,
though not strictly the first, that had been made in Europe.[396] His
more extensive productions did not appear till afterwards; and the
treatise on triangles, the most celebrated, not till 1533. The solution
of the more difficult cases, both in plane and spherical trigonometry,
is found in this work; and with the exception of what the science owes
to Napier, it may be said, that it advanced little for more than two
centuries after the age of Regiomontanus.[397] Purbach had computed a
table of sines to a radius of 600,000 parts. Regiomontanus, ignorant, as
has been thought, which appears very strange, of his master’s labours,
calculated them to 6,000,000 parts. But perceiving the advantages of a
decimal scale, he has given a second table, wherein the ratio of the
sines is computed to a radius of 10,000,000 parts, or, as we should say,
taking the latter as unity, to seven places of decimals. He subjoined
what he calls Canon Fæcundus, or a table of tangents, calculating them,
however, only for entire degrees to a radius of 100,000 parts.[398] It
has been said, that Regiomontanus was inclined to the theory of the
earth’s motion, which indeed Nicolas Cusanus had already espoused.
[394] This gnomon is by much the loftiest in Europe. It would be no
slight addition to the glory of Toscanelli if we should suppose him
to have suggested the discovery of a passage westward to the Indies
in a letter to Columbus, as his article in the Biographie
Universelle seems to imply. But the more accurate expressions of
Tiraboschi, referring to the correspondence between these great
men, leave Columbus in possession of the original idea, at least
concurrently with the Florentine astronomer, though the latter gave
him strong encouragement to persevere in his undertaking.
Toscanelli, however, had, on the authority of Marco Polo, imbibed
an exaggerated notion of the distance eastward to China; and
consequently believed, as Columbus himself did, that the voyage by
the west to that country would be far shorter than, if the
continent of America did not intervene, it could have been.
Tiraboschi, vi. 189, 207. Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. 20.
[395] Walther was more than a patron of science, honourable as that
name was. He made astronomical observations, worthy of esteem
relatively to the age. Montucla, i. 545. It is to be regretted that
Walther should have diminished the credit due to his name by
withholding from the public the manuscripts of Regiomontanus, which
he purchased after the latter’s death; so that some were lost by
the negligence of his own heirs, and the rest remained unpublished
till 1533.
[396] Gassendi, Vita Regiomontani. He speaks of them himself, as quas
vulgo vocant almanach; and Gassendi says, that some were extant in
manuscript at Paris, from 1442 to 1472. Those of Regiomontanus
contained eclipses, and other matters not in former almanacs.
[397] Hutton’s Logarithms, Introduction, p. 3.
[398] Kästner, i. 557.
|Arts of delineation.|
72. Though the arts of delineation do not properly come within the scope
of this volume, yet, so far as they are directly instrumental to
science, they ought not to pass unregarded. Without the tool that
presents figures to the eye, not the press itself could have diffused an
adequate knowledge either of anatomy or of natural history. As figures
cut in wooden blocks gave the first idea of letter-printing, and were
for some time associated with it, an obvious invention, when the latter
art became improved, was to arrange such blocks together with types in
the same page. We find, accordingly, about this time, many books adorned
or illustrated in this manner; generally with representations of saints,
or other ornamental delineations not of much importance; but in a few
instances with figures of plants and animals, or of human anatomy. The
Dyalogus creaturarum moralizatus, of which the first edition was
published at Gouda, 1480, seems to be nearly, if not altogether, the
earliest of these. It contains a series of fables with rude woodcuts, in
little more than outline. A second edition, printed at Antwerp in 1486,
repeats the same cuts, with the addition of one representing a church,
which is really elaborate.[399]
[399] Both these editions are in the British Museum. In the same
library is a copy of the exceedingly scarce work, Ortus Sanitatis.
Mogunt. 1491. The colophon, which may be read in De Bure (Sciences,
No. 1554), takes much credit for the carefulness of the
delineations. The wooden cuts of the plants, especially, are as
good as we usually find in the sixteenth century; the form of the
leaves and character of the plant are generally well preserved. The
animals are also tolerably figured, though with many exceptions,
and, on the whole, fall short of the plants. The work itself is a
compilation from the old naturalists, arranged alphabetically.
|Maps.|
|Geography.|
73. The art of engraving figures on plates of copper was nearly coëval
with that of printing, and is due either to Thomas Finiguerra about
1460, or to some German about the same time. It was not a difficult step
to apply this invention to the representation of geographical maps; and
this we owe to Arnold Buckinck, an associate of the printer Sweynheim.
His edition of Ptolemy’s geography appeared at Rome in 1478. These maps
are traced from those of Agathodæmon in the fifth century; and it has
been thought that Buckinck profited by the hints of Donis, a German
monk, who himself gave two editions of Ptolemy not long afterwards at
Ulm.[400] The fifteenth century had already witnessed an increasing
attention to geographical delineations. The libraries of Italy contain
several unpublished maps, of which that by Fra Mauro, a monk of the
order of Camaldoli, in the convent of Murano, near Venice, is the most
celebrated. It is still preserved there, and is said to attest the
cosmographical science of its delineator, such as he could derive from
Ptolemy, and from the astronomy of his own age.[401] Two causes, besides
the increase of commerce, and the gradual accumulation of knowledge, had
principally turned the thoughts of many towards the figure of the earth
on which they trod. Two translations, one of them by Emanuel
Chrysoloras, had been made early in the century, from the cosmography of
Ptolemy; and from his maps the geographers of Italy had learned the use
of parallels and meridians, which might a little, though inadequately,
restrain their arbitrary admeasurements of different countries.[402] But
the real discoveries of the Portuguese on the coast of Africa, under the
patronage of Don Henry, were of far greater importance in stimulating
and directing enterprise. In the academy founded by that illustrious
prince, nautical charts were first delineated in a method more useful to
the pilot, by projecting the meridians in parallel right lines,[403]
instead of curves on the surface of the sphere. This first step in
hydrographical science entitles Don Henry to the name of its founder.
And though these early maps and charts of the fifteenth century are to
us but a chaos of error and confusion, it was on them that the patient
eye of Columbus had rested through long hours of meditation, while
strenuous hope and unsubdued doubt were struggling in his soul.
[400] Biogr. Univ. Buckinck, Donis.
[401] Andrès, ix. 88. Corniani, iii. 162.
[402] Andrès, 86.
[403] Id. 83.
SECT. V. 1480-1490.
_Great Progress of Learning in Italy--Italian Poetry--Pulci--Metaphysical
Theology--Ficinus--Picus of Mirandola--Learning in Germany--Early
European Drama--Alberti and Leonardo da Vinci._
|Greek printed in Italy.|
74. The press of Italy was less occupied with Greek for several years
than might have been expected. But the number of scholars was still not
sufficient to repay the expenses of impression. The Psalter was
published in Greek twice at Milan in 1481, once at Venice in 1486.
Craston’s Lexicon was also once printed, and the Grammar of Lascaris
several times. The first classical work the printers ventured
upon, was Homer’s Battle of Frogs and Mice, published at Venice in 1486,
or, according to some, at Milan in 1485; the priority of the two
editions being disputed. But in 1488, under the munificent patronage of
Lorenzo, and by the care of Demetrius of Crete, a complete edition of
Homer issued from the press of Florence. This splendid work closes our
catalogue for the present.[404]
[404] See Maittaire’s character of this edition quoted in Roscoe’s
Leo X., ch. 21.
|Hebrew printed.|
75. The first Hebrew book, Jarchi’s commentary on the Pentateuch, had
been printed by some Jews at Reggio in Calabria, as early as 1475. In
this period a press was established at Soncino, where the Pentateuch was
published in 1482, the greater prophets in 1486, and the whole Bible in
1488. But this was intended for themselves alone. What little
instruction in Hebrew had anywhere hitherto been imparted to Christian
scholars, was only oral. The commencement of Hebrew learning, properly
so called, was not till about the end of the century, in the Franciscan
monasteries of Tubingen and Basle. Their first teacher, however, was an
Italian, by name Raimondi.[405]
[405] Eichhorn, ii. 562.
|Miscellanies of Politian.|
76. To enumerate every publication that might scatter a gleam of light
on the progress of letters in Italy, or to mention every scholar who
deserves a place in biographical collections, or in an extended history
of literature, would crowd these pages with too many names. We must
limit ourselves to those best deserving to be had in remembrance. In
1480, according to Meiners, or, as Heeren says, in 1483, Politian was
placed in the chair of Greek and Latin eloquence at Florence; a station
perhaps the most conspicuous and the most honourable which any scholar
could occupy. It is beyond controversy, that he stands at the head of
that class in the fifteenth century. The envy of some of his
contemporaries attested his superiority. In 1489, he published his once
celebrated Miscellanea, consisting of one hundred observations
illustrating passages of Latin authors, in the desultory manner of Aulus
Gellius, which is certainly the easiest, and perhaps the most agreeable
method of conveying information. They are sometimes grammatical; but
more frequently relate to obscure (at that time) customs or mythological
allusions. Greek quotations occur not seldom, and the author’s command
of classical literature seems considerable. Thus he explains, for
instance, the crambe repetita of Juvenal by a proverb mentioned in
Suidas, δὶς χρὰμβη θὰνατος: χρὰμβη [dis chrambê thanatos: chrambê] being
a kind of cabbage, which, when boiled a second time, was of course not
very palatable. This may serve to show the extent of learning which some
Italian scholars had reached through the assistance of the manuscripts
collected by Lorenzo. It is not improbable that no one in England at
that time had heard the name of Suidas. Yet the imperfect knowledge of
Greek which these early writers possessed, is shown when they attempt to
write it. Politian has some verses in his Miscellanea, but very bald,
and full of false quantities. This remark we may have occasion to
repeat; for it is applicable to much greater names in philology than
his.[406]
[406] Meiners has praised Politian’s Greek verses, but with very little
skill in such matters, p. 214. The compliments he quotes from
contemporary Greeks, non esse tam Atticas Athenas ipsas, may not
have been very sincere, unless they meant _esse_ to be taken in the
present tense. These Greeks, besides, knew but little of their
metrical language.
|Their character, by Heeren.|
77. The Miscellanies, Heeren says, were then considered an immortal
work; it was deemed an honour to be mentioned in them, and those who
missed this made it a matter of complaint. If we look at them now, we
are astonished at the different measure of glory in the present age.
This book probably sprung out of Politian’s lectures. He had cleared up
in these some difficult passages, which had led him on to further
inquiries. Some of his explanations might probably have arisen out of
the walks and rides he was accustomed to take with Lorenzo, who had
advised the publication of the Miscellanies. The manner in which these
explanations are given, the light, yet solid mode of handling the
subjects, and their great variety, give in fact a charm to the
Miscellanies of Politian which few antiquarian works possess. Their
success is not wonderful. They were fragments, and chosen fragments,
from the lectures of the most celebrated teacher of that age, whom many
had heard, but still more had wished to hear. Scarcely had a work
appeared in the whole fifteenth century, of which so vast expectations
had been entertained, and which was received with such curiosity.[407]
The very fault of Politian’s style, as it was that of Hermolaus
Barbarus, his affected intermixture of obsolete words, for which it is
necessary in almost every page of his Miscellanies to consult the
dictionary, would, in an age of pedantry, increase the admiration of his
readers.[408]
[407] Heeren, p. 263. Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen, &c., has written
the life of Politian, ii. 111-220, more copiously than any one I
have read. His character of the Miscellanies is in p. 136.
[408] Meiners, pp. 155, 209. In the latter passage Meiners censures
with apparent justice the affected words of Politian, some of which
he did not scruple to take from such writers as Apuleius and
Tertullian, with an inexcusable display of erudition at the expense
of good taste.
|His version of Herodian.|
78. Politian was the first that wrote the Latin language with much
elegance; and while every other early translator from the Greek has
incurred more or less of censure at the hands of judges whom better
learning had made fastidious, it is agreed by them that his Herodian has
all the spirit of his original, and frequently excels it.[409] Thus we
perceive that the age of Poggio, Filelfo, and Valla was already left far
behind by a new generation: these had been well employed as the pioneers
of ancient literature; but for real erudition and taste we must descend
to Politian, Christopher Landino, and Hermolaus Barbarus.[410]
[409] Huet. apud Blount in Politiano.
[410] Meiners, Roscoe, Corniani, Heeren, and Greswell’s Memoirs of
early Italian scholars, are the best authorities to whom the reader
can have recourse for the character of Politian, besides his own
works. I think, however, that Heeren has hardly done justice to
Politian’s poetry. Tiraboschi is unsatisfactory. Blount, as usual,
collects the suffrages of the sixteenth century.
|Cornucopia of Perotti.|
79. The Cornucopia sive Linguæ Latinæ Commentarii, by Nicolas Perotti,
bishop of Siponto, suggests rather more by its title than the work
itself seems to warrant. It is a copious commentary upon part of
Martial; in which he takes occasion to explain a vast many Latin words,
and has been highly extolled by Morhof, and by writers quoted in Baillet
and Blount. To this commentary is appended an alphabetical index of
words, which rendered it a sort of dictionary for the learned reader.
Perotti lived a little before this time; but the first edition seems to
have been in 1489. He also wrote a small Latin grammar, frequently
reprinted in the fifteenth century, and was an indifferent translator of
Polybius.[411]
[411] Heeren, 272, Morhof, i. 821, who calls Perotti the first compiler
of good Latin, from whom those who followed have principally
borrowed. See also Baillet and Blount for testimonies to Perotti.
|Latin poetry of Politian.|
80. We have not thought it worth while to mention the Latin poets of the
fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They are numerous, and somewhat
rude, from Petrarch and Boccace to Maphæus Vegius, the continuator of
the Æneid in a thirteenth book, first printed in 1471, and very
frequently afterwards. This is, probably, the best versification before
Politian. But his Latin poems display considerable powers of
description, and a strong feeling of the beauties of Roman poetry. The
style is imbued with these, not too ambitiously chosen, nor in the
manner called Centonism, but so as to give a general elegance to the
composition, and to call up pleasing associations in the reader of
taste. This, indeed, is the common praise of good versifiers in modern
Latin, and not peculiarly appropriate to Politian, who is inferior to
some who followed, though to none, as I apprehend, that preceded in that
numerous fraternity. His ear is good, and his rhythm, with a few
exceptions, musical and Virgilian. Some defects are nevertheless worthy
of notice. He is often too exuberant, and apt to accumulate details of
description. His words, unauthorised by any legitimate example, are very
numerous; a fault in some measure excusable by the want of tolerable
dictionaries; so that the memory was the only test of classical
precedent. Nor can we deny that Politian’s Latin poetry is sometimes
blemished by affected and effeminate expressions, by a too studious use
of repetitions, and by a love of diminutives, according to the fashion
of his native language, carried beyond all bounds that correct Augustan
latinity could possibly have endured. This last fault, and to a man of
good taste it is an unpleasing one, belongs to a great part of the
lyrical and even elegiac writers in modern Latin. The example of
Catullus would probably have been urged in excuse; but perhaps Catullus
went farther than the best judges approved; and nothing in his poems can
justify the excessive abuse of that effeminate grace, what the stern
Persius would have called, “summa delumbe saliva,” which pervades the
poetry both of Italian and Cisalpine Latinists for a long period. On the
whole, Politian, like many of his followers, is calculated to delight
and mislead a schoolboy, but may be read with pleasure by a man.[412]
[412] The extracts from Politian, and other Latin poets of Italy, by
Pope, in the two little volumes, entitled Poemata Italorum, are
extremely well chosen, and give a just measure of most of them.
|Italian poetry of Lorenzo.|
81. Amidst all the ardour for the restoration of classical literature in
Italy, there might seem reason to apprehend that native originality
would not meet its due reward, and even that the discouraging notion of
a degeneracy in the powers of the human mind might come to prevail.
Those who annex an exaggerated value to correcting an unimportant
passage in an ancient author, or, which is much the same, interpreting
some worthless inscription, can hardly escape the imputation of
pedantry; and doubtless this reproach might justly fall on many of the
learned in that age, as, with less excuse, it has often done upon their
successors. We have already seen that, for a hundred years, it was
thought unworthy a man of letters, even though a poet, to write in
Italian; and Politian, with his great patron Lorenzo, deserves no small
honour for having disdained the false vanity of the philologers. Lorenzo
stands at the head of the Italian poets of the fifteenth century in the
sonnet as well as in the light lyrical composition. His predecessors,
indeed, were not likely to remove the prejudice against vernacular
poetry. Several of his sonnets appear, both for elevation and elegance
of style, worthy of comparison with those of the next age. But perhaps
his most original claim to the title of a poet is founded upon the Canti
Carnascialeschi, or carnival songs, composed for the popular shows on
festivals. Some of these, which are collected in a volume printed in
1558, are by Lorenzo, and display a union of classical grace and
imitation with the native raciness of Florentine gaiety.[413]
[413] Corniani. Roscoe. Crescimbeni (della volgar poesia, ii. 324)
strongly asserts Lorenzo to be the restorer of poetry, which had
never been more barbarous than in his youth. But certainly the
Giostra of Politian was written while Lorenzo was very young.
|Pulci.|
82. But at this time appeared a poet of a truly modern school, in one of
Lorenzo’s intimate society, Luigi Pulci. The first edition of his
Morgante Maggiore, containing twenty-three cantos, to which five were
subsequently added, was published at Venice in 1481. The taste of the
Italians has always been strongly inclined to extravagant combinations
of fancy, caprices rapid and sportive as the animal from which they take
their name. The susceptible and versatile imaginations of that people,
and their habitual cheerfulness, enable them to render the serious and
terrible instrumental to the ridiculous, without becoming, like some
modern fictions, merely hideous and absurd.
|Character of Morgante Maggiore.|
83. The Morgante Maggiore was evidently suggested by some long romances
written within the preceding century in the octave stanza, for which the
fabulous chronicle of Turpin, and other fictions wherein the same real
and imaginary personages had been introduced, furnished the materials.
Under pretence of ridiculing the intermixture of sacred allusions with
the romantic legends, Pulci carried it to an excess; which, combined
with some sceptical insinuations of his own, seems clearly to display an
intention of exposing religion to contempt.[414] As to the heroes of his
romance, there can be, as it seems, no sort of doubt that he designed
them for nothing else than the butts of his fancy; that the reader might
scoff at those whom duller poets had held up to admiration. It has been
a question among Italian critics, whether the poem of Pulci is to be
reckoned burlesque.[415] This may seem to turn on the definition,
though I do not see what definition could be given, consistently with
the use of language, that would exclude it; it is intended as a
caricature of the poetical romances, and might even seem by anticipation
a satirical, though not ill-natured, parody on the Orlando Furioso. That
he meant to excite any other emotion than laughter cannot, as it seems,
be maintained; and a very few stanzas of a more serious character, which
may rarely be found, are not enough to make an exception to his general
design. The Morgante was to the poetical romances of chivalry, what Don
Quixote was to their brethren in prose.
[414] The story of Meridiana, in the eighth canto, is sufficient to
prove Pulci’s irony to have been exercised on religion. It is well
known to the readers of the Morgante. It has been alleged in the
Biographie Universelle, that he meant only to turn into ridicule
“ces muses mendiantes du 14me siècle,” the authors of la Spagna or
Buovo d’Antona, who were in the habit of beginning their songs with
scraps of the liturgy, and even of introducing theological
doctrines in the most absurd and misplaced style. Pulci has given
us much of the latter, wherein some have imagined that he had the
assistance of Ficinus.
[415] This seems to have been an old problem in Italy. Corniani,
ii. 302; and the gravity of Pulci has been maintained of late by
such respectable authorities as Foscolo and Panizzi. Ginguéné, who
does not go this length, thinks the death of Orlando, and his last
prayer, both pathetic and sublime. I can see nothing in it but the
systematic spirit of parody which we find in Pulci. But the lines
on the death of Forisena, in the fourth canto, are really graceful
and serious. The following remarks on Pulci’s style come from a
more competent judge than myself.
“There is something harsh in Pulci’s manner, owing to his abrupt
transition from one idea to another, and to his carelessness of
grammatical rules. He was a poet by nature, and wrote with ease,
but he never cared for sacrificing syntax to meaning; he did not
mind saying anything incorrectly, if he were but sure that his
meaning would be guessed. The rhyme very often compels him to
employ expressions, words, and even lines which frequently render
the sense obscure and the passage crooked, without producing any
other effect than that of destroying a fine stanza. He has no
similes of any particular merit, nor does he stand eminent in
description. His verses almost invariably make sense taken singly,
and convey distinct and separate ideas. Hence he wants that
richness, fulness, and smooth flow of diction, which is
indispensable to an epic poet, and to a noble description or
comparison. Occasionally, when the subject admits of a powerful
sketch which may be presented with vigour and spirit by a few
strokes boldly drawn, Pulci appears to a great advantage.”--Panizzi
on romantic poetry of Italians, in the first volume of his Orlando
Innamorato, p. 298.
84. A foreigner must admire the vivacity of the narrative, the humorous
gaiety of the characters, the adroitness of the satire. But the
Italians, and especially the Tuscans, delight in the raciness of Pulci’s
Florentine idiom, which we cannot equally relish. He has not been
without influence on men of more celebrity than himself. In several
passages of Ariosto, especially the visit of Astolfo to the moon, we
trace a resemblance not wholly fortuitous. Voltaire, in one of his most
popular poems, took the dry archness of Pulci, and exaggerated the
profaneness, superadding the obscenity from his own stores. But Mr.
Frere, with none of these two ingredients in his admirable vein of
humour, has come, in the War of the Giants, much closer to the Morgante
Maggiore than any one else.
|Platonic theology of Ficinus.|
85. The Platonic academy, in which the chief of the Medici took so much
delight, did not fail to reward his care. Marsilius Ficinus, in his
Theologica Platonica (1482), developed a system chiefly borrowed from
the later Platonists of the Alexandrian school, full of delight to the
credulous imagination, though little appealing to the reason, which, as
it seemed remarkably to coincide in some respects with the received
tenets of the church, was connived at in a few reveries, which could not
so well bear the test of an orthodox standard. He supported his
philosophy by a translation of Plato into Latin, executed at the
direction of Lorenzo, and printed before 1490. Of this translation Buhle
has said, that it has been very unjustly reproached with want of
correctness; it is, on the contrary, perfectly conformable to the
original, and has even, in some passages, enabled us to restore the
text; the manuscripts used by Ficinus, I presume, not being in our
hands. It has also the rare merit of being at once literal, perspicuous,
and in good Latin.[416]
[416] Hist. de la Philosophie, vol. ii. The fullest account of the
philosophy of Ficinus has been given by Buhle. Those who seek less
minute information may have recourse to Brucker or Corniani; or, if
they are content with still less, to Tiraboschi, Roscoe, Heeren, or
the Biographie Universelle.
|Doctrine of Averroes on the soul.|
86. But the Platonism of Ficinus was not wholly that of the master. It
was based on the emanation of the human soul from God, and its capacity
of reunion by an ascetic and contemplative life; a theory perpetually
reproduced in various modifications of meaning, and far more of words.
The nature and immortality of the soul, the functions and distinguishing
characters of angels, the being and attributes of God, engaged the
thoughtful mind of Ficinus. In the course of his high speculations he
assailed a doctrine, which, though rejected by Scotus and most of the
schoolmen, had gained much ground among the Aristotelians, as they
deemed themselves, of Italy; a doctrine first held by Averroes; that
there is one common intelligence, active, immortal, indivisible,
unconnected with matter, the soul of human kind, which is not in any one
man, because it has no material form, but which yet assists in the
rational operations of each man’s personal soul, and from those
operations which are all conversant with particulars, derives its own
knowledge of universals. Thus, if I understand what is meant, which is
rather subtle, it might be said, that as in the common theory particular
sensations furnish means to the soul of forming general ideas, so, in
that of Averroes, the ideas and judgments of separate human souls
furnish collectively the means of that knowledge of universals, which
the one great soul of mankind alone can embrace. This was a theory
built, as some have said, on the bad Arabic version of Aristotle which
Averroes used. But, whatever might have first suggested it to the
philosopher of Cordova, it seems little else than an expansion of the
Realist hypothesis, urged to a degree of apparent paradox. For if the
human soul, as an universal, possess an objective reality, it must
surely be intelligent; and, being such, it may seem no extravagant
hypothesis, though one incapable of that demonstration we now require in
philosophy, to suppose that it acts upon the subordinate intelligences
of the same species, and receives impressions from them. By this also
they would reconcile the knowledge we were supposed to possess of the
reality of universals, with the acknowledged impossibility, at least in
many cases, of representing them to the mind.
|Opposed by Ficinus.|
87. Ficinus is the more prompt to refute the Averroists, that they all
maintained the mortality of the particular soul, while it was his
endeavour, by every argument that erudition and ingenuity could supply,
to prove the contrary. The whole of his Platonic Theology appears a
beautiful, but too visionary and hypothetical, system of theism, the
groundworks of which lay deep in the meditations of ancient oriental
sages. His own treatise, of which a very copious account will be found
in Buhle, soon fell into oblivion; but it belongs to a class of
literature, which, in all its extension, has, full as much as any other,
engaged the human mind.
|Desire of man to explore mysteries.|
88. The thirst for hidden knowledge, by which man is distinguished from
brutes, and the superior races of men from savage tribes, burns
generally with more intenseness in proportion as the subject is less
definitely comprehensible, and the means of certainty less attainable.
Even our own interest in things beyond the sensible world does not
appear to be the primary or chief source of the desire we feel to be
acquainted with them; it is the pleasure of belief itself, of
associating the conviction of reality with ideas not presented by sense;
it is sometimes the necessity of satisfying a restless spirit, that
first excites our endeavour to withdraw the veil that conceals the
mystery of their being. The few great truths in religion that reason
discovers, or that an explicit revelation deigns to communicate,
sufficient as they may be for our practical good, have proved to fall
very short of the ambitious curiosity of man. They leave so much
imperfectly known, so much wholly unexplored, that in all ages he has
never been content without trying some method of filling up the void.
These methods have often led him to folly, and weakness, and crime. Yet
as those who want the human passions, in their excess the great
fountains of evil, seem to us maimed in their nature, so an indifference
to this knowledge of invisible things, or a premature despair of
attaining it, may be accounted an indication of some moral or
intellectual deficiency, some scantness of due proportion in the mind.
|Various methods employed.|
|Reason and inspiration.|
89. The means to which recourse has been had to enlarge the boundaries
of human knowledge in matters relating to the Deity, or to such of his
intelligent creatures as do not present themselves in ordinary
objectiveness to our senses, have been various, and may be distributed
into several classes. Reason itself, as the most valuable, though not
the most frequent in use, may be reckoned the first. Whatever deductions
have suggested themselves to the acute, or analogies to the observant
mind, whatever has seemed the probable interpretation of revealed
testimony, is the legitimate province of a sound and rational theology.
But so fallible appears the reason of each man to others, and often so
dubious are its inferences to himself, so limited is the span of our
faculties, so incapable are they of giving more than a vague and
conjectural probability, where we demand most of definiteness and
certainty, that few, comparatively speaking, have been content to
acquiesce even in their own hypothesis upon no other grounds than
argument has supplied. The uneasiness that is apt to attend suspense of
belief has required, in general, a more powerful remedy. Next to those
who have solely employed their rational faculties in theology, we may
place those who have relied on a supernatural illumination. These have
nominally been many; but the imagination, like the reason, bends under
the incomprehensibility of spiritual things; a few excepted, who have
become founders of sects, and lawgivers to the rest, the mystics fell
into a beaten track, and grew mechanical even in their enthusiasm.
|Extended inferences from sacred books.|
90. No solitary and unconnected meditations, however, either of the
philosopher or the mystic, could furnish a sufficiently extensive stock
of theological faith for the multitude, who, by their temper and
capacities, were more prone to take it at the hands of others than
choose any tenets for themselves. They looked, therefore, for some
authority upon which to repose; and instead of builders, became as it
were occupants of mansions prepared for them by more active minds. Among
those who acknowledged a code of revealed truths, the Jews, Christians,
and Mahometans, this authority has been sought in largely expansive
interpretations of their sacred books; either of positive obligation, as
the decisions of general councils were held to be, or at least of such
weight as a private man’s reason, unless he were of great name himself,
was not permitted to contravene. These expositions, in the Christian
Church, as well as among the Jews, were frequently allegorical; a hidden
stream of esoteric truth was supposed to flow beneath all the surface of
Scripture; and every text germinated, in the hands of the preacher, into
meanings far from obvious, but which were presumed to be not undesigned.
This scheme of allegorical interpretation began among the earliest
fathers, and spread with perpetual expansion through the middle
ages.[417] The Reformation swept most of it away; but it has frequently
revived in a more partial manner. We mention it here only as one great
means of enabling men to believe more than they had done, of
communicating to them what was to be received as divine truths, not
additional to Scripture, because they were concealed in it, but such as
the church could only have learned through its teachers.
[417] Fleury (5me discours), xvii. 37. Mosheim, passim.
|Confidence in traditions.|
91. Another large class of religious opinions stood on a somewhat
different footing. They were in a proper sense, according to the notions
of those times, revealed from God; though not in the sacred writings
which were the chief depositories of his word. Such were the received
traditions in each of the three great religions, sometimes, absolutely
infallible, sometimes, as in the former case of interpretations, resting
upon such a basis of authority, that no one was held at liberty to
withhold his assent. The Jewish traditions were of this kind; and the
Mahometans have trod in the same path, we may add to these the legends
of saints: none, perhaps, were positively enforced as of faith; but a
Franciscan was not to doubt the inspiration and miraculous gifts of his
founder. Nor was there any disposition in the people to doubt of them;
they filled up with abundant measure the cravings of the heart and
fancy, till, having absolutely palled both by excess, they brought about
a kind of reaction, which has taken off much of their efficacy.
|Confidence in individuals as inspired.|
92. Francis of Assisi may naturally lead us to the last mode in which
the spirit of theological belief manifested itself; the confidence in a
particular man, as the organ of a special divine illumination. But
though this was fully assented to by the order he instituted, and
probably by most others, it cannot be said that Francis pretended to set
up any new tenets, or enlarge, except by his visions and miracles, the
limits of spiritual knowledge. Nor would this, in general, have been a
safe proceeding in the middle ages. Those who made a claim to such light
from heaven as could irradiate what the church had left dark seldom
failed to provoke her jealousy. It is, therefore, in later times, and
under more tolerant governments, that we shall find the fanatics, or
impostors, whom the multitude has taken for witnesses of divine truth,
or at least as interpreters of the mysteries of the invisible world.
|Jewish Cabbala.|
93. In the class of traditional theology, or what might be called
complemental revelation, we must place the Jewish Cabbala. This
consisted in a very specific and complex system, concerning the nature
of the Supreme being, the emanation of various orders of spirits in
successive links from his essence, their properties and characters. It
is evidently one modification of the oriental philosophy, borrowing
little from the Scriptures, at least through any natural interpretation
of them, and the offspring of the Alexandrian Jews, not far from the
beginning of the Christian æra. They referred it to a tradition from
Esdras, or some other eminent person, on whom they fixed as the
depositary of an esoteric theology communicated by divine authority. The
Cabbala was received by the Jewish doctors in the first centuries after
the fall of their state; and after a period of long duration, as
remarkable for the neglect of learning in that people as in the
Christian world, it revived again in that more genial season, the
eleventh and twelfth centuries, when the brilliancy of many kinds of
literature among the Saracens of Spain excited their Jewish subjects to
emulation. Many conspicuous men illustrate the Hebrew learning of those
and the succeeding ages. It was not till now, about the middle of the
fifteenth century, that they came into contact with the Christians in
theological philosophy. The Platonism of Ficinus, derived, in great
measure, from that of Plotinus and the Alexandrian school, was easily
connected, by means especially of the writings of Philo, with the Jewish
orientalism, sisters as they were of the same family. Several forgeries
in celebrated names, easy to affect and sure to deceive, had been
committed in the first ages of Christianity by the active propagators of
this philosophy. Hermes Trismegistus, and Zoroaster, were counterfeited
in books which most were prone to take for genuine, and which it was not
then easy to refute on critical grounds. These altogether formed a huge
mass of imposture, or, at best, of arbitrary hypothesis, which, for more
than a hundred years after this time, obtained an undue credence, and
consequently retarded the course of real philosophy in Europe.[418]
[418] Brucker, vol. ii. Buhle, ii. 316. Meiners, Vergl. der Sitten,
iii. 277.
|Picus of Mirandola.|
94. They never gained over a more distinguished proselyte, or one whose
credulity was more to be regretted, than a young man who appeared at
Florence in 1485, John Picus of Mirandola. He was then twenty-two years
old, the younger son of an illustrious family, which held that little
principality as an imperial fief. At the age of fourteen he was sent to
Bologna, that he might study the canon law, with a view to the
ecclesiastical profession; but after two years he felt an inexhaustible
desire for more elevated though less profitable sciences. He devoted the
next six years to the philosophy of the schools, in the chief
universities of Italy and France: whatever disputable subtilties the
metaphysics and theology of that age could supply, became familiar to
his mind; but to these he added a knowledge of the Hebrew and other
eastern languages, a power of writing Latin with grace, and of amusing
his leisure with the composition of Italian poetry. The natural genius
of Picus is well shown, though in a partial manner, by a letter which
will be found among those of Politian, in answer to Hermolaus Barbarus.
His correspondent had spoken with the scorn, and almost bitterness,
usual with philologers, of the Transalpine writers, meaning chiefly the
schoolmen, for the badness of their Latin. The young scholastic
answered, that he had been at first disheartened by the reflection that
he had lost six years’ labour; but considered afterwards, that the
barbarians might say something for themselves, and puts a very good
defence in their mouths; a defence which wants nothing but the truth of
what he is forced to assume, that they had been employing their
intellects upon things instead of words. Hermolaus found, however,
nothing better to reply than the compliment, that Picus would be
disavowed by the schoolmen for defending them in so eloquent a
style.[419]
[419] The letter of Hermolaus is dated Apr. 1485. He there says, after
many compliments to Picus himself: Nec enim inter autores Latinæ
linguæ numero Germanos istos et Teutonas qui ne viventes quidem
vivebant, nedum ut extincti vivant, aut si vivunt, vivunt in pœnam
et contumeliam. The answer of Picus is dated in June. A few lines
from his pleading for the schoolmen will exhibit his ingenuity and
elegance. Admirenture nos sagaces in inquirendo, circumspectors in
explorando, subtiles in contemplando, in judicando graves,
implicitos in vinciendo, faciles in enodando. Admirentur in nobis
brevitatem styli, fœtam rerum multarum atque magnarum, sub
expositis verbis remotissimas sententias, plenas quæstionum, plenas
solutionum, quam apti sumus, quam bene instructi ambiguitates
tollere, scrupos diluere, involuta evolvere, flexanimis syllogismis
et infirmare falso et vera confirmare. Viximus celebres, o
Hermolae, et posthac vivemus, non in scholis grammaticorum et
pædagogiis, sed in philosophorum coronis, in conventibus sapientum,
ubi non de matre Andromaches, non de Niobes filiis, atque id genus
levibus nugis, sed de humanarum divinarumque rerum rationibus
agitur et disputatur. In quibus meditandis, inquirendis et
enodandis, ita subtiles acuti acresque fuimus, ut anxii quandoque
nimium et morosi fuisse forte videamur, si modo esse morosus
quispiam aut curiosus nimio plus in indagando veritate potest.
Polit. Epist. lib. 9.
|His credulity in the Cabbala.|
95. He learned Greek very rapidly, probably after his coming to Florence.
And having been led, through Ficinus, to the study of Plato, he seems to
have given up his Aristotelian philosophy for theories more congenial to
his susceptible and credulous temper. These led him onwards to wilder
fancies. Ardent in the desire of knowledge, incapable, in the infancy of
criticism, to discern authentic from spurious writings, and perhaps
disqualified, by his inconceivable rapidity in apprehending the opinions
of others from judging acutely of their reasonableness, Picus of
Mirandola fell an easy victim to his own enthusiasm and the snares of
fraud. An impostor persuaded him to purchase fifty Hebrew manuscripts,
as having been composed by Esdras, and containing the most secret
mysteries of the Cabbala. From this time, says Corniani, he imbibed more
and more such idle fables, and wasted in dreams a genius formed to reach
the most elevated and remote truths. In these spurious books of Esdras,
he was astonished to find, as he says, more of Christianity than
Judaism, and trusted them the more confidently for the very reason that
demonstrates their falsity.[420]
[420] Corniani, iii. 63. Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer
ii. 21. Tiraboschi, vii. 325.
|His literary performances.|
96. Picus, about the end of 1486, repaired to Rome, and with permission
of Innocent VIII., propounded his famous nine hundred theses, or
questions, logical, ethical, mathematical, physical, metaphysical,
theological, magical, and cabbalistical; upon every one of which he
offered to dispute with any opponent. Four hundred of these propositions
were from philosophers of Greece or Arabia, from the schoolmen, or from
the Jewish doctors; the rest were announced as his own opinions, which,
saving the authority of the church, he was willing to defend.[421] There
was some need of this reservation; for several of his theses were
ill-sounding, as it was called, in the ears of the orthodox. They raised
a good deal of clamour against him; and the high rank, brilliant
reputation, and obedient demeanour of Picus were all required to save
him from public censure or more serious animadversions. He was
compelled, however, to swear that he would adopt such an exposition of
his theses as the pope should set forth. But as this was not done, he
published an apology, especially vindicating his employment of
cabbalistical and magical learning. This excited fresh attacks, which in
some measure continued to harass him, till, on the accession of
Alexander VI. to the papal chair, he was finally pronounced free from
blameable intention. He had meantime, as we may infer from his later
writings, receded from some of the bolder opinions of his youth. His
mind became more devout, and more fearful of deviating from the church.
On his first appearance at Florence, uniting rare beauty with high birth
and unequalled renown, he had been much sought by women, and returned
their love. But at the age of twenty-five he withdrew himself from all
worldly distraction, destroying, as it is said, his own amatory poems,
to the regret of his friends.[422] He now published several works, of
which the Heptaplus is a cabbalistic exposition of the first chapter of
Genesis. It is remarkable that, with his excessive tendency to belief,
he rejected altogether, and confuted in a distinct treatise, the popular
science of astrology, in which men so much more conspicuous in
philosophy have trusted. But he had projected many other undertakings of
vast extent; an allegorical exposition of the New Testament, a defence
of the Vulgate and Septuagint against the Jews, a vindication of
Christianity against every species of infidelity and heresy; and
finally, a harmony of philosophy, reconciling the apparent
inconsistencies of all writers, ancient and modern, who deserved the
name of wise, as he had already attempted by Plato and Aristotle. In
these arduous labours he was cut off by a fever at the age of
thirty-one, in 1494, on the very day that Charles VIII. made his entry
into Florence. A man, so justly called the phœnix of his age, and so
extraordinarily gifted by nature, ought not to be slightly passed over,
though he may have left nothing which we could read with advantage. If
we talk of the admirable Crichton, who is little better than a shadow,
and lives but in panegyric, so much superior and more wonderful a person
as John Picus of Mirandola should not be forgotten.[423]
[421] Meiners, p. 14.
[422] Meiners, p. 10.
[423] The long biography of Picus in Meiners is in great measure taken
from a life written by his nephew, John Francis Picus, count of
Mirandola, himself a man of great literary and philosophical
reputation in the next century. Meiners has made more use of this
than any one else; but much will be found concerning Picus, from
this source, and from his own works, in Brucker, Buhle, Corniani,
and Tiraboschi. The epitaph on Picus by Hercules Strozza is, I
believe, in the church of St. Mark:--
Joannes jacet hic Mirandola; cætera nôrunt
Et Tagus et Ganges; forsan et Antipodes.
|State of learning in Germany.|
|Agricola.|
97. If, leaving the genial city of Florence, we are to judge of the
state of knowledge in our Cisalpine regions, and look at the books it
was thought worth while to publish, which seems no bad criterion, we
shall rate but lowly their proficiency in the classical literature so
much valued in Italy. Four editions, and those chiefly of short works,
were printed at Deventer, one at Cologne, one at Louvain, five perhaps
at Paris, two at Lyons.[424] But a few undated books might, probably, be
added. Either, therefore, the love of ancient learning had grown colder,
which was certainly not the case, or it had never been strong enough to
reward the labour of the too sanguine printers. Yet it was now striking
root in Germany. The excellent schools of Munster and Schelstadt were
established in some part of this decade; they trained those who were
themselves to become instructors; and the liberal zeal of Langius
extending beyond his immediate disciples, scarce any Latin author was
published in Germany in which he did not correct the text.[425] The
opportunities he had of doing so were not, as has been just
seen, so numerous in this period as they became in the next. He had to
withstand a potent and obstinate faction. The mendicant friars of
Cologne, the head-quarters of barbarous superstition, clamoured against
his rejection of the old school-books, and the entire reform of
education. But Agricola addresses his friend in sanguine language: “I
entertain the greatest hope from your exertions, that we shall one day
wrest from this insolent Italy her vaunted glory of pre-eminent
eloquence; and redeeming ourselves from the opprobrium of ignorance,
barbarism, and incapacity of expression which she is ever casting upon
us, may show our Germany so deeply learned, that Latium itself shall not
be more Latin than she will appear.”[426] About 1482, Agricola was
invited to the court of the elector palatine at Heidelberg. He seems not
to have been engaged in public instruction, but passed the remainder of
his life, unfortunately too short, for he died in 1485, in diffusing and
promoting a taste for literature among his contemporaries. No German
wrote in so pure a style, or possessed so large a portion of classical
learning. Vives places him in dignity and grace of language even above
Politian and Hermolaus.[427] The praises of Erasmus, as well as of the
later critics, if not so marked, are very freely bestowed. His letters
are frequently written in Greek; a fashion of those who could; and as
far as I have attended to them, seem equal in correctness to some from
men of higher name in the next age.
[424] Panzer.
[425] Meiners, Lebensbesch. ii. 328. Eichhorn, iii. 231-239.
[426] Unum hoc tibi affirmo, ingentem de te concipio fiduciam,
summamque in spem adducor, fore aliquando, ut priscam insolenti
Italiæ, et propemodum occupatam bene dicendi gloriam extorqueamus;
vindicemusque nos, et ab ignavia, qua nos barbaros, indoctosque et
elingues, et si quid est his incultius, esse nos jactitant,
exsolvamus, futuramque tam doctam et literatam Germaniam nostram,
ut non Latinius vel ipsum sit Latium. This is quoted by Heeren, p.
154, and Meiners, ii. 329.
[427] Vix et hac nostra et patrum memoria fuit unus atque alter dignior,
qui multum legeretur, multumque in manibus haberetur, quam
Radulphus Agricola Frisius; tantum est in ejus operibus ingenii,
artis, gravitatis, dulcedinis, eloquentiæ, eruditionis; at is
paucissimis noscitur, vir non minus, qui ab hominibus
cognosceretur, dignus quam Politianus, vel Hermolaus Barbarus, quos
mea quidem sententia, et majestate et suavitate dictionis non æquat
modo, sed etiam vincit. Vives, Comment. in Augustin. (apud Blount,
Censura Auctorum, sub nomine Agricola.)
Agnosco virum divini pectoris, eruditionis reconditæ, stylo minime
vulgari, solidum, nervosum elaboratum, compositum. In Italia summus
esse poterat, nisi Germanium prætulisset. Erasmus in Ciceroniano.
He speaks as strongly in many other places. Testimonies to the
merits of Agricola from Huet, Vossius, and others, are collected by
Bayle, Blount, Baillet, and Niceron. Meiners has written his life,
ii. pp. 332-363; and several of his letters will be found among
those addressed to Reuchlin, Epistolæ ad Reuchlinum; a collection
of great importance for this portion of literary history.
|Rhenish academy.|
98. The immediate patron of Agricola, through whom he was invited to
Heidelberg, was John Camerarius, of the house of Dalberg, bishop of
Worms, and chancellor of the Palatinate. He contributed much himself to
the cause of letters in Germany; especially if he is to be deemed the
founder, as probably he should be, of an early academy, the Rhenish
Society, which, we are told, devoted its time to Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew criticism, astronomy, music, and poetry; not scorning to relax
their minds with dances and feasts, nor forgetting the ancient German
attachment to the flowing cup.[428] The chief seat of the Rhenish
Society was at Heidelberg; but it had associate branches in other parts
of Germany, and obtained imperial privileges. No member of this academy
was more conspicuous than Conrad Celtes, who has sometimes been reckoned
its founder, which, from his youth, is hardly probable, and was, at
least, the chief instrument of its subsequent extension. He was
indefatigable in the vineyard of literature, and, travelling to
different parts of Germany, exerted a more general influence than
Agricola himself. Celtes was the first from whom Saxony derived some
taste for learning. His Latin poetry was far superior to any that had
been produced in the empire; and for this, in 1487, he received the
laurel crown from Frederic III.[429]
[428] Studebant eximia hæc ingenia Latinorum, Græcorum, Ebræorumque
scriptorum lectioni, cumprimis criticæ; astronomiam et artem
musicam excolebant. Poesin atque jurisprudentiam sibi habebant
commendatam; imo et interdum gaudia curis interponebant. Nocturno
nimirum tempore, defessi laboribus, ludere solebant, saltare,
jocari cum mulierculis, epulari, ac more Germanorum inveterato
strenue potare. Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, p. 1993 (vol. iii.). The
passage seems to be taken from Ruprecht, Oratio de Societate
Litteraria Rhenana, Jenæ, 1752, which I have not seen.
[429] Jugler, ubi suprà. Eichhorn, ii. 557. Heeren, p. 100. Biogr.
Universelle, art. Celtes, Dalberg, Trithemius.
|Reuchlin.|
99. Reuchlin, in 1482, accompanied the duke of Wirtemberg on a visit to
Rome. He thus became acquainted with the illustrious men of
Italy, and convinced them of his own pretensions to the name of a
scholar. The old Constantinopolitan Argyropulus, on hearing him
translate a passage of Thucydides, exclaimed, “Our banished Greece has
now flown beyond the Alps.” Yet Reuchlin, though from some other
circumstances of his life a more celebrated, was not probably so learned
or so accomplished a man as Agricola; he was withdrawn from public
tuition by the favour of several princes, in whose courts he filled
honourable offices; and after some years more, he fell unfortunately
into the same seducing error as Picus of Mirandola, and sacrificed his
classical pursuits for the Cabbalistic philosophy.
|French language and poetry.|
100. Though France contributed little to the philologer, several books
were now published in French. In the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, 1486, a
slight improvement in polish of language is said to be discernible.[430]
The poems of Villon are rather of more importance. They were first
published in 1489; but many of them had been written thirty years
before. Boileau has given Villon credit for being the first who cleared
his style from the rudeness and redundancy of the old romancers.[431]
But this praise, as some have observed, is more justly due to the duke
of Orleans, a man of full as much talent as Villon, with a finer taste.
The poetry of the latter, as might be expected from a life of
dissoluteness and roguery, is often low and coarse; but he seems by no
means incapable of a moral strain, not destitute of terseness and
spirit. Martial d’Auvergne, in his Vigiles de la Mort de Charles VII.,
which, from its subject, must have been written soon after 1460, though
not printed till 1490, displays, to judge from the extracts in Goujet,
some compass of imagination.[432] The French poetry of this age was
still full of allegorical morality, and had lost a part of its original
raciness. Those who desire an acquaintance with it may have recourse to
the author just mentioned, or to Bouterwek; and extracts, though not so
copious as the title promises, will be found in the Recueil des Anciens
Poètes Français.
[430] Essai du C. François de Neufchâteau sur les meilleurs ouvrages
en prose; prefixed to Œuvres de Pascal (1819), i. p. cxx.
[431] Villon fut le primer dans des siècles grossiers
Debrouiller l’art confus de nos vieux romanciers.
Art Poétique, l. i. v. 117.
[432] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, vol. x.
|European drama.|
|Latin.|
101. The modern drama of Europe is derived, like its poetry, from two
sources, the one ancient or classical, the other mediæval; the one an
imitation of Plautus and Seneca, the other a gradual refinement of the
rude scenic performances, denominated miracles, mysteries, or
moralities. Latin plays upon the former model, a few of which are
extant, were written in Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries, and sometimes represented, either in the universities, or
before an audience of ecclesiastics and others who could understand
them.[433] One of these, the Catinia of Secco Polentone, written about
the middle of the fifteenth century, and translated by a son of the
author into the Venetian dialect, was printed in 1482. This piece,
however, was confined to the press.[434] Sabellicus, as quoted by
Tiraboschi, has given to Pomponius Lætus the credit of having
re-established the theatre at Rome, and caused the plays of Plautus
Terence, as well as some more modern, which we may presume to have been
in Latin, to be performed before the pope, probably Sixtus IV. And James
of Volterra, in a diary published by Muratori, expressly mentions a
History of Constantine represented in the papal palace during the
carnival of 1484.[435] In imitation of Italy, but, perhaps, a little
after the present decennial period, Reuchlin brought Latin plays of his
own composition before a German audience. They were represented by
students of Heidelberg. An edition of his Progymnasmata Scenica,
containing some of these comedies, was printed in 1498. It has been said
that one of them is taken from the French farce Maitre Patelin[436];
while another, entitled Sergius, according to Warton, flies a much
higher pitch, and is a satire on bad kings and bad ministers; though,
from the account of Meiners, it seems rather to fall on the fraudulent
arts of the monks.[437] The book is very scarce, and I have never seen
it. Conrad Celtes, not long after Reuchlin, produced his own tragedies
and comedies in the public halls of German cities. It is to be
remembered, that the oral Latin language might at that time be tolerably
familiar to a considerable audience in Germany.
[433] Tiraboschi, vii. 200.
[434] Id. p. 201.
[435] Id. p. 204.
[436] Greswell’s Early Parisian Press, p. 124; quoting la Monnoye. This
seems to be confirmed by Meiners, i. 63.
[437] Warton, iii. 203. Meiners, i. 62. The Sergius was represented at
Heidelberg about 1497.
|Orfeo of Politian.|
102. The Orfeo of Politian has claimed precedence as the earliest
represented drama, not of a religious nature, in a modern language. This
was written by him in two days, and acted before the court of Mantua in
1483. Roscoe has called it the first example of the musical drama, or
Italian opera; but though he speaks of this as agreed by general
consent, it is certain that the Orfeo was not designed for musical
accompaniment, except, probably, in the songs and choruses.[438]
According to the analysis of the fable in Ginguéné, the Orfeo differs
only from a legendary mystery by substituting one set of characters for
another; and it is surely by an arbitrary definition that we pay it the
compliment upon which the modern historians of literature seem to have
agreed. Several absurdities which appear in the first edition are said
not to exist in the original manuscripts from which the Orfeo has been
reprinted.[439] We must give the next place to a translation of the
Menæchmi of Plautus, acted at Ferrara in 1486, by order of Ercole I.,
and, as some have thought, his own production, or to some original plays
said to have been performed at the same brilliant court in the following
years.[440]
[438] Burney (Hist. of Music, iv. 17) seems to countenance this; but
Tiraboschi does not speak of musical accompaniment to the Orfeo;
and Corniani only says, alcuni di essi sembrano dall’autor
destinati ad accoppiarsi colla musica. Tali sono i canzoni e i cori
alla Greca. Probably Roscoe did not mean all that his words imply;
for the origin of recitative, in which the essence of the Italian
opera consists, more than a century afterwards, is matter of
notoriety.
[439] Tiraboschi, vii. 216. Ginguéné, iii. 514. Andrès (v. 125),
discussing the history of the Italian and Spanish theatres,
gives the precedence to the Orfeo as a represented play, though he
conceives the first act of the Celestina to have been written and
well known not later than the middle of the fifteenth century.
[440] Tiraboschi, vii. 203, et post. Roscoe, Leo X., ch. ii. Ginguéné,
vi. 18.
|Origin of dramatic mysteries.|
103. The less regular, though in their day not less interesting, class
of scenical stories, commonly called mysteries, all of which related to
religious subjects, were never in more reputation than at this time. It
is impossible to fix their first appearance at any single æra, and the
inquiry into the origin of dramatic representation must be very limited
in its subject, or perfectly futile in its scope. All nations, probably,
have at all times, to a certain extent, amused themselves both with
pantomimic and oral representation of a feigned story; the sports of
children are seldom without both; and the exclusive employment of the
former, instead of being a first stage of the drama, as has sometimes
been assumed, is rather a variety in the course of its progress.
|Their early stage.|
104. The Christian drama arose on the ruins of the heathen theatre: it
was a natural substitute of real sympathies for those which were effaced
and condemned. Hence we find Greek tragedies on sacred subjects almost
as early as the establishment of the church, and we have testimonies to
their representation at Constantinople. Nothing of this kind being
proved with respect to the west of Europe in the dark ages, it has been
conjectured, not improbably, though without necessity, that the
pilgrims, of whom great numbers repaired to the East in the eleventh
century, might have obtained notions of scenical dialogue, with a
succession of characters, and with an ornamental apparatus, in which
theatrical representation properly consists. The earliest mention of
them, it has been said, is in England. Geoffrey, afterwards abbot of St.
Albans, while teaching a school at Dunstable, caused one of the shows,
vulgarly called miracles, on the story of St. Catherine, to be
represented in that town. Such is the account of Matthew Paris, who
mentions the circumstance incidentally, in consequence of a fire that
ensued. This must have been within the first twenty years of the twelfth
century.[441] It is not to be questioned, that Geoffrey, a native of
France, had some earlier models in his own country. Le Bœuf gives an
account of a mystery written in the middle of the preceding century,
wherein Virgil is introduced among the prophets that come to adore the
Saviour; doubtless in allusion to the fourth eclogue.
[441] Matt. Paris, p. 1007 (edit. 1684). See Warton’s 34th section
(iii. 193-233), for the early drama, and Beauchamps, Hist. du
Théâtre Français, vol. i., or Bouterwek, v. 95-117, for the French
in particular; Tiraboschi, ubi suprà, or Riccoboni, Hist. du
Théâtre Italien, for that of Italy.
|Extant English mysteries.|
105. Fitz-Stephen, in the reign of Henry II., dwells on the sacred plays
acted in London, representing the miracles or passions of martyrs. They
became very common by the names of mysteries or miracles, both in
England and on the Continent, and were not only exhibited within the
walls of convents, but upon public occasions and festivals for the
amusement of the people. It is probable, however, that the performers
for a long time were always ecclesiastics. The earlier of those
religious dramas were in Latin. A Latin farce exists on St. Nicholas,
older than the thirteenth century.[442] It was slowly that the
modern languages were employed; and perhaps it might hence be presumed,
that the greater part of the story was told through pantomime. But as
this was unsatisfactory, and the spectators could not always follow the
fable, there was an obvious inducement to make use of the vernacular
language. The most ancient specimens appear to be those which Le Grand
d’Aussy found among the compositions of the Trouveurs. He has published
extracts from three; two of which are in the nature of legendary
mysteries, while the third, which is far more remarkable, and may
possibly be of the following century, is a pleasing pastoral drama, of
which there seem to be no other instances in the mediæval period.[443]
Bouterwek mentions a fragment of a German mystery, near the end of the
thirteenth century.[444] Next to this it seems that we should place an
English mystery called The Harrowing of Hell. “This,” its editor
observes, “is believed to be the most ancient production in a dramatic
form in our language. The manuscript from which it is now printed is on
vellum, and is certainly as old as the reign of Edward III., if not
older. It probably formed one of a series of performances of the same
kind, founded upon Scripture history.” It consists of a prologue,
epilogue, and intermediate dialogue of nine persons, Dominus, Sathan,
Adam, Eve, &c. Independently of the alleged age of the manuscript
itself, the language will hardly be thought later than 1350.[445] This,
however, seems to stand at no small distance from any extant work of the
kind. Warton having referred the Chester mysteries to 1327, when he
supposes them to have been written by Ranulph Higden, a learned monk of
that city, best known as the author of the Polychronicon, Roscoe
positively contradicts him, and denies that any dramatic composition can
be found in England anterior to the year 1500.[446] Two of these Chester
mysteries have been since printed; but notwithstanding the very
respectable authorities which assign them to the fourteenth century, I
cannot but consider the language in which we now read them not earlier,
to say the least, than the middle of the next. It is possible that they
have in some degree been modernised. Mr. Collier has given an analysis
of our own extant mysteries, or, as he prefers to call them,
Miracle-plays.[447] There does not seem to be much dramatic merit, even
with copious indulgence, in any of them; and some, such as the two
Chester mysteries, are in the lowest style of buffoonery; yet they are
of some importance in the absolute sterility of English literature
during the age in which we presume them to have been written, the reigns
of Henry VI. and Edward IV.
[442] Journal des Savans, 1828, p. 297. These farces, according to
M. Raynouard, were the earliest dramatic representations, and gave
rise to the mysteries.
[443] Fabliaux, ii. 119.
[444] ix. 265. The Tragedy of the Ten Virgins was acted at Eisenach
in 1322. This is evidently nothing but a mystery. Weber’s
Illustrations of Northern Poetry, p. 19.
[445] Mr. Collier has printed twenty-five copies (why veteris tam parcus
aceti?) of this very curious record of the ancient drama. I do not
know that any other in Europe of that early age has yet been given
to the press.
[446] Lorenzo de’ Medici, i. 399. Roscoe thinks the few extracts in
Bouterwek, is rather there is reason to conjecture that the
Miracle-play acted at Dunstable was in dumb show; and assumes the
same of the “grotesque exhibitions” known by the name of The
Harrowing of Hell. In this we have just seen that he was mistaken,
and probably in the former.
[447] Hist. of English Dramatic Poetry, vol. ii. The Chester mysteries
were printed for the Roxburgh Club, by my friend Mr. Markland; and
what are called the Townley mysteries are announced for publication.
|First French theatre.|
106. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were fertile of these
religious dramas in many parts of Europe. They were frequently
represented in Germany, but more in Latin than in the mother-tongue. The
French scriptural theatre, whatever may have been previously exhibited,
seems not to be traced in permanent existence beyond the last years of
the fourteenth century. It was about 1400, according to Beauchamps, or
some years before, as the authorities quoted by Bouterwek imply, that
the Confrairie de la Passion de N. S. was established as a regular body
of actors at Paris.[448] They are said to have taken their name from the
mystery of the passion, which in fact represented the whole life of our
Lord from his baptism, and was divided into several days. In pomp of
show they far excelled our English mysteries, in which few persons
appeared, and the scenery was simple. But in the mystery of the passion,
eighty-seven characters were introduced in the first day; heaven, earth,
and hell combined to people the stage; several scenes were written for
singing, and some for choruses. The dialogue, of which I have only seen
similar to that of our own mysteries, though less rude, and with
more efforts at a tragic tone.[449]
[448] Beauchamps, Recherches sur le Théâtre Français. Bouterwek, v. 96.
[449] Bouterwek, p. 100.
|Theatrical machinery.|
107. The mysteries, not confined to scriptural themes, embraced those
which were hardly less sacred and trustworthy in the eyes of the people,
the legends of saints. These afforded ample scope for the gratification
which great part of mankind seem to take in witnessing the endurance of
pain. Thus, in one of these Parisian mysteries, St. Barbara is hung up
by the heels on the stage, and after uttering her remonstrances in that
unpleasant situation, is torn with pincers and scorched with lamps
before the audience. The decorations of this theatre must have appeared
splendid. A large scaffolding at the back of the stage displayed heaven
above and hell below, between which extended the world, with
representations of the spot where the scene lay. Nor was the machinist’s
art unknown. An immense dragon, with eyes of polished steel, sprung out
from hell, in a mystery exhibited at Metz in the year 1437, and spread
his wings so near to the spectators that they were all in
consternation.[450] Many French mysteries, chiefly without date of the
year, are in print, and probably belong, typographically speaking, to
the present century.[451] One bears, according to Brunet, the date of
1484. These may, however, have been written long before their
publication. Beauchamps has given a list of early mysteries and
moralities in the French language, beginning near the end of the
fourteenth century.
[450] Bouterwek, pp. 103-106.
[451] Brunet, Manuel du Libraire.
|Italian religious dramas.|
108. The religious drama was doubtless full as ancient in Italy as in
any other country; it was very congenial to people whose delight in
sensible objects is so intense. It did not supersede the extemporaneous
performances, the mimi and histriones, who had probably never
intermitted their sportive license since the days of their Oscan
fathers, and of whom we find mention, sometimes with severity, sometimes
with toleration, in ecclesiastical writers;[452] but it came into
competition with them; and thus may be said to have commenced in the
thirteenth century a war of regular comedy against the lawless savages
of the stage, which has only been terminated in Italy within very recent
recollection. We find a society del Gonfalone established at Rome in
1264, the statutes of which declare, that it is designed to represent
the passion of Jesus Christ.[453] Lorenzo de’ Medici condescended to
publish a drama of this kind on the martyrdom of two saints; and a
considerable collection of similar productions during the fifteenth
century was in the possession of Mr. Roscoe.[454]
[452] Thomas Aquinas mentions the histrionatûs ars, as lawful if not
abused. St. Antonin does the same. Riccoboni, i. 23.
[453] Riccoboni. Tiraboschi, however, v. 376, disputes the antiquity
of any scenical representations truly dramatic, in Italy; in which
he seems to be mistaken.
[454] Life of Lorenzo, i. 402.
|Moralities.|
|Farces.|
109. Next to the mysteries came the kindred class, styled moralities.
But as these belong more peculiarly to the next century, both in England
and France, though they began about the present time, we may better
reserve them for that period. There is still another species of dramatic
composition, what may be called the farce, not always very
distinguishable from comedy, but much shorter, admitting more buffoonery
without reproach, and more destitute of any serious or practical end. It
may be reckoned a middle link between the extemporaneous effusions of
the mimes and the legitimate drama. The French have a diverting piece of
this kind, Maitre Patelin, ascribed to Pierre Blanchet, and first
printed in 1490. It was restored to the stage with much alteration,
under the name of l’Avocat Patelin, about the beginning of the last
century; and contains strokes of humour, which Molière would not have
disdained.[455] Of these productions there were not a few in Germany,
called Fastnachts-spiele, or Carnival plays, written in the license
which that season has generally permitted. They are scarce and of little
value. The most remarkable is the Apotheosis of Pope Joan, a tragi-comic
legend, written about 1480.[456]
[455] The proverbial expression for quitting a digression, Revenons à
nos moutons, is taken from this farce; which is at least short, and
as laughable as most farces are. It seems to have been written not
long before its publication. See Pasquier, Recherches de la France,
l. viii. c. 59; Biogr. Univ., Blanchet; and Bouterwek, v. 118.
[456] Bouterwek, Gesch. der deutschen Poesie, ix. 357-367. Heinsius,
Lehrbuch der Sprachtwissenschaft, iv. 125.
|Mathematical works.|
110. Euclid was printed for the first time at Venice in 1482; the
diagrams in this edition are engraved on copper, and remarkably clear
and neat.[457] The translation is that of Campanus from the
Arabic. The cosmography of Ptolemy, which had been already twice
published in Italy, appeared the same year at Ulm, with maps by Donis,
some of them traced after the plans drawn by Agathodæmon, some modern;
and it was reprinted, as well as Euclid, at the same place in 1486. The
tables of Regiomontanus were printed both at Augsburg and Venice in
1490. We may take this occasion of introducing two names, which do not
exclusively belong to the exact sciences, nor to the present period.
[457] A beautiful copy of this edition, presented to Mocenigo, doge
of Venice, is in the British Museum. The diagrams, especially those
which represent solids, are better than in our modern editions of
Euclid. I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that the
earliest book, in which engravings are found, is the edition of
Dante by Landino, published at Florence in 1481. See Brunet, Manuel
du Libraire, Dibdin’s Bibl. Spencer, &c.
|Leo Baptista Alberti.|
111. Leo Baptista Alberti was a man, who, if measured by the
universality of his genius, may claim a place in the temple of glory he
has not filled; the author of a Latin comedy, entitled Philodoxios,
which the younger Aldus Manutius afterwards published as the genuine
work of a certain ancient Lepidus; a moral writer in the various forms
of dialogue, dissertation, fable, and light humour; a poet, extolled by
some, though not free from the rudeness of his age; a philosopher of the
Platonic school of Lorenzo; a mathematician and inventor of optical
instruments; a painter, and the author of the earliest modern treatise
on painting; a sculptor, and the first who wrote about sculpture; a
musician, whose compositions excited the applause of his contemporaries;
an architect of profound skill, not only displayed in many works, of
which the church of Saint Francis at Rimini is the most admired, but in
a theoretical treatise, De Re Ædificatoriâ, published posthumously in
1485. It has been called the only work on architecture which we can
place on a level with that of Vitruvius, and by some has been preferred
to it. Alberti had deeply meditated the remains of Roman antiquity, and
endeavoured to derive from them general theorems of beauty, variously
applicable to each description of buildings.[458]
[458] Corniani, ii. 160. Tiraboschi, vii. 360.
112. This great man seems to have had two impediments to his permanent
glory: one, that he came a few years too soon into the world, before his
own language was become polished, and before the principles of taste in
art had been wholly developed; the other, that, splendid as was his own
genius, there were yet two men a little behind, in the presence of whom
his star has paled; men, not superior to Alberti in universality of
mental powers, but in their transcendency and command over immortal
fame. Many readers will have perceived to whom I allude,--Lionardo da
Vinci, and Michael Angelo.
|Lionardo da Vinci.|
113. None of the writings of Lionardo were published till more than a
century after his death; and, indeed, the most remarkable of them are
still in manuscript. We cannot, therefore, give him a determinate place
under this rather than any other decennium; but as he was born in 1452,
we may presume his mind to have been in full expansion before 1490. His
Treatise on Painting is known as a very early disquisition on the rules
of the art. But his greatest literary distinction is derived from those
short fragments of his unpublished writings that appeared not many years
since; and which, according, at least, to our common estimate of the age
in which he lived, are more like revelations of physical truths
vouchsafed to a single mind, than the superstructure of its reasoning
upon any established basis. The discoveries which made Galileo, and
Kepler, and Mæstlin, and Maurolycus, and Castelli, and other names
illustrious, the system of Copernicus, the very theories of recent
geologers, are anticipated by Da Vinci, within the compass of a few
pages, not perhaps in the most precise language, or on the most
conclusive reasoning, but so as to strike us with something like the awe
of præternatural knowledge. In an age of so much dogmatism, he first
laid down the grand principle of Bacon, that experiment and observation
must be the guides to just theory in the investigation of nature. If any
doubt could be harboured, not as to the right of Lionardo da Vinci to
stand as the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all
doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which,
probably, no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made,
it must be on an hypothesis, not very untenable, that some parts of
physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not
record. The extraordinary works of ecclesiastical architecture in the
middle ages, especially in the fifteenth century, as well as those of
Toscanelli and Fioravanti, which we have mentioned, lend some
countenance to this opinion; and it is said to be confirmed by
the notes of Fra Mauro, a lay brother of a convent near Venice, on a
planisphere constructed by him, and still extant. Lionardo himself
speaks of the earth’s annual motion, in a treatise that appears to have
been written about 1510, as the opinion of many philosophers in his
age.[459]
[459] The manuscripts of Lionardo da Vinci, now at Paris, are the
justification of what has been said in the text. A short account of
them was given by Venturi, who designed to have published a part;
but, having relinquished that intention, the fragments he has made
known are the more important. As they are very remarkable, and not,
I believe, very generally known, I shall extract a few passages
from his Essai sur les Ouvrages Physico-mathématiques de Léonard de
Vinci. Paris, 1797.
En mécanique Vinci connaissait, entr’autres choses: 1. La théorie
des forces appliquées obliquement au bras du levier; 2. La
résistance respective des poutres; 3. Les lois du frottement
données ensuite par Amontons; 4. L’influence du centre de gravité
sur les corps en repos ou en mouvement; 5. L’application du
principe des vitesses virtuelles à plusieurs cas que la sublime
analyse a porté de nos jours a sa plus grande généralité. Dans
l’optique il décrivit la chambre obscure avant Porta, il expliqua
avant Maurolycus la figure de l’image du soleil dans un trou de
forme anguleuse; il nous apprend la perspective aerienne, la nature
des ombres colorées, les mouvemens de l’iris, les effets de la
durée de l’impression visible, et plusieurs autres phénomènes de
l’œil qu’on ne rencontre point dans Vitellion. Enfin non seulement
Vinci avait remarqué tout ce que Castelli a dit un siècle après lui
sur le mouvement des eaux; le premier me parait même dans cette
partie supérieur de beaucoup à l’autre, que l’Italie cependant a
regardé comme le fondateur de l’hydraulique.
Il faut donc placer Léonard à la tête de ceux qui se sont occupés
des sciences physico-mathématiques, et de la vraie méthode
d’étudier parmi les modernes, p. 5.
The first extract Venturi gives is entitled, On the descent of
heavy bodies combined with the rotation of the earth. He here
assumes the latter, and conceives that a body falling to the earth
from the top of a tower would have a compound motion in consequence
of the terrestrial rotation. Venturi thinks that the writings of
Nicolas de Cusa had set men on speculating concerning this before
the time of Copernicus.
Vinci had very extraordinary lights as to mechanical motions. He
says plainly, that the time of descent on inclined planes of equal
height is as their length; that a body descends along the arc of a
circle sooner than down the chord, and that a body descending an
inclined plane will re-ascend with the same velocity as if it had
fallen down the height. He frequently repeats, that every body
weighs in the direction of its movement, and weighs the more in the
ratio of its velocity; by weight evidently meaning what we call
force. He applies this to the centrifugal force of bodies in
rotation: Pendant tout ce temps elle pèse sur la direction de son
mouvement.
Lorsqu’on employe une machine quelconque pour mouvoir un corps
grave, toutes les parties de la machine qui ont un mouvement égal à
celui du corps grave ont une charge égale au poids entier du même
corps. Si la partie qui est le moteur a, dans le même temps, plus
de mouvement que le corps mobile, elle aura plus de puissance que
le mobile; et celà d’Autant plus qu’elle se mouvra plus vite que le
corps même. Si la partie qui est le moteur a moins de vitesse que
le mobile, elle aura d’Autant moins de puissance que ce mobile. If
in this passage there is not the perfect luminousness of expression
we should find in the best modern books, it seems to contain the
philosophical theory of motion as unequivocally as any of them.
Vinci had a better notion of geology than most of his
contemporaries, and saw that the sea had covered the mountains
which contain shells: Ces coquillages ont vécu dans le même endroit
lorsque l’eau de la mer le recouvrait. Les bancs, par la suite des
temps, ont été recouverts par d’Autres couches de limon de
différentes hauteurs; ainsi, les coquilles ont été enclavées sous
le bourbier amoncelé au dessus, jusqu’à sortir de l’eau. He seems
even to have had an idea of the elevation of the continents, though
he gives an unintelligible reason for it.
He explained the obscure light of the unilluminated part of the
moon by the reflection of the earth, as Mœstlin did long after.
He understood the camera obscura, and describes its effect. He
perceived that respirable air must support flame: Lorsque l’air
n’est pas dans un état propre à recevoir la flamme, il n’y peut
vivre ni flamme ni aucun animal terrestre ou aerien. Aucun animal
ne peut vivre dans un endroit ou la flamme ne vit pas.
Vinci’s observations on the conduct of the understanding are also
very much beyond his time. I extract a few of them.
Il est toujours bon pour l’entendement d’Acquérir des connaissances
quelles qu’elles soient; on pourra ensuite choisir les bonnes et
écarter les inutiles.
L’interprète des artifices de la nature, c’est l’expérience. Elle
ne se trompe jamais; c’est notre jugement qui quelquefois se trompe
lui-même, parcequ’il s’attend à des effets auxquels l’expérience se
refuse. Il faut consulter l’expérience, en varier les circonstances
jusqu’à ce que nous en ayons tiré des règles générales; car c’est
elle qui fournit les vraies règles. Mais à quoi bon ces règles, me
direz-vous? Je réponds qu’elles nous dirigent dans les recherches
de la nature et les opérations de l’art. Elles empêchent que nous
ne nous abusions nous-mêmes ou les autres, en nous promettant des
résultats que nous ne saurions obtenir.
Il n’y a point de certitude dans les sciences où on ne peut pas
appliquer quelque partie des mathématiques, ou qui n’en dépendent
pas de quelque manière.
Dans l’étude des sciences qui tiennent aux mathématiques, ceux qui
ne consultent pas la nature, mais les auteurs, ne sont pas les
enfans de la nature; je dirais qu’ils n’en sont que les petits
fils: elle seule, en effet, est le maitre des vrais génies. Mais
voyez la sottise! on se moque d’un homme qui aimera mieux apprendre
de la nature elle-même, que des auteurs, qui n’en sont que les
clercs. Is not this the precise tone of Lord Bacon?
Vinci says, in another place: Mon dessein est de citer d’Abord
l’expérience, et de démontrer ensuite pourquoi les corps sont
contraints d’Agir de telle manière. C’est la méthode qu’on doit
observer dans les recherches des phénomènes de la nature. Il est
bien vrai que la nature commence par le raisonnement, et finit par
l’expérience; mais n’importe, il nous faut prendre la route
opposée: comme j’ai dit, nous devons commencer par l’expérience, et
tâcher par son moyen d’en découvrir la raison.
He ascribes the elevation of the equatorial waters above the polar
to the heat of the sun: Elles entrent en mouvement de tous les
côtés de cette éminence aqueuse pour rétablir leur sphéricité
parfaite. This is not the true cause of their elevation, but by
what means could he know the fact?
Vinci understood fortification well, and wrote upon it. Since in
our time, he says, artillery has four times the power it used to
have, it is necessary that the fortification of towns should be
strengthened in the same proportion. He was employed on several
great works of engineering. So wonderful was the variety of power
in this miracle of nature. For we have not mentioned that his Last
Supper at Milan is the earliest of the great pictures in Italy, and
that some productions of his easel vie with those of Raphael. His
only published work, the Treatise on Painting, does him injustice;
it is an ill-arranged compilation from several of his manuscripts.
That the extraordinary works, of which this note contains an
account, have not been published entire, and in their original
language, is much to be regretted by all who know how to venerate
so great a genius as Lionardo da Vinci.
SECT. VI. 1491-1500.
_State of Learning in Italy--Latin and Italian Poets--Learning in
France and England--Erasmus--Popular Literature and Poetry--Other
kinds of Literature--General Literary Character of Fifteenth
Century--Book-trade, its Privileges and Restraints._
|Aldine Greek editions.|
114. The year 1494 is distinguished by an edition of Musæus, generally
thought the first work from the press established at Venice by Aldus
Manutius, who had settled there in 1489.[460]
In the course of about twenty years, with some interruption, he gave to
the world several of the principal Greek authors; and though, as we have
seen, not absolutely the earliest printer in that language, he so far
excelled all others in the number of his editions, that he may be justly
said to stand at the head of the list. It is right, however, to mention,
that Zarot had printed Hesiod and Theocritus in one volume, and also
Isocrates, at Milan, in 1493; that the Anthologia appeared at Florence
in 1494; Lucian and Apollonius Rhodius in 1496; the lexicon of Suidas,
at Milan, in 1499. About fifteen editions of Greek works, without
reckoning Craston’s lexicon and several grammars, had been published
before the close of the century.[461] The most remarkable of the Aldine
editions are the Aristotle, in five volumes, the first bearing date of
1495, the last of 1498, and nine plays of Aristophanes in the latter
year. In this Aristophanes, and perhaps in other editions of this time,
Aldus had fortunately the assistance of Marcus Musurus, one of the last,
but by no means the least eminent, of the Greeks who transported their
language to Italy. Musurus was now a public teacher at Padua. John
Lascaris, son, perhaps, of Constantine, edited the Anthologia at
Florence. It may be doubted whether Italy had as yet produced any
scholar, unless it were Varino, more often called Phavorinus, singly
equal to the task of superintending a Greek edition. His Thesaurus
Cornucopiæ, a collection of thirty-four grammatical tracts in Greek,
printed 1496, may be an exception. The Etymologicum Magnum, Venice,
1499, being a lexicon with only Greek explanations, is supposed to be
chiefly due to Musurus. Aldus had printed Craston’s lexicon, in 1497,
with the addition of an index; this has often been mistaken for an
original work.[462]
[460] The Erotemata of Constantino Lascaris, printed by Aldus, bears
date Feb. 1494, which Menu to mean 1495. But the Musæus has no
date, nor the Galeomyomachia, a Greek poem by one Theodoras
Prodromus. Renouard, Hist. de I’Imprimerie des Aldes.
[461] The grammar of Urbano Valeriano was first printed in 1497. It is
in Greek and Latin, and of extreme rarity. Roscoe (Leo X., ch. xi.)
says, “it was received with such avidity that Erasmus, on inquiring
for it in the year 1499, found that not a copy of this impression
remained unsold.” I have given, a little below, a different
construction to these words of Erasmus.
[462] Renouard. Roscoe’s Leo X., ch. xi.
|Decline of learning in Italy.|
115. The state of Italy was not so favourable as it had been to the
advancement of philosophy. After the expulsion of the Medici from
Florence, in 1494, the Platonic academy was broken up; and that
philosophy never found again a friendly soil in Italy, though Ficinus
had endeavoured to keep it up by a Latin translation of Plotinus.
Aristotle and his followers began now to regain the ascendant. Perhaps
it may be thought that even polite letters were not so flourishing as
they had been; no one, at least, yet appeared to fill the place of
Hermolaus Barbarus, who died in 1493, or Politian, who followed him the
next year.
|Hermolaus Barbarus.|
116. Hermolaus Barbarus was a noble Venetian, whom Europe agreed to
place next to Politian in critical learning, and to draw a line between
them and any third name. “No time, no accident, no destiny,” says an
enthusiastic scholar of the next age, “will ever efface their
remembrance from the hearts of the learned.”[463] Erasmus calls him a
truly great and divine man. He filled many honourable offices for the
republic; but lamented that they drew him away from that learning for
which he says he was born, and to which alone he was devoted.[464] Yet
Hermolaus is but faintly kept in mind at the present day. In his Latin
style, with the same fault as Politian, an affectation of obsolete
words, he is less flexible and elegant. But his chief merit was in the
restoration of the text of ancient writers. He boasts that he had
corrected about five thousand passages in Pliny’s natural history, and
more than three hundred in the very brief geography of Pomponius Mela.
Hardouin, however, charges him with extreme rashness in altering
passages he did not understand. The pope had nominated Hermolaus to the
greatest post in the Venetian church, the patriarchate of Aquileia; but
his mortification at finding that the senate refused to concur in the
appointment is said to have hastened his death.[465]
[463] Habuit nostra hæc ætas bonarum literarum proceres duos,
Hermolaum Barbarum atque Angelum Politianum: Deum immortalem!
quam acri judicio, quanta facundia, quanta linguarum, quanta
disciplinarum omnium scientia præditos! Hi Latinam linguam
jampridem squalentem et multa barbariei rubigine exesam, ad
pristinum revocare nitorem conati sunt, atque illis suus profecto
conatus non infeliciter cessit, suntque illi de Latina lingua tam
bene meriti, quam qui ante cos optimi meriti fuere. Itaque
immortalem sibi gloriam, immortale decus paraverunt, manebitque
semper in omnium eruditorum pectoribus consecrata Hermolai et
Politiani memoria, nullo ævo, nullo casu, nullo fato abolenda.
Brixeus Erasmo in Erasm. Epist. ccxii.
[464] Meiners, ii. 200.
[465] Bayle. Niceron, vol. xiv. Tiraboschi, vii. 152. Corniani, iii.
197. Heeren, p. 274.
|Mantuan.|
117. A Latin poet once of great celebrity, Baptista Mantuan, seems to
fall within this period as fitly as any other, though several of his
poems had been separately printed before, and their collective
publication was not till 1513. Editions recur very frequently in the
bibliography of Italy and Germany. He was, and long continued to be, the
poet of school-rooms. Erasmus says that he would be placed by posterity
not much below Virgil;[466] and the marquis of Mantua, anticipating this
suffrage, erected their statues side by side. Such is the security of
contemporary compliments! Mantuan has long been utterly neglected, and
does not find a place in most selections of Latin poetry. His Eclogues
and Silvæ are said to be the least bad of his numerous works. He was
among the many assailants of the church, or at least the court of Rome;
and this animosity inspired him with some bitter, or rather vigorous,
invectives. But he became afterwards a Carmelite friar.[467] Marullus, a
Greek by birth, has obtained a certain reputation for his Latin poems,
which are of no great value.
[466] Et nisi me fallit augurium, erit, erit aliquando Baptista suo
concive gloriâ celebritateque non ita multo inferior, simul
invidiam anni detraxerint. Append. ad Erasm. Epist. cccxcv. (edit.
Lugd.) It is not conceivable that Erasmus meant this literally; but
the drift of the letter is to encourage the reading of Christian
poets.
[467] Corniani, iii. 148. Niceron, vol. xxvii. Such of Mantuan’s
eclogues as are printed in Carmina Illustrium Poetarum Italorum,
Florent. 1719, are but indifferent. I doubt, however, whether that
voluminous collection has been made with much taste; and his satire
on the see of Rome would certainly be excluded, whatever might be
its merit. Corniani has given an extract, better than what I had
seen of Mantuan.
|Pontanus.|
118. A far superior name is that of Pontanus, to whom, if we attend to
some critics, we must award the palm, above all Latin poets of the
fifteenth century. If I might venture to set my own taste against
theirs, I should not agree to his superiority over Politian. His
hexameters are by no means deficient in harmony, and may, perhaps, be
more correct than those of his rival, but appears to me less pleasing
and poetical. His lyric poems are like too much modern Latin, in a tone
of languid voluptuousness, and ring changes on the various beauties of
his mistress, and the sweetness of her kisses. The few elegies of
Pontanus, among which that addressed to his wife, on the prospect of
peace, is the best known, fall very short of the admirable lines of
Politian on the death of Ovid. Pontanus wrote some moral and political
essays in prose, which are said to be full of just observations
and sharp satire on the court of Rome, and written in a style which his
contemporaries regarded with admiration. They were published in 1490.
Erasmus, though a parsimonious distributor of praise to the Italians,
has acknowledged their merit in the Ciceronianus.[468]
[468] Roscoe, Leo X., ch. ii. and xx. Niceron, vol. viii. Corniani.
Tiraboschi. Pantanus cum illa quatuor complecti summa cura conatus
sit nervum dico, numeros, candorem, venustatem, profecto est omnia
consecutus. Quintum autem illud quod est horum omnium veluti vita
quædam, modum intelligo, penitus ignoravit. Aiunt Virgilium cum
multos versus matutino calore effudisset, pomeridianis horis novo
judicio solitum ad paucorum numerum revocare. Contra quidem Pontano
evenisse arbitror. Quæ prima quaque inventione arrisissent, isis
plura postea, dum recognosceret, addita atque ipsis potius
carminibus, quam sibi pepercisse. Scaliger de Re Poetica (apud
Blount).
|Neapolitan academy.|
119. Pontanus presided at this time over the Neapolitan Academy, a
dignity which he had attained upon the death of Beccatelli, in 1471.
This was after the decline of the Roman and the Florentine, by far the
most eminent reunion of literary men in Italy; and though it was long
conspicuous, seems to have reached its highest point in the last years
of this century, under the patronage of the mild Frederic of Aragon, and
during that transient calm which Naples was permitted to enjoy between
the invasions of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. That city and kingdom
afforded many lovers of learning and poetry; some of them in the class
of its nobles; each district being, as it were, represented in this
academy by one or more of its distinguished residents. But other members
were associated from different parts of Italy; and the whole
constellation of names is still brilliant, though some have grown dim by
time. The house of Este, at Ferrara, were still the liberal patrons of
genius; none more eminently than their reigning marquis, Hercules I. And
not less praise is due to the families who held the principalities of
Urbino and Mantua.[469]
[469] Roscoe’s Leo. X., ch. ii. This contains an excellent account of
the state of literature in Italy about the close of the century.
|Boiardo.|
120. A poem now appeared in Italy, well deserving of attention for its
own sake, but still more so on account of the excitement and direction
it gave to one of the most famous poets that ever lived. Matteo Maria
Boiardo, count of Scandiano, a man esteemed and trusted at the court of
Ferrara, amused his leisure in the publication of a romantic poem, for
which the stories of Charlemagne and his paladins, related by one who
assumed the name of Turpin, and already woven into long metrical
narrations, current at the end of the fourteenth and during the
fifteenth century in Italy, supplied materials, which are almost lost in
the original inventions of the author. The first edition of this poem is
without date, but probably in 1495. The author, who died the year
before, left it unfinished at the ninth canto of the third book.
Agostini, in 1516, published a continuation, indifferently executed, in
three more books; but the real complement of the Innamorato is the
Furioso.[470] The Orlando Innamorato of Boiardo has hitherto not
received that share of renown which seems to be its due; overpowered by
the splendour of Ariosto’s poem, and almost set aside in its original
form by the improved edition or remaking (rifaccimento), which Berni
afterwards gave, it has rarely been sought or quoted, even in
Italy.[471]
The style is uncouth and hard; but without style, which is the source of
perpetual delight, no long poem will be read; and it has been observed
by Ginguéné with some justice, that Boiardo’s name is better remembered,
though his original poem may have been more completely neglected,
through the process to which Berni has subjected it. In point of novel
invention and just keeping of character, especially the latter, he has
not been surpassed by his illustrious follower Ariosto; and whatever of
this we find in the Orlando Innamorato, is due to Boiardo alone; for
Berni has preserved the sense of almost every stanza. The imposing
appearance of Angelica at the court of Charlemagne, in the first canto,
opens the poem with a splendour rarely equalled, with a luxuriant
fertility of invention, and with admirable art; judiciously presenting
the subject in so much singleness, that amidst all the intricacies and
episodes of the story, the reader never forgets the incomparable
princess of Albracca. The latter city, placed in that remote Cathay
which Marco Polo had laid open to the range of fancy, and its
siege by Agrican’s innumerable cavalry, are creations of Boiardo’s most
inventive mind. Nothing in Ariosto is conceived so nobly, or so much in
the true genius of romance. Castelvetro asserts that the names Gradasso,
Mandricardo, Sobrino, and others which Boiardo has given to his
imaginary characters, belonged to his own peasants of Scandiano; and
some have improved upon this by assuring us, that those who take the
pains to ascertain the fact may still find the representatives of these
sonorous heroes at the plough, which, if the story were true, ought to
be the case.[472] But we may give him credit for talent enough to invent
those appellations; he hardly found an Albracca on his domains; and
those who grudge him the rest acknowledge that, in a moment of
inspiration, while hunting, the name of Rodomont occurred to his mind.
We know how finely Milton, whose ear pursued, almost to excess, the
pleasure of harmonious names, and who loved to expatiate in these
imaginary regions, has alluded to Boiardo’s poem in the Paradise
Regained. The lines are perhaps the most musical he has ever produced.
Such forces met not, nor so wide a camp,
When Agrican with all his northern powers
Besieged Albracca, as romances tell,
The city of Gallaphron, from thence to win
The fairest of her sex, Angelica,
His daughter, sought by many prowest knights,
Both paynim and the peers of Charlemagne.[473]
[470] Fontanini, dell’Eloquenza Italiana, edit. di Zeno, p. 270.
[471] See my friend Mr. Panizzi’s excellent introduction to his edition
of the Orlando Innamorato. This poem had never been reprinted since
1544; so much was Roscoe deceived in fancying that “the simplicity
of the original has caused it to be preferred to the same work, as
altered or reformed by Francesco Berni.” Life of Leo X., ch. ii.
[472] Camillo Pellegrino, in his famous controversy with the Academy of
Florence on the respective merits of Ariosto and Tasso, having
asserted this, they do not deny the fact, but say it stands on the
authority of Castelvetro. Opere di Tasso, 4to, ii. 94. The critics
held rather a pedantic doctrine; that though the names of private
men may be feigned, the poet has no right to introduce kings
unknown to history, as this destroys the probability required for
his fiction.
[473] Book iii.
|Francesco Bello.|
121. The Mambriano of Francesco Bello, sirnamed il Cieco, another poem
of the same romantic class, was published posthumously in 1497. Apostolo
Zeno, as quoted by Roscoe, attributes the neglect of the Mambriano to
its wanting an Ariosto to continue its subject, or a Berni to reform its
style.[474] But this seems a capricious opinion. Bello composed it at
intervals to amuse the courtiers of the marquis of Mantua. The poem,
therefore, wants unity. “It is a reunion,” says Mr. Panizzi, “of
detached tales, without any relation to each other, except in so far as
most of the same actors are before us.”[475] We may perceive by this,
how little a series of rhapsodies, not directed by a controlling unity
of purpose, even though the work of a single man, are likely to fall
into a connected poem. But that a long poem, of singular coherence and
subordination of parts to an end, should be framed from the random and
insulated songs of a great number of persons, is almost as incredible as
that the annals of Ennius, to use Cicero’s argument against the
fortuitous origin of the world, should be formed by shaking together the
letters of the alphabet.
[474] Leo X., ch. ii.
[475] Panizzi’s Introduction to Boiardo, p. 360. He does not highly
praise the poem, of which he gives an analysis with extracts. See
too Ginguéné, vol. iv.
|Italian poetry near the end of the century.|
122. Near the close of the fifteenth century we find a great increase of
Italian poetry, to which the patronage and example of Lorenzo had given
encouragement. It is not easy to place within such narrow limits as a
decennial period, the names of writers whose productions were frequently
not published, at least collectively, during their lives. Serafino
d’Aquila, born in 1466, seems to fall, as a poet, within this decade;
and the same may be said of Tibaldeo and Benivieni. Of these the first
is perhaps the best known; his verses are not destitute of spirit, but
extravagance and bad taste deform the greater part.[476] Tibaldeo unites
false thoughts with rudeness and poverty of diction. Benivieni, superior
to either of these, is reckoned by Corniani a link between the harshness
of the fifteenth and the polish of the ensuing century. The style of
this age was far from the grace and sweetness of Petrach; forced in
sentiment, low in choice of words, deficient in harmony, it has been
condemned by the voice of all Italian critics.[477]
[476] Bouterwek, Gesch. der Ital. Poesie, i. 321. Corniani.
[477] Corniani. Muratori, della perfetta Poesia. Crescimbeni, Storia
della volgar poesia.
|Progress of learning in France and Germany.|
123. A greater activity than before was now perceptible in the literary
spirit of France and Germany. It was also regularly progressive. The
press of Paris gave twenty-six editions of ancient Latin authors, nine
of which were in the year 1500. Twelve were published at Lyons. Deventer
and Leipsic, especially the latter, which now took a lead in the German
press, bore a part in this honourable labour; a proof of the rapid and
extensive influence of Conrad Celtes on that part of Germany. It is to
be understood that a very large proportion, or nearly the whole,
of the Latin editions printed in Germany were for the use of
schools.[478] We should be warranted in drawing an inference as to the
progress in literary instruction in these countries from the increase in
the number of publications, small as that number still is, and trifling
as some of them may appear. It may be accounted for by the gradual
working of the schools at Munster and other places, which had now sent
out a race of pupils well fitted to impart knowledge in their turn to
others; and by the patronage of some powerful men, among whom the first
place, on all accounts, is due to the emperor Maximilian. Nothing was so
likely to contribute to the intellectual improvement of Germany as the
public peace of 1495, which put an end to the barbarous customs of the
middle ages, not unaccompanied by generous virtues, but certainly as
incompatible with the steady cultivation of literature as with riches
and repose. Yet there seems to be no proof that the Greek language had
obtained much more attention; no book connected with it is recorded to
have been printed, and I do not find mention that it was taught, even
superficially, in any university or school, at this time, though it
might be conjectured without improbability. Reuchlin had now devoted his
whole thoughts to cabbalistic philosophy, and the study of Hebrew; and
Eichhorn, though not unwilling to make the most of early German
learning, owns that, at the end of the century, no other person had
become remarkable for a skill in Greek.[479]
[478] A proof of this may be found in the books printed at Deventer
from 1491 to 1500. They consisted of Virgil’s Bucolics three times,
Virgil’s Georgics twice, and the eclogues of Calpurnius once, or
perhaps twice. At Leipsic the list is much longer, but in great
measure of the same kind; single treatises of Seneca or Cicero, or
detached parts of Virgil, Horace, Ovid, sometimes very short, as
the Culex or the Ibis, form, with not many exceptions, the
Cisalpine classical bibliography of the fifteenth century.
[479] Eichhorn, iii. 236. This section in Eichhorn is valuable, but
not without some want of precision.
Reuchlin had been very diligent in purchasing Greek manuscripts.
But these were very scarce, even in Italy. A correspondent of his,
Streler by name, one of the young men who went from Germany to
Florence for education, tells him, in 1491, Nullos libros Græcis
hic venales reperio; and again, de Græcis libris coemendis hoc
scias; fui penes omnes hic librarios, nihil horum prorsus reperio.
Epist. ad Reuchl. (1562) fol. 7. In fact, Reuchlin’s own library
was so large as to astonish the Italian scholars when they saw the
catalogue, who plainly owned they could not procure such books
themselves. They had of course been originally purchased in Italy,
unless we suppose some to have been brought by way of Hungary.
It is not to be imagined that the libraries of ordinary scholars
were to be compared with that of Reuchlin, probably more opulent
than most of them. The early printed books of Italy, even the most
indispensable, were very scarce, at least in France. A Greek
grammar was a rarity at Paris in 1499. Grammaticen Græcam, says
Erasmus to a correspondent, summo studio vestigavi, ut emptam tibi
mitterem, sed jam utraque divendita fuerat, et Constantini quæ
dicitur, quæque Urbani. Epist. lix. See too Epist. lxxiii.
|Erasmus.|
|His diligence.|
124. Two men, however, were devoting incessant labour to the acquisition
of that language at Paris, for whom was reserved the glory of raising
the knowledge of it in Cisalpine Europe to a height which Italy could
not attain. These were Erasmus and Budæus. The former, who had acquired
as a boy the mere rudiments of Greek under Hegius at Deventer, set
himself in good earnest to that study about 1499, hiring a teacher at
Paris, old Hermonymus of Sparta, of whose extortion he complains; but he
was little able to pay anything; and his noble endurance of privations
for the sake of knowledge deserves the high reward of glory it received.
“I have given my whole soul,” he says, “to Greek learning, and as soon
as I get any money I shall first buy Greek books, and then
clothes.”[480] “If any new Greek book comes to hand, I would rather
pledge my cloak than not obtain it; especially if it be religious, such
as a psalter or a gospel.”[481] It will be remembered that the books of
which he speaks must have been frequently manuscripts.
[480] Epist. xxix.
[481] Epist. lviii.
|Budæus; his early studies.|
125. Budæus, in his proper name Budé, nearly of the same age as Erasmus,
had relinquished every occupation for intense labour in literature. In
an interesting letter, addressed to Cuthbert Tunstall in 1517, giving an
account of his own early studies, he says that he learned Greek very ill
from a bad master at Paris, in 1491. This was certainly Hermonymus, of
whom Reuchlin speaks more favourably; but he was not quite so competent
a judge.[482] Some years afterwards Budæus got much better instruction;
“ancient literature having derived within a few years great improvement
in France by our intercourse with Italy, and by the importation of books
in both the learned languages.” Lascaris, who now lived at the court of
Charles VIII., having returned with him from the Neapolitan expedition,
gave Budæus some assistance, though not, according to the latter’s
biographer, to any great extent.
[482] Hody (de Græcis Illustribus, p. 238) thinks that the master of
Budæus could not have been Hermonymus; probably because the praise
of Reuchlin seemed to him incompatible with the contemptuous
language of Budæus. But Erasmus is very explicit on this subject,
Ad Græcas literas utcunque puero degustatas jam grandior redii; hoc
est, annos natus plus minus triginta, sed turn cum apud nos nulla
Græcorum codicum esset copia, neque minor penuria doctorum. Lutetiæ
tantum unus Georgius Hermonymus Græce balbutiebat; sed talis, ut
neque potuisset docere si voluisset, neque voluisset si potuisset.
Itaque coactus ipse mihi præceptor esse, &c. (A.D. 1524.) I
transcribe from Jortin, ii. 419. Of Hermonymus it is said by Beatus
Rhenanus in a letter to Reuchlin, that he was non tam doctrina quam
patria clarus. (Epist. ad Reuchl. fol. 52.) Roy, in his Life of
Budæus, says, that the latter, having paid Hermonymus 500 gold
pieces, and read Homer and other books with him, nihilo doctior est
factus.
|Latin not well written in France.|
126. France had as yet no writer of Latin, who could be endured in
comparison with those of Italy. Robert Gaguin praises Fichet, rector of
the Sorbonne, as learned and eloquent, and the first who had taught many
to employ good language in Latin. The more certain glory of Fichet is to
have introduced the art of printing into France. Gaguin himself enjoyed
a certain reputation for his style, and his epistles have been printed.
He possessed at least, what is most important, a love of knowledge, and
an elevated way of thinking. But Erasmus says of him, that “whatever he
might have been in his own age, he would now scarcely be reckoned to
write Latin at all.” If we could rely on a panegyrist of Faustus
Andrelinus, an Italian who came about 1489 to Paris, and was authorised,
in conjunction with one Balbi, and with Cornelio Vitelli, to teach in
the university,[483] he was the man who brought polite literature into
France, and changed its barbarism for classical purity. But Andrelinus,
who is best known as a Latin poet of by no means a high rank, seems not
to merit his commendation. Whatever his capacities of teaching may have
been, we have little evidence of his success. Yet the number of editions
of Latin authors published in France during this decade proves some
diffusion of classical learning; and we must admit the circumstance to
be quite decisive of the inferiority of England.
[483] This I find quoted in Bettinelli, Risorgimento d’ltalia, i. 250.
See also Bayle, and Biogr. Univ., art. Andrelini. They were only
allowed to teach for one hour in the evening; the jealousy of the
logicians not having subsided. Crevier, iv. 439.
|Dawn of Greek learning in England.|
127. A gleam of light, however, now broke out there. We have seen
already that a few, even in the last years of Henry VI., had overcome
all obstacles in order to drink at the fountain-head of pure learning in
Italy. One or two more names might be added for the intervening period;
Milling, abbot of Westminister, and Selling, prior of a convent at
Canterbury.[484] It is reported by Polydore Virgil, and is proved by
Wood, that Cornelio Vitelli, an Italian, came to Oxford about 1488, in
order to give that most barbarous university some notion of what was
going forward on the other side of the Alps; and it has been probably
conjectured, or rather may be assumed, that he there imparted the
rudiments of Greek to William Grocyn.[485] It is certain, at least, that
Grocyn had acquired some insight into that language, before he took a
better course, and, travelling into Italy, became the disciple of
Chalcondyles and Politian. He returned home in 1491, and began to
communicate his acquisitions, though chiefly to deaf ears, teaching in
Exeter College at Oxford. A diligent emulator of Grocyn, but
some years younger, and, like him, a pupil of Politian and Hermolaus,
was Thomas Linacre, a physician; but though a first edition of his
translation of Galen has been supposed to have been printed at Venice in
1498, it seems to be ascertained that none preceded that of Cambridge in
1521. His only contribution to literature in the fifteenth century was a
translation of the very short mathematical treatise of Proclus on the
sphere, published in a volume of ancient writers on astronomy, by Aldus
Manutius, in 1499.[486]
[484] Warton, iii. 247. Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 5. This is
mentioned on Selling’s monument now remaining in Canterbury
cathedral.
Doctor theologus Selling Græca atque Latina Lingua perdoctus.
Selling, however, did not go to Italy till after 1480, far from
returning in 1460, as Warton has said, with his usual indifference
to anachronisms.
[485] Polydore says nothing about Vitelli’s teaching Greek, though
Knight, in his Life of Colet, translates bonæ literæ, “Greek and
Latin.” But the following passages seem decisive as to Grocyn’s
early studies in the Greek language. Grocinus, qui prima Græcaæ et
Latinæ linguæ, rudimenta in Britannia hausit, mox solidiorem iisdem
operam sub Demetrio Chalcondyle et Politiano præceptoribus in
Italia hausit. Lilly, Elogia virorum doctorum, in Knight’s Life of
Colet, p. 24. Erasmus as positively: Ipse Grocinus, cujus exemplum
affers, nonne primum in Anglia Græcæ linguæ rudimenta didicit? Post
in Italiam profectus audivit summos viros, sed interim lucro fuit
ilia prius a qualibuscunque didicisse. Epist. ccclxiii. Whether the
_qualescunque_ were Vitelli or any one else, this can leave no
doubt as to the existence of some Greek instruction in England
before Grocyn; and as no one can be suggested, so far as appears,
except Vitelli, it seems reasonable to fix upon him as the first
preceptor of Grocyn. Vitelli had returned to Paris in 1489, and
taught in the university, as has just been mentioned; so that he
could have little time, if Polydore’s date of 1488 be right, for
giving much instruction at Oxford.
[486] Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 152.
|Erasmus comes to England.|
128. Erasmus paid his first visit to England in 1497, and was delighted
with everything that he found, especially at Oxford. In an epistle dated
Dec. 5th, after praising Grocyn, Colet, and Linacre to the skies, he
says of Thomas More, who could not then have been eighteen years old,
“What mind was ever framed by nature more gentle, more pleasing, more
gifted?--It is incredible, what a treasure of old books is found here
far and wide.--There is so much erudition, not of a vulgar and ordinary
kind, but recondite, accurate, ancient, both Latin and Greek, that you
would seek nothing in Italy but the pleasure of travelling.”[487] But
this letter is addressed to an Englishman, and the praise is evidently
much exaggerated; the scholars were few, and not more than three or four
could be found, or at least could now be mentioned, who had any tincture
of Greek,--Grocyn, Linacre, William Latimer, who, though an excellent
scholar, never published anything, and More, who had learned at Oxford
under Grocyn.[488] It should here be added, that, in 1497, Terence was
printed by Pynson, being the first edition of a strictly classical
author in England; though Boethius had already appeared with Latin and
English on opposite pages.
[487] Thomæ Mori ingenio quid unquam finxit natura vel mollius, vel
dulcius, vel felicius?... Mirum est dictu, quam hic passim, quam
dense veterum librorum seges efflorescat ... tantum eruditionis non
illius protritæ ac trivialis, sed reconditæ, exactæ, antiquæ,
Latinæ Græcæque, ut jam Italiam nisi visendi gratia non multum
desideres. Epist. xiv.
[488] A letter of Colet to Erasmus from Oxford in 1497, is written in
the style of a man who was conversant with the best Latin authors.
Sir Thomas More’s birth has not been placed by any biographer
earlier than 1480.
It has been sometimes asserted, on the authority of Antony Wood,
that Erasmus taught Greek at Oxford; but there is no foundation for
this, and in fact he did not know enough of the language. Knight,
on the other hand, maintains that he learned it there under Grocyn
and Linacre; but this rests on no evidence; and we have seen that
he gives a different account of his studies in Greek. Life of
Erasmus, p. 22.
|He publishes his Adages.|
129. In 1500 was printed at Paris the first edition of Erasmus’s Adages,
doubtless the chief prose work of this century beyond the limits of
Italy; but this edition should, if possible, be procured, in order to
judge with chronological exactness of the state of literature; for as
his general knowledge of antiquity, and particularly of Greek, which was
now very slender, increased, he made vast additions. The Adages, which
were now about eight hundred, amounted in his last edition to 4151; not
that he could find so many which properly deserve that name, but the
number is made up by explanations of Latin and Greek idioms, or even of
single words. He declares himself, as early as 1504, ashamed of the
first edition of his Adages, which already seemed meagre and
imperfect.[489] Erasmus had been preceded in some measure by Polydore
Virgil, best known as the historian of this country, where he resided
many years as collector of papal dues. He published a book of adages,
which must have been rather a juvenile, and is a superficial production,
at Venice in 1498.
[489] Epist. cii., jejunum atque inops videri cœpit, posteoquam Græcos
colui auctores.
|Romantic ballads of Spain.|
130. The Castilian poets of the fifteenth century have been collectively
mentioned on a former occasion. Bouterwek refers to the latter part of
this age most of the romances, which turn upon Saracen story, and the
adventures of “knights of Granada, gentlemen, though Moors.” Sismondi
follows him without, perhaps, much reflection, and endeavours to explain
what he might have doubted. Fear having long ceased in the bosoms of the
Castilian Christians, even before conquest had set its seal to their
security, hate, the child of fear, had grown feebler; and the romancers
felt themselves at liberty to expatiate in the rich field of Mohammedan
customs and manners. These had already exercised a considerable
influence over Spain. But this opinion seems hard to be supported; nor
do I find that the Spanish critics claim so much antiquity for the
Moorish class of romantic ballads. Most of them, it is acknowledged,
belong to the sixteenth, and some to the seventeenth century; and the
internal evidence is against their having been written before the
Moorish wars had become matter of distant tradition. We shall therefore
take no notice of the Spanish romance-ballads till we come to
the age of Philip II., to which they principally belong.[490]
[490] Bouterwek, p. 121. Sismondi, iii. 222. Romances Moriscos, Madr.
1828.
|Pastoral romances.|
131. Bouterwek places in this decade the first specimens of the pastoral
romance which the Castilian language affords.[491] But the style is
borrowed from a neighbouring part of the peninsula, where this species
of fiction seems to have been indigenous. The Portuguese nation
cultivated poetry as early as the Castilian; and we have seen that some
remains of a date anterior to the fourteenth century. But to the heroic
romance they seem to have paid no regard; we do not find that it ever
existed among them. Love chiefly occupied the Lusitanian muse; and to
trace that passion through all its labyrinths, to display its troubles
in a strain of languid melancholy, was the great aim of every poet. This
led to the invention of pastoral romances, founded on the ancient
traditions as to the felicity of shepherds and their proneness to love,
and rendered sometimes more interesting for the time by the introduction
of real characters and events under a slight disguise.[492] This
artificial and effeminate sort of composition, which, if it may now and
then be not unpleasing, cannot fail to weary the modern reader by its
monotony, is due to Portugal, and having been adopted in languages
better known, became for a long time highly popular in Europe.
[491] P. 123.
[492] Bouterwek’s Hist. of Portuguese Literature, p. 43.
|Portuguese lyric poetry.|
132. The lyrical poems of Portugal were collected by Garcia de Resende,
in the Cancioneiro Geral, published in 1516. Some few of these are of
the fourteenth century, for we find the name of King Pedro, who died in
1369. Others are by the Infante Don Pedro, son of John I., in the
earlier part of the fifteenth. But a greater number belong nearly to the
present or preceding decade, or even to the ensuing age, commemorating
the victories of the Portuguese in Asia. This collection is of extreme
scarcity; none of the historians of Portuguese literature have seen it.
Bouterwek and Sismondi declare that they have caused search to be made
in various libraries of Europe without success. There is, however, a
copy in the British Museum; and M. Raynouard has given a short account
of one that he had seen in the Journal des Savans for 1826. In this
article he observes, that the Cancioneiro is a mixture of Portuguese and
Spanish pieces. I believe, however, that very little Spanish will be
found, with the exception of the poems of the Infante Pedro, which
occupy some leaves. The whole number of poets is but one hundred and
thirty-two, even if some names do not occur twice; which I mention,
because it has been erroneously said to exceed considerably that of the
Spanish Cancioneiro. The volume is in folio, and contains two hundred
and twenty-seven leaves. The metres are those usual in Spanish; some
_versos de arte mayor_; but the greater part in trochaic
redondillas. I observed no instance of the assonant rhyme; but there are
several glosses, or, in the Portuguese word, _grosas_.[493] The
chief part is amatory; but there are lines on the death of kings, and
other political events.[494]
[493] Bouterwek, p. 30, has observed, that the Portuguese employ the
glosa, calling it volta. The word in the Cancioneiro is grosa.
[494] A manuscript collection of Portuguese lyric poetry of the
fifteenth century belonged to Mr. Heber, and was sold to Messrs.
Payne and Foss. It would probably be found on comparison to contain
many of the pieces in the Cancioneiro Geral, but it is not a copy
of it.
|German popular books.|
133. The Germans, if they did not as yet excel in the higher department
of typography, were by no means negligent of their own great invention.
The books, if we include the smallest, printed in the empire between
1470 and the close of the century, amount to several thousand editions.
A large proportion of these were in their own language. They had a
literary public, as we may call it, not merely in their courts and
universities, but in their respectable middle class, the burghers of the
free cities, and, perhaps, in the artizans whom they employed. Their
reading was almost always with a serious end; but no people so
successfully cultivated the art of moral and satirical fable. These, in
many instances, spread with great favour through cisalpine Europe. Among
the works of this kind, in the fifteenth century, two deserve mention;
the Eulenspiegel, a book which became popular afterwards in England by
the name of Howleglass, and a superior and better known production, the
Narrenschiff, or Ship of Fools, by Sebastian Brandt of Strasburg, the
first edition of which I do not find referred to any date; but the Latin
translation appeared at Lyons in 1488. It was translated into English by
Barclay, and published early in 1509. It is a metrical satire on the
follies of every class, and may possibly have suggested to Erasmus his
Encomium Moriæ. But the idea was not absolutely new; the theatrical
company established at Paris, under the name of Enfans de San Souci, as
well as the ancient office of jester or fool in our courts and castles,
implied the same principle of satirising mankind with ridicule so
general, that every man should feel more pleasure from the humiliation
of his neighbours, than pain from his own. Brandt does not show much
poetical talent; but his morality is clear and sound; he keeps the pure
and right-minded reader on his side; and in an age when little better
came into competition, his characters of men, though more didactic than
descriptive, did not fail to please. The influence such books of simple
fiction and plain moral would possess over a people, may be judged by
the delight they once gave to children, before we had learned to vitiate
the healthy appetite of ignorance by premature refinements and
stimulating variety.[495]
[495] Bouterwek, ix. 332-354, v. 113. Heinsius, iv. 113. Warton,
iii. 74.
|Historical works.|
|Ph. de Comines.|
134. The historical literature of this century presents very little
deserving of notice. The English writers of this class are absolutely
contemptible; and if some annalists of good sense and tolerable skill in
narration may be found on the Continent, they are not conspicuous enough
to arrest our regard in a work which designedly passes over that
department of literature, so far as it is merely conversant with
particular events. But the memoirs of Philip de Comines, which, though
not published till 1529, must have been written before the close of the
fifteenth century, are not only of a higher value, but almost make an
epoch in historical literature. If Froissart, by his picturesque
descriptions, and fertility of historical _invention_, may be
reckoned the Livy of France, she had her Tacitus in Philip de Comines.
The intermediate writers, Monstrelet and his continuators, have the
merits of neither, certainly not of Comines. He is the first modern
writer, (or, if there had been any approach to an exception among the
Italians, it has escaped my recollection,) who in any degree has
displayed sagacity in reasoning on the characters of men, and the
consequences of their actions, or who has been able to generalise his
observation by comparison and reflection. Nothing of this could have
been found in the cloister; nor were the philologers of Italy equal to a
task which required capacities and pursuits very different from their
own. An acute understanding and much experience of mankind gave Comines
this superiority; his life had not been spent over books; and he is
consequently free from that pedantic application of history, which
became common with those who passed for political reasoners in the next
two centuries. Yet he was not ignorant of former times; and we see the
advantage of those translations from antiquity, made during the last
hundred years in France, by the use to which he turned them.
|Algebra.|
135. The earliest printed treatise of algebra, for that of Leonard
Fibonacci is still in manuscript, was published in 1494, by Luca Pacioli
di Borgo, a Franciscan, who taught mathematics in the university of
Milan. This book is written in Italian, with a mixture of the Venetian
dialect, and with many Latin words. In the first part, he explains the
rules of commercial arithmetic in detail, and is the earliest Italian
writer who shows the principles of Italian book-keeping by double entry.
Algebra he calls l’arte maggiore, detta dal volgo la regola de la cosa,
over alghebra e almacabala, which last he explains by restauratio et
opposito. The known number is called _n_ᵒ or _numero_; _co._ or _cosa_
stands for the unknown quantity; whence algebra was sometimes called the
cossic art. In the early Latin treatises _Res_ is used, or _R._, which
is an approach to literal expression. The square is called _censo_ or
_ce._; the cube, _cubo_ or _cu._; _p._ and _m._ stand for _plus_ and
_minus_. Thus, _3co. p. 4ce. m. 5cu. p. 2ce. ce. m. 6nᵒ_ would have been
written for what would now be expressed 3_x_ + 4_x_² - 5_x_³ + 2_x_⁴ - 6.
Luca di Borgo’s algebra goes as far as quadratic equations; but though
he had very good notions on the subject, it does not appear that he
carried the science much beyond the point where Leonard Fibonacci had
left it three centuries before. And its principles were already familiar
to mathematicians; for Regiomontanus, having stated a trigonometrical
solution in the form of a quadratic equation, adds, quod restat,
præcepta artis edocebunt. Luca di Borgo perceived, in a certain sense,
the application of algebra to geometry, observing, that the rules as to
surd roots are referrible to incommensurable magnitudes.[496]
[496] Montucla. Kästner. Cossali. Hutton’s Mathem. Dict., art. Algebra.
The last writer, and perhaps the first, had never seen the book of
Luca Pacioli.
Mr. Colebrooke, in his Indian Algebra, has shown that the Hindoos
carried that science considerably farther than either the Greeks or
the Arabians (though he thinks they may probably have derived their
notions of the science from the former), anticipating some of the
discoveries of the sixteenth century.
|Events from 1490 to 1500.|
136. This period of ten years from 1490 to 1500, will ever be memorable
in the history of mankind. It is here that we usually close the long
interval between the Roman world and this our modern Europe, denominated
the Middle Ages. The conquest of Granada, which rendered Spain a
Christian kingdom; the annexation of the last great fief of the French
crown, Britany, which made France an entire and absolute monarchy; the
public peace of Germany; the invasion of Naples by Charles VIII., which
revealed the weakness of Italy, while it communicated her arts and
manners to the cisalpine nations, and opened the scene of warfare and
alliances which may be deduced to the present day; the discovery of two
worlds by Columbus and Vasco de Gama, all belong to this decade. But it
is not, as we have seen, so marked an era in the progression of
literature.
|Close of fifteenth century.|
137. In taking leave of the fifteenth century, to which we have been
used to attach many associations of reverence, and during which the
desire of knowledge was, in one part of Europe, more enthusiastic and
universal than perhaps it has since ever been, it is natural to ask
ourselves what harvest had already rewarded their zeal and labour, what
monuments of genius and erudition still receive the homage of mankind?
|Its literature nearly neglected.|
138. No very triumphant answer can be given to this interrogation. Of
the books then written how few are read! Of the men then famous how few
are familiar in our recollection! Let us consider what Italy itself
produced of any effective tendency to enlarge the boundaries of
knowledge, or to delight the taste and fancy. The treatise of Valla on
Latin grammar, the miscellaneous observations of Politian on ancient
authors, the commentaries of Landino and some other editors, the
Platonic theology of Ficinus, the Latin poetry of Politian and Pontanus,
the light Italian poetry of the same Politian and Lorenzo de’ Medici,
the epic romances of Pulci and Boiardo. Of these, Pulci alone, in an
original shape, is still read in Italy, and by some lovers of that
literature in other countries, and the Latin poets by a smaller number.
If we look on the other side of the Alps, the catalogue is much shorter,
or rather does not contain a single book, except Philip de Comines, that
enters into the usual studies of a literary man. Froissart hardly
belongs to the fifteenth century, his history terminating about 1400.
The first undated edition, with a continuation by some one to 1498, was
printed between that time and 1509, when the second appeared.
|Summary of its acquisitions.|
139. If we come to inquire, what acquisitions had been made between the
years 1400 and 1500, we shall find that, in Italy, the Latin language
was now written by some with elegance, and by most with tolerable
exactness and fluency; while, out of Italy, there had been, perhaps, a
corresponding improvement, relatively to the point from which they
started; the flagrant barbarisms of the fourteenth century having
yielded before the close of the next to a more respectable, though not
an elegant or exact kind of style. Many Italians had now some
acquaintance with Greek, which in 1400 had been hardly the case with any
one; and the knowledge of it was of late beginning to make a little
progress in cisalpine Europe. The French and English languages were
become what we call more polished, though the difference in the former
seems not to be very considerable. In mathematical science, and in
natural history, the ancient writers had been more brought to light, and
a certain progress had been made by diligent, if not very inventive
philosophers. We cannot say that metaphysical or moral philosophy stood
higher than it had done in the time of the schoolmen. The history of
Greece and Rome, and the antiquities of the latter, were, of course,
more distinctly known after so many years of attentive study bestowed on
their principal authors; yet the acquaintance of the learned with those
subjects was by no means exact or critical enough to save them from
gross errors, or from becoming the dupes of any forgery. A proof of this
was furnished by the impostures of Annius of Viterbo, who, having
published large fragments of Megasthenes, Berosus, Manetho, and a great
many more lost historians, as having been discovered by himself,
obtained full credence at the time, which was not generally withheld for
too long a period afterwards, though the forgeries were palpable to
those who had made themselves masters of genuine history.[497]
[497] Annius of Viterbo did not cease to have believers after this
time. See Blount, Niceron, vol. ii., Corniani, iii. 131, and his
article in Biographie Universelle. Apostolo Zeno and Tiraboschi
have imputed less fraud than credulity to Annius, but most have
been of another opinion; and it is unimportant for the purpose of
the text.
|Their imperfection.|
140. We should, therefore, if we mean to judge accurately, not
over-value the fifteenth century, as one in which the human mind
advanced with giant strides in the kingdom of knowledge. General
historians of literature are apt to speak rather hyperbolically in
respect of men who rose above their contemporaries; language frequently
just, in relation to the vigorous intellects and ardent industry of such
men, but tending to produce an exaggerated estimate of their absolute
qualities. But the question is at present not so much of men, as of the
average or general proficiency of nations. The catalogues of printed
books in the common bibliographical collections afford, not quite a
gauge of the learning of any particular period, but a reasonable
presumption, which it requires contrary evidence to rebut. If these
present us very few and imperfect editions of books necessary to the
progress of knowledge, if the works most in request appear to have been
trifling and ignorant productions, it seems as reasonable to draw an
inference one way from these scanty and discreditable lists, as on the
other hand we hail the progressive state of any branch of knowledge from
the redoubled labours of the press, and the multiplication of useful
editions. It is true that the deficiency of one country might be
supplied by importation from another; and some cities, especially Paris,
had acquired a typographical reputation somewhat disproportioned to the
local demand for books; a considerable increase of readers would but
naturally have created a press, or multiplied its operations, in any
country of Europe.
|Number of books printed.|
141. The bibliographies, indeed, even the best and latest, are always
imperfect; but the omissions, after the immense pains bestowed on the
subject, can hardly be such as to affect our general conclusions. We
will therefore illustrate the literary history of the fifteenth century
by a few numbers taken from the typographical annals of Panzer, which
might be corrected in two ways; first, by adding editions since brought
to light, or secondly, by striking out some inserted on defective
authority; a kind of mistake which tends to compensate the former. The
books printed at Florence down to 1500 are 300; at Milan, 629; at
Bologna, 298; at Rome, 925; at Venice, 2835; fifty other Italian cities
had printing presses in the fifteenth century.[498] At Paris, the number
of books is 751; at Cologne, 530; at Nuremberg, 382; at Leipsic, 351; at
Basle, 320; at Strasburg, 526; at Augsburg, 256; at Louvain, 116; at
Mentz, 134; at Deventer, 169. The whole number printed in England
appears to be 141; whereof 130 at London and Westminster; seven at
Oxford; four at St. Albans. Cicero’s works were first printed entire by
Minutianus, at Milan, in 1498; but no less than 291 editions of
different portions appeared in the century. Thirty-seven of these bear
date on this side of the Alps; and forty-five have no place named. Of
ninety-five editions of Virgil, seventy are complete; twenty-seven are
cisalpine, and four bear no date. On the other hand, only eleven out of
fifty-seven editions of Horace contain all his works. It has been
already shown, that most editions of classics printed in France and
Germany are in the last decennium of the century.
[498] I find this in Heeren, p. 127, for I have not counted the number
of cities in Panzer.
142. The editions of the vulgate registered in Panzer are ninety-one,
exclusive of some spurious or suspected. Next to theology, no science
furnished so much occupation to the press as the civil and canon laws.
The editions of the digest and decretals, or other parts of those
systems of jurisprudence, must amount to some hundreds.
|Advantages already reaped from printing.|
143. But while we avoid, for the sake of truth, any undue exaggeration
of the literary state of Europe at the close of the fifteenth century,
we must even more earnestly deprecate the hasty prejudice, that no good
had been already done by the culture of classical learning, and by the
invention of printing. Both were of inestimable value, even where their
immediate fruits were not clustering in ripe abundance. It is certain
that much more than ten thousand editions of books or pamphlets (a late
writer says fifteen thousand)[499] were printed from 1470 to 1500. More
than half the number appeared in Italy. All the Latin authors, hitherto
painfully copied by the scholar, or purchased by him at inconvenient
cost, or borrowed for a time from friends, became readily accessible,
and were printed, for the most part, if not correctly, according to our
improved criticism, yet without the gross blunders of the ordinary
manuscripts. The saving of time which the art of printing has
occasioned, can hardly be too highly appreciated. Nor was the cisalpine
press unserviceable in this century, though it did not pour forth so
much from the stores of ancient learning. It gave useful food, and such
as the reader could better relish and digest. The historical records of
his own nation, the precepts of moral wisdom, the regular metre, that
pleased the ear and supplied the memory, the fictions that warmed the
imagination, and sometimes ennobled or purified the heart, the
repertories of natural phenomena, mingled as truth was on these
subjects, and on all the rest, with error, the rules of civil and canon
law, that guided the determinations of private right, the subtle
philosophy of the scholastics, were laid open to his choice; while his
religious feelings might find their gratification in many a treatise of
learned doctrine, according to the received creed of the church, in many
a legend on which a pious credulity delighted to rely, in the devout
aspirations of holy ascetic men; but, above all, in the Scriptures
themselves, either in the Vulgate Latin, which had by use acquired the
authority of an original text, or in most of the living languages of
Europe.
[499] Santander, Dict. Bibliogr. du 15me siècle. I do not think so many
would be found in Panzer. I have read somewhere that the library of
Munich claims to possess 20,000 Incunabula, or books of the
fifteenth century: a word lately so applied in Germany. But unless
this comprehends many duplicates, it seems a little questionable.
Books were not in general so voluminous in that age as at present.
|Trade of bookselling.|
144. We shall conclude this portion of literary history with a few
illustrations of what a German writer calls “the exterior being of
books,”[500] for which I do not find an equivalent in English idiom. The
trade of bookselling seems to have been established at Paris and at
Bologna in the twelfth century; the lawyers and universities called it
into life.[501] It is very improbable that it existed in what we
properly call the dark ages. Peter of Blois mentions a book which he had
bought of a public dealer (a quodam publico mangone librorum). But we do
not find, I believe, many distinct accounts of them till the next age.
These dealers were denominated Stationarii, perhaps from the open stalls
at which they carried on their business, though statio is a general word
for a shop, in low Latin.[502] They appear, by the old statutes of the
university of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon
commission; and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from
the Librarii; a word which, having originally been confined to the
copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in
them.[503] They sold parchment and other materials of writing, which,
with us, though, as far I know, nowhere else, have retained the name of
stationery, and naturally exercised the kindred occupations of binding
and decorating. They probably employed transcribers: we find at least
that there was a profession of copyists in the universities and in large
cities; and by means of these, before the invention of printing, the
necessary books of grammar, law, and theology were multiplied to a great
extent for the use of students; but with much incorrectness, and far
more expense than afterwards. That invention put a sudden stop to their
honest occupation. But whatever hatred they might feel towards the new
art, it was in vain to oppose its reception: no party could be raised in
the public against so manifest and unalloyed a benefit; and the
copyists, grown by habit fond of books, frequently employed themselves
in the somewhat kindred labour of pressmen.[504]
[500] Aüsseres bucher-wesen. Savigny, iii. 532.
[501] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 142.
[502] Du Cange, in voc.
[503] The librarii were properly those who transcribed new books; the
Antiquarii old ones. This distinction is as old as Cassiodorus; but
doubtless it was not strictly observed in later times. Muratori,
Dissert. 43. Du Cange.
[504] Crevier, ii. 66, 130, et alibi. Du Cange, in voc. Stationarii,
Librarii. Savigny, iii. 532-548. Chevillier, 302. Eichhorn, ii.
531. Meiners, Vergleich der Sitten, ii. 539. Greswell’s Parisian
Press, p. 8.
The parliament of Paris, on the petition of the copyists, ordered
some of the first printed books to be seized. Lambinet calls this
superstition; it was more probably false compassion, and regard for
existing interests, combined with dislike of all innovation. Louis
XI., however, who had the merit of esteeming literature, evoked the
process to the counsel of state, who restored the books. Lambinet,
Hist. de l’Imprimerie, p. 172.
|Books sold by printers.|
145. The first printers were always booksellers, and sold their own
impressions. These occupations were not divided till the early part of
the sixteenth century.[505] But the risks of sale, at a time when
learning was by no means general, combined with the great cost of
production, paper and other materials being very dear, rendered this a
hazardous trade. We have a curious petition of Sweynheim and Pannartz to
Sixtus IV., in 1472, wherein they complain of their poverty, brought on
by printing so many works, which they had not been able to sell. They
state the number of impressions of each edition. Of the classical
authors they had generally printed 275; of Virgil and the philosophical
works of Cicero, twice that number. In theological publications
the usual number of copies had also been 550. The whole number of copies
printed was 12,475.[506] It is possible that experience made other
printers more discreet in their estimation of the public demand.
Notwithstanding the casualties of three centuries, it seems from the
great scarcity of these early editions, which has long existed, that the
original circulation must have been much below the number of copies
printed, as indeed the complaint of Sweynheim and Pannartz shows.[507]
[505] Conversations-Lexicon, art. Buchhandlung.
[506] Maittaire. Lambinet, p. 166. Beckmann, iii. 119, erroneously says
that this was the number of volumes remaining in their warehouses.
[507] Lambinet says, that the number of impressions did not generally
exceed three hundred, p. 197. Even this seems large, compared with
the present scarcity of books unlikely to have been destroyed by
careless use.
|Price of books.|
146. The price of books was diminished by four-fifths after the
invention of printing. Chevillier gives some instances of a fall in this
proportion. But not content with such a reduction, the university of
Paris proceeded to establish a tariff, according to which every edition
was to be sold, and seems to have set the prices very low. This was by
virtue of the prerogatives they exerted, as we shall soon find, over the
book-trade of the capital. The priced catalogues of Colinæus and Robert
Stephens are extant, relating, of course, to a later period than the
present; but we shall not return to the subject. The Greek Testament of
Colinæus was sold for twelve sous, the Latin for six. The folio Latin
Bible, printed by Stephens in 1532, might be had for one hundred sous, a
copy of the Pandacts for forty sous, a Virgil for two sous and six
deniers; a Greek grammar of Clenardus for two sous, Demosthenes and
Æschines, I know not what edition, for five sous. It would of course be
necessary, before we can make any use of these prices, to compare them
with that of corn.[508]
[508] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 370 et seq.
In the preceding pages he mentions what I should perhaps have
introduced before, that a catalogue of the books in the Sorbonne,
in 1292, contains above 1000 volumes, which were collectively
valued at 3,812 livres, 10 sous, 8 deniers. In a modern English
book on literary antiquities, this is set down 3,812_l._ 10_s._
8_d._; which is a happy way of helping the reader.
Lambinet mentions a few prices of early books, which are not
trifling. The Mentz Bible of 1462 was purchased in 1470 by a bishop
of Angers for forty gold crowns. An English gentleman paid eighteen
gold florins, in 1481, for a missal: upon which Lambinet makes a
remark:--Mais on a toujours fait payer plus cher aux Anglais qu’aux
autres nations, p. 198. The florin was worth about four francs of
present money, equivalent perhaps to twenty-four in command of
commodities. The crown was worth rather more.
Instances of an almost incredible price of manuscripts are to be
met with in Robertson and other common authors. It is to be
remembered that a particular book might easily bear a monopoly
price; and that this is no test of the cost of those which might be
multiplied by copying.
|Form of books.|
147. The more usual form of books printed in the fifteenth century is in
folio. But the Psalter of 1457, and the Donatus of the same year, are in
quarto; and this size is not uncommon in the early Italian editions of
classics. The disputed Oxford book of 1468, Sancti Jeronymi Expositio,
is in octavo, and would, if genuine, be the earliest specimen of that
size, which may perhaps furnish an additional presumption against the
date. It is at least, however, of 1478, when the octavo form, as we
shall immediately see, was of the rarest occurrence. Maittaire, in whom
alone I have had the curiosity to make this search, which would be more
troublesome in Panzer’s arrangement, mentions a book printed in octavo
at Milan in 1470; but the existence of this, and of one or two more that
follow, seems equivocal; and the first on which we can rely is the
Sallust, printed at Valencia in 1475. Another book of that form, at
Treviso, occurs in the same year, and an edition of Pliny’s epistles at
Florence in 1478. They become from this time gradually more common; but
even at the end of the century form rather a small proportion of
editions. I have not observed that the duodecimo division of the sheet
was adopted in any instance. But it is highly probable that the volumes
of Panzer furnish means of correcting these little notices, which I
offer as suggestions to persons more erudite in such matters. The price
and convenience of books are evidently not unconnected with their size.
|Exclusive privileges.|
148. Nothing could be less unreasonable than that the printer should
have a better chance of indemnifying himself and the author, if in those
days the author, as probably he did, hoped for some lucrative return
after his exhausting drudgery, by means of an exclusive privilege. The
senate of Venice granted an exclusive privilege for five years to John
of Spire in 1469, for the first book printed in the city, his edition of
Cicero’s epistles.[509] But I am not aware that this extended to
any other work. And this seems to have escaped the learned Beckmann, who
says that the earliest instance of protected copyright on record appears
to be in favour of a book insignificant enough, a missal for the church
of Bamberg, printed in 1490. It is probable that other privileges of an
older date have not been found. In 1491, one occurs at the end of a book
printed at Venice, and five more at the same place within the century;
the Aristotle of Aldus being one of the books: one also is found at
Milan. These privileges are always recited at the end of the volume.
They are, however, very rare in comparison with the number of books
published, and seem not accorded by preference to the most important
editions.[510]
[509] Tiraboschi, vi. 139. I have a recollection of some more decisive
authority than this passage, but cannot find it.
[510] Beckmann’s Hist. of Inventions, iii. 109.
|Power of universities over bookselling.|
149. In these exclusive privileges, the printer was forced to call in
the magistrate for his own benefit. But there was often a different sort
of interference by the civil power with the press. The destruction of
books, and the prohibition of their sale, had not been unknown to
antiquity; instances of it occur in the free republics of Athens and
Rome; but it was naturally more frequent under suspicious despotisms,
especially when to the jealousy of the state was superadded that of the
church, and novelty, even in speculation, became a crime.[511] Ignorance
came on with the fall of the empire, and it was unnecessary to guard
against the abuse of an art which very few possessed at all. With the
first revival of letters in the eleventh and twelfth centuries sprang up
the reviving shoots of heretical freedom; but with Berenger and Abelard
came also the jealousy of the church, and the usual exertion of the
right of the strongest. Abelard was censured by the council of Soissons
in 1121, for suffering copies of his book to be taken without the
approbation of his superiors, and the delinquent volumes were given to
the flames. It does not appear, however, that any regulation on this
subject had been made.[512] But when the sale of books became the
occupation of a class of traders, it was deemed necessary to place them
under restraint. Those of Paris and Bologna, the cities, doubtless,
where the greatest business of this kind was carried on, came altogether
into the power of the universities. It is proved by various statutes of
the university of Paris, originating, no doubt, in some authority
conferred by the crown, and bearing date from the year 1275 to 1403,
that booksellers were appointed by the university, and considered as its
officers, probably matriculated by entry on her roll; that they took an
oath, renewable at her pleasure, to observe her statutes and
regulations; that they were admitted upon security, and testimonials to
their moral conduct; that no one could sell books in Paris without this
permission; and that they could expose no book to sale without
communication with the university, and without its approbation; that the
university fixed the prices, according to the tariff of four sworn
booksellers, at which books should be sold, or lent to the scholars;
that a fine might be imposed for incorrect copies; that the sellers were
bound to fix up in their shops a priced catalogue of their books,
besides other regulations of less importance. Books, deemed by the
university unfit for perusal were sometimes burned by its order.[513]
Chevillier gives several prices for lending books (pro exemplari
concesso scholaribus) fixed about 1303. The books mentioned are all of
divinity, philosophy, or canon law; on an average, the charge for about
twenty pages was a sol. The university of Toulouse exercised the same
authority; and Albert III., archduke of Austria, founding the university
of Vienna about 1384, copied the statutes of Paris in this control over
bookselling as well as in other respects.[514] The stationarii of
Bologna were also bound by oath, and gave sureties, to fulfil their
duties towards the university; one of these was, to keep by them copies
of books to the number of one hundred and seventeen, for the hire of
which a price was fixed.[515] By degrees, however, a class of
booksellers grew up at Paris, who took no oath to the university, and
were consequently not admitted to its privileges, being usually poor
scholars, who were tolerated in selling books at a low price. These were
of no importance, till the privileged, or sworn traders, having been
reduced by a royal ordinance of 1488 to twenty-four, this lower class
silently increased, at length the practice of taking an oath to the
university fell into disuse.[516]
[511] Id.
[512] Hist. Litt. de la France, ix. 28.
[513] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 302, et seq.
Crevier, ii. 66.
[514] Chevillier, ibid.
[515] Savigny, iii. 540.
[516] Chevillier, 334-351.
|Restraints on sale of printed books.|
150. The vast and sudden extension of the means of communicating and
influencing opinion which the discovery of printing afforded, did not
long remain unnoticed. Few have temper and comprehensive views
enough not to desire the prevention by force of that which they reckon
detrimental to truth and right. Hermolaus Barbarus, in a letter to
Merula, recommends that, on account of the many trifling publications
which took men off from reading the best authors, nothing should be
printed without the approbation of competent judges.[517] The
governments of Europe cared little for what seemed an evil to Hermolaus.
But they perceived that, especially in Germany, a country where the
principles that were to burst out in the Reformation were evidently
germinating in this century, where a deep sense of the corruptions of
the church pervaded every class, that incredible host of popular
religious tracts, which the Rhine and Neckar poured forth like their
waters, were of no slight danger to the two powers, or at least the
union of the two, whom the people had so long obeyed. We find,
therefore, an instance, in 1480, of a book called Nosce Teipsum, printed
at Heidelberg with the approving testimonies of four persons, who may be
presumed, though it is not stated, to have been appointed censors on
that occasion.[518] Two others, one of which is a Bible, have been found
printed at Cologne in 1479; in the subscription to which, the language
of public approbation by the university is more express. The first known
instance, however, of the regular appointment of a censor on books is in
the mandate of Berthold, archbishop of Mentz, in 1486. “Notwithstanding,”
he begins, “the facility given to the acquisition of science by the
divine art of printing, it has been found that some abuse this
invention, and convert that which was designed for the instruction of
mankind to their injury. For books on the duties and doctrines of
religion are translated from Latin into German, and circulated among the
people, to the disgrace of religion itself; and some have even had the
rashness to make faulty versions of the canons of the church into the
vulgar tongue, which belong to a science so difficult, that it is enough
to occupy the life of the wisest man. Can such men assert, that our
German language is capable of expressing what great authors have written
in Greek and Latin on the high mysteries of the Christian faith, and on
general science? Certainly it is not; and hence they either invent new
words, or use old ones in erroneous senses; a thing especially dangerous
in sacred Scripture. For who will admit that men without learning, or
women, into whose hands these translations may fall, can find the true
sense of the gospels, or of the epistles of St. Paul? much less can they
enter on questions which, even among catholic writers, are open to
subtle discussion. But since this art was first discovered in this city
of Mentz, and we may truly say by divine aid, and is to be maintained by
us in all its honour, we strictly forbid all persons to translate, or
circulate when translated, any books upon any subject whatever from the
Greek, Latin, or any other tongue, into German, until, before printing,
and again before their sale, such translations shall be approved by four
doctors herein named, under penalty of excommunication, and of
forfeiture of the books, and of one hundred golden florins to the use of
our exchequer.”[519]
[517] Beckmann, iii. 98.
[518] Beckmann, 99.
[519] Beckmann, 101, from the fourth volume of Guden’s Codex
Diplomaticus. The Latin will be found in Beckmann.
|Effect of printing on the Reformation.|
151. I have given the substance of this mandate rather at length,
because it has a considerable bearing on the preliminary history of the
Reformation, and yet has never, to my knowledge, been produced with that
view. For it is obvious that it was on account of religious
translations, and especially those of the Scripture, which had been very
early printed in Germany, that this alarm was taken by the worthy
archbishop. A bull of Alexander VI., in 1501, reciting that many
pernicious books had been printed in various parts of the world, and
especially in the provinces of Cologne, Mentz, Treves, and Magdeburg,
forbids all printers in these provinces to publish any books without the
licence of the archbishops or their officials.[520] We here perceive the
distinction made between these parts of Germany and the rest of Europe,
and can understand their ripeness for the ensuing revolution. We
perceive, also, the vast influence of the art of printing upon the
Reformation. Among those who have been sometimes enumerated as its
precursors, a place should be left for Schœffer and Gutenberg; nor has
this always been forgotten.[521]
[520] Id. 106.
[521] Gerdes, in his Hist. Evangel. Reformati, who has gone very
laboriously into this subject, justly dwells on the influence of
the art of printing.
CHAPTER IV.
ON THE LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1500 TO 1520.
SECT. I. 1501-1510.
_Classical Learning of Italy in this Period--Of France, Germany, and
England--Works of Polite Literature in Languages of Italy, Spain, and
England._
|Decline of learning in Italy.|
1. The new century did not begin very auspiciously for the literary
credit of Italy. We may, indeed, consider the whole period between the
death of Lorenzo in 1492, and the pontificate of his son in 1513, as
less brilliant than the two ages which we connect with their names. But
when measured by the labours of the press, the last ten years of the
fifteenth century were considerably more productive than any which had
gone before. In the present decade a striking decline was perceptible.
Thus, in comparing the numbers of books printed in the chief towns of
Italy, we find--
1491-1500 1501-1510
Florence 179 47
Rome 460 41
Milan 228 99
Venice 1491 536[522]
Such were the fruits of the ambition of Ferdinand and of Louis XII., and
the first interference of strangers with the liberties of Italy. Wars so
protracted within the bosom of a country, if they do not prevent the
growth of original genius, must yet be unfavourable to that secondary,
but more diffused excellence, which is nourished by the wealth of
patrons and the tranquillity of universities. Thus the gymnasium of
Rome, founded by Eugenius IV., but lately endowed and regulated by
Alexander VI., who had established it in a handsome edifice on the
Quirinal hill, was despoiled of its revenues by Julius II., who, with
some liberality towards painters, had no regard for learning; and this
will greatly account for the remarkable decline in the typography of
Rome. Thus, too, the Platonic school at Florence soon went to decay
after the fall of the Medici, who had fostered it; and even the rival
philosophy which rose upon its ruins, and was taught at the beginning of
this century with much success at Padua by Pomponatius, according to the
original principles of Aristotle, and by two other professors of great
eminence in their time, Nifo and Achillini, according to the system of
Averroes, could not resist the calamities of war: the students of that
university were dispersed in 1509, after the unfortunate defeat of
Ghiaradadda.
[522] Panzer.
|Press of Aldus.|
2. Aldus himself left Venice in 1506, his effects in the territory
having been plundered, and did not open his press again till 1512, when
he entered into partnership with his father-in-law, Andrew Asola. He had
been actively employed during the first years of the century. He
published Sophocles, Herodotus, and Thucydides in 1502, Euripides and
Herodian in 1503, Demosthenes in 1504. These were important accessions
to Greek learning, though so much remained behind. A circumstance may be
here mentioned, which had so much influence in facilitating the
acquisition of knowledge, that it renders the year 1501 a sort of epoch
in literary history. He that year not only introduced a new Italic
character, called Aldine, more easily read perhaps than his Roman
letters, which are somewhat rude; but, what was of more importance,
began to print in a small octavo or duodecimo form, instead of the
cumbrous and expensive folios that had been principally in use. Whatever
the great of ages past might seem to lose by this indignity, was more
than compensated in the diffused love and admiration of their writings.
“With what pleasure,” says M. Renouard, “must the studious man, the
lover of letters, have beheld these benevolent octavos, these Virgils
and Horaces contained in one little volume, which he might carry in his
pocket while travelling or in a walk; which besides cost him hardly more
than two of our francs, so that he could get a dozen of them for the
price of one of those folios, that had hitherto been the sole furniture
of his library. The appearance of these correct and well printed octavos
ought to be as much remarked as the substitution of printed books for
manuscripts itself.”[523] We have seen above, that not only quartos,
nearly as portable perhaps as octavos, but the latter form also, had
been coming into use towards the close of the fifteenth century, though,
I believe, it was sparingly employed for classical authors.
[523] Renouard, Hist. de l’Imprimerie des Aldes. Roscoe’s Leo. X.
ch. ii.
|His academy.|
3. It was about 1500, that Aldus drew together a few scholars into a
literary association, called Aldi Neacademia. Not only amicable
discussions, but the choice of books to be printed, of manuscripts and
various readings, occupied their time, so that they may be considered as
literary partners of the noble-minded printer. This academy was
dispersed by the retirement of Aldus from Venice, and never met
again.[524]
[524] Tiraboschi. Roscoe. Renouard. Scipio Forteguerra, who latinized
his name into Carteromachus, was secretary to this society, and
among its most distinguished members. He was celebrated in his time
for a discourse, De Laudibus Literarum Græcarum, reprinted by Henry
Stephens in his Thesaurus. Biogr. Univ., Forteguerra.
|Dictionary of Calepio.|
4. The first edition of Calepio’s Latin Dictionary, which, though far
better than one or two obscure books that preceded it, and enriched by
plundering the stores of Valla and Perotti, was very defective, appeared
at Reggio in 1502.[525] It was so greatly augmented by subsequent
improvers, that calepin has become a name in French for any voluminous
compilation. This dictionary was not only of Latin and Italian, but
several other languages; and these were extended in the Basle edition of
1581 to eleven. It is still, if not the best, the most complete
polyglott lexicon for the European languages. Calepio, however moderate
might be his erudition, has just claim to be esteemed one of the most
effective instruments in the restoration of the Latin language in its
purity to general use; for though some had by great acuteness and
diligence attained a good style in the fifteenth century, that age was
looked upon in Italy itself as far below the subsequent period.[526]
[525] Brunet. Tiraboschi (x. 383) gives some reason to suspect that
there may have been an earlier edition.
[526] Calepio is said by Morhof and Baillet to have copied Perotti’s
Cornucopia almost entire. Sir John Elyot long before had remarked:
“Calepin nothing amended, but rather appaired that which Perottus
had studiously gathered.” But the Cornucopia was not a complete
dictionary. It is generally agreed, that Calepio was an indifferent
scholar, and that the first editions of his dictionary are of no
great value. Nor have those who have enlarged it done so with
exactness, or with selection of good latinity. Even Passerat, the
most learned of them, has not extirpated the unauthorised words of
Calepio. Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 44.
Several bad dictionaries, abridged from the Catholicon, appeared
near the end of the fifteenth century, and at the beginning of the
next. Du Cange, præfat in Glossar, p. 47.
|Books printed in Germany.|
5. We may read in Panzer the titles of 325 books printed during these
ten years at Leipsic, 60 of which are classical, but chiefly, as before,
small school-books; 14 out of 214 at Cologne; 10 out of 208 at
Strasburg; 1 out of 84 at Basle; but scarcely any books whatever appear
at Louvain. One printed at Erfurt in 1501 deserves some attention. The
title runs “Εισαγωγη προς των γραμματων Ελληνων [Eisagôgê pros tôn
grammatôn Ellênôn], Elementale Introductorium in idioma Græcanicum,”
with some more words. Panzer observes: “This Greek grammar, published by
some unknown person, is undoubtedly the first which was published in
Germany since the invention of printing.” In this, however, as has
already been shown, he is mistaken; unless we deny to the book printed
at Deventer the name of a grammar. But Panzer was not acquainted with
it. This seems to be the only attempt at Greek that occurs in Germany
during this decade; and it is unnecessary to comment on the ignorance,
which the gross solecism in the title displays.[527]
[527] Panzer, vi. 494. We find, however, a tract by Hegius, De
Utilitate Linguæ Græcæ printed at Deventer in 1501; but whether it
contains Greek characters or not, must be left to conjecture.
Lambinet says, that Martens, a Flemish printer, employed Greek
types in quotations as early as 1501 or 1502.
|First Greek press at Paris.|
6. Paris contributed in ten years 430 editions, thirty-two being of
Latin classics. And in 1507 Giles Gourmont, a printer of that city,
assisted by the purse of Francis Tissard, had the honour of introducing
the Greek language on this side, as we may say, of the Alps; for the
trifling exceptions we have mentioned scarcely affect his priority.
Greek types had been used in a few words by Badius Ascensius, a learned
and meritorious Parisian printer, whose publications began about 1498.
They occur in his edition (1505) of Villa’s Annotations on the Greek
Testament.[528] Four little books, namely, a small miscellaneous
volume preceded by an alphabet, the Works and Days of Hesiod, the Frogs
and Mice of Homer, and the Erotemata or Greek grammar of Chrysoloras, to
which four a late writer has added an edition of Musæus, were the first
fruits of Gourmont’s press. Aleander, a learned Italian, who played
afterwards no inconsiderable part in the earlier period of the
Reformation, came to Paris in 1508, and received a pension from Louis
XII.[529] He taught Greek there, and perhaps Hebrew. Through his care,
besides a Hebrew and Greek alphabet in 1508, Gourmont printed some of
the moral works of Plutarch in 1509.
[528] Chevillier, Origines de l’Imprimerie de Paris, p. 246. Greswell’s
View of early Parisian Greek Press, i. 15. Panzer, according to Mr.
Greswell, has recorded nearly 400 editions from the press of
Badius. They include almost every Latin classic, usually with
notes. He also printed a few Greek authors. See also Bayle and
Biogr. Univ. The latter refers the first works from the Parisian
press of Badius to 1511, but probably by misprint. Badius had
learned Greek at Ferrara. If Bayle is correct, he taught it at
Lyons before he set up his press at Paris, which is worthy of
notice; but he gives no authority, except for the fact of his
teaching in the former city, which might not be the Greek language.
It is said, however, that he came to Paris in order to give
instruction in Greek about 1499. Bayle, art. Badius, note H. It is
said in the Biographie Universelle, that Denys le Fevre taught
Greek at Paris in 1504, when only sixteen years old; but the story
seems apocryphal.
[529] Aleander was no favourite with Erasmus, and Luther utters many
invectives against him. He was a strenuous supporter of all things
as they were in the church, and would have presided in the council
of Trent, as legate of Paul III., who had given him a cardinal’s
hat, if he had not been prevented by death. His epitaph on himself
may be mentioned, as the best Greek verses by a Frank that I
remember to have read before the middle of the eighteenth century,
though the reader may not think much of them.
κάτθανον οὐκ ἀέκων, ὅτι πάυσομαι ὣν ἐπιμάρτθς
πόλλων, ὥνπερ ἰδεῖν ἀλγίον ἤν θανάτου.
[katthanon ouk aekôn, hoti pausomai hôn epimartus
pollôn, hônper idein algion ên thanatou.]
It is fair to say of Aleander, that he was the friend of Sadolet.
In a letter of that excellent person to Paul III., he praises
Aleander very highly, and requests for him the hat, which the Pope
in consequence bestowed. Sadolet. Epist. l. xii. See, for Aleander,
Bayle; Sleidan, Hist. de la Réformation, l. ii. and iii.; Roscoe’s
Leo X., ch. xxi.; Jortin’s Erasmus, passim.
|Early studies of Melanchthon.|
7. We learn from a writer of the most respectable authority, Camerarius,
that the elements of Greek were already taught to some boys in parts of
Germany.[530] About 1508, Reuchlin, on a visit to George Simler, a
schoolmaster in Hesse, found a relation of his own, little more than ten
years old, who, uniting extraordinary quickness with thirst for
learning, had already acquired the rudiments of that language; and
presenting him with a lexicon and grammar, precious gifts in those
times, changed his German name, Schwartzerd, to one of equivalent
meaning and more classical sound, Melanchthon. He had himself set the
example of assuming a name of Greek derivation, being almost as much
known by the name of Capnio as by his own. And this pedantry, which
continued to prevail for a century and a half afterwards, might be
excused by the great uncouthness of many German, not to say French and
English, surnames in their latinised forms. Melanchthon, the precocity
of his youth being followed by a splendid maturity, became not only one
of the greatest lights of the Reformation, but, far above all others,
the founder of general learning in Germany.[531]
[530] Jam enim pluribus in locis melius quam dudum pueritia institui
et doctrina in scholis usurpari politior, quod et bonorum autorum
scripta in manus tenerentur, et elementa quoque linguæ Græcæ
alicubi proponerentur ad discendum, cum seniorum admiratione
maxima, et ardentissima cupiditate juniorum, cujus utriusque tum
non tam judicium quam novitas causa fuit. Similerus, qui postea ex
primario grammatico eximius jurisconsultus factus est, initio hanc
doctrinam non vulgandam aliquantisper, arbitrabatur. Itaque
Græcarum literarum scholam explicabat aliquot discipulis suis
privatim, quibus debat hanc operam peculiarem, ut quos summopere
diligeret. Camerarius, Vita Melanchthonis. I find also in one of
Melanchthon’s own epistles, that he learned the Greek grammar from
George Simler. Epist. Melanchthon, p. 351 (edit. 1647.)
[531] Camerarius. Meiners, i. 73. The Biographie Universelle, art.
Melanchthon, calls him nephew of Reuchlin: but this seems not to be
the case; Camerarius only says, that their families were connected
quadam cognationis necessitudine.
|Learning in England.|
8. England seems to have been nearly stationary in academical learning
during the unpropitious reign of Henry VII.[532] But just hopes were
entertained from the accession of his son in 1509, who had received in
some degree a learned education. And the small knot of excellent men,
united by zeal for improvement, Grocyn, Linacre, Latimer, Fisher, Colet,
More, succeeded in bringing over their friend Erasmus to teach Greek at
Cambridge in 1510. The students, he says, were too poor to pay him
anything; nor had he many scholars.[533] His instruction was
confined to the grammar. In the same year, Colet, dean of St. Paul’s,
founded there a school, and published a Latin grammar; five or six
little works of the kind had already appeared in England.[534] These
trifling things are mentioned to let the reader take notice that there
is nothing more worthy to be named. Twenty-six books were printed at
London during this decade; among these Terence in 1504; but no other
Latin author of classical name. The difference in point of learning
between Italy and England was at least that of a century; that is, the
former was more advanced in knowledge of ancient literature in 1400 than
the latter was in 1500.
[532] “The schools were much frequented with quirks and sophistry. All
things, whether taught or written, seemed to be trite and inane. No
pleasant streams of humanity or mythology were gliding among us,
and the Greek language, from whence the greater part of knowledge
is derived, was at a very low ebb, or in a manner forgotten.”
Wood’s Annals of Oxford, A.D. 1508. The word “forgotten” is
improperly applied to Greek, which had never been known. In this
reign, but in what part of it does not appear, the university of
Oxford hired an Italian, one Caius Auberinus, to compose the public
orations and epistles, and to explain Terence in the schools.
Warton, ii. 420, from MS. authority.
[533] Hactenus prælegimus Chrysoloræ grammaticam, sed paucis; fortassis
frequentiori auditorio Theodori grammaticam auspicabimur. Ep.
cxxiii. (16th Oct. 1511.)
[534] Wood talks of Holt’s Lac Puerorum, published in 1497, as if it
had made an epoch in literature. It might be superior to any
grammar we already possessed.
|Erasmus and Budæus.|
9. It is plain, however, that on the continent of Europe, though no very
remarkable advances were made in these ten years, learning was slowly
progressive, and the men were living who were to bear fruit in due
season. Erasmus republished his Adages with such great additions as
rendered them almost a new work; while Budæus, in his Observations upon
the Pandects, gave the first example of applying philological and
historical literature to the illustration of Roman law, by which others,
with more knowledge of jurisprudence than he possessed, were in the next
generation signally to change the face of that science.
|Study of eastern languages.|
10. The eastern languages began now to be studied, though with very
imperfect means. Hebrew had been cultivated in the Franciscan
monasteries of Tubingen and Basle before the end of the last century.
The first grammar was published by Conrad Pellican in 1503. Eichhorn
calls it an evidence of the deficiencies of his knowledge, though it
cost him incredible pains. Reuchlin gave a better, with a dictionary, in
1506; which, enlarged by Munster, long continued to be a standard book.
A Hebrew psalter, with three Latin translations, and one French, was
published in 1509 by Henry Stephens, the progenitor of a race
illustrious in typographical and literary history. Petrus de Alcala, in
1506, attempted an Arabic vocabulary, printing the words in Roman
letter.[535]
[535] Eichhorn, ii. 562, 563; v. 609. Meiners’s Life of Reuchlin, in
Lebensbeschreibungen berühmter Männer, i. 68. A very few instances
of Hebrew scholars in the fifteenth century might be found, besides
Reuchlin and Picus of Mirandola. Tiraboschi gives the chief place
among these to Giannozzo Manetti, vii. 123.
|Dramatic works.|
|Calisto and Melibœa.|
11. If we could trust an article in the Biographie Universelle, a
Portuguese, Gil Vicente, deserves the high praise of having introduced
the regular drama into Europe; the first of his pieces having been
represented at Lisbon in 1504.[536] But, according to the much superior
authority of Bouterwek, Gil Vicente was a writer in the old national
style of Spain and Portugal; and his early compositions are Autos, or
spiritual dramas, totally unlike any regular plays, and rude both in
design and execution. He became, however, a comic writer of great
reputation among his countrymen at a later period, but in the same vein
of uncultivated genius, and not before Machiavel and Ariosto had
established their dramatic renown. The Calandra of Bibbiena, afterwards
a cardinal, was represented at Venice in 1508, though not published till
1524. An analysis of this play will be found in Ginguéné; it bears only
a general resemblance to the Menæchmi of Plautus. Perhaps the Calandra
may be considered as the earliest modern comedy, or at least the
earliest that is known to be extant; for its five acts and intricate
plot exclude the competition of Maitre Patelin.[537] But there is a more
celebrated piece in the Spanish language, of which it is probably
impossible to determine the date; the tragi-comedy, as it has been
called, of Calisto and Melibœa. This is the work of two authors; one
generally supposed to be Rodrigo Cota, who planned the story, and wrote
the first act; the other, Fernando de Rojas, who added twenty more acts
to complete the drama. This alarming number does not render the play
altogether so prolix as might be supposed, the acts being only what with
us are commonly denominated scenes. It is, however, much beyond the
limits of representation. Some have supposed Calisto and Melibœa to
have been commenced by Juan de la Mena before the middle of the
fifteenth century. But this, Antonio tells us, shows ignorance of the
style belonging to that author and to his age. It is far more probably
of the time of Ferdinand and Isabella; and as an Italian translation
appears to have been published in 1514, we may presume that it was
finished and printed in Spain about the present decade.[538]
[536] Biogr. Univ., art. Gil Vicente. Another Life of the same
dramatist in a later volume, under the title Vicente, seems
designed to retract this claim. Bouterwek adverts to this supposed
drama of 1504, which is an Auto on the festival of Corpus Christi,
and of the simplest kind.
[537] Ginguéné, vi. 171. An earlier writer on the Italian theatre is in
raptures with this play. “The Greeks, Latins, and moderns have
never made, and perhaps never will make, so perfect a comedy as the
Calandra. It is, in my opinion, the model of good comedy.”
Riccoboni, Hist. du Théátre Italien, i. 148. This is much to say,
and shows an odd taste, for the Calandra neither displays character
nor excites interest.
[538] Antonio. Bibl. Hisp. Nova. Andrès, v. 125. La Celestina, says the
later, certo contiene un fatto bene svolto, e spiegato con episodj
verisimili e naturali, dipinge con verità i caratteri, ed esprime
talora con calore gli affetti; e tutto questo à mio giudizio potrà
bastare per darli il vanto d’essere stata la prima composizione
teatrale scritta con eleganza e regolarità.
|Its character.|
12. Bouterwek and Sismondi have given some account of this rather
remarkable dramatic work. But they hardly do it justice, especially the
former, who would lead the reader to expect something very anomalous and
extravagant. It appears to me, that it is as regular and well-contrived
as the old comedies generally were: the action is simple and
uninterrupted; nor can it be reckoned very extraordinary, that what
Bouterwek calls the unities of time and place should be transgressed,
when for the next two centuries they were never observed. Calisto and
Melibœa was at least deemed so original and important an accession to
literature, that it was naturalised in several languages. A very early
imitation, rather than version, in English, appears to have been printed
in 1530.[539] A real translation, with the title Celestina (the name of
a procuress who plays the chief part in the drama, and by which it has
been frequently known), is mentioned by Herbert under the year 1598. And
there is another translation, or second edition, in 1631, with the same
title, from which all my acquaintance with this play is derived.
Gaspar Barthius gave it in Latin, 1624, with the title,
Pornobosco-didascalus.[540] It was extolled by some as a salutary
exposition of the effects of vice--
Quo modo adolescentulæ
Lenarum ingenia et mores possent noscere,--
and condemned by others as too open a display of it. Bouterwek has
rather exaggerated the indecency of this drama, which is much less
offensive, unless softened in the translation, than in most of our old
comedies. The style of the first author is said to be more elegant than
that of his continuator; but this is not very apparent in the English
version. The chief characters throughout are pretty well drawn, and
there is a vein of humour in some of the comic parts.
[539] Dibdin’s Typographical Antiquities. Mr. Collier (Hist. of Dramatic
Poetry, ii. 408) has given a short account of this production,
which he says “is not long enough for play, and could only have
been acted as an interlude.” It must therefore be very different
from the original.
[540] Clement, Bibliothèque Curieuse. This translation is sometimes
erroneously named Pornodidascalus; the title of a very different
book.
|Juan de la Enzina.|
13. The first edition of the works of a Spanish poet, Juan de la Enzina,
appeared in 1501, though they were probably written in the preceding
century. Some of these are comedies, as one biographer calls them, or
rather, perhaps, as Bouterwek expresses it, “sacred and profane
eclogues, in the form of dialogues, represented before distinguished
persons on festivals.” Enzina wrote also a treatise on Castilian poetry,
which, according to Bouterwek, is but a short essay on the rules of
metre.[541]
[541] Bouterwek, Biogr. Univ., art. Enzina. The latter praises this
work of Enzina more highly, but whether from equal knowledge I
cannot say. The dramatic compositions above mentioned are most
scarce.
|Arcadia of Sannazzaro.|
14. The pastoral romance, as was before mentioned, began a little before
this time in Portugal. An Italian writer of fine genius, Sannazzaro,
adopted it in his Arcadia, of which the first edition was in 1502.
Harmonious prose intermingled with graceful poetry, and with a fable
just capable of keeping awake the attention, though it could never
excite emotion, communicate a tone of pleasing sweetness to this volume.
But we have been so much used to fictions of more passionate interest,
that we hardly know how to accommodate ourselves to the mild languor of
these early romances. A recent writer places the Arcadia at the head of
Italian prose in that age. “With a less embarrassed construction,” he
says, “than Boccaccio, and less of a servile mannerism than Bembo, the
style of Sannazzaro is simple, flowing, rapid, harmonious; if it should
seem now and then too florid and diffuse, this may be pardoned in a
romance. It is to him, in short, rather than to Bembo, that we owe the
revival of correctness and elegance in the Italian prose of the
sixteenth century; and his style in the Arcadia would have been far more
relished than that of the Asolani, if the originality of his poetry had
not engrossed our attention.” He was the first who employed in any
considerable degree the sdrucciolo verse, though it occurs before;
but the difficulty of finding rhymes for it drives him frequently upon
unauthorised phrases. He may also be reckoned the first who restored the
polished style of Petrarch, which no writer of the fifteenth century had
successfully emulated.[542]
[542] Salfi, Continuation de Ginguéné, x. 92. Corniani, iv. 12. Roscoe
speaks of the Arcadia with less admiration, but perhaps more
according to the feelings of the general reader. But I cannot
altogether concur in his sweeping denunciation of poetical prose,
“that hermaphrodite of literature.” In many styles of composition,
and none more than such as the Arcadia, it may be read with
delight, and without wounding a rational taste. The French
language, which is not well adapted to poetry, would have lost some
of its most imaginative passages, with which Buffon, St. Pierre,
and others now living have enriched it, if a highly ornamented
prose had been wholly proscribed; and we may say the same with
equal truth of our own. It is another thing to condemn the peculiar
style of poetry in writings that from their subject demand a very
different tone.
|Asolani of Bembo.|
15. The Asolani of Peter Bembo, a dialogue, the scene of which is laid
at Asola in the Venetian territory, were published in 1505. They are
disquisitions on love, tedious enough to our present apprehension, but
in a style so pure and polite, that they became the favourite reading
among the superior ranks in Italy, where the coldness and pedantry of
such dissertations were forgiven for their classical dignity and moral
truth. The Asolani has been thought to make an epoch in Italian
literature, though the Arcadia is certainly a more original and striking
work of genius.
|Dunbar.|
16. I do not find at what time the poems in the Scottish dialect by
William Dunbar were published; but the Thistle and the Rose, on the
marriage of James IV. with Margaret of England in 1503, must be presumed
to have been written very little after that time. Dunbar, therefore, has
the honour of leading the vanguard of British poetry in the sixteenth
century. His allegorical poem, The Golden Targe, is of a more extended
range, and displays more creative power. The versification of Dunbar is
remarkably harmonious and exact for his age; and his descriptions are
often very lively and picturesque. But it must be confessed that there
is too much of sunrise and singing-birds in all our mediæval poetry; a
note caught from the French and Provençal writers, and repeated to
satiety by our own. The allegorical characters of Dunbar are derived
from the same source. He belongs, as a poet, to the school of Chaucer
and Lydgate.[543]
[543] Warton, iii. 90. Ellis (Specimens, i. 377) strangely calls Dunbar
“the greatest poet that Scotland has produced.” Pinkerton places
him above Chaucer and Lydgate. Chalmers’s Biogr. Dict.
|Anatomy of Zerbi.|
17. The first book upon anatomy, since that of Mundinus, was by Zerbi of
Verona, who taught in the university of Padua in 1495. The title is,
Liber Anatomiæ Corporis Humani et singulorum Membrorum illius, 1503. He
follows in general the plan of Mundinus; and his language is obscure, as
well as full of inconvenient abbreviations; yet the germ of discoveries
that have crowned later anatomists with glory is sometimes perceptible
in Zerbi; among others that of the Fallopian tubes.[544]
[544] Portal, Hist. de l’Anatomie. Biogr. Univ., art. Zerbi.
|Voyages of Cadamosto.|
18. We now, for the first time, take relations of voyages into our
literary catalogue. During the fifteenth century, though the old travels
of Marco Polo had been printed several times, and in different
languages, and even those of Sir John Mandeville once; though the
Cosmography of Ptolemy had appeared in not less than seven editions, and
generally with maps, few, if any, original descriptions of the kingdoms
of the world had gratified the curiosity of modern Europe. But the
stupendous discoveries that signalised the last years of that age could
not long remain untold. We may, however, give perhaps the first place to
the voyages of Cadamosto, a Venetian, who, in 1455, under the protection
of prince Henry of Portugal, explored the western coast of Africa, and
bore a part in discovering its two great rivers, as well as the Cape de
Verde islands. “The relation of his voyages,” says a late writer, “the
earliest of modern travels, is truly a model, and would lose nothing by
comparison with those of our best navigators. Its arrangement is
admirable, its details are interesting, its descriptions clear and
precise.”[545] These voyages of Cadamosto do not occupy more than thirty
pages in the collection of Ramusio, where they are reprinted. They are
said to have first appeared at Vicenza in 1507, with the title Prima
Navigazione per l’Oceano alle Terre de’ Negri della Bassa Ethiopia di
Luigi Cadamosto. It is asserted, however, by Brunet, that no edition
exists earlier than 1519, and that this of 1507 is a confusion with the
next book. This was a still more important production, announcing the
great discoveries that Americo Vespucci was suffered to wrest, at least
in name, from a more illustrious though ill-requited Italian: Mondo
Nuovo, e Paeso nuovamente ritrovati da Alberico Vesputio Florentino
intitolati. Vicenza, 1507. It does not appear that any earlier work on
America had been published; but an epistle of Columbus himself, de
Insulis Indiæ nuper inventis, was twice printed about 1493 in Germany,
and probably in other countries; and a few other brief notices of the
recent discovery are to be traced. We find also in 1508 an account of
the Portuguese in the East, which, being announced as a translation from
the native language into Latin, may be presumed to have appeared
before.[546]
[545] Biogr. Univ., art. Cadamosto.
[546] See Brunet, art. Itinerarium, &c.
SECT. II. 1511-1520.
_Age of Leo X.--Italian Dramatic Poetry--Classical Learning,
especially Greek, in France, Germany, and England--Utopia of
More--Erasmus--His Adages--Political Satire contained in them--
Opposition of the Monks to Learning--Antipathy of Erasmus to
them--Their attack on Reuchlin--Origin of Reformation--Luther--
Ariosto--Character of the Orlando Furioso--Various Works of Amusement
in modern Languages--English Poetry--Pomponatius--Raymond Lully._
|Leo X., his patronage of letters.|
19. Leo X. became pope in 1513. His chief distinction, no doubt, is
owing to his encouragement of the arts, or, more strictly, to the
completion of those splendid labours of Raffaelle, under his
pontificate, which had been commenced by his predecessor. We have here
only to do with literature; and in the promotion of this he certainly
deserves a much higher name than any former pope, except Nicolas V.,
who, considering the difference of the times, and the greater solidity
of his own character, as certainly stands far above him. Leo began by
placing men of letters in the most honourable stations of his court.
There were two, Bembo and Sadolet, who had by common confession reached
a consummate elegance of style, in comparison of which the best
productions of the last age seemed very imperfect. They were made
apostolical secretaries. Beroaldo, second of the name, whose father,
though a more fertile author, was inferior to him in taste, was
intrusted with the Vatican library. John Lascaris and Marcus Musurus
were invited to reside at Rome;[547] and the pope, considering it, he
says, no small part of his pontifical duty to promote the Latin
literature, caused search to be made everywhere for manuscripts. This
expression sounds rather oddly in his mouth; and the less religious
character of transalpine literature is visible in this as in everything
else.
[547] John Lascaris, who is not to be confounded with Constantine
Lascaris, by some thought to be his father, and to whom we owe a
Greek Grammar, after continuing for several years under the
patronage of Lorenzo at Florence, where he was editor of the
Anthologia, or collection of epigrams, printed in 1494, on the fall
of the Medici family entered the service of Charles VIII., and
lived many years at Paris. He was afterwards employed by Louis XII.
as minister at Venice. After a residence of some duration at Rome,
he was induced by Francis I., in 1518, to organise the literary
institutions designed by the king to be established at Paris. But
these being postponed, Lascaris spent the remainder of his life
partly in Paris, partly in Rome, and died in the latter city in
1535. Hody de Græcis Illustribus.
|Roman gymnasium.|
20. The personal taste of Leo was almost entirely directed towards
poetry and the beauties of style. This, Tiraboschi seems to hint, might
cause the more serious learning of antiquity to be rather neglected. But
there does not seem to be much ground for this charge. We owe to Leo the
publication, by Beroaldo, of the first five books of the Annals of
Tacitus, which had lately been found in a German monastery. It appears
that in 1514 above one hundred professors received salaries in the Roman
university, or gymnasium, restored by the pope to its alienated
revenues.[548] Leo seems to have founded a seminary distinct
from the former, under the superintendence of Lascaris, for the sole
study of Greek, and to have brought over young men as teachers from
Greece. In this academy a Greek press was established, where the
scholiasts on Homer were printed in 1517.[549]
[548] We are indebted to Roscoe for publishing this list. But as the
number of one hundred professors might lead us to expect a most
comprehensive scheme, it may be mentioned that they consisted of
four for theology, eleven for canon law, twenty for civil law,
sixteen for medicine, two for metaphysics, five for philosophy
(probably physics), two for ethics, four for logic, one for
astrology (probably astronomy), two for mathematics, eighteen for
rhetoric, three for Greek, and thirteen for grammar, in all a
hundred and one. The salaries are subjoined in every instance; the
highest are among the medical professors; the Greek are also high.
Roscoe, ii. 333, and Append. No. 89.
Roscoe remarks that medical botany was one of the sciences taught,
and that it was the earliest instance. If this be right, Bonafede
of Padua cannot have been the first botanical professor in Europe,
as we read that he died in 1533. But in the roll of these Roman
professors we only find that one was appointed ad declarationem
simplicium medicinæ. I do not think this means more than the
materia medica; we cannot infer that he lectured upon the plants
themselves.
[549] Tiraboschi. Hody, p. 247. Roscoe, ch. 11. Leo was anticipated in
his Greek editions by Chigi, a private Roman, who, with the
assistance of Cornelio Benigno, and with Calliergus, a Cretan, for
his printer, gave to the world two good editions of Pindar and
Theocritus in 1515 and 1516.
|Latin Poetry.|
21. Leo was a great admirer of Latin poetry; and in his time the chief
poets of Italy seem to have written several of their works, though not
published till afterwards. The poems of Pontanus, which naturally belong
to the fifteenth century, were first printed in 1513 and 1518; and those
of Mantuan, in a collective form, about the same time.
|Italian tragedy.|
|Sophonisba of Trissino.|
22. The Rosmunda of Rucellai, a tragedy in the Italian language, on the
ancient regular model, was represented before Leo at Florence in 1515.
It was the earliest known trial of blank verse; but it is acknowledged
by Rucellai himself, that the Sophonisba of his friend Trissino, which
is dedicated to Leo in the same year, though not published till 1524,
preceded and suggested his own tragedy.[550] The Sophonisba is strictly
on the Greek model, divided only by the odes of the chorus, but not into
five portions or acts. The speeches in this tragedy are sometimes too
long, the style unadorned, the descriptions now and then trivial. But in
general there is a classical dignity about the sentiments, which are
natural, though not novel; and the latter part, which we should call the
fifth act, is truly noble, simple, and pathetic. Trissino was thoroughly
conversant with the Greek drama, and had imbibed its spirit; seldom has
Euripides written with more tenderness, or chosen a subject more fitted
to his genius; for that of Sophonisba, in which many have followed
Trissino with inferior success, is wholly for the Greek school; it
admits, with no great difficulty, of the chorus, and consequently of the
unities of time and place. It must, however, always chiefly depend on
Sophonisba herself; for it is not easy to make Masinissa respectable,
nor has Trissino succeeded in attempting it. The long continuance of
alternate speeches in single lines, frequent in this tragedy, will not
displease those to whom old associations are recalled by it.
[550] This dedication, with a sort of apology for writing tragedies in
Italian, will be found in Roscoe’s Appendix, vol. vi. Roscoe quotes
a few words from Rucellai’s dedication of his poem, L’Api, to
Trissino, acknowledging the latter as the inventor of blank verse.
Voi foste il primo, che questo modo di scrivere, in versi materni,
liberi delle rime, poneste in luce. Life of Leo X. ch. 16. See also
Ginguéné, vol. vi. and Walker’s Memoir on Italian Tragedy, as well
as Tiraboschi. The earliest Italian tragedy, which is also on the
subject of Sophonisba, by Galeotto del Carretto, was presented to
the Marchioness of Mantua in 1502. But we do not find that it was
brought on the stage; nor is it clear that it was printed so early
as the present decade. But an edition of the Pamphila, a tragedy on
the story of Sigismunda, by Antonio da Pistoja, was printed at
Venice in 1508. Walker, p. 11. Ginguéné has been ignorant of this
very curious piece, from which Walker had given a few extracts, in
rhymed measures of different kinds. Ginguéné indeed had never seen
Walker’s book, and his own is the worse for it. Walker was not a
man of much vigour of mind, but had some taste, and great knowledge
of his subject. This tragedy is mentioned by Quadrio, iv. 58, with
the title Il Filostrato e Panfila, due Amanti.
It may be observed, that, notwithstanding the testimony of Rucellai
himself above quoted, it is shown by Walker (Appendix, No. 3), that
blank verse had been occasionally employed before Trissino.
|Rosmunda of Rucellai.|
23. The Rosmunda falls in my opinion below the Sophonisba, though it is
the work of a better poet; and perhaps, in language and description it
is superior. What is told in narration, according to the ancient
inartificial form of tragedy, is finely told; but the emotions are less
represented than in the Sophonisba; the principal character is less
interesting, and the story is unpleasing. Rucellai led the way to those
accumulations of horrible and disgusting circumstances which deformed
the European stage for a century afterwards. The Rosmunda is divided
into five acts, but preserves the chorus. It contains imitations of the
Greek tragedies, especially the Antigone, as the Sophonisba does of the
Ajax and the Medea. Some lines in the latter, extolled by modern
critics, are simply translated from the ancient tragedians.
|Comedies of Ariosto.|
24. Two comedies by Ariosto seem to have been acted about 1512, and were
written as early as 1495, when he was but twenty-one years old, which
entitles him to the praise of having first conceived and carried into
effect the idea of regular comedies, in imitation of the ancient, though
Bibbiena had the advantage of first occupying the stage with his
Calandra. The Cassaria and Suppositi of Ariosto are, like the Calandra,
free imitations of the manner of Plautus, in a spirited and natural
dialogue, and with that graceful flow of language which appears
spontaneous in all his writings.[551]
[551] Ginguéné, vi. 183, 218, has given a full analysis of these
celebrated comedies. They are placed next to those of Machiavel by
most Italian critics.
|Books printed in Italy.|
|Cælius Rhodiginus.|
25. The north of Italy still endured the warfare of stranger armies:
Ravenna, Novara, Marignan, attest the well-fought contention. Aldus,
however, returning to Venice in 1512, published many editions before his
death in 1516. Pindar, Plato, and Lysias first appeared in 1513,
Athenæus in 1514, Xenophon, Strabo, and Pausanias in 1516, Plutarch’s
Lives in 1517. The Aldine press then continued under his father-in-law,
Andrew Asola, but with rather diminished credit. It appears that the
works printed during this period, from 1511 to 1520, were, at Rome 116,
at Milan 91, at Florence 133, and at Venice 511. This is, perhaps, less
than from the general renown of Leo’s age we should have expected. We
may select, among the original publications, the Lectiones Antiquæ of
Cælius Rhodiginus (1516), and a little treatise on Italian grammar by
Fortunio, which has no claim to notice but as the earliest book on the
subject.[552] The former, though not the first, appears to have been by
far the best and most extensive collection hitherto made from the stores
of antiquity. It is now hardly remembered; but obtained almost universal
praise, even from severe critics, for the deep erudition of its author,
who, in a somewhat rude style, pours forth explanations of obscure, and
emendations of corrupted passages, with profuse display of knowledge in
the customs and even philosophy of the ancients, but more especially in
medicine and botany. Yet he seems to have inserted much without
discrimination of its value, and often without authority. A more perfect
edition was published in 1550, extending to thirty books instead of
sixteen.[553]
[552] Regole Grammaticali delle Volgar Lingua. (Ancona, 1516.) Questo
libro fuor di dubbio è stato il primo che si videsse stampato, a
darne insegnamenti d’Italiana, eon già eloquenza, ma lingua.
Fontanini dell’Eloquenza Italiana, p. 5. Fifteen editions were
printed within six years; a decisive proof of the importance
attached to the subject.
[553] Blount. Biogr. Univ., art. Rhodiginus.
|Greek printed in France and Germany.|
26. It may be seen, that Italy, with all the lustre of Leo’s reputation,
was not distinguished by any very remarkable advance in learning during
his pontificate; and I believe it is generally admitted, that the
elegant biography of Roscoe, in making the public more familiar with the
subject, did not raise the previous estimation of its hero and of its
times. Meanwhile the cisalpine regions were gaining ground upon their
brilliant neighbour. From the Parisian press issued in these ten years
eight hundred books; among which were a Greek Lexicon by Aleander, in
1512, and four more little grammatical works, with a short romance in
Greek. This is trifling indeed; but in the cities on the Rhine something
more was done in that language. A Greek grammar, probably quite
elementary, was published at Wittenberg in 1511; one at Strasburg in
1512,--thrice reprinted in the next three years. These were succeeded by
a translation of Theodore Gaza’s grammar by Erasmus in 1516, by the
Progymnasmata Græcæ Literaturæ of Luscinius, in 1517, and by the
Introductiones in Linguam Græcam of Croke, in 1520. Isocrates and Lucian
appeared at Strasburg in 1515; the first book of the Iliad next year,
besides four smaller tracts;[554] several more followed before the end
of the decade. At Basle the excellent printer Frobenius, an intimate
friend of Erasmus, had established himself as early as 1491.[555]
Besides the great edition of the New Testament by Erasmus, which issued
from his press, we find, before the close of 1520, the Works and Days of
Hesiod, the Greek Lexicon of Aldus, the Rhetoric and Poetics of
Aristotle, the first two books of the Odyssey, and several grammatical
treatises. At Cologne two or three small Greek pieces were printed in
1517. And Louvain, besides the Plutus of Aristophanes in 1518, and three
or four others about the same time, sent forth in the year 1520 six
Greek editions, among which were Lucian, Theocritus, and two tragedies
of Euripides.[556] We may hence perceive, that the Greek
language now first became generally known and taught in Germany and in
the Low Countries.
[554] These were published by Luscinius (Nachtigall), a native of
Strasburg, and one of the chief members of the literary academy,
established by Wimpheling in that city. Biogr. Univ.
[555] Biogr. Univ.
[556] The whole number of books, according to Panzer printed from
1511 to 1520 at Strasburg, was 373; at Basle, 289; at Cologne, 120;
at Leipsic, 462; at Louvain, 57. It may be worth while to remind
the reader once more that these lists must be very defective as to
the slighter class of publications, which have often perished to a
single copy. Panzer is reckoned more imperfect after 1500 than
before. Biogr. Universelle. In England, we find thirty-six by
Pynson, and sixty-six by Wynkyn de Worde within these ten years.
|Greek scholars in these countries.|
27. It is evident that these works were chiefly designed for students in
the universities. But it is to be observed, that Greek literature was
now much more cultivated than before. In France there were, indeed, not
many names that could be brought forward; but Lefevre of Etaples,
commonly called Faber Stapulensis, was equal to writing criticism on the
Greek Testament of Erasmus. He bears a high character among contemporary
critics for his other writings, which are chiefly on theological and
philosophical subjects; but it appears by his age that he must have come
late to the study of Greek.[557] That difficult language was more easily
mastered by younger men. Germany had already produced some deserving of
remembrance. A correspondent of Erasmus, in 1515, writes to recommend
Œcolampadius as “not unlearned in Greek literature.”[558] Melanchthon
was, even in his early youth, deemed competent to criticise Erasmus
himself. At the age of sixteen, he lectured on the Greek and Latin
authors of antiquity. He was the first who printed Terence as
verse.[559] The library of this great scholar was in 1835 sold in
London, and was proved to be his own by innumerable marginal notes of
illustration and correction. Beatus Rhenanus stands perhaps next to him
as a scholar; and we may add the names of Luscinius, of Bilibald
Pirckheimer, a learned senator of Nuremberg, who made several
translations, and of Petrus Mosellanus, who became about 1518 lecturer
in Greek at Leipsic.[560] He succeeded our distinguished countryman,
Richard Croke, a pupil of Grocyn, who had been invited to Leipsic in
1514, with the petty salary of 15 guilders, but with the privilege of
receiving other remuneration from his scholars, and had the signal
honour of first imbuing the students of northern Germany with a
knowledge of that language.[561] One or two trifling works on Greek
grammar were published by Croke during this decennium. Ceratinus, who
took his name, in the fanciful style of the times, from his birthplace,
Horn in Holland, was now professor of Greek at Louvain; and in 1525, on
the recommendation of Erasmus, became the successor of Mosellanus at
Leipsic.[562] William Cop, a native of Basle, and physician to Francis
I., published in this period some translations from Hippocrates and
Galen.
[557] Jortin’s Erasmus, i. 92. Bayle, Fevre d’Etaples. Blount. Biogr.
Univ., Febure d’Etaples.
[558] Erasmus himself says afterwards, Œcolampadius satis novit Græcè,
Latini sermonis rudior; quanquam ille magis peccat indiligentia
quam imperitia.
[559] Cox’s Life of Melanchthon, p. 19. Melanchthon wrote Greek verse
indifferently and incorrectly, but Latin with spirit and elegance:
specimens of both are given in Dr. Cox’s valuable biography.
[560] The lives and characters of Rhenanus, Pirckheimer, and Mosellanus,
will be found in Blount, Niceron, and the Biographie Universelle;
also in Gerdes’s Historia Evangel. Renov., Melchior Adam, and other
less common books.
[561] Crocus regnat in Academia Lipsiensi, publicitus Græcas docens
litteras. Erasm. Epist. clvii. 5th June 1514. Eichhorn says, that
Conrad Celtes and others had taught Latin only, iii. 272.
Camerarius, who studied for three years under Croke, gives him a
very high character; qui primus putabatur ita docuisse Græcam
linguam in Germania, ut plane perdisci illam posse, et quid momenti
ad omnem doctrinæ eruditionem atque cultum hujus cognitio allatura
esse videretur, nostri homines sese intelligere arbitrarentur. Vita
Melanchthonis, p. 27; and Vita Eobani Hessi, p. 4. He was received
at Leipsic “like a heavenly messenger:” every one was proud of
knowing him, of paying whatever he demanded, of attending him at
any hour of the day or night. Melanchthon apud Meiners, i. 165. A
pretty good life of Croke is in Chalmers’s Biographical Dictionary.
Bayle does not mention him. Croke was educated at King’s College,
Cambridge, to which he went from Eton in 1506 and is said to have
learned Greek at Oxford from Grocyn, while still a scholar of
King’s.
[562] Erasmus gives a very high character of Ceratinus. Græcæ linguæ
peritia superat vel tres Mosellanos, nec inferior ut arbitror,
Romanæ linguæ facundia. Epist. Dccxxxvii. Ceratinus Græcanicæ
literaturæs tam exacte callens, ut vix unum aut alteram habeat
Italia quicum dubitem hanc committere. Magnæ doctrinæ erat
Mosellanus, spei majoris, et amaban unicè hominis ingenium, nec
falso dicunt odiosas esse comparationes; sed hoc ipsa causa me
compellit dicere, longe alia res est. Epist. Dccxxxviii.
|Colleges at Alcala and Louvain.|
28. Cardinal Ximenes, about the beginning of the century, founded a
college at Alcala, his favourite university, for the three learned
languages. This example was followed by Jerome Busleiden, who by his
last testament, in 1516 or 1517, established a similar foundation at
Louvain.[563] From this source proceeded many men of conspicuous
erudition and ability; and Louvain, through its Collegium
trilingue, became in a still higher degree than Deventer had been in the
fifteenth century not only the chief seat of Belgian learning, but the
means of diffusing it over parts of Germany. Its institution was
resisted by the monks and theologians, unyielding though beaten
adversaries of literature.[564]
[563] Bayle, Busleiden.
[564] Von der Hardt, Hist. Litt. Reformat.
|Latin style in France.|
29. It cannot be said, that many yet on this side of the Alps wrote
Latin well. Budæus is harsh and unpolished; Erasmus fluent, spirited,
and never at a loss to express his meaning; nor is his style much
defaced by barbarous words, though by no means exempt from them; yet it
seldom reaches a point of classical elegance. Francis Sylvius (probably
Dubois), brother of a celebrated physician, endeavoured to inspire a
taste for purity of style in the university of Paris. He had, however,
acquired it himself late, for some of his writings are barbarous. The
favourable influence of Sylvius was hardly earlier than 1520.[565] The
writer most solicitous about his diction was Longolius (Christopher de
Longueil), a native of Malines, the only true Ciceronian out of Italy;
in which country, however, he passed so much time, that he is hardly to
be accounted a mere cisalpine. Like others of that denomination, he was
more ambitious of saying common things well, than of producing what was
well worthy of being remembered.
[565] Bayle, art. Sylvius.
|Greek scholars in England.|
30. We have the imposing testimony of Erasmus himself, that neither
France nor Germany stood so high about this period as England. That
country, he says, so distant from Italy, stands next to it in the esteem
of the learned. This, however, is written in 1524. About the end of the
present decennial period we can produce a not very small number of
persons possessing a competent acquaintance with the Greek tongue, more,
perhaps, than could be traced in France, though all together might not
weigh as heavy as Budæus alone. Such were Grocyn, the patriarch of
English learning, who died in 1519; Linacre, whose translation of Galen,
first printed in 1521, is one of the few in that age that escape censure
for inelegance or incorrectness; Latimer, beloved and admired by his
friends, but of whom we have no memorial in any writings of his own;
More, known as a scholar by Greek epigrams of some merit;[566] Lilly,
master of St. Paul’s school, who had acquired Greek at Rhodes, but whose
reputation is better preserved by the grammars that bear his name;
Lupsett, who is said to have learned from Lilly, and who taught some
time at Oxford; Richard Croke, already named; Gerard Lister, a
physician, to whom Erasmus gives credit for skill in the three
languages; Pace and Tunstall, both men well known in the history of
those times; Lee and Stokesley, afterwards bishops, the former of whom
published Annotations on the Greek Testament of Erasmus at Basle in
1520;[567] and probably Gardiner; Clement, one of Wolsey’s first
lecturers at Oxford;[568] Brian, Wakefield, Bullock, and a few more,
whose names appear in Pits and Wood, or even who are not recorded; for
we could not without presumption attempt to enumerate every person who
at this time was not wholly unacquainted with the Greek language. Yet it
would be an error, on the other hand, to make a large allowance for
omissions; much less to conclude that every man who might enjoy some
reputation in a learned profession could in a later generation have
passed for a scholar. Colet, for example, and Fisher, men as
distinguished as almost any of that age, were unacquainted with the
Greek tongue, and both made some efforts to attain it at an advanced
age.[569] It was not till the year 1517 that the first Greek lecture was
established at Oxford by Fox, bishop of Hereford, in his new foundation
of Corpus Christi College. Wolsey, in 1519, endowed a regular
professorship in the university. It was about the same year that Fisher,
chancellor of the university of Cambridge, sent down Richard Croke,
lately returned from Leipsic, to tread in the footsteps of Erasmus as
teacher of Greek.[570] But this was in advance of our neighbours; for no
public instruction in that language was yet given in France.
[566] The Greek verses of More and Lilly, Progymnasmata Mori et Lilii,
were published at Basle, 1518. It is in this volume that the
distich, about which some curiosity has been shown, is found:
Inveni portum, spes et fortuna valete, &c. But it is a translation
from the Greek.
Quid tandem non præstitisset admirabilis ista naturæ felicitas, si
hoc ingenium instituisset Italia? si totum Musarum sacris vacasset?
si ad justam frugem ac velut autumnum suum maturuisset? Epigrammata
lusit adolescens admodum, ac pleraque puer; Britanniam suam nunquam
egressus est, nisi semel atque iterum principis sui nomine
legatione functus apud Flandros. Præter rem uxoriam, præter curas
domesticas, præter publici muneris functionem et causarum undas,
tot tantisque regni negotiis distrahitur, ut mireris esse otium vel
cogitandi de libris. Epist. clxix. Aug. 1517. In the Ciceronianus
he speaks of More with more discriminating praise, and the passage
is illustrative of that just quoted.
[567] Erasmus does not spare Lee. Epist. ccxlviii. Quo uno nihil unquam
adhuc terra produxit, nec arrogantius, nec virulentius, nec
stultius. This was the tone of the age towards any adversary, who
was not absolutely out of reach of such epithets. In another place,
he speaks of Lee as nuper Græcæ linguæ rudimentis initiatus. Ep.
cccclxxxxi.
[568] Knight says (apud Jortin, i. 45) that Clement was the first
lecturer at Oxford in Greek after Linacre, and that he was
succeeded by Lupsett. And this seems, as to the fact that they did
successively teach, to be confirmed by More. Jortin, ii. 396. But
the Biographia Britannica, art. Wolsey, asserts that they were
appointed to the chair of rhetoric or humanity; and that
Calpurnius, a native of Greece, was the first professor of the
language. No authority is quoted by the editors; but I have found
it confirmed by Caius in a little treatise De Pronuntiatione Græcæ
et Latinæ Linguæ. Novit, he says, Oxoniensis schola, quemadmodum
ipsa Græcia pronuntiavit. ex Matthæo Calpurnio Græco, quem ex
Græciâ Oxoniam Græcarum literarum gratia perduxerat Thomas Wolseus,
de bonis literis optime meritus cardinalis, cum non alia ratione
pronuntiant illi, quam quâ nos jam profitemur. Caius de Pronunt.
Græc. et Lat. Linguæ, edit. Jebb, p. 228.
[569] Nunc dolor me tenet, says Colet in 1516, quod non didicerim
Græcum sermonem, sine cujus peritia nihil sumus. From a later
epistle of Erasmus, where he says, Coletus strenue Græcatur, it
seems likely that he actually made some progress; but at his age it
would not be very considerable. Latimer dissuaded Fisher from the
attempt, unless he could procure a master from Italy, which Erasmus
thought needless. Epist. ccclxiii. In an edition of his Adages, he
says, Joannes Fischerus tres linguas ætate jam vergente non vulgari
studio amplectitur, Chil. iv. Cent. v. 1.
[570] Greek had not been neglected at Cambridge during the interval,
according to a letter of Bullock (in Latin Bovillus) to Erasmus in
1516 from thence. Hic acriter incumbunt literis Græcis, optanque
non mediocritur tuum adventum, et hi magnopere favent tuæ huic in
Novum Testamentum editioni. It is probable that Cranmer was a pupil
of Croke: for in the deposition of the latter before Mary’s
commissioners in 1555, he says that he had known the archbishop
thirty-six years, which brings us to his own first lectures at
Cambridge. Todd’s Life of Cranmer, ii. 449. But Cranmer may have
known something of the language before, and is, not improbably, one
of those to whom Bullock alludes.
|Mode of teaching in schools.|
31. By the statutes of St. Paul’s school, dated in 1518, the master is
to be “lerned in good and clene Latin literature, and also in Greke, iff
such may be gotten.” Of the boys he says, “I wolde they were taught
always in good literature both Latin and Greke.” But it does not follow
from hence that Greek was actually taught; and considering the want of
lexicons and grammars, none of which, as we shall see, were published in
England for many years afterwards, we shall be apt to think that little
instruction could have been given.[571] This, however, is not
conclusive, and would lead us to bring down the date of philological
learning in our public seminaries much too low. The process of learning
without books was tedious and difficult, but not impracticable for the
diligent. The teacher provided himself with a lexicon which was in
common use among his pupils, and with one of the grammars published on
the Continent, from which he gave oral lectures, and portions of which
were transcribed by each student. The books read in the lecture-room
were probably copied out in the same manner, the abbreviations giving
some facility to a cursive hand; and thus the deficiency of impressions
was in some degree supplied, just as before the invention of printing.
The labour of acquiring knowledge strengthened, as it always does, the
memory; it excited an industry which surmounted every obstacle, and
yielded to no fatigue; and we may thus account for that copiousness of
verbal learning which sometimes astonishes us in the scholars of the
sixteenth century, and in which they seem to surpass the more
exact philologers of later ages.
[571] In a letter of Erasmus on the death of Colet in 1522, Epist.
ccccxxxv (and in Jortin’s App., ii. 315), though he describes the
course of education at St. Paul’s school rather diffusely, and in a
strain of high panegyric, there is not a syllable of allusion to
the study of Greek. Pits, however, in an account of one William
Horman, tells us, that he was ad collegium Etonense studiorum causa
missus, ubi avide haustis litteris humanioribus, _perceptisque
Græcæ linguæ rudimentis_, dignus habitus est qui Cantabrigiam ad
altiores disciplinas destinaretur. Horman became Græcæ linguæ
peritissimus, and returned, as head master, to Eton: quo tempore in
litteris humanioribus scholares illic insigniter erudivit. He wrote
several works, partly grammatical, of which Pits gives the titles,
and died, _plenus dierum_, in 1535.
If we could depend on the accuracy of all this, we must suppose
that Greek was taught at Eton so early, that one who acquired the
rudiments of it in that school might die at an advanced age in
1535. But this is not to be received on Pits’s authority. And I
find, in Harwood’s Alumni Etonenses, that Horman became head master
as early as 1485: no one will readily believe, that he could have
learned Greek while at school: and the fact is, that he was not
educated at Eton, but at Winchester.
The Latin grammar which bears the name of Lilly was compiled partly
by Colet, partly by Erasmus.
|Few classical works printed here.|
32. It is to be observed, that we rather extol a small number of men who
have struggled against difficulties, than put in a claim for any
diffusion of literature in England, which would be very far from the
truth. No classical works were printed except four editions of Virgil’s
Bucolics, a small treatise of Seneca, the first book of Cicero’s
Epistles (the latter at Oxford in 1519), all merely of course for
learners. We do not reckon Latin grammars. And as yet no Greek types had
been employed. In the spirit of truth, we cannot quite take to ourselves
the compliment of Erasmus; there must evidently have been a far greater
diffusion of sound learning in Germany; where professors of Greek had
for some time been established in all the universities, and where a long
list of men ardent in the cultivation of letters could be adduced.[572]
Erasmus had a panegyrical humour towards his friends, of whom there were
many in England.
[572] Such a list is given by Meiners, i. 154, of the supporters of
Reuchlin; who comprised all the real scholars of Germany: he
enumerates sixty-seven, which might doubtless be enlarged.
|State of learning in Scotland.|
33. Scotland had, as might naturally be expected, partaken still less of
Italian light than the south of Britain. But the reigning king,
contemporary with Henry VII., gave proofs of greater good-will towards
letters. A statute of James IV., in 1496, enacts that gentlemen’s sons
should be sent to school in order to learn Latin. Such provisions were
too indefinite for execution, even if the royal authority had been
greater than it was; but it serves to display the temper of the
sovereign. His natural son, Alexander, on whom, at a very early age, he
conferred the archbishopric of St. Andrews, was the pupil of Erasmus in
the Greek language. The latter speaks very highly of this promising
scion of the house of Stuart in one of his adages.[573] But, at the age
of twenty, he perished with his royal father on the disastrous day of
Flodden Field. Learning had made no sensible progress in Scotland; and
the untoward circumstances of the next twenty years were far from giving
it encouragement. The translation of the Æneid by Gawin Douglas, bishop
of Dunkeld, though we are not at present on the subject of poetry, may
be here mentioned in connection with Scottish literature. It was
completed about 1513, though the earliest edition is not till 1553.
“This translation,” says Warton, “is executed with equal spirit and
fidelity; and is a proof that the Lowland Scotch and English languages
were now nearly the same. I mean the style of composition, more
especially in the glaring affectation of anglicising Latin words. The
several books are introduced with metrical prologues, which are often
highly poetical, and show that Douglas’s proper walk was original
poetry.” Warton did well to explain his rather startling expression,
that the Lowland Scotch and English languages were then nearly the same:
for I will venture to say, that no Englishman, without guessing at every
other word, could understand the long passage he proceeds to quote from
Gawin Douglas. It is true that the differences consisted mainly in
pronunciation, and consequently in orthography; but this is the great
cause of diversity in dialect. The character of Douglas’s original
poetry seems to be that of the middle ages in general,--prolix, though
sometimes animated, description of sensible objects.[574]
[573] Chil. ii. cent. v. 1.
[574] Warton, iii 111.
|Utopia of More.|
34. We must not leave England without mention of the only work of genius
that she can boast in this age; the Utopia[575] of Sir Thomas More.
Perhaps we scarcely appreciate highly enough the spirit and originality
of this fiction, which ought to be considered with regard to the
barbarism of the times, and the meagreness of preceding inventions. The
Republic of Plato no doubt furnished More with the germ of his perfect
society; but it would be unreasonable to deny him the merit of having
struck out the fiction of its real existence from his own fertile
imagination; and it is manifest, that some of his most distinguished
successors in the same walk of romance, especially Swift, were largely
indebted to his reasoning, as well as inventive talents. Those who read
the Utopia in Burnet’s translation, may believe that they are in
Brobdignag; so similar is the vein of satirical humour and easy
language. If false and impracticable theories are found in the Utopia
(and perhaps he knew them to be such), this is in a much greater degree
true of the Platonic Republic; and they are more than compensated by the
sense of justice and humanity that pervades it, and his bold censures on
the vices of power. These are remarkable in a courtier of Henry VIII.;
but, in the first year of Nero, the voice of Seneca was heard
without resentment. Nor had Henry much to take to himself in the
reprehension of parsimonious accumulation of wealth, which was meant for
his father’s course of government.
[575] Utopia is named from a King Utopus. I mention this, because some
have shown their learning by changing the word to Eutopia.
|His inconsistency with his opinions.|
35. It is possible that some passages in the Utopia, which are neither
philosophical nor reconcilable with just principles of morals, were
thrown out as mere paradoxes of a playful mind; nor is it easy to
reconcile his language as to the free toleration of religious worship
with those acts of persecution which have raised the only dark cloud on
the memory of this great man. He positively indeed declares for
punishing those who insult the religion of others, which might be an
excuse for his severity towards the early reformers. But his latitude as
to the acceptability of all religions with God, as to their identity in
essential principles, and as to the union of all sects in a common
worship, could no more be made compatible with his later writings or
conduct, than his sharp satire against the court of Rome for breach of
faith, or against the monks and friars for laziness and beggary. Such
changes, however, are very common, as we may have abundantly observed,
in all seasons of revolutionary commotions. Men provoke these, sometimes
in the gaiety of their hearts with little design, sometimes with more
deliberate intention, but without calculation of the entire
consequences, or of their own courage to encounter them. And when such
men, like More, are of very quick parts, and, what is the usual
attendant of quick parts, not very retentive of their opinions, they
have little difficulty in abandoning any speculative notion, especially
when, like those in the Utopia, it can never have had the least
influence upon their behaviour. We may acknowledge, after all, that the
Utopia gives us the impression of its having proceeded rather from a
very ingenious than a profound mind; and this apparently, is what we
ought to think of Sir Thomas More. The Utopia is said to have been first
printed at Louvain in 1516;[576] it certainly appeared at the close of
the preceding year; but the edition of Basle in 1518, under the care of
Erasmus, is the earliest that bears a date. It was greatly admired on
the Continent; indeed there had been little or nothing of equal spirit
and originality in Latin since the revival of letters.
[576] Of an undated edition, to which Panzer gives the name of editio
princeps, there is a copy in the British Museum, and another was in
Mr. Heber’s library. Dibdin’s Utopia, 1808, preface, cxi. It
appears from a letter of Montjoy to Erasmus, dated 4th Jan. 1516,
that he had received the Utopia, which must therefore have been
printed in 1515; and it was reprinted once at least in 1516 or
1517. Erasm. Epist. cciii. ccv. Append. Ep. xliv. lxxix. ccli, et
alibi. Panzer mentions one at Louvain in December 1516. This volume
by Dr. Dibdin is a reprint of Robinson’s early and almost
contemporary translation. That by Burnet, 1685, is more known, and
I think it good. Burnet, and I believe some of the Latin editions,
omit a specimen of the Utopian language, and some Utopian poetry;
which probably was thought too puerile.
|Learning restored in France.|
36. The French themselves give Francis I. the credit of having been the
father of learning in that country. Galland, in a funeral panegyric on
that prince, asks if at his accession (in 1513) any one man in France
could read Greek or write Latin? Now this is an absurd question, when we
recollect the names of Budæus, Longolius, and Faber Stapulensis; yet it
shows that there could have been very slender pretensions to classical
learning in the kingdom. Erasmus, in his Ciceronianus, enumerates among
French scholars, not only Budæus, Faber, and the eminent printer,
Jodocus Badius (a Fleming by birth), whom, in point of style, he seems
to put above Budæus, but John Pin, Nicolas Berald, Francis Deloin,
Lazarus Baif, and Ruel. This was however in 1529, and the list assuredly
is not long. But as his object was to show that few men of letters were
worthy of being reckoned fine writers, he does not mention Longueil, who
was one; or whom, perhaps, he might omit, as being then dead.
|Jealousy of Erasmus and Budæus.|
37. Budæus and Erasmus were now at the head of the literary world; and
as the friends of each behaved rather too much like partizans, a kind of
rivalry in public reputation began, which soon extended to themselves,
and lessened their friendship. Erasmus seems to have been, in a certain
degree, the aggressor; at least, some of his letters to Budæus indicate
an irritability, which the other, as far as appears, had not provoked.
Budæus had published in 1514 an excellent treatise, De Asse, the first
which explained the denominations and values of Roman money in all
periods of history.[577] Erasmus sometimes alludes to this with covert
jealousy. It was set up by a party against his Adages, which he
justly considered more full of original thoughts and extensive learning.
But Budæus understood Greek better; he had learned it with prodigious
labour, and probably about the same time with Erasmus, so that the
comparison between them was not unnatural. The name of one is at present
only retained by scholars, and that of the other by all mankind; so
different is contemporary and posthumous reputation. It is just to add
that, although Erasmus had written to Budæus in far too sarcastic a
tone,[578] under the smart of that literary sensitiveness which was very
strong in his temper, yet when the other began to take serious offence,
and to threaten a discontinuance of their correspondence, he made amends
by an affectionate letter, which ought to have restored their good
understanding. Budæus, however, who seems to have kept his resentments
longer than his quick-minded rival, continued to write peevish letters;
and fresh circumstances arose afterwards to keep up his jealousy.[579]
[577] Quod opus ejus, says Vives, in a letter to Erasmus (Ep. Dcx.),
Hermolaos omnes, Picos, Politianos, Gazas, Vallas, cunctam Italiam
pudefecit.
[578] Epist. cc. I quote the numeration of the Leyden edition.
[579] Erasmi Epistolæ, passim. The publication of his Ciceronianus in
1528, renewed the irritation; in this he gave a sort of preference
to Badius over Budæus, in respect to style alone; observing that
the latter had great excellences of another kind. The French
scholars made this a national quarrel, pretending that Erasmus was
prejudiced against their country. He defends himself in his
epistles so prolixly and elaborately, as to confirm the suspicion,
not of this absurdly imputed dislike to the French, but of some
little desire to pique Budæus. Epigrams in Greek were written at
Paris against him by Lascaris and Toussain; and thus Erasmus, by an
unlucky inability to restrain his pen from sly sarcasm, multiplied
the enemies, whom an opposite part of his character, its spirit of
temporising and timidity, was always raising up. Erasm. Epist.
Mvxi. et alibi.
This rather unpleasing correspondence between two great men,
professing friendship, yet covertly jealous of each other, is not
ill described by Von der Hardt, in the Historia Litteraria
Reformationis. Mirum dictu, qui undique aculei, sub mellitissima
oratione, inter blandimenta continua. Genius utriusque
argutissimus, qui vellendo et acerbe pungendo nullibi videretur
referre sanguinem aut vulnus inferre. Possint profecto hæ literæ
Budæum inter et Erasmum illustre esse et incomparabile exemplar
delicatissimæ sed et perquam aculeatæ concertationis, quæ videretur
suavissimo absolvi risu et velut familiarissimo palpo. De
alterutrius integritate neuter visus dubitare; uterque tamen semper
anceps, tot annis commercio frequentissimo. Dissimulandi artificium
inexplicabile, quod attenti lectoris admirationem vehat, eumque præ
dissertationum dulcedine subamara in stuporem vertat. p. 46.
|Character of Erasmus.|
38. Erasmus diffuses a lustre over his age which no other name among the
learned supplies. The qualities which gave him this superiority were his
quickness of apprehension, united with much industry, his liveliness of
fancy, his wit and good sense. He is not a very profound thinker, but an
acute observer: and the age for original thinking was hardly come. What
there was of it in More produced little fruit. In extent of learning, no
one perhaps was altogether his equal. Budæus, with more accurate
scholarship, knew little of theology, and might be less ready perhaps in
general literature than Erasmus. Longolius, Sadolet, and several others,
wrote Latin far more elegantly; but they were of comparatively
superficial erudition, and had neither his keen wit, nor his vigour of
intellect. As to theological learning, the great Lutheran divines must
have been at least his equals in respect of scriptural knowledge, and
some of them possessed an acquaintance with Hebrew, of which Erasmus
knew nothing; but he had probably the advantage in the study of the
fathers. It is to be observed, that by far the greater part of his
writings are theological. The rest either belong to philology and
ancient learning, as the Adages, the Ciceronianus, and the various
grammatical treatises, or may be reckoned effusions of his wit, as the
Colloquies and the Encomium Moriæ.
|His Adages severe on kings.|
39. Erasmus, about 1517, published a very enlarged edition of his
Adages, which had already grown with the growth of his own erudition. It
is impossible to distinguish the progressive accessions they received
without a comparison of editions; and some probably belong to a later
period than the present. The Adages, as we read them, display a
surprising extent of intimacy with Greek and Roman literature.[580] Far
the greater portion is illustrative; but Erasmus not unfrequently
sprinkles his explanations of ancient phrase with moral or literary
remarks of some poignancy. The most remarkable, in every sense, are
those which reflect with excessive bitterness and freedom on kings and
priests. Jortin has slightly alluded to some of these; but they
may deserve more particular notice, as displaying the character of the
man, and perhaps the secret opinions of his age.
[580] In one passage, under the proverb, Herculei labores, he
expatiates on the immense labour with which this work, his
Adages, had been compiled; mentioning, among other difficulties,
the prodigious corruption of the text in all Latin and Greek
manuscripts, so that it scarce ever happened that a passage could
be quoted from them, without a certainty or suspicion of some
erroneous reading.
|Instances in illustration.|
40. Upon the adage, Frons occipitio prior, meaning, that every one
should do his own business, Erasmus takes the opportunity to observe,
that no one requires more attention to this than a prince, if he will
act as a real prince, and not as a robber. But at present our kings and
bishops are only the hands, eyes, and ears of others, careless of the
state, and of everything but their own pleasure.[581] This, however, is
a trifle. In another proverb, he bursts out: “Let any one turn over the
pages of ancient or modern history, scarcely in several generations will
you find one or two princes, whose folly has not inflicted the greatest
misery on mankind.” And after much more of the same kind: “I know not
whether much of this is not to be imputed to ourselves. We trust the
rudder of a vessel, where a few sailors and some goods alone are in
jeopardy, to none but skilful pilots; but the state, wherein the safety
of so many thousands is concerned, we put into any hands. A charioteer
must learn, reflect upon, and practise his art; a prince need only be
born. Yet government, as it is the most honourable, so is it the most
difficult of all sciences. And shall we choose the master of a ship, and
not choose him, who is to have the care of many cities, and so many
souls? But the usage is too long established for us to subvert. Do we
not see that noble cities are erected by the people; that they are
destroyed by princes? that the community grows rich by the industry of
its citizens, is plundered by the rapacity of its princes? that good
laws are enacted by popular magistrates, are violated by these princes?
that the people love peace; that princes excite war?”[582]
[581] Chil. i. cent. ii. 19.
[582] Quin omnes et veterum et neotericorum annales
evolve, nimirum ita comperies, vix sæculis aliquot unum aut alterum
extitisse principem, qui non insigni stultitiâ maximam perniciem
invexerit rebus humanis.... Et haud scio, an nonnulla hujus mali
pars nobis ipsis sit imputanda. Clavum navis non committimus nisi
ejus rei perito, quod quatuor vectorum aut paucarum mercium sit
periculum; et rempublicam, in qua tot hominum millia periclitantur,
cuivis committimus. Ut auriga fiat aliquis discit artem, exercet,
meditatur; at ut princeps sit aliquis, satis esse putamus natum
esse. Atqui rectè gerere principatum, ut est munus omnium longe
pulcherrimum, ita est omnium etiam multo difficillimum. Deligis,
cui navem committas, non deligis cui tot urbes, tot hominum capita
credas? Sed istud receptius est, quam ut convelli possit.
An non videmus egregia oppida a populo condi, a principibus
subverti? rempublicam civium industria ditescere, principum
rapacitate spoliari? bonas leges ferri a plebeiis magistratibus, a
principibus violari? populum studere paci, principes excitare
bellum?
41. “It is the aim of the guardians of a prince,” he exclaims in another
passage, “that he may never become a man. The nobility, who fatten on
public calamity, endeavour to plunge him into pleasures, that he may
never learn what is his duty. Towns are burned, lands are wasted,
temples are plundered, innocent citizens are slaughtered, while the
prince is playing at dice, or dancing, or amusing himself with puppets,
or hunting, or drinking. O race of the Bruti, long since extinct! O
blind and blunted thunderbolts of Jupiter! We know indeed that those
corrupters of princes will render account to Heaven, but not easily to
us.” He passes soon afterwards to bitter invective against the clergy,
especially the regular orders.[583]
[583] Miro studio curant tutores, ne unquam vir sit princeps.
Adnituntur optimates, ii qui publicis malis saginantur, ut
voluptatibus sit quam effæminatissimus, ne quid eorum sciat, quæ
maxime decet scire principem. Exuruntur vici, vastantur agri,
diripiuntur templa, trucidantur immeriti cives, sacra profanaque
miscentur, dum princeps interim otiosus ludit aleam, dum saltit,
dum oblectat se morionibus, dum venatur, dum amat, dum potat. O
Brutorum genus jam olim extinctum! o fulmen Jovis aut cæcum aut
obtusum! Neque dubium est, quin isti principum corruptores pœnas
Deo daturi sint, sed sero nobis.
42. In explaining the adage, Sileni Alcibiadis, referring to things
which, appearing mean and trifling, are really precious, he has many
good remarks on persons and things, of which the secret worth is not
understood at first sight. But thence passing over to what he calls
inversi Sileni, those who seem great to the vulgar, and are really
despicable, he expatiates on kings and priests, whom he seems to hate
with the fury of a modern philosopher. It must be owned he is very
prolix and declamatory. He here attacks the temporal power of the church
with much plainness; we cannot wonder that his Adages required
mutilation at Rome.
43. But by much the most amusing and singular of the Adages is Scarabæus
aquilam quærit; the meaning of which, in allusion to a fable that the
beetle, in revenge for an injury, destroyed the eggs of the eagle, is
explained to be, that the most powerful may be liable to the resentment
of the weakest. Erasmus here returns to the attack upon kings
still more bitterly and pointed than before. There is nothing in the
Contre un of La Boetie, nothing, we may say, in the most seditious libel
of our own time, more indignant and cutting against regal government
than this long declamation: “Let any physiognomist, not a blunderer in
his trade, consider the look and features of an eagle, those rapacious
and wicked eyes, that threatening curve of the beak, those cruel cheeks,
that stern front, will he not at once recognise the image of a king, a
magnificent and majestic king? Add to these a dark, ill-omened colour,
an unpleasing, dreadful, appalling voice, and that threatening scream,
at which every kind of animal trembles. Every one will acknowledge this
type, who has learned how terrible are the threats of princes, even
uttered in jest. At this scream of the eagle the people tremble, the
senate shrinks, the nobility cringes, the judges concur, the divines are
dumb, the lawyers assent, the laws and constitutions give way; neither
right nor religion, neither justice nor humanity avail. And thus, while
there are so many birds of sweet and melodious song, the unpleasant and
unmusical scream of the eagle alone has more power than all the
rest.”[584]
[584] Age si quis mihi physiognomon non omnino malus vultum ipsum et
os aquilæ diligentius contempletur, oculos avidos atque improbos,
rictum minacem, genas truculentas, frontem torvam, denique illud,
quod Cyrum Persarum regem tantopere delectavit in principe γρυπὸν
[grypon], nonne plane regium quoddam simulacrum agnoscet,
magnificum et majestatis plenum? Accedit huc et color ipse
funestus, teter èt inauspicatus, fusco squalore nigricans. Unde
etiam quod fuscum est et subnigrum, aquilum vocamus. Tum vox
inamœna, terribilis, exanimatrix, ac minax ille querulusque
clangor, quem nullum animantium genus non expavescit. Jam hoc
symbolum protinus agnoscit, qui modo periculum fecerit, aut viderit
certè, quam sint formidandæ principum minæ, vel joco prolatæ.... Ad
hanc, inquam, aquilæ stridorem illico pavitat omne vulgus,
contrahit sese senatus, observit nobilitas, obsecundant judices,
silent theologi, assentantur jurisconsulti, cedunt leges, cedunt
instituta; nihil valet fas nec pietas, nec æquitas nec humanitas.
Cumque tam multæ sint aves non ineloquentes, tam multæ canoræ,
tamque variæ sint voces ac modulatus qui vel saxa possint flectere,
plus tamen omnibus valet insuavis ille et minime musicus unius
aquilæ stridor.
44. Erasmus now gives the rein still more to his fancy. He imagines
different animals, emblematic no doubt of mankind, in relation to his
eagle. “There is no agreement between the eagle and the fox, not without
great disadvantage to the vulpine race; in which however they are
perhaps worthy of their fate, for having refused aid to the hares when
they sought an alliance against the eagle, as is related in the Annals
of Quadrupeds, from which Homer borrowed his Battle of the Frogs and
Mice.”[585] I suppose that the foxes mean the nobility, and the hares
the people. Some allusions to animals that follow I do not well
understand. Another is more pleasing: “It is not surprising,” he says,
“that the eagle agrees ill with the swans, those poetic birds; we may
wonder more, that so warlike an animal is often overcome by them.” He
sums up all thus: “Of all birds the eagle alone has seemed to wise men
the apt type of royalty; not beautiful, not musical, not fit for food;
but carnivorous, greedy, plundering, destroying, combating, solitary,
hateful to all, the curse of all, and with its great powers of doing
harm, surpassing them in its desire of doing it.”[586]
[585] Nihil omnino convenit inter aquilam et vulpem, quanquam id sane
non mediocri vulpinæ gentis malo; quo tamen haud scio an dignæ
videri debeant, quæ quondam leporibus συμμαχιαν [symmachian]
adversus aquilam petentibus auxilium negarint, ut refertur in
Annalibus Quadrupedum, a quibus Homerus Βατραχομυομαχιαν
[Batrachomyomachian] mutuatus est.... Neque vero mirum quod illi
parum convenit cum oloribus, ave nimirum poetica; illud mirum, ab
iis sæpenumero vinci tam pugnacem belluam.
[586] Ex universis avibus una aquila viris tam sapientibus idonea visa
est, quæ regis imaginem repræsentet, nec formosa, nec canora, nec
esculenta, sed carnivora, rapax, prædatrix, populatrix, bellatrix,
solitaria, invisa omnibus, pestis omnium; quæ cum plurimum nocere
possit, plus tamen velit quam possit.
45. But the eagle is only one of the animals in the proverb. After all
this bile against those the royal bird represents, he does not forget
the beetles. These of course are the monks, whose picture he draws with
equal bitterness and more contempt. Here, however, it becomes difficult
to follow the analogy, as he runs a little wildly into mythological
tales of the Scarabæus, not easily reduced to his purpose. This he
discloses at length: “There are a wretched class of men, of low degree,
yet full of malice; not less dingy, nor less filthy, nor less vile than
beetles; who nevertheless by a certain obstinate malignity of
disposition, though they can never do good to any mortal, become
frequently troublesome to the great. They frighten by their ugliness,
they molest by their noise, they offend by their stench; they buzz round
us, they cling to us, they lie in ambush for us, so that it is
often better to be at enmity with powerful men than to attack those
beetles, whom it is a disgrace even to overcome, and whom no one can
either shake off, or encounter, without some pollution.”[587]
[587] Sunt homunculi quidam, infimæ quidem sortis, sed tamen malitiosi,
non minus atri quam scarabæi, neque minus putidi, neque minus
abjecti; qui tamen pertinaci quadam ingenii malitia, cum nulli
omnino mortalium prodesse possint, magnis etiam sæpenumero viris
facessunt negotium. Territant nigrore, obstrepunt stridore,
obturbant fœtore; circumvolitant, hærent, insidiantur, ut non paulo
satius sit cum magnis aliquando viris simultatem suscipere, quam
hos lacessere scarabæos, quos pudeat etiam vicisse, quosque nec
excutere possis, neque conflictari cum illis queas, nisi discedas
contaminatior. Chil. iii. cent. vii. 1.
In a letter to Budæus, Ep. ccli., Erasmus boasts of his παρρησια
[parrêsia] in the Adages, naming the most poignant of them; but
says, in proverbio αετον κανθαρος μαιευεται [aeton kantharos
maieuetai], plane lusimus ingenio. This proverb, and that entitled
Sileni Alcibiadis, had appeared before 1515; for they were
reprinted in that year by Frobenius, separately from the other
Adages, as appears by a letter of Beatus Rhenanus in Appendice ad
Erasm. Epist. Ep. xxviii. Zasius, a famous jurist, alludes to them
in another letter, Ep. xxvii., praising “fluminosas disserendi
undas amplificationis immensam ubertatem.” And this, in truth, is
the character of Erasmus’s style. The Sileni Alcibiadis were also
translated into English, and published by John Gough; see Dibdin’s
Typographical Antiquities, article 1433.
There is not a little severity in the remarks Erasmus makes on
princes and nobles in the Moriæ Encomium. But with them he seems
through life to have been a privileged person.
46. It must be admitted, that this was not the language to conciliate;
and we might almost commiserate the sufferance of the poor beetles thus
trod upon; but Erasmus knew that the regular clergy were not to be
conciliated, and resolved to throw away the scabbard. With respect to
his invectives against kings, they proceeded undoubtedly, like those,
less intemperately expressed, of his friend More in the Utopia, from a
just sense of the oppression of Europe in that age by ambitious and
selfish rulers. Yet the very freedom of his animadversions seems to
plead a little in favour of these tyrants, who, if they had been as
thorough birds of prey as he represents them, might easily have torn to
pieces the author of this somewhat outrageous declamation, whom on the
contrary they honoured and maintained. In one of the passages above
quoted, he has introduced, certainly in a later edition, a limitation of
his tyrannicidal doctrine, if not a palinodia, in an altered key.
“Princes,” he says, “must be endured, lest tyranny should give way to
anarchy, a still greater evil. This has been demonstrated by the
experience of many states; and lately the insurrection of the German
boors has taught us, that the cruelty of princes is better to be borne
than the universal confusion of anarchy.” I have quoted these political
ebullitions rather diffusely, as they are, I believe, very little known,
and have given the original in my notes, that I may be proved to have no
way over-coloured the translation, and also that a fair specimen may be
presented of the eloquence of Erasmus, who has seldom an opportunity of
expressing himself with so much elevation, but whose rapid, fertile, and
lively, though not very polished style, is hardly more exhibited in
these paragraphs, than in the general character of his writings.
|His Greek Testament.|
47. The whole thoughts of Erasmus began now to be occupied with his
great undertaking, an edition of the Greek Testament with explanatory
annotations and a continued paraphrase. Valla, indeed, had led the
inquiry as a commentator; and the Greek text without notes was already
printed at Alcala by direction of Cardinal Ximenes; though this edition,
commonly styled the Complutensian, did not appear till 1522. That of
Erasmus was published at Basle in 1516. It is strictly therefore the
princeps editio. He employed the press of Frobenius, with whom he lived
in friendship. Many years of his life were spent at Basle.
|Patrons of letters in Germany.|
48. The public, in a general sense of the word, was hardly yet recovered
enough from its prejudices to give encouragement to letters. But there
were not wanting noble patrons who, besides the immediate advantages of
their favour, bestowed a much greater indirect benefit on literature, by
making it honourable in the eyes of mankind. Learning, which is held
pusillanimous by the soldier, unprofitable by the merchant, and pedantic
by the courtier, stands in need of some countenance from those before
whom all three bow down; wherever at least, which is too commonly the
case, a conscious self-respect does not sustain the scholar against the
indifference or scorn of the prosperous vulgar. Italy was then, and
perhaps has been ever since, the soil where literature, if it has not
always most flourished, has stood highest in general estimation. But in
Germany also, at this time, the emperor Maximilian, whose character is
neither to be estimated by the sarcastic humour of the Italians, nor by
the fond partiality of his countrymen, and especially his own, in his
self-delineation of Der Weisse König, the Wise King, but really a brave
and generous man of lively talents, Frederic, justly denominated the
Wise, elector of Saxony, Joachim elector of Brandeburg, Albert
archbishop of Mentz, were prominent among the friends of genuine
learning. The university of Wittenberg, founded by the second of these
princes in 1502, rose in this decade to great eminence, not only as the
birthplace of the Reformation, but as the chief school of philological
and philosophical literature. That of Frankfort on the Oder was
established by the elector of Brandeburg in 1506.
|Resistance to learning.|
49. The progress of learning, however, was not to be a march through a
submissive country. Ignorance, which had much to lose, and was proud as
well as rich, ignorance in high places, which is always incurable,
because it never seeks for a cure, set itself sullenly and stubbornly
against the new teachers. The Latin language, taught most barbarously
through books whose very titles, Floresta, Mammotrectus, Doctrinale
Puerorum, Gemma Gemmarum, bespeak their style,[588] with the scholastic
logic and divinity in wretched compends, had been held sufficient for
all education. Those who had learned nothing else could of course teach
nothing else, and saw their reputation and emoluments gone all at once
by the introduction of philological literature and real science. Through
all the palaces of Ignorance went forth a cry of terror at the coming
light--“A voice of weeping heard and loud lament.” The aged giant was
roused from his sleep, and sent his dark hosts of owls and bats to the
war. One man above all the rest, Erasmus, cut them to pieces with irony
or invective. They stood in the way of his noble zeal for the
restoration of letters.[589] He began his attack in his Encomium Moriæ,
the praise of folly. This was addressed to Sir Thomas More, and
published in 1511. Eighteen hundred copies were printed, and speedily
sold; though the book wanted the attraction that some later editions
possess, the curious and amusing engravings from designs of Holbein. It
is a poignant satire against all professions of men and even against
princes and peers; but the chief objects are the mendicant orders of
monks. “Though this sort of men,” he says, “are so detested by everyone,
that it is reckoned unlucky so much as to meet them by accident, they
think nothing equal to themselves, and hold it a proof of their
consummate piety, if they are so illiterate as not to be able to read.
And when their asinine voices bray out in the churches their psalms,
which they can count, but not understand,[590] then it is they fancy
that the ears of the saints above are enraptured with the harmony;” and
so forth.
[588] Eichhorn, iii. 273, gives a curious list of names of these early
grammars: they were driven out of the schools about this time.
Mammotrectus, after all, is a learned word: it means, μαμμοθρεπτος
[mammothreptos], that is, a boy taught by his grandmother; and a
boy taught by his grandmother means one taught gently.
Erasmus gives a lamentable account of the state of education when
he was a boy, and probably later: Deum immortalem! quale sæculum
erat hoc, cum magno apparatu disticha Joannis Garlandini
adolescentibus operosis et prolixis commentariis enarrabantur! cum
ineptis versiculis dictandis, repetendis et exigendis magna pars
temporis absumeretur; cum disceretur; Floresta et Floretus; nam
Alexandrum iter tolerabiles numerandum arbitror.
I will take this opportunity of mentioning, that Erasmus was
certainly born in 1465, not in 1467, as Bayle asserts, whom Le
Clerc and Jortin have followed. Burigni perceived this; and it may
be proved by many passages in the Epistles of Erasmus. Bayle quotes
a letter of Feb. 1516, wherein Erasmus says, as he transcribes it:
Ago annum undequinquagesimum. But in the Leyden edition, which is
the best, I find, Ego jam annum ago primum et quinquagesimum.
Epist. cc. Thus he says also, 15th March, 1528: Arbitror me nunc
ætatem agere, in quo M. Tullius decessit. Some other places I have
not taken down. His epitaph at Basle calls him, jam septuagenarius,
and he died in 1536. Bayle’s proofs of the birth of Erasmus in 1467
are so unsatisfactory, that I wonder how Le Clerc should have so
easily acquiesced in them. The Biographie Universelle sets down
1467 without remark.
[589] When the first lectures in Greek were given at Oxford about 1519,
a party of students arrayed themselves, by the name of Trojans, to
withstand the innovators by dint of clamour and violence, till the
king interfered to support the learned side. See a letter of More
giving an account of this in Jortin’s Appendix, p. 662. Cambridge,
it is to be observed, was very peaceable at this time, and suffered
those who liked it to learn something worth knowing. The whole is
so shortly expressed by Erasmus that his words may be quoted.
Anglia duas habet Academias.... In utraque traduntur Græcæ litteræ,
sed Cantabrigiæ tranquillè, quod ejus scholæ princeps sit Johannes
Fischerus, episcopus Roffensis, non eruditione tantum sed et vitâ
theologicâ. Verum Oxoniæ cum juvenis quidam non vulgariter doctus
satis feliciter Græcè profiteretur, barbarus quispiam in populari
concione magnis et atrocibus convitiis debacchari cœpit in Græcas
literas. At Rex, ut non indoctus ipse, ita bonis literis favens,
qui tum forte in propinquo erat, re per Morum et Pacœum cognitâ,
denunciavit ut volentes ac lubentes Græcanicam literaturam
amplecterentur. Ita rabulis impositum est silentium. Id. p. 667.
See also Erasm. Epist. ccclxxx.
Antony Wood, with rather an excess of academical prejudice,
insinuates that the Trojans, who waged war against Oxonian Greek,
were “Cambridge men, as it is reported.” He endeavours to
exaggerate the deficiencies of Cambridge in literature at this
time, as if “all things were full of rudeness and barbarousness;”
which the above letters of More and Erasmus show not to have been
altogether the case. On the contrary, More says that even those who
did not learn Greek contributed to pay the lecturer.
It may be worth while to lay before the reader part of two orations
by Richard Croke, who had been sent down to Cambridge by Bishop
Fisher, chancellor of the university. As Croke seems to have left
Leipsic in 1518, they may be referred to that, or perhaps more
probably the following year. It is evident that Greek was now just
incipient at Cambridge.
Maittaire says of these two orations of Richard Croke: Editio
rarissima, cujusque unum duntaxat exemplar inspexisse mihi
contigit. The British Museum has a copy, which belonged to Dr.
Farmer; but he must have seen another copy, for the last page of
this being imperfect, he has filled it up with his own hand. The
book is printed at Paris by Colinæus in 1520.
The subject of Croke’s orations, which seem not very correctly
printed, is the praise of Greece and of Greek literature, addressed
to those who already knew and valued that of Rome, which he shows
to be derived from the other. Quin ipsæ quoque voculationes Romanæ
Græcis longe in suaviores, minusque concitatæ sunt, cum ultima
semper syllaba rigeat in gravem, contraque apud Græcos et
inflectatur nonnunquam et acuatur. Croke of course spoke Greek
accentually. Greek words, in bad types, frequently occur through
this oration.
Croke dwells on the barbarous state of the sciences, in consequence
of the ignorance of Greek. Euclid’s definition of a line was so ill
translated, that it puzzled all the geometers till the Greek was
consulted. Medicine was in an equally bad condition; had it not
been for the labours of learned men, Linacre, Cop, Ruel, quorum
opera felicissime loquantur Latinè Hippocrates, Galenus et
Dioscorides, cum summa ipsorum invidia, qui, quod canis in præsepi,
nec Græcam linguam discere ipsi voluerunt, nec aliis ut discerent
permiserunt. He then urges the necessity of Greek studies for the
theologian, and seems to have no respect for the Vulgate above the
original.
Turpe sanè erit, cum mercator sermonem Gallicum, Illyricum,
Hispanicum, Germanicum, vel solius lucri causa avide ediscat, vos
studiosos Græcum in manus vobis traditum rejicere, quo et divitiæ
et eloquentia et sapientia comparari possunt. Imo perpendite rogo
viri Cantabrigienses, quo nunc in loco vestræ res sita sunt.
Oxonienses quos ante hæc in omni scientiarum genere vicistis, ad
literas Græcas pertugere, vigilant, jejunant, sudant et algent;
nihil non faciunt ut eas occupent. Quod si contingat, actum est de
fama vestra. Erigent enim de vobis tropæum nunquam succumbuturi.
Habent duces præter cardinalem Cantuariensem, Wintoniensem, cæteros
omnes Angliæ episcopos, excepto uno Roffensir summo semper fautore
vestro, et Eliensi, &c.
Favet præterea ipsis sancta Grocini et theologo digna severitas,
Linacri πολυμαθεια [polumatheia] et acre judicium, Tunstali non
legibus magis quam utrique linguæ familiaris facundia, Stopleii
triplex lingua, Mori candida et eloquentissima urbanitas, Pacei
mores doctrina et ingenium, ab ipso Erasmo, optimo eruditionis
censore, commendati; quem vos olim habuistis Græcarum literarum
professorum, utinamque potuissetis retinere. Succedo in Erasmi
locum ego, bone Deus, quam infra illum, et doctriná et famâ,
quamquam me, ne omnino nihili fiam, principes viri, theologici
doctores, jurium etiam et medicinæ, artium præterea professores
innumeri, et præceptorem agnovere, et quod plus est, a scholis ad
ædes, ab ædibus ad scholas honorificentissime comitati perduxere.
Dii me perdant, viri Cantabrigienses, si ipsi Oxonienses stipendio
multorum nobilium præter victum me non invitavere. Sed ego pro mea
in hanc academiam et fide et observantia, &c.
In his second oration, Croke exhorts the Cantabrigians not to give
up the study of Greek. Si quisquam omnium sit qui vestræ reipublicæ
bene consulere debeat, is ego sum, viri Cantabrigienses. Optime
enim vobis esse cupio, et id nisi facerem, essem profecto longe
ingratissimus. Ubi enim jacta literarum mearum fundamenta, quibus
tantum tum apud nostrates, tum vero apud exteros quoque principes,
favoris mihi comparatum est; quibus ea fortuna, ut licet jam olim
consanguineorum iniquitate paterna hæreditate sim spoliatus, ita
tamen adhuc vivam, ut quibusvis meorum majorum imaginibus videar
non indignus. He was probably of the ancient family of Croke. Peter
Mosellanus calls him, in a letter among those of Erasmus, juvenis
cum imaginibus.
Audio ego plerosque vos a litteris Græcis dehortatos esse. Sed vos
diligenter expendite, qui sint et plane non alios fore comperitis,
quam qui igitur linguam oderunt Græcam quia Romanam non norunt.
Cæterum jam deprehendo quid facturi sint, qui nostras literas odio
prosequuntur, confugiunt videlicet ad religionem, cui uni dicent
omnia postponenda. Sentio ego cum illis, sed unde quæso orta
religio, nisi è Græciâ? quid enim novum testamentum, excepto
Matthæo? quid enim vetus? nunquid Deo auspice a septuaginta Græcè
redditum? Oxonia est colonia vestra; uti olim non sine summa laude
a Cantabrigia deducta, ita non sine summo vestro nunc dedecore, si
doctrina ab ipsis vos vinci patiamini. Fuerunt olim illi discipuli
vestri, nunc erunt præceptores? Utinam quo animo hæc a me dicta
sunt, eo vos dicta interpretemini; crederetisque, quod est
verissimum, si quoslibet alios, certe Cantabrigienses minime decere
literarum Græcarum esse desertores.
The great scarcity of this tract will serve as an apology for the
length of these extracts, illustrating, as they do, the
commencement of classical literature in England.
[590] Numeratos illos quidem, sed non intellectos. I am not quite sure
of this meaning.
|Unpopularity of The monks.|
50. In this sentence Erasmus intimates, what is abundantly confirmed by
other testimony, that the mendicant orders had lost their ancient hold
upon the people. There was a growing sense of the abuses prevailing in
the church, and a desire for a more scriptural and spiritual religion.
We have seen already that this was the case seventy years before. And in
the intermediate period the exertions of a few eminent men, especially
Wessel of Groningen, had not been wanting to purify the doctrines and
discipline of the clergy. More popular writers assailed them with
satire. Thus everything was prepared for the blow to be struck by
Luther; better indeed than he was himself; for it is well known that he
began his attack on indulgences with no expectation or desire of the
total breach with the see of Rome which ensued.[591]
[591] Seckendorf, Hist. Lutheranismi, p. 226. Gerdes, Hist. Evang.
sæc. xvi. renovat. vols. i. and iii. Milner’s Church History, vol.
iv. Mosheim, sæc. xv. et xvi. Bayle, art. Wessel. For Wessel’s
character as a philosopher, who boldly opposed the scholastics of
his age, see Brucker, iii. 859.
|The book excites odium.|
51. The Encomium Moriæ was received with applause by all who loved
merriment, and all who hated the monks; but grave men, as usual, could
not bear to see ridicule employed against grave folly and hypocrisy. A
letter of one Dorpius, a man, it is said, of some merit, which may be
read in Jortin’s Life of Erasmus,[592] amusingly complains, that while
the most eminent divines and lawyers were admiring Erasmus, his unlucky
Moria had spoiled all, by letting them see that he was mischievously
fitting asses’ ears to their heads. The same Dorpius, who seems, though
not an old man, to have been a sworn vassal of the giant Ignorance,
objects to anything in Erasmus’s intended edition of the Greek
Testament, which might throw a slur on the accuracy of the Vulgate.
[592] ii. 336.
|Erasmus attacks the monks.|
52. Erasmus was soon in a state of war with the monks; and in his second
edition of the New Testament printed in 1518, the notes, it is said, are
full of invectives against them. It must be confessed that he had begun
the attack, without any motive of provocation, unless zeal for learning
and religion is to count for such, which the parties assailed could not
be expected to admit, and they could hardly thank him for “spitting on
their gaberdine.” No one, however, knew better how to pay his court; and
he wrote to Leo X. in a style rather too adulatory, which in truth was
his custom in addressing the great, and contrasts with his free language
in writing about them. The custom of the time affords some excuse for
this panegyrical tone of correspondence, as well as for the opposite
extreme of severity.
|Their contention with Reuchlin.|
53. The famous contention between Reuchlin and the German monks, though
it began in the preceding decennial period, belongs chiefly to the
present. In the year 1509, one Pfeffercorn, a converted Jew, induced the
inquisition at Cologne to obtain an order from the emperor for burning
all Hebrew books except the Bible, upon the pretext of their being full
of blasphemies against the Christian religion. The Jews made complaints
of this injury; but before it could take place, Reuchlin, who had been
consulted by the emperor, remonstrated against the destruction of works
so curious and important, which, from his partiality to Cabbalistic
theories, he rated above their real value. The order was accordingly
superseded, to the great indignation of the Cologne inquisitors, and of
all that party throughout Germany which resisted the intellectual and
religious progress of mankind. Reuchlin had offended the monks by
satirising them in a comedy which he permitted to be printed in 1506.
But the struggle was soon perceived to be a general one; a struggle
between what had been and what was to be. Meiners has gone so far as to
suppose a real confederacy to have been formed by the friends of truth
and learning through Germany and France, to support Reuchlin against the
mendicant orders, and to overthrow, by means of this controversy, the
embattled legions of ignorance.[593] But perhaps the passages he adduces
do not prove more than their unanimity and zeal in the cause. The
attention of the world was first called to it about 1513; that is, it
assumed about that time the character of a war of opinions, extending,
in its principle and consequences, beyond the immediate dispute.[594]
Several books were published on both sides; and the party in power
employed its usual argument of burning what was written by its
adversaries. One of these writings is still known, the Epistolæ
Obscurorum Virorum; the production, it is said, of three authors, the
principal of whom was Ulric von Hutten, a turbulent hotheaded man, of
noble birth and quick parts, and a certain degree of learning, whose
early death seems more likely to have spared the reformers some degree
of shame, than to have deprived them of a useful supporter.[595] Few
books have been more eagerly received than these epistles at their first
appearance in 1516,[596] which surely proceeded rather from their
suitableness to the time, than from much intrinsic merit; though it must
be owned that the spirit of many temporary allusions, which delighted or
offended that age, is now lost in a mass of vapid nonsense and bad
grammar, which the imaginary writers pour out. Erasmus, though not
intimately acquainted with Reuchlin, could not but sympathise in a
quarrel with their common enemies in a common cause. In the end the
controversy was referred to the pope; but the pope was Leo; and it was
hoped that a proposal to burn books, or to disgrace an illustrious
scholar, would not sound well in his ears. But Reuchlin was
disappointed, when he expected acquittal, by a mandate to supersede, or
suspend, the process commenced against him by the inquisition of
Cologne, which might be taken up at a more favourable time.[597] This
dispute has always been reckoned of high importance; the victory in
public opinion, though not in judicature, over the adherents to the old
system, prostrated them so utterly, that from this time the study of
Greek and Hebrew became general among the German youth; and the cause of
the Reformation was identified in their minds with that of classical
literature.[598]
[593] Lebensbeschreib. i. 144. et seq.
[594] Meiners brings many proofs of the interest taken in Reuchlin, as
the champion, if not the martyr, of the good cause.
[595] Herder, in his Zerstreute Blätter, v. 329, speaks with
unreasonable partiality of Ulric von Hutten; and Meiners has
written his life with an enthusiasm which seems to me quite
extravagant. Seckendorf, p. 130, more judiciously observes that he
was of little use to the Reformation. And Luther wrote about him in
June, 1521: Quid Huttenus petat vides. Nollem vi et cæde pro
evangelio certari, ita scripsi ad hominem. Melanchthon of course
disliked such friends. Epist. Melanchth., p. 45 (1647), and
Camerarius, Vita Melanchth. Erasmus could not endure Hutten; and
Hutten, when he found this out, wrote virulently against Erasmus.
Jortin, as biographer of Erasmus, treats Hutten perhaps with too
much contempt; but this is nearer justice than the veneration of
the modern Germans. Hutten wrote Latin pretty well, and had a good
deal of wit; his satirical libels, consequently, had great
circulation and popularity, which, in respect of such writings, is
apt, in all ages, to produce an exaggeration of their real
influence. In the mighty movement of the Reformation, the Epistolæ
Obscurorum Virorum had about as much effect as the Mariage de
Figaro in the French Revolution. A dialogue severely reflecting on
pope Julius II., called Julius exclusus, of which Jortin suspects
Erasmus, in spite of his denial, ii. 595, is given by Meiners to
Hutten.
[596] Meiners, in his Life of Hutten, Lebensbesch. iii. 73, inclines to
fix the publication of the first part of the Epistles in the
beginning of 1517; though he admits an earlier date to be not
impossible.
[597] Meiners, i. 197.
[598] Sleidan, Hist. de la Réformat. l. ii. Brucker, iv. 366. Mosheim.
Eichhorn, iii. 238, vi. 16. Bayle, art. Hochstrat. None of these
authorities are equal in fulness to Meiners, Lebensbeschreibungen
berühmter Männer, i. 98-212; which I did not consult so early as
the rest. But there is also a very copious account of the
Reuchlinian controversy, including many original documents, in the
second part of Von der Hardt’s Historia Litteraria Reformationis.
|Origin of the Reformation.|
54. We are now brought, insensibly perhaps, but by necessary steps, to
the great religious revolution which has just been named. I approach
this subject with some hesitation, well aware that impartiality is no
protection against unreasonable cavilling; but neither the history of
literature, nor of human opinion upon the most important subjects, can
dispense altogether with so extensive a portion of its materials. It is
not required, however, in a work of this nature, to do much more than
state shortly the grounds of dispute, and the changes wrought in the
public mind.
55. The proximate cause of the Reformation is well known. Indulgences,
or dispensations granted by the pope from the heavy penances imposed on
penitents after absolution by the old canons, and also, at least in
later ages, from the pains of purgatory, were sold by the papal
retailers with the most indecent extortion, and eagerly purchased by the
superstitious multitude, for their own sake, or that of their deceased
friends. Luther, in his celebrated theses, propounded at Wittenberg, in
November 1517, inveighed against the erroneous views inculcated as to
the efficacy of indulgences, and especially against the notion of the
pope’s power over souls in purgatory. He seems to have believed, that
the dealers had exceeded their commission, and would be disavowed by the
pope. This, however, was very far from being the case; and the
determination of Leo to persevere in defending all the abusive
prerogatives of his see, drew Luther on to levy war against many
other prevailing usages of the church, against several tenets maintained
by the most celebrated doctors, against the divine right of the papal
supremacy, and finally to renounce all communion with a power which he
now deemed an antichristian tyranny. This absolute separation did not
take place till he publicly burned the pope’s bull against him, and the
volumes of the canon law, at Wittenberg, in November 1520.
|Popularity of Luther.|
56. In all this dispute Luther was sustained by a prodigious force of
popular opinion. It was perhaps in the power of his sovereign, Frederic
elector of Saxony, to have sent him to Rome, in the summer of 1518,
according to the pope’s direction. But it would have been an odious step
in the people’s eyes, and a little later would have been impossible.
Miltitz, an envoy despatched by Leo in 1519, upon a conciliatory errand,
told Luther that 25,000 armed men would not suffice to make him a
prisoner, so favourable was the impression of his doctrine upon Germany.
And Frederic himself, not long afterwards, wrote plainly to Rome, that a
change had taken place in his country; the German people were not what
they had been; there were many men of great talents and considerable
learning among them, and the laity were beginning to be anxious about a
knowledge of Scripture; so that unless Luther’s doctrine, which had
already taken root in the minds of a great many both in Germany and
other countries, could be refuted by better argument than mere
ecclesiastical fulminations, the consequence must be so much disturbance
in the empire, as would by no means redound to the benefit of the Holy
See.[599] In fact, the university of Wittenberg was crowded with
students and others, who came to hear Luther and Melanchthon. The latter
had at the very beginning embraced his new master’s opinions with a
conviction he did not in all respects afterwards preserve. And though no
overt attempts to innovate on the established ceremonies had begun in
this period, before the end of 1520 several preached against them, and
the whole north of Germany was full of expectation.
[599] Seckendorf. This remarkable letter will be found also in Roscoe’s
Leo X., Appendix No. 185. It bears date April 1520. See also a
letter of Petrus Mosellanus, in Jortin’s Erasmus, ii. 353; and
Luther’s own letter to Leo, of March 1519.
|Simultaneous reform by Zwingle.|
57. A counterpart to the reformation that Luther was thus effecting in
Saxony might be found at the same instant in Switzerland, under the
guidance of Zwingle. It has been disputed between the advocates of these
leaders, to which the priority in the race of reform belongs. Zwingle
himself declares, that in 1516, before he had heard of Luther, he began
to preach the gospel at Zurich, and to warn the people against relying
upon human authority.[600] But that is rather ambiguous, and hardly
enough to substantiate his claim. In 1518, which of course is after
Luther’s appearance on the scene, the Swiss reformer was engaged in
combating the venders of indulgences, though with less attention from
the court of Rome. Like Luther, he had the support of the temporal
magistrate, the council of Zurich. Upon the whole, they proceeded so
nearly with equal steps, and were so little connected with each other,
that it seems difficult to award either any honour of precedence.[601]
[600] Zwingle apud Gerdes, i. 103.
[601] Milner, who is extremely partial in the whole of this history,
labours to extenuate the claims of Zwingle to independence in the
preaching of reformation; and even pretends that he had not
separated from the church of Rome in 1523, when Adrian VI. sent him
a civil letter. But Gerdes shows at length that the rupture was
complete in 1520. See also the article Zwingle in Biogr.
Universelle.
The prejudice of Milner against Zwingle throughout is striking, and
leads him into much unfairness. Thus he asserts him, v. 510, to
have been consenting to the capital punishment of some Anabaptists
at Zurich. But, not to mention that their case was not one of mere
religious dissidence, it does not by any means appear that he
approved their punishment, which he merely relates as a fact. A
still more gross misrepresentation occurs in p. 526.
|Reformation prepared beforehand.|
58. The German nation was, in fact, so fully awakened to the abuses of
the church, the disclaimer of papal sovereignty in the councils of
Constance and Basle had been so effectual in its influence on the public
mind, though not on the external policy of church and state, that, if
neither Luther nor Zwingle had ever been born, there can be little
question that a great religious schism was near at hand. These councils
were to the Reformation what the parliament of Paris was to the French
Revolution. Their leaders never meant to sacrifice one article of
received faith; but the little success they had in redressing what they
denounced as abuses, convinced the laity that they must go much farther
for themselves. What effect the invention of printing, which in Italy
was not much felt in this direction, exerted upon the serious minds of
the Teutonic nations, has been already intimated, and must appear to
every reflecting person. And when this was followed by a more extensive
acquaintance with the New Testament in the Greek language, nothing could
be more natural than that inquisitive men should throw away much of what
seemed the novel superstructure of religion, and, what in other times
such men had rarely ventured should be encouraged by the obvious change
in the temper of the multitude to declare themselves. We find that
Pellican and Capito, two of the most learned scholars in western
Germany, had come, as early as 1512, to reject altogether the doctrine
of the real presence. We find also that Œcolampadius had begun to preach
some of the protestant doctrines in 1514.[602] And Erasmus, who had so
manifestly prepared the way for the new Reformers, continued, as it is
easy to show from the uniform current of his letters, beyond the year
1520, favourable to their cause. His enemies were theirs, and he
concurred in much that they preached, especially as to the exterior
practices of religion. Some, however, of Luther’s tenets he did not and
could not approve; and he was already disgusted by that intemperance of
language and conduct, which, not long afterwards, led him to recede
entirely from the Protestant side.[603]
[602] Gerdes, i. 117, 124, et post. In fact the precursors of the
Reformation were very numerous, and are collected by Gerdes in his
first and third volumes, though he has greatly exaggerated the
truth, by reckoning as such Dante and Petrarch, and all opponents
of the temporal power of the papacy. Wessel may, upon the whole, be
fairly reckoned among the Reformers.
[603] In 1519 and 1520, even in his letters to Albert archbishop of
Mentz, and others by no means partial to Luther, he speaks of him
very handsomely, and with little or no disapprobation, except on
account of his intemperance, though professing only a slight
acquaintance with his writings. The proofs are too numerous to be
cited. He says, in a letter to Zwingle, as late as 1521, Videor
mihi fere omnia docuisse, quæ docet Lutherus, nisi quod non tam
atrociter, quodque abstinui a quibusdam ænigmatis et paradoxis.
This is quoted by Gerdes, i. 153, from a collection of letters of
Erasmus, published by Hottinger, but not contained in the Leyden
edition. Jortin seems not to have seen them.
|Dangerous tenets of Luther.|
59. It would not be just, probably, to give Bossuet credit in every part
of that powerful delineation of Luther’s theological tenets, with which
he begins the History of the Variations of Protestant churches. Nothing,
perhaps, in polemical eloquence is so splendid as this chapter. The
eagle of Meaux is there truly seen, lordly of form, fierce of eye,
terrible in his beak and claws. But he is too determined a partizan to
be trusted by those who seek the truth without regard to persons and
denominations. His quotations from Luther are short, and in French; I
have failed in several attempts to verify the references. Yet we are not
to follow the Reformer’s partizans in dissembling altogether, like Isaac
Milner, or in slightly censuring, as others have done, the enormous
paradoxes which deform his writings, especially such as fall within the
present period. In maintaining salvation to depend on faith as a single
condition, he not only denied the importance, in a religious sense, of a
virtuous life, but asserted that every one who felt within himself a
full assurance that his sins were remitted (which, according to Luther,
is the proper meaning of Christian faith), became incapable of sinning
at all, or at least of forfeiting the favour of God, so long, but so
long only, as that assurance should continue. Such expressions are
sometimes said by Seckendorf and Mosheim to have been thrown out
hastily, and without precision; but I fear it will be found on
examination that they are very definite and clear, the want of precision
and perspicuity being rather in those which are alleged as inconsistent
with them, and as more consonant to the general doctrine of the
Christian church.[604] It must not be supposed for a moment that Luther,
whose soul was penetrated with a fervent piety, and whose integrity as
well as purity of life are unquestioned, could mean to give any
encouragement to a licentious disregard of moral virtue; which he
valued, as in itself lovely before God as well as man, though in
the technical style of his theology, he might deny its proper
obligation. But his temper led him to follow up any proposition of
Scripture to every consequence that might seem to result from its
literal meaning; and he fancied that to represent a future state as the
motive of virtuous action, or as any way connected with human conduct,
for better or worse, was derogatory to the free grace of God, and the
omnipotent agency of the Spirit in converting the soul.[605]
[604] See in proof of this Luther’s works, vol. i. passim (edit. 1554).
The first work of Melanchthon, his Loci Communes, published in
1521, when he followed Luther more obsequiously in his opinions
than he did in after-life, is equally replete with the strongest
Calvinism. This word is a little awkward in this place; but I am
compelled to use it, as most intelligible to the reader; and I
conceive that these two reformers went much beyond the language of
Augustin, which the schoolmen thought themselves bound to recognise
as authority, though they might elude its spirit. I find the first
edition of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes in Von der Hardt, Historia
Litteraria Reformationis, a work which contains a great deal of
curious matter. It is called by him, opus rarissimum, not being in
the edition of Melanchthon’s theological works; which some have
ascribed to the art of Peucer, whose tenets were widely different.
[605] I am unwilling to give these pages too theological a cast by
proving this statement, as I have the means of doing, by extracts
from Luther’s own early writings. Milner’s very prolix history of
this period is rendered less valuable by his disingenuous trick of
suppressing all passages in these treatises of Luther, which
display his Antinomian paradoxes in a strong light. Whoever has
read the writings of Luther up to the year 1520 inclusive, must
find it impossible to contradict my assertion. In treating of an
author so full of unlimited propositions as Luther, no positive
proof as to his tenets can be refuted by the production of
inconsistent passages.
60. Whatever may be the bias of our minds as to the truth of Luther’s
doctrines, we should be careful, in considering the Reformation as a
part of the history of mankind, not to be misled by the superficial and
ungrounded representations which we sometimes find in modern writers.
Such is this, that Luther, struck by the absurdity of the prevailing
superstitions, was desirous of introducing a more rational system of
religion; or, that he contended for freedom of inquiry, and the
boundless privileges of individual judgment; or, what others have been
pleased to suggest, that his zeal for learning and ancient philosophy
led him to attack the ignorance of the monks, and the crafty policy of
the church, which withstood all liberal studies.
|Real explanation of them.|
61. These notions are merely fallacious refinements, as every man of
plain understanding, who is acquainted with the writings of the early
reformers, or has considered their history, must acknowledge. The
doctrines of Luther, taken altogether, are not more rational, that is,
more conformable to what men, à priori, would expect to find in
religion, than those of the church of Rome; nor did he ever pretend that
they were so. As to the privilege of free inquiry, it was of course
exercised by those who deserted their ancient altars, but certainly not
upon any latitudinarian theory of a right to judge amiss. Nor, again, is
there any foundation for imagining that Luther was concerned for the
interests of literature. None had he himself, save theological; nor are
there, as I apprehend, many allusions to profane studies, or any proof
of his regard to them, in all his works. On the contrary, it is probable
that both the principles of this great founder of the Reformation, and
the natural tendency of so intense an application to theological
controversy, checked for a time the progress of philological and
philosophical literature on this side of the Alps.[606] Every solution
of the conduct of the reformers must be nugatory, except one, that they
were men absorbed by the conviction that they were fighting the battle
of God. But among the population of Germany or Switzerland, there was
undoubtedly another predominant feeling; the sense of ecclesiastical
oppression, and scorn for the worthless swarm of monks and friars. This
may be said to have divided the propagators of the Reformation into such
as merely pulled down, and such as built upon the ruins. Ulric von
Hutten may pass for the type of the one, and Luther himself of the
other. And yet it is hardly correct to say of Luther, that he erected
his system on the ruins of popery. For it was rather the growth and
expansion in his mind of one positive dogma, justification by faith, in
the sense he took it (which can be easily shown to have preceded the
dispute about indulgences[607]), that broke down and crushed
successively the various doctrines of the Romish church; not because he
had originally much objection to them, but because there was no longer
room for them in a consistent system of theology.[608]
[606] Erasmus, after he had become exasperated with the reformers,
repeatedly charges them with ruining literature. Ubicunque regnat
Lutheranismus, ibi literarum est interitus. Epist. Mvi. (1528).
Evangelicos istos, cum multis aliis, tum hoc nomine præcipue odi,
quod per eos ubique languent, frigent, jacent, intereunt bonæ
literæ, sine quibus quid est hominum vita? Amant viaticum et
uxorem, cætera pili non faciunt. Hos fucos longissime arcendos
censeo a vestro contubernio. Ep. Dccccxlvi. (eod. an.) There were
however at this time, as well as afterwards, more learned men on
the side of the Reformation than on that of the church.
[607] See his disputations at Wittenberg, 1516; and the sermons
preached in the same and the subsequent year.
[608] The best authorities for the early history of the Reformation
are Seckendorf, Hist. Lutheranismi, and Sleidan, Hist. de la
Réformation, in Courayer’s French translation; the former being
chiefly useful for the ecclesiastical, the latter for political
history. But as these confine themselves to Germany, Gerdes (Hist.
Evangel. Reformat.) is necessary for the Zuinglian history, as well
as for that of the northern kingdoms. The first sections of Father
Paul’s History of the Council of Trent are also valuable. Schmidt,
Histoire des Allemands, vols. vi. and vii., has told the story on
the side of Rome speciously and with some fairness; and Roscoe has
vindicated Leo X. from the imputation of unnecessary violence in
his proceeding against Luther. Mosheim is always good, but concise;
Milner far from concise, but highly prejudiced, and in the habit of
giving his quotations in English, which is not quite satisfactory
to a lover of truth.
The essay on the influence of the Reformation by Villers, which
obtained a prize from the French Institute, and has been extolled
by a very friendly, but better-informed writer in the Biographie
Universelle, appears to me the work of a man who had not taken the
pains to read any one contemporary work, or even any compilation
which contains many extracts. No wonder that it does not represent,
in the slightest degree, the real spirit of the times, or the
tenets of the reformers. Thus, e. gr., “Luther,” he says, “exposed
the abuse of the traffic of indulgences, and the danger of
believing that heaven and the remission of all crimes could be
bought with money; while a sincere repentance and an amended life
were the only means of appeasing the divine justice.” (p. 65 Engl.
Transl.) This at least is not very like Luther’s antinomian
contempt for repentance and amendment of life; it might come near
to the notions of Erasmus.
|Orlando Furioso.|
62. The laws of synchronism, which we have hitherto obeyed, bring
strange partners together, and we may pass at once from Luther to
Ariosto. The Orlando Furioso was first printed at Ferrara in 1516. This
edition contained forty cantos, to which the last six were added in
1532. Many stanzas, chiefly of circumstance, were interpolated by the
author from time to time.
|Its popularity.|
63. Ariosto has been, after Homer, the favourite poet of Europe. His
grace and facility, his clear and rapid stream of language, his variety
and beauty of invention, his very transitions of subject, so frequently
censured by critics, but artfully devised to spare the tediousness that
hangs on a protracted story, left him no rival in general popularity.
Above sixty editions of the Orlando Furioso were published in the
sixteenth century. There was not one, says Bernardo Tasso, of any age,
or sex, or rank, who was satisfied after more than a single perusal. If
the change of manners and sentiments have already in some degree
impaired this attraction, if we cease to take interest in the prowess of
Paladins, and find their combats a little monotonous, this is perhaps
the necessary lot of all poetry, which, as it can only reach posterity
through the medium of contemporary reputation, must accommodate itself
to the fleeting character of its own time. This character is strongly
impressed on the Orlando Furioso; it well suited an age of war and pomp,
and gallantry; an age when chivalry was still recent in actual life, and
was reflected in concentrated brightness from the mirror of romance.
|Want of seriousness.|
64. It has been sometimes hinted as an objection to Ariosto, that he is
not sufficiently in earnest, and leaves a little suspicion of laughing
at his subject. I do not perceive that he does this in a greater degree
than good sense and taste permit. The poets of knight-errantry might in
this respect be arranged in a scale, of which Pulci and Spenser would
stand at the extreme points; the one mocking the absurdities he coolly
invents, the other, by intense strength of conception, full of love and
faith in his own creations. Between these Boiardo, Ariosto, and Berni
take successively their places; none so deeply serious as Spenser, none
so ironical as Pulci. It was not easy in Italy, especially after the
Morgante Maggiore had roused the sense of ridicule, to keep up at every
moment the solemn tone which Spain endured in the romances of the
sixteenth century; nor was this consonant to the gaiety of Ariosto. It
is the light carelessness of his manner which constitutes a great part
of its charm.
|A continuation of Boiardo.|
65. Castelvetro has blamed Ariosto for building on the foundations of
Boiardo.[609] He seems to have had originally no other design than to
carry onward, a little better than Agostini, that very attractive story;
having written, it is said, at first, only a few cantos to please his
friends.[610] Certainly it is rather singular that so great and renowned
a poet should have been little more than the continuator of one who had
so lately preceded him; though Salviati defends him by the example of
Homer; and other critics, with whom we shall perhaps not agree, have
thought this the best apology for writing a romantic instead of an
heroic poem. The story of the Orlando Innamorato must be known before we
can well understand that of the Furioso. But this is nearly what
we find in Homer; for who can reckon the Iliad anything but a fragment
of the tale of Troy? It was indeed less felt by the compatriots of
Homer, already familiar with that legendary cyclus of heroic song, than
it is by the readers of Ariosto, who are not in general very well
acquainted with the poem of his precursor. Yet experience has even here
shown that the popular voice does not echo the complaint of the critic.
This is chiefly owing to the want of a predominant unity in the Orlando
Furioso, which we commonly read in detached parcels. The unity it does
possess, distinct from the story of Boiardo, consists in the loves and
announced nuptials of Rogero and Bradamante, the imaginary progenitors
of the house of Este; but Ariosto does not gain by this condescension to
the vanity of a petty sovereign.
[609] Poetica d’Aristotele (1570). It violates, he says, the rule of
Aristotle, αρχη εστιν, ὁ εξ αναγκης μη μετ' αλλο εστι [archê estin,
ho ex anankês mê met' allo esti]. Camillo Pellegrini, in his famous
controversy with the Academicians of Florence, repeats the same
censure. Salviati, under the disguised name l’Infarinato (Opere di
Tasso, ii. 130), defends Ariosto by the example of Homer, which
Castelvetro had already observed to be inapplicable.
[610] Quadrio, Storia d’ogni Poesia, vi. 606.
|In some points inferior.|
66. The inventions of Ariosto are less original than those of Boiardo,
but they are more pleasing and various. The tales of old mythology and
of modern romance furnished him with those delightful episodes we all
admire, with his Olimpia and Bireno, his Ariodante and Geneura, his
Cloridan and Medoro, his Zerbino and Isabella. He is more conversant
with the Latin poets, or has turned them to better account, than his
predecessor. For the sudden transitions in the middle of a canto or even
a stanza, with which every reader of Ariosto is familiar, he is indebted
to Boiardo, who had himself imitated in them the metrical romancers of
the preceding age. From them also, that justice may be rendered to those
nameless rhymers, Boiardo drew the individuality of character, by which
their heroes were distinguished, and which Ariosto has not been so
careful to preserve. His Orlando has less of the honest simplicity, and
his Astolfo less of the gay boastfulness, that had been assigned to them
in the cyclus.
|Beauties of its style.|
67. Corniani observes of the style of Ariosto, what we may all perceive
on attending to it to be true, that he is sparing in the use of
metaphors, contenting himself generally with the plainest expression; by
which, if he loses something in dignity, he gains in perspicuity. It may
be added, that he is not very successful in figurative language, which
is sometimes forced and exaggerated. Doubtless this transparency of
phrase, so eminent in Ariosto, is the cause that he is read and
delighted in by the multitude, as well as by the few; and it seems also
to be the cause that he can never be satisfactorily rendered into any
language less musical, and consequently less independent upon an
ornamental dress in poetry, than his own, or one which wants the
peculiar advantages, by which conventional variances in the form of
words, and the liberty of inversion, as well as the frequent recurrence
of the richest and most euphonious rhymes, elevate the simplest
expression in Italian verse above the level of discourse. Galileo, being
asked by what means he had acquired the remarkable talent of giving
perspicuity and grace to his philosophical writings, referred it to the
continual study of Ariosto. His similes are conspicuous for their
elaborate beauty; they are familiar to every reader of this great poet;
imitated, as they usually are, from the ancients, they maintain an equal
strife with their models, and occasionally surpass them. But even the
general strain of Ariosto, natural as it seems, was not unpremeditated,
or left to its own felicity; his manuscript at Ferrara, part of which is
shown to strangers, bears numerous alterations, the _pentimenti_,
if I may borrow a word from a kindred art, of creative genius.
|Accompanied with faults.|
68. The Italian critics love to expatiate in his praise, though they are
often keenly sensible to his defects. The variety of style and of rhythm
in Ariosto, it is remarked by Gravina, is convenient to that of his
subject. His rhymes, the same author observes, seem to spring from the
thoughts, and not from the necessities of metre. He describes minutely,
but with much felicity, and gives a clear idea of every part; like the
Farnesian Hercules, which seems greater by the distinctness of every
vein and muscle.[611] Quadrio praises the correspondence of the sound to
the sense. Yet neither of these critics is blindly partial. It is
acknowledged indeed by his warmest advocates, that he falls sometimes
below his subject, and that trifling and feeble lines intrude too
frequently in the Orlando Furioso. I can hardly regret, however, that in
the passages of flattery towards the house of Este, such as that long
genealogy which he deduces in the third canto, his genius has deserted
him, and he degenerates, as it were wilfully, into prosaic tediousness.
In other allusions to contemporary history, he is little better. I am
hazarding a deviation from the judgment of good critics when I add, that
in the opening stanzas of each canto, where the poet appears in his own
person, I find generally a deficiency of vigour and originality,
a poverty of thought and of emotion, which is also very far from unusual
in the speeches of his characters. But these introductions have been
greatly admired.
[611] Ragion Poetica, p. 104.
|Its place as a poem.|
69. Many faults of language in Ariosto are observed by his countrymen.
They justly blame also his inobservance of propriety, his hyperbolical
extravagance, his harsh metaphors, his affected thoughts. These are
sufficiently obvious to a reader of reflecting taste; but the
enchantment of his pencil redeems every failing, and his rapidity, like
that of Homer, leaves us little time to censure before we are hurried
forward to admire. The Orlando Furioso, as a great single poem, has been
very rarely surpassed in the living records of poetry. He must yield to
three, and only three, of his predecessors. He has not the force,
simplicity, and truth to nature of Homer, the exquisite style and
sustained majesty of Virgil, nor the originality and boldness of Dante.
The most obvious parallel is Ovid, whose Metamorphoses, however, are far
excelled by the Orlando Furioso, not in fertility of invention, or
variety of images and sentiments, but in purity of taste, in grace of
language, and harmony of versification.
|Amadis de Gaul.|
70. No edition of Amadis de Gaul has been proved to exist before that
printed at Seville in 1519, which yet is suspected of not being the
first.[612] This famous romance, which in its day was almost as popular
as the Orlando Furioso itself, was translated into French by Herberay
between 1540 and 1557, and into English by Munday in 1619. The four
books by Vasco de Lobeyra grew to twenty by successive additions, which
have been held by lovers of romance far inferior to the original. They
deserve at least the blame, or praise, of making the entire work
unreadable by the most patient or the most idle of mankind. Amadis de
Gaul can still perhaps impart pleasure to the susceptible imagination of
youth; but the want of deep or permanent sympathy leaves a naked sense
of unprofitableness in the perusal, which must, it should seem, alienate
a reader of mature years. Amadis at least obtained the laurel at the
hands of Cervantes, speaking through the barber and curate, while so
many of Lobeyra’s unworthy imitators were condemned to the flames.
[612] Brunet, Man. du Libraire.
|Gringore.|
71. A curious dramatic performance, if it may deserve such an
appellation, was represented at Paris in 1511, and published in 1516. It
is entitled Le Prince des Sots et la Mère sotte, by one Peter Gringore,
who had before produced some other pieces of less note, and bordering
more closely on the moralities. In the general idea there was nothing
original. A prince of fools had long ruled his many-coloured subjects on
the theatre of a joyous company, les Enfans sans souci, who had diverted
the citizens of Paris with their buffoonery, under the name, perhaps, of
moralities, while their graver brethren represented the mysteries of
scripture and legend. But the chief aim of La Mère sotte was to turn the
pope and court of Rome into ridicule during the sharp contest of Louis
XII. with Julius II. It consists of four parts, all in verse. The first
of these is called The Cry, and serves as a sort of prologue, summoning
all fools of both sexes to see the prince of fools play on Shrove
Tuesday. The second is The Folly. This is an irregular dramatic piece,
full of poignant satire on the clergy, but especially on the pope. A
third part is entitled The Morality of the Obstinate Man; a dialogue in
allusion to the same dispute. Finally comes an indecent farce,
unconnected with the preceding subject. Gringore, who represented the
character of La Mère sotte, was generally known by that name, and
assumed it in his subsequent publications.[613]
[613] Beauchamps, Recherches sur le Théâtre Français. Goujet, Bibl.
Française, xi. 212. Niceron, vol. xxxiv. Bouterwek, Gesch. der
Französen Poesie, v. 113. Biogr. Univers. The works of Gringore,
says the last authority, are rare, and sought by the lovers of our
old poetry, because they display the state of manners at the
beginning of the sixteenth century.
|Hans Sachs.|
72. Gringore was certainly at a great distance from the Italian stage,
which had successfully adapted the plots of Latin comedies to modern
stories. But, among the _barbarians_, a dramatic writer, somewhat
younger than he, was now beginning to earn a respectable celebrity,
though limited to a yet uncultivated language, and to the inferior class
of society. Hans Sachs, a shoemaker of Nuremberg, born in 1494, is said
to have produced his first carnival play (Fast nacht spiel) in 1517. He
belonged to the fraternity of poetical artizans, the meister-singers of
Germany, who, from the beginning of the fourteenth century, had a
succession of mechanical (in every sense of the word) rhymers to boast,
to whom their countrymen attached as much reverence as might have
sufficed for more genuine bards. In a spirit which might naturally be
expected from artizans, they required a punctual observance of
certain arbitrary canons, the by-laws of the corporation Muses, to which
the poet must conform. These, however, did not diminish the fecundity,
if they repressed the excursiveness, of our meister-singers, and least
of all that of Hans Sachs himself, who poured forth, in about forty
years, fifty-three sacred and seventy-eight profane plays, sixty-four
farces, fifty-nine fables, and a large assortment of other poetry. These
dramatic works are now scarce, even in Germany; they appear to be ranged
in the same class as the early fruits of the French and English
theatres. We shall mention Hans Sachs again in another chapter.[614]
[614] Biogr. Univ. Eichhorn, iii. 948. Bouterwek, ix. 381. Heinsius,
iv. 150. Retrospective Review, vol. x.
|Stephen Hawes.|
73. No English poet, since the death of Lydgate, had arisen whom it
could be thought worth while to mention.[615] Many, perhaps, will not
admit that Stephen Hawes, who now meets us, should be reckoned in that
honourable list. His “Pastime of Pleasure, or the Historie of Graunde
Amour and La bel Pucel,” finished in 1506, was printed by Wynkyn de
Worde in 1517. From this title we might hardly expect a moral and
learned allegory, in which the seven sciences of the trivium and
quadrivium, besides a host of abstract virtues and qualities, play their
parts in living personality, through a poem of about six thousand lines.
Those who require the ardent words or the harmonious grace of poetical
diction, will not frequently be content with Hawes. Unlike many of our
older versifiers, he would be judged more unfavourably by extracts than
by a general view of his long work. He is rude, obscure, full of
pedantic latinisms, and probably has been disfigured in the press; but
learned and philosophical, reminding us frequently of the school of
James I. The best, though probably an unexpected, parallel for Hawes is
John Bunyan; their inventions are of the same class, various and novel,
though with no remarkable pertinence to the leading subject, or
naturally consecutive order; their characters, though abstract in name,
have a personal truth about them, in which Phineas Fletcher, a century
after Hawes, fell much below him; they render the general allegory
subservient to inculcating a system, the one of philosophy, the other of
religion. I do not mean that the Pastime of Pleasure is equal in merit,
as it certainly has not been in success, to the Pilgrim’s Progress.
Bunyan is powerful and picturesque from his concise simplicity; Hawes
has the common failings of our old writers, a tedious and languid
diffuseness, an expatiating on themes of pedantry in which the reader
takes no interest, a weakening of every feature and every reflection by
ignorance of the touches that give effect. But if we consider the
Historie of Graunde Amour less as a poem to be read than as a measure of
the author’s mental power, we shall not look down upon so long and
well-sustained an allegory. In this style of poetry much was required,
that no mind ill stored with reflection, or incapable of novel
combination, could supply; a clear conception of abstract modes, a
familiarity with the human mind, and with the effects of its qualities
on human life, a power of justly perceiving and vividly representing the
analogies of sensible and rational objects. Few that preceded Hawes have
possessed more of these gifts than himself.
[615] I have adverted in another place to Alexander Barclay’s
translation of the Ship of Fools from Sebastian Brandt; and I may
here observe, that he has added many original strokes on his own
countrymen, especially on the clergy.
74. This poem has been little known till Mr. Southey reprinted it in
1831; the original edition is very rare. Warton had given several
extracts, which, as I have observed, are disadvantageous to Hawes, and
an analysis of the whole;[616] but though he praises the author for
imagination, and admits that the poem has been unjustly neglected, he
has not dwelt enough on the erudition and reflection it displays. Hawes
appears to have been educated at Oxford, and to have travelled much on
the Continent. He held also an office in the court of Henry VII. We may
reckon him therefore among the earliest of our learned and accomplished
gentlemen; and his poem is the first-fruits of that gradual ripening of
the English mind, which must have been the process of the laboratory of
time, in the silence and darkness of the fifteenth century. It augured a
generation of grave and stern thinkers, and the omen was not vain.
[616] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 54.
|Change in English language.|
75. Another poem, the Temple of Glass, which Warton had given to Hawes,
is now by general consent restored to Lydgate. Independently of external
proof, which is decisive,[617] it will appear that the Temple of Glass
is not written in the English of Henry VII.’s reign. I mention
this only for the sake of observing, that in following the line of our
writers in verse and prose, we find the old obsolete English to have
gone out of use about the accession of Edward IV. Lydgate and bishop
Pecock, especially the latter, are not easily understood by a reader not
habituated to their language; he requires a glossary, or must help
himself out by conjecture. In the Paston Letters, on the contrary, in
Harding, the metrical chronicler, or in Sir John Fortescue’s discourse
on the difference between an absolute and limited monarchy, he finds
scarce any difficulty; antiquated words and forms of termination
frequently occur; but he is hardly sensible that he reads these books
much less fluently than those of modern times. These were written about
1470. But in Sir Thomas More’s History of Edward V., written about 1509,
or in the beautiful ballad of the Nut-brown Maid, which we cannot place
very far from the year 1500, but which, if nothing can be brought to
contradict the internal evidence, I should incline to refer to this
decennium, there is not only a diminution of obsolete phraseology, but a
certain modern turn and structure, both in the verse and prose, which
denotes the commencement of a new æra, and the establishment of new
rules of taste and polite literature. Every one will understand, that a
broad line cannot be traced for the beginning of this change: Hawes,
though his English is very different from that of Lydgate, seems to have
had a great veneration for him, and has imitated the manner of that
school, to which, in a marshalling of our poets, he unquestionably
belongs. Skelton, on the contrary, though ready enough to coin words,
has comparatively few that are obsolete.
[617] See note in Price’s edition of Warton, ubi suprà: to which I add,
that the Temple of Glass is mentioned in the Paston Letters, ii.
90, long before the time of Hawes.
|Skelton.|
76. The strange writer, whom we have just mentioned, seems to fall well
enough within this decade; though his poetical life was long, if it be
true that he received the laureate crown at Oxford in 1483, and was also
the author of a libel on Sir Thomas More, ascribed to him by Ellis,
which, alluding to the Nun of Kent, could hardly be written before
1533.[618] But though this piece is somewhat in Skelton’s manner, we
find it said that he died in 1529, and it is probably the work of an
imitator. Skelton is certainly not a poet, unless some degree of comic
humour, and a torrent-like volubility of words in doggrel rhyme, can
make one; but this uncommon fertility, in a language so little copious
as ours was at that time, bespeaks a mind of some original vigour. Few
English writers come nearer in this respect to Rabelais, whom Skelton
preceded. His attempts in serious poetry are utterly contemptible; but
the satirical lines on Cardinal Wolsey were probably not ineffective. It
is impossible to determine whether they were written before 1520. Though
these are better known than any poem of Skelton’s, his dirge on Philip
Sparrow is the most comic and imaginative.[619]
[618] Ellis’s Specimens, vol. ii.
[619] This last poem is reprinted in Southey’s Selections from the
older Poets. Extracts from Skelton occur also in Warton, and one in
the first volume of the Somers Tracts. Mr. Dyce has it, I believe,
in contemplation to publish a collective edition.
|Oriental languages.|
77. We must now take a short survey of some other departments of
literature during this second decade of the sixteenth century. The
oriental languages become a little more visible in bibliography than
before. An Æthiopic, that is, Abyssinian grammar, with the Psalms in the
same language, was published at Rome by Potken in 1513; a short treatise
in Arabic at Fanno in 1514, being the first time those characters had
been used in type; a psalter in 1516, by Giustiniani at Genoa, in
Hebrew, Chaldee, Arabic, and Greek;[620] and a Hebrew Bible, with the
Chaldee paraphrase and other aids, by Felice di Prato, at Venice in
1519. The book of Job in Hebrew appeared at Paris in 1516. Meantime the
magnificent polyglott Bible of Alcala proceeded under the patronage of
Cardinal Ximenes, and was published in five volumes folio, between the
years 1514 and 1517. It contains in triple columns the Hebrew, the
Septuagint Greek, and Latin Vulgate; the Chaldee paraphrase of the
Pentateuch by Onkelos being also printed at the foot of the page.[621]
Spain, therefore, had found men equal to superintend this
arduous labour. Lebrixa was still living, though much advanced in years;
Stunica and a few other now obscure names were his coadjutors. But that
of Demetrius Cretensis appears among these in the title-page, to whom
the principal care of the Greek was doubtless intrusted; and it is
highly probable, that all the early Hebrew and Chaldee publications
demanded the assistance of Jewish rabbis.
[620] It is printed in eight columns, which Gesner, apud Bayle,
Justiniani, Note D., thus describes; Quarum prima habet Hebræam
editionem, secunda Latinam interpretationem respondentem Hebrææ de
verbo in verbum, tertia Latinam communem, quarta Græcam, quinta
Arabicam, sexta paraphrasim, sermone quidem Chaldæo, sed literis
Hebraicis conscriptam; septima Latinam respondentem Chaldeæ, ultima
vero, id est octava, continet scholia, hoc est, annotationes
sparsas et intercisas.
[621] Andrès, xix. 35. An observation in the preface to the
Complutensian edition has been often animadverted upon, that
they print the Vulgate between the Hebrew and the Greek, like
Christ between two thieves. The expression, however it may have
been introduced, is not to be wholly defended; but at that time it
was generally believed, that the Hebrew text had been corrupted by
the Jews.
|Pomponatius.|
78. The school of Padua, renowned already for its medical science, as
well as for the cultivation of the Aristotelian philosophy, laboured
under a suspicion of infidelity, which was considerably heightened by
the work of Pomponatius, its most renowned professor, on the immortality
of the soul, published in 1516. This book met with several answerers,
and was publicly burned at Venice; but the patronage of Bembo sustained
Pomponatius at the court of Leo; and he was permitted by the inquisition
to reprint his treatise with some corrections. He defended himself by
declaring that he merely denied the validity of philosophical arguments
for the soul’s immortality, without doubting in the least the authority
of revelation, to which, and to that of the church, he had expressly
submitted. This, however, is the current language of philosophy in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which must be judged by other
presumptions. Brucker and Ginguéné are clear as to the real disbelief of
Pomponatius in the doctrine, and bring some proofs from his other
writings, which seem more unequivocal than any that the treatise De
Immortalitate affords. It is certainly possible, and not uncommon, for
men to deem the arguments on that subject inconclusive, so far as
derived from reason, while they assent to those that rest on revelation.
It is on the other hand impossible for a man to believe inconsistent
propositions when he perceives them to be so. The question therefore can
only be, as Buhle seems to have seen, whether Pomponatius maintained the
rational arguments for a future state to be repugnant to known truths,
or merely insufficient for conviction; and this a superficial perusal of
his treatise hardly enables me to determine; though there is a
presumption, on the whole, that he had no more religion than the
philosophers of Padua generally kept for a cloak. That university was
for more than a century the focus of atheism in Italy.[622]
[622] Tiraboschi, vol. viii. Corniani. Ginguéné. Brucker. Buhle.
Niceron. Biogr. Universelle. The two last of these are more
favourable than the rest to the intentions of the Paduan
philosopher.
Pomponatius, or Peretto, as he was sometimes called, on account of
his diminutive stature, which he had in common with his predecessor
in philosophy, Marsilius Ficinus, was ignorant of Greek, though he
read lectures on Aristotle. In one of Sperone’s dialogues (p. 120
edit. 1596) he is made to argue, that if all books were read in
translations, the time now consumed in learning languages might be
better employed.
|Raymond Lully.|
|His method.|
79. We may enumerate among the philosophical writings of this period, as
being first published in 1516, a treatise full two hundred years older,
by Raymond Lully, a native of Majorca; one of those innovators in
philosophy, who, by much boasting of their original discoveries in the
secrets of truth, are taken by many at their word, and gain credit for
systems of science, which those who believe in them seldom trouble
themselves to examine, or even understand. Lully’s principal treatise is
his Ars Magna, being, as it professes, a new method of reasoning on all
subjects. But this method appears to be only an artificial disposition,
readily obvious to the eye, of subjects and predicables, according to
certain distinctions; which, if it were meant for anything more than a
topical arrangement, such as the ancient orators employed to aid their
invention, could only be compared to the similar scheme of using
machinery instead of mental labour, devised by the philosophers of
Laputa. Leibnitz is of opinion that the method might be convenient in
extemporary speaking; which is the utmost limit that can be assigned to
its usefulness. Lord Bacon has truly said of this, and of such idle or
fraudulent attempts to substitute trick for science, that they are “not
a lawful method, but a method of imposture, which is to deliver
knowledges in such manner, as men may speedily come to make a show of
learning, who have it not;” and that they are “nothing but a mass of
words of all arts, to give men countenance, that those which use the
terms might be thought to understand them.”
80. The writings of Lully are admitted to be very obscure; and those of
his commentators and admirers, among whom the meteors of philosophy,
Cornelius Agrippa and Jordano Bruno, were enrolled, are hardly less so.
But, as is usual with such empiric medicines, it obtained a great deal
of celebrity, and much ungrounded praise, not only for the two centuries
which intervened between the author’s age and that of its appearance
from the press, but for a considerable time afterwards, till the
Cartesian philosophy drove that to which the art of Lully was
accommodated from the field; and even Morhof, near the end of the
seventeenth century, avows that, though he had been led to reckon it a
frivolous method, he had very much changed his opinion on fuller
examination.[623] The few pages which Brucker has given to Lully do not
render his art very intelligible;[624] but they seem sufficient to show
its uselessness for the discovery of truth. It is utterly impossible,
even for those who have taken much pains to comprehend this method,
which is not the case with me, to give a precise notion of it in a few
words, even with the help of diagrams, which are indispensably
required.[625]
[623] Morhof, Polyhistor. l. ii. c. 5. But if I understand the ground
on which Morhof rests his favourable opinion of Lully’s art, it is
merely for its usefulness in suggesting middle terms to a
syllogistic disputant.
[624] Brucker, iv. 9-21. Ginguéné, who observes that Brucker’s analysis,
à sa manière accoutumée, may be understood by those who have
learned Lully’s method, but must be very confused to others, has
made the matter a great deal more unintelligible by his own attempt
to explain it Hist. Litt. de l’Italie, vii. 497. I have found a
better development of the method in Alstedius, Clavis Artis
Lullianæ (Argentor. 1633), a staunch admirer of Lully. But his
praise of the art, when examined, is merely as an aid to the
memory, and to disputation, de quavis quæstione utramque in partem
disputandi. This is rather an evil than a good; and though
mnemonical contrivances are not without utility, it is probable
that much better could be found than that of Lully.
[625] Buhle has observed that the favourable reception of Lully’s
method is not surprising, since it really is useful in the
association of ideas, like all other topical contrivances, and may
be applied to any subject, though often not very appropriately,
suggesting materials in extemporary speaking, and notwithstanding
its shortness, professing to be a complete system of topics; but
whosoever should try it must be convinced of its inefficacy in
reasoning. Hence he thinks that such men as Agrippa and Bruno kept
only the general principle of Lully’s scheme, enlarging it by new
contrivances of their own. Hist. de Philos. ii. 612. See also an
article on Lully in the Biographie Universelle. Tennemann calls the
Ars Magna a logical machine to let men reason about everything
without study or reflection. Manuel de la Philos. i. 380. But this
seems to have been much what Lully reckoned its merit.
|Peter Martyr’s epistles.|
81. The only geographical publication which occurs in this period is, an
account of the recent discoveries in America, by Peter Martyr of
Anghieria, a Milanese, who passed great part of his life in the court of
Madrid. The title is, De Rebus Oceanicis Decades tres; but it is, in
fact, a series of epistles, thirty in number, written, or feigned to be
written, at different times as fresh information was received; the first
bearing date a few days only after the departure of Columbus in 1493;
while the two last decades are addressed to Leo X. An edition is said to
have appeared in 1516, which is certainly the date of the author’s
dedication to Charles V.; yet this edition seems not to have been seen
by bibliographers. Though Peter Martyr’s own account has been implicitly
believed by Robertson and many others, there seems strong internal
persumption, or rather irresistible demonstration, against the
authenticity of these epistles in the character they assume. It appears
to me evident that he threw the intelligence obtained into that form
many years after the time. Whoever will take the trouble of comparing
the two first letters in the decades of Peter Martyr with any authentic
history, will perceive that they are a negligent and palpable imposture,
every date being falsified, even that of the year in which Columbus made
his great discovery. It is a strange instance of oversight in Robertson
that he has uniformly quoted them as written at the time, for the least
attention must have shown him the contrary. And it may here be
mentioned, that a similar suspicion has been very reasonably entertained
with respect to another collection of epistles by the same author,
rather better known than the present. There is a folio volume with which
those who have much attended to the history of the sixteenth century are
well acquainted, purporting to be a series of letters from Anghiera to
various friends between the years 1488 and 1522. They are full of
interesting facts, and would be still more valuable than they are, could
we put our trust in their genuineness as strictly contemporary
documents. But, though Robertson has almost wholly relied upon them in
his account of the Castilian insurrection, and even in the Biographie
Universelle no doubt is raised as to their being written at their
several dates, yet La Monnoye (if I remember right, certainly some one)
long since charged the author with imposture, on the ground that the
letters, into which he wove the history of his times, are so full of
anachronisms as to render it evident that they were fabricated
afterwards. It is several years since I read these epistles; but I was
certainly struck with some palpable errors in chronology, which
led me to suspect that several of them were wrongly dated, the solution
of their being feigned not occurring to my mind, as the book is of
considerable reputation.[626] A ground of suspicion hardly less striking
is, that the letters of Peter Martyr are too exact for verisimilitude;
he announces events with just the importance they ought to have,
predicts nothing but what comes to pass, and must in fact be either an
impostor (in an innocent sense of the word), or one of the most
sagacious men of his time. But, if not exactly what they profess to be,
both these works of Anghiera are valuable as contemporary history; and
the first mentioned in particular, De Rebus Oceanicis, is the earliest
account we possess of the settlement of the Spaniards in Darien, and of
the whole period between Columbus and Cortes.
[626] The following are specimens of anachronism, which seem fatal to
the genuineness of these epistles, and are only selected from
others. In the year 1489 he writes to a friend: In peculiarem te
nostræ tempestatis morbum, qui appellatione Hispanâ Bubarum
dicitur, ab Italis morbus Gallicus, medicorum Elephantiam alii,
alii aliter appellant, incidisse præcipitem, libero ad me scribis
pede. Epist. 68. Now if we should even believe that this disease
was known some years before the discovery of America and the siege
of Naples, is it probable that it could have obtained the name of
morbus Gallicus before the latter æra? In February 1511, he
communicates the absolution of the Venetians by Julius II., which
took place in February 1510. Epist. 451. In a letter dated at
Brussels, 31st Aug. 1520, (Epist. 689) he mentions the burning of
the canon law at Wittenberg by Luther, which is well known to have
happened in the ensuing November.
82. It would be embarrassing to the reader were we to pursue any longer
that rigidly chronological division by short decennial periods, which
has hitherto served to display the regular progress of European
literature, and especially of classical learning. Many other provinces
were now cultivated, and the history of each is to be traced separately
from the rest, though frequently with mutual reference, and with regard,
as far as possible, to their common unity. In the period immediately
before us, that unity was chiefly preserved by the diligent study of the
Latin and Greek languages; it was to the writers in those languages that
the theologian, the civil lawyer, the physician, the geometer and
philosopher, even the poet, for the most part, and dramatist, repaired
for the materials of their knowledge, and the nourishment of their
minds. We shall begin, therefore, by following the further advances of
philological literature; and some readers must here, as in other places,
pardon what they will think unnecessary minuteness in so general a work
as the present, for the sake of others who set a value on precise
information.
CHAPTER V.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
_Classical Taste of the Italians--Ciceronians--Erasmus attacks
them--Writings on Roman Antiquity--Learning in France--Commentaries
of Budæus--Progress of Learning in Spain, Germany, England--State of
Cambridge and Oxford--Advance of Learning still slow--Encyclopædic
Works._
|Superiority of Italy in taste.|
1. Italy, the genial soil where the literature of antiquity had been
first cultivated, still retained her superiority in the fine perception
of its beauties, and in the power of retracing them by spirited
imitation. It was the land of taste and sensibility; never surely more
so than in the age of Raffaelle as well as Ariosto. Far from the
clownish ignorance so long predominant in the transalpine aristocracy,
the nobles of Italy, accustomed to a city life, and to social festivity,
more than to war or the chase, were always conspicuous for their
patronage, and, what is more important than mere patronage, their
critical skill in matters of art and elegant learning. Among the
ecclesiastical order this was naturally still more frequent. If the
successors of Leo X. did not attain so splendid a name, they were
perhaps, after the short reign of Adrian VI., which, if we may believe
the Italian writers, seemed to threaten an absolute return of
barbarism,[627] not less munificent or sedulous in encouraging
polite and useful letters. The first part indeed of this period of
thirty years was very adverse to the progress of learning; especially in
that disastrous hour when the lawless mercenaries of Bourbon’s army were
led on to the sack of Rome. In this, and in other calamities of the same
kind, it happened that universities and literary academies were broken
up, that libraries were destroyed or dispersed. That of Sadolet, having
been with difficulty saved in the pillage of Rome, was dispersed, in
consequence of shipwreck during its transport to France.[628] A better
æra commenced with the pacification of Italy in 1531. The subsequent
wars were either transient, or partial in their effects. The very
extinction of all hope for civil freedom, which characterised the new
period, turned the intellectual energies of an acute and ardent people
towards those tranquil pursuits, which their rulers would both permit
and encourage.
[627] Valerianus, in his treatise De Infelicitate Litteratorum, a
melancholy series of unfortunate authors, in the manner, though not
quite with the spirit and interest, of M. D’Israeli, speaks of
Adrian VI. as of another Paul II. in hatred of literature. Ecce
adest musarum et eloquentiæ, totiusque nitoris hostis acerrimus,
qui literatis omnibus inimicitias minitatur, quoniam, ut ipse
dictitabat, Terentiani essent, quos cum odisse atque etiam persequi
cœpisset, voluntarium alii exilium, alias atque alias alii latebras
quærentes, tamdiu latuere, quoad Dei beneficio, altero imperii anno
decessit, qui si aliquanto diutius vixissit, Gotica illa tempora
adversus bonas literas videbatur suscitaturus. Lib. ii. p. 34. It
is but fair to add, that Erasmus ascribes to Adrian the protection
of letters in the Low Countries. Vix nostra phalanx sustinuisset
hostium conjurationem, ni Adrianus tum Cardinalis, postea Romanus
pontifex, hoc edidisset oraculum: Bonus literas non damno, hæreses
et schismata damno. Epist. Mclxxvi. There is not indeed much in
this; but the Biographie Universelle (Suppl. art. Busleiden)
informs us that this pope was compelled to interfere in order to
remove the impediments to the foundation of Busleiden’s Collegium
Trilingue at Louvain. It is well known that Adrian VI. was inclined
to reform some abuses in the church; enough to set the Italians
against him. See his life, in Bayle, Note D.
[628] Cum enim direptis rebus cæteris, libri soli superstites ab
hostium injuria intacti, in navim conjecti, ad Galliæ littus jam
pervecti essent, incidit in vectores, et in ipsos familiares meos
pestilentia. Quo metu ii permoti, quorum ad littora navis appulsa
fuerat, onera in terram exponi non permisere. Ita asportati sunt in
alienas et ignotas terras; exceptisque voluminibus paucis, quæ
deportavi mecum huc proficiscens, mei reliqui illi tot labores quos
impenderamus, Græcis præsertim codicibus conquirendis undique et
colligendis, mei tanti sumptus meæ curæ, omnes iterum jam ad
nihilum reciderunt. Sadolet. Epist. lib. i. p. 23. (Colon. 1554.)
|Admiration of Antiquity.|
2. The real excellence of the ancients in literature as well as art gave
rise to an enthusiastic and exclusive admiration of antiquity, not
unusual indeed in other parts of Europe, but in Italy a sort of national
pride which all partook. They went back to the memory of past ages for
consolation in their declining fortunes, and conquered their barbarian
masters of the north in imagination with Cæsar and Marius. Everything
that reminded them of the slow decay of Rome, sometimes even their
religion itself, sounded ill in their fastidious ears. Nothing was so
much at heart with the Italian scholars, as to write a Latin style, not
only free from barbarism, but conformable to the standard of what is
sometimes called the Augustan age, that is of the period from Cicero to
Augustus. Several of them affected to be exclusively Ciceronian.
|Sadolet.|
|Bembo.|
3. Sadolet, one of the apostolic secretaries under Leo X. and Clement
VII., and raised afterwards to the purple by Paul III., stood in as high
a rank as any for purity of language without affectation, though he
seems to have been reckoned of the Ciceronian school. Except his
epistles, however, none of Sadolet’s works are now read, or even appear
to have been very conspicuous in his own age; though Corniani has given
an analysis of a treatise on education.[629] A greater name, in point of
general literary reputation, was Peter Bembo, a noble Venetian,
secretary with Sadolet to Leo, and raised, like him, to the dignity of a
cardinal by Paul III. Bembo was known in Latin and in Italian
literature; and in each language both as a prose writer and a poet. We
shall thus have to regard four claims he prefers to a niche in the
temple of fame, and we shall find none of them ungrounded. In pure Latin
style he was not perhaps superior to Sadolet, but would not have yielded
to any competitor in Europe. It has been told, in proof of Bembo’s
scrupulous care to give his compositions the utmost finish, that he kept
forty portfolios, into which every sheet entered successively, and was
only taken out to undergo his corrections, before it entered into the
next limbo of this purgatory. Though this may not be quite true, it is
but an exaggeration of the laborious diligence by which he must often
have reduced his sense to feebleness and vacuity. He was one of those
exclusive Ciceronians who, keenly feeling the beauties of their master’s
eloquence, and aware of the corruption which after the age of Augustus
came rapidly over the purity of style, rejected with scrupulous care not
only every word or phrase which could not be justified by the practice
of what was called the golden age, but even insisted on that of Cicero
himself, as the only model they thought absolutely perfect. Paulus
Manutius, one of the most rigorous, though of the most eminent among
these, would not employ the words of Cicero’s correspondents, though as
highly accomplished and polite as himself. This fastidiousness was of
course highly inconvenient in a language constantly applicable to the
daily occurrences of life in epistles or in narration, and it has driven
Bembo, according to one of his severest critics, into strange
affectation and circuity in his Venetian history. It produced also, what
was very offensive to the more serious reader, and is otherwise frigid
and tasteless, an adaptation of heathen phrases to the usages and even
the characters of Christianity.[630] It has been remarked also, that in
his great solicitude about the choice of words, he was indifferent
enough to the value of his meaning; a very common failing of elegant
scholars, when they write in a foreign language. But if some praise is
due, as surely it is, to the art of reviving that consummate grace and
richness which enchants every successive generation in the periods of
Cicero, we must place Bembo, had we nothing more than this to say of
him, among the ornaments of literature in the sixteenth century.
[629] Niceron says of Sadolet’s Epistles, which form a very thick
volume: Il y a plusieurs choses dignes d’être remarquées dans les
lettres de Sadolet; mais elles sont quelquefois trop diffuses, et
par conséquent ennuyeuses à lire. I concur in this: yet it may be
added, that the epistles of Cicero would sometimes be tedious, if
we took as little interest in their subjects as we commonly do in
those of Sadolet. His style is uniformly pure and good; but he is
less fastidious than Bembo, and does not use circuity to avoid a
theological expression. They are much more interesting, at least,
than the ordinary Latin letters of his contemporaries, such as
those of Paulus Manutius. A uniform goodness of heart, and love of
right, prevail in the epistles of Sadolet. His desire of
ecclesiastical reformation in respect of morals has caused him to
be suspected of a bias towards protestantism, and a letter he wrote
to Melanchthon, which that learned man did not answer, has been
brought in corroboration of this; but the general tenor of his
letters refutes this surmise. His theology, which was wholly
semi-pelagian, must have led him to look with disgust on the
Lutheran school (Epist. l. iii. p. 121, and l. ix. p. 410); and
after Paul III. bestowed on him the purple, he became a staunch
friend of the court of Rome, though never losing his wish to see a
reform of its abuses. This will be admitted by every one who takes
the trouble to run over Sadolet’s epistles.
[630] This affectation had begun in the preceding century, and was
carried by Campano in his Life of Braccio di Montone to as great an
extreme as by Bembo, or any Ciceronian of his age. Bayle (Bembus,
Note B.) gives some odd instances of it in the latter.
Notwithstanding his laborious scrupulosity as to language, Bembo is
reproached by Lipsius, and others of a more advanced stage of
critical knowledge, with many faults of Latin, especially in his
letters. Ibid. Sturm says of the letters of Bembo: Ejus epistolæ
scriptæ mihi magis quam missæ esse videntur. Indicia sunt hominis
otiosi et imitatoris speciem magis rerum quam res ipsas
consectantis. Ascham, Epist. cccxci.
|Ciceronianus of Erasmus.|
4. The tone which Bembo and others of that school were studiously giving
to ancient literature, provoked one of the most celebrated works of
Erasmus, the dialogues entitled Ciceronianus. The primary aim of these
was to ridicule the fastidious purity of that sort of writers, who would
not use a case or tense for which they could not find authority in the
works of Cicero. A whole winter’s night, they thought, was well spent in
composing a single sentence; but even then it was to be revised over and
over again. Hence they wrote little except elaborated epistles. One of
their rules, he tells us, was never to speak Latin, if they could help
it, which must have seemed extraordinary in an age when it was the
common language of scholars from different countries. It is certain,
indeed, that the practice cannot be favourable to very pure Latinity.
5. Few books of that age give us more insight into its literary history
and the public taste than the Ciceronianus. In a short retrospect
Erasmus characterises all the considerable writers in Latin since the
revival of letters, and endeavours to show how far they wanted this
Ciceronian elegance for which some were contending. He distinguishes in
a spirit of sound taste between a just imitation which leaves free scope
for genius, and a servile following of a single writer. “Let your first
and chief care,” he says, “be to understand thoroughly what you
undertake to write about. That will give you copiousness of words, and
supply you with true and natural sentiments. Then will it be found how
your language lives and breathes, how it excites and hurries away the
reader, and how it is a just image of your own mind. Nor will that be
less genuine which you add to your own by imitation.”
6. The Ciceronianus, however, goes in some passages beyond the limited
subject of Latin style. The controversy had some reference to the
division between the men of learning and the men of taste, between the
lovers of the solid and of the brilliant, in some measure also, to that
between Christianity and Paganism, a garb which the incredulity of the
Italians affected to put on. All the Ciceronian party, except Longolius,
were on the other side of the Alps.[631] The object of the Italian
scholars was to write pure Latin, to gleam little morsels of Roman
literature, to talk a heathenish philosophy in private, and leave the
world to its own abuses. That of Erasmus was to make men wiser and
better by wit, sense, and learning.
[631] Though this is generally said, on the authority of Erasmus
himself, Peter Bunel is asserted by some French scholars of great
name, and particularly by Henry Stephens, to have equalled in
Ciceronian purity the best of the Italians; and Paulus Manutius
owns him as his master, in one of his epistles: Ego ab illo maximum
habebam beneficium, quod me cum Politianis et Erasmis nescio quibus
miserè errantem, in hanc rectè scribendi viam primus induxerat. In
a later edition, for Politianis et Erasmis, it was thought more
decent to introduce Philelphis et Campanis. Bayle, art. Bunel, Note
A. The letters of Bunel, written with great purity, were published
in 1551. It is to be observed, that he had lived much in Italy.
Erasmus does not mention him in the Ciceronianus.
|Scaliger’s invective against it.|
7. Julius Cæsar Scaliger wrote against the Ciceronianus with all that
unmannerly invective, which is the disgrace of many scholars, and very
much his own. His vanity blinded him to what was then obvious to Europe,
that with considerable learning, and still better parts, he was totally
unworthy of being named with the first man in the literary republic. Nor
in fact had he much right to take up the cause of the Ciceronian
purists, with whom he had no pretension to be reckoned, though his reply
to Erasmus is not ill written. It consists chiefly in a vindication of
Cicero’s life and writings against some passages in the Ciceronianus
which seem to affect them, scarcely touching the question of Latin
style. Erasmus made no answer, and thus escaped the danger of
retaliating on Scaliger in his own phrases.
|Editions of Cicero.|
8. The devotedness of the Italians to Cicero was displayed in a more
useful manner than by this close imitation. Pietro Vettori (better known
as Victorius), professor of Greek and Roman literature at Florence,
published an entire edition of the great orator’s writings in 1534. But
this was soon surpassed by a still more illustrious scholar, Paulus
Manutius, son of Aldus, and his successor in the printing-house at
Venice. His edition of Cicero appeared in 1540. It is by far the most
important edition of any ancient author that had hitherto been
published. In fact, the notes of Manutius, which were very much
augmented in later editions,[632] form at this day in great measure the
basis of interpretation and illustration of Cicero, as what are called
the Variorum editions will show. A further accession to Ciceronian
literature was made by Nizolius in his Observationes in M. Tullium
Ciceronem, 1535. This hardly indicates that it is a dictionary of
Ciceronian words, with examples of their proper senses. The later and
improved editions bear the title of Thesaurus Ciceronianus. I find no
critical work in this period of greater extent and labour than that of
Scaliger de Causis Latinæ Linguæ; by “causis” meaning its principles. It
relates much to the foundations of the language, or the rules by which
its various peculiarities have been formed. He corrects many alleged
errors of earlier writers, and sometimes of Valla himself; enumerating,
rather invidiously, 634 of such errors in an index. In this book he
shows much acuteness and judgment.
[632] Renouard, Imprimerie des Aldes.
|Alexander ab Alexandro.|
9. The Geniales Dies of Alexander ab Alexandro, a Neapolitan lawyer,
published in 1522, are on the model of Aulus Gellius, a repertory of
miscellaneous learning, thrown together without arrangement, on every
subject of Roman philology and antiquities. The author had lived with
the scholars of the fifteenth century, and even remembered Philelphus;
but his own reputation seems not to have been extensive, at least
through Europe. “He knows every one,” says Erasmus in a letter; “no one
knows who he is.”[633] The Geniales Dies has had better success in later
ages than most early works of criticism, a good edition having appeared,
with Variorum notes, in 1673. It gives, like the Lectiones
Antiquæ of Cælius Rhodiginus, an idea of the vast extent to which the
investigation of Latin antiquity had been already carried; though so
much was left for the _coryphæi_ of these researches, whom the
ensuing age was to produce.
[633] Demiror quis sit ille Alexander ab Alexandro. Novit omnes
celebres Italiæ viros, Philelphum, Pomponium Lætum, Hermolaum, et
quos non? Omnibus usus est familiariter; tamen nemo novit illum.
Append. ad Erasm. Epist. ccclxxiii. (1533). Bayle also remarks,
that Alexander is hardly mentioned by his contemporaries.
Tiraqueau, a French lawyer of considerable learning, undertook the
task of writing critical notes on the Geniales Dies about the
middle of the century, correcting many of the errors which they
contained.
|Works on Roman antiquities.|
10. A very few books of the same class belong to this period; and may
deserve mention, although long since superseded by the works of those to
whom we have just alluded, and who filled up and corrected their
outline. Marlianus on the Topography of Rome, 1534, is admitted, though
with some hesitation, by Grævius into his Thesaurus Antiquitatum
Romanarum, while he absolutely sets aside the preceding labours of
Blondus Flavius and Pomponius Lætus. The Fasti Consulares were first
published by Marlianus in 1549; and a work on the same subject in 1550
was the earliest production of the great Sigonius. Before these the
memorable events of Roman history had not been critically reduced to a
chronological series. A treatise by Raphael of Volterra de Magistratibus
et Sacerdotibus Romanorum is very inaccurate and superficial.[634]
Mazochius, a Roman bookseller, was the first who, in 1521, published a
collection of inscriptions. This was very imperfect, and full of false
monuments. A better appeared in Germany by the care of Apianus,
professor of mathematics at Ingoldstadt, in 1534.[635]
[634] It is published in Sallengre, Novus Thesaurus Antiquit. vol. iii.
[635] Burmann, præfat. in Gruter, Corpus Inscriptionum.
|Greek less studied in Italy.|
11. It could not be expected, that the elder and more copious fountain
of ancient lore, the Greek language, would slake the thirst of Italian
scholars as readily as the Latin. No local association, no patriotic
sentiment, could attach them to that study. Greece itself no longer sent
out a Lascaris or a Musurus; subdued, degraded, barbarous in language
and learning, alien, above all, by insuperable enmity, from the church,
she had ceased to be a living guide to her own treasures. Hence we may
observe even already, not a diminution, but a less accelerated increase
of Greek erudition in Italy. Two however among the most considerable
editions of Greek authors, in point of labour, that the century
produced, are the Galen by Andrew of Asola in 1525, and the Eustathius
from the press of Bladus at Rome in 1542.[636] We may add, as first
editions of Greek authors, Epictetus, at Venice, in 1528, and Arrian in
1535; Ælian, at Rome, in 1545. The Etymologicum Magnum of Phavorinus,
whose real name was Guarino, published at Rome in 1523, was of some
importance, while no lexicon but the very defective one of Craston had
been printed. The Etymologicum of Phavorinus, however, is merely “a
compilation from Hesychius, Suidas, Phrynichus, Harpocration,
Eustathius, the Etymologica, the lexicon of Philemon, some treatises of
Trypho, Apollonius, and other grammarians and various scholiasts. It is
valuable as furnishing several important corrections of the authors from
whom it was collected, and not a few extracts from unpublished
grammarians.”[637]
[636] Greswell’s Early Parisian Greek Press, p. 14.
[637] Quarterly Review, vol. xxii. Roscoe’s Leo, ch. xi. Stephens is
said to have inserted many parts of this lexicon of Guarino in his
Thesaurus. Niceron, xxii. 141.
|Schools of classical learning.|
12. Of the Italian scholars, Vettori, already mentioned, seems to have
earned the highest reputation for his skill in Greek. But there was no
considerable town in Italy, besides the regular universities, where
public instruction in the Greek as well as Latin tongue was not
furnished, and in many cases by professors of fine taste and recondite
learning, whose names were then eminent; such as Bonamico, Nizzoli,
Parrhasio, Corrado, and Maffei, commonly called Raphael of Volterra.
Yet, according to Tiraboschi, something was still wanting to secure
these schools from the too frequent changes of teachers, which the hope
of better salaries produced, and to give the students a more vigorous
emulation, and a more uniform scheme of discipline.[638] This was to be
supplied by the followers of Ignatius Loyola. But their interference
with education in Italy did not begin in quite so early a period as the
present.
[638] Vol. viii. 114, x. 319. Ginguéné, vii. 232, has copied
Tiraboschi’s account of these accomplished teachers with little
addition, and probably with no knowledge of the original sources of
information.
|Budæus; his commentaries on Greek.|
13. If we cross the Alps, and look at the condition of learning in
countries which we left in 1520 rapidly advancing on the footsteps of
Italy, we shall find that, except in purity of Latin style, both France
and Germany were now capable of entering the lists of fair competition.
France possessed, by general confession, the most profound Greek scholar
in Europe, Budæus. If this could before have been in doubt, he raised
himself to a pinnacle of philological glory by his Commentarii
Linguæ Græcæ, Paris, 1529. The publications of the chief Greek authors
by Aldus, which we have already specified, had given a compass of
reading to the scholars of this period, which those of the fifteenth
century could not have possessed. But, with the exception of the
Etymologicum of Phavorinus, just mentioned, no attempt had been made by
a native of western Europe to interpret the proper meaning of Greek
words; even he had confined himself to compiling from the grammarians.
In this large and celebrated treatise, Budæus has established the
interpretation of a great part of the language. All later critics write
in his praise. There will never be another Budæus in France, says Joseph
Scaliger, the most envious and detracting, though the most learned, of
the tribe.[639] But, referring to what Baillet and Blount have collected
from older writers,[640] we will here insert the character of these
Commentaries which an eminent living scholar has given.
[639] Scaligerana, i. 33.
[640] Baillet, Jugemens des Savans, ii. 328. (Amst. 1725) Blount,
in Budæo.
|Its character.|
14. “This great work of Budæus has been the text-book and common
storehouse of succeeding lexicographers. But a great objection to its
general use was its want of arrangement. His observations on the Greek
language are thrown together in the manner of a commonplace book, an
inconvenience which is imperfectly remedied by an alphabetical index at
the end. His authorities and illustrations are chiefly drawn from the
prose writers of Greece, the historians, orators, and fathers. With the
poets he seems to have had a less intimate acquaintance. His
interpretations are mostly correct, and always elegantly expressed;
displaying an union of Greek and Latin literature which renders his
Commentaries equally useful to the students of both languages. The
peculiar value of this work consists in the full and exact account which
it gives of the Greek legal and forensic terms, both by literal
interpretation, and by a comparison with the corresponding terms in
Roman jurisprudence. So copious and exact is this department of the
work, that no student can read the Greek orators to the best advantage
unless he consults the Commentaries of Budæus. It appears from the Greek
epistle subjoined to the work that the illustration of the forensic
language of Athens and Rome was originally all that his plan embraced;
and that when circumstances tempted him to extend the limits of his
work, this still continued to be his chief object.”[641]
[641] Quarterly Review, vol. xxii., an article ascribed to the Bishop
of London. The commentaries of Budæus are written in a very
rambling and desultory manner, passing from one subject to another
as a casual word may suggest the transition. Sic enim, he says, hos
commentarios scribere instituimus, ut quicquid in ordinem seriemque
scribendi incurreret, vel ex diverticulo quasi obviam se offerret,
ad id digredi. A large portion of what is valuable in this work has
been transferred by Stephens to his Thesaurus. The Latin criticisms
of Budæus have also doubtless been borrowed.
Budæus and Erasmus are fond of writing Greek in their correspondence.
Others had the same fancy; and it is curious, that they ventured
upon what was wholly gone out of use since the language has been so
well understood. But probably this is the reason that later
scholars have avoided it. Neither of these great men shine much in
elegance or purity. One of Budæus, 15 Aug. 1519, (in Erasm. Epist.
cccclv.) seems often incorrect, and in the mere style of a
schoolboy.
|Greek grammars and lexicons.|
15. These Commentaries of Budæus stand not only far above any thing else
in Greek literature before the middle of the sixteenth century, but are
alone in their class. What comes next, but at a vast interval, is the
Greek grammar of Clenardus, printed at Louvain in 1530. It was, however,
much beyond Budæus in extent of circulation, and probably, for this
reason, in general utility. This grammar was continually reprinted with
successive improvements, and, defective as, especially in its original
state, it must have been, was far more perspicuous than that of Gaza,
though not perhaps more judicious in principle. It was for a long time
commonly used in France; and is in fact the basis of those lately or
still in use among us; such as the Eton Greek grammar. The proof of this
is, that they follow Clenardus in most of his rules, erroneous or not,
and, nine times or more out of ten, in the choice of instances.[642] The
account of syntax in this grammar, as well as that of Gaza, is
wretchedly defective. A better treatise, in this respect, is by Varenius
of Malines, Syntaxis Linguæ Græcæ, printed at Louvain about 1532.
Another Greek grammar by Vergara, a native of Spain, has been extolled
by some of the older critics, and depreciated by others.[643] The Greek
lexicon, of which the first edition was printed at Basle in 1537, is
said to abound in faults and inaccuracies of every description. The
character given of it by Henry Stephens, even when it had been enlarged,
if not improved, does not speak much for the means that the scholars of
this age had possessed in labouring for the attainment of Greek
learning.[644]
[642] Clenardus seems first to have separated simple from contracted
nouns, thus making ten declensions. Wherever he differs from Gaza,
our popular grammars seem to have followed him. He tells us, that
he had drawn up this for the use of his private pupils. Baillet
observes, that the grammar of Clenardus, notwithstanding the
mediocrity of his learning, has had more success than any other;
those who have followed having mostly confined themselves to
correcting and enlarging it. Jugemens des Savans, ii. 164. This is
certainly true, as far as England is concerned; though the Eton
grammar, bad as, in the present times, it appears, is in some
degree an improvement on Clenardus.
[643] Vergara, De omnibus Græcæ Linguæ Grammaticæ Partibus, 1573;
rather 1537, for “deinde Parisiis,” 1550, follows in Antonio, Bibl.
Nova.
[644] H. Stephanus, De Typographiæ suæ Statu. Gesner himself says of
this lexicon, which sometimes bore his name: Circa annum 1537
lexicon Græco-Latinum, quod jam ante a diversis et innominatis
nescio quibus miserè satis consarcinatum erat, ex Phavorini
Camertis Lexico Græco ita auxi, ut nihil in eo extaret, quod non ut
singulari fide, ita labore maximo adjicerem; sed typographus me
inscio, et præter omnem expectationem meam, exiguam duntaxat
accessionis meæ partem adjecit, reservans sibi forte auctarium ad
sequentes etiam editiones. He proceeds to say, that he enlarged
several other editions down to 1556, when the last that had been
enriched by his additions appeared at Basle. Cæterum hoc anno, quo
hæc scribo, 1562, Genevæ prodiisse audio longe copiosissimum
emendatissimumque Græcæ linguæ thesaurum a Rob. Constantino
incomparabilis doctrinæ viro, ex Joannis Crispini officinâ. Vide
Gesneri Biblioth. Universalis, art. Conrad Gesner: this is part of
a long account given here by Gesner of his own works.
|Editions of Greek authors.|
|Latin Thesaurus of R. Stephens.|
16. The most remarkable editions of Greek authors from the Parisian
press were those of Aristophanes in 1528, and of Sophocles in 1529; the
former printed by Gourmont, the latter by Colinæus; the earliest edition
of an entire Diodorus in 1539, of Dionysius Halicarnassensis in 1546,
and of Dio Cassius in 1548; the two latter by Robert Stephens. The first
Greek edition of the elements of Euclid appeared at Basle in 1533, of
Diogenes Laertius the same year, of five books of Diodorus in 1539, of
Josephus in 1544; the first of Polybius in 1530, at Haguenaw. Besides
these editions of classical authors, Basil, and other of the Greek
fathers, occupied the press of Frobenius, under the superintendence of
Erasmus. The publications of Latin authors by Badius Ascensius continued
till his death in 1535. Colinæus began to print his small editions of
the same class at Paris about 1521. They are in that cursive character,
which Aldus had first employed.[645] The number of such editions, both
in France and Germany, became far more considerable than in the
preceding age. They are not, however, in general, much valued for
correctness of text; nor had many considerable critics even in Latin
philology yet appeared on this side of the Alps. Robert Stephens stands
almost alone, who, by the publication of his Thesaurus in 1535,
augmented in a subsequent edition of 1543, may be said to have made an
epoch in this department of literature. The preceding dictionaries of
Calepio and other compilers had been limited to an interpretation of
single words, sometimes with reference to passages in the authors who
had employed them. This produced, on the one hand, perpetual barbarisms
and deviations from purity of idiom, while it gave rise in some to a
fastidious hypercriticism, of which Valla had given an example.[646]
Stephens first endeavoured to exhibit their proper use, not only in all
the anomalies of idiom, but in every delicate variation of sense to
which the pure taste and subtle discernment of the best writers had
adapted them. Such an analysis is perhaps only possible with respect to
a language wherein the extant writers, and especially those who have
acquired authority, are very limited in number; and even in Latin, the
most extensive dictionary, such as has grown up long since the days of
Robert Stephens, under the hands of Gesner, Forcellini, and Facciolati,
or such as might still improve upon their labour, could only approach an
unattainable perfection. What Stephens himself achieved would now be
deemed far too defective for general use; yet it afforded the means of
more purity in style than any could in that age have reached without
unwearied exertion. Accordingly, it is to be understood, that while a
very few scholars, chiefly in Italy, had acquired a facility and
exactness of language, which has seldom been surpassed, the general
style retained a great deal of barbarism, and neither in single words,
nor always in mere grammar, can bear a critical eye. Erasmus is
often incorrect, especially in his epistles, and says modestly of
himself in the Ciceronianus, that he is hardly to be named among writers
at all, unless blotting a great deal of paper with ink is enough to make
one. He is, however, among the best of his contemporaries, if a vast
command of Latin phrase, and a spirited employment of it, may compensate
for some want of accuracy. Budæus, as has been already said, is hard and
unpolished. Vives assumes that he has written his famous and excellent
work on the corruption of the sciences with some elegance; but this he
says in language which hardly warrants the boast.[647] In fact, he is by
no means a good writer. But Melancthon excelled Erasmus by far in purity
of diction, and correctness of classical taste. With him we may place
Calvin in his Institutes, and our countryman Sir John Cheke, as
distinguished from most other cisalpine writers of this period by the
merit of what is properly called style. Bunel of Toulouse is reckoned
the best model of language in this period. The praise, however, of
writing pure Latin, or the pleasure of reading it, is dearly bought when
accompanied by such vacuity of sense as we experience in the elaborate
epistles of Paulus Manutius and the Ciceronian school in Italy.
[645] Greswell’s History of the early Parisian Greek Press.
[646] Vives de causis corrupt. art. (Opera Lud. Vives, edit. Basle,
1555, i. 358.) He observes, in another work, that there was no full
and complete dictionary of Latin. Id. p. 475.
[647] Nitorem præterea sermonis addidi aliquem, et quod non expediret
res pulcherrimas sordidè ac spuriè vestiri, et ut studiosi
elegantiarum [orum?] literarum non perpetuo in vocum et sermonis
cognitione adhærescerent; quod hactenus fere accidit, tædio nimirum
infrugiferæ ac horridæ molestiæ, quæ in percipiendis artibus
diutissimè erat devorata, i. 324.
|Progress of learning in France.|
17. Francis I. has obtained a glorious title, the Father of French
literature. The national propensity (or what once was such) to extol
kings may have had something to do with this; for we never say the same
of Henry VIII. In the early part of his reign he manifested a design to
countenance ancient literature by public endowments. War, and
unsuccessful war, sufficiently diverted his mind from this scheme. But
in 1531, a season of peace, he established the royal college of three
languages in the university of Paris, which did not quite deserve its
name till the foundation of a Latin professorship in 1534. Vatable was
the first professor of Hebrew, and Danés of Greek. In 1545 it appears
that there were three professors of Hebrew in the royal college, three
of Greek, one of Latin, two of mathematics, one of medicine, and one of
philosophy. But this college had to encounter the jealousy of the
university, tenacious of its ancient privileges, which it fancied to be
trampled upon, and stimulated by the hatred of the pretended
philosophers, the scholastic dialecticians, against philological
literature. They tried to get the parliament on their side; but that
body, however averse to innovation, of which it gave in this age, and
long afterwards, many egregious proofs, was probably restrained by the
king’s known favour to learning from obstructing the new college as much
as the university desired.[648] Danés had a colleague and successor as
Greek professor in a favourite pupil of Budæus, and a good scholar,
Toussain, who handed down the lamp in 1547 to one far more eminent,
Turnebus. Under such a succession of instructors, it may be naturally
presumed that the knowledge of Greek would make some progress in France.
And no doubt the great scholars of the next generation were chiefly
trained under these men. But the opposition of many, and the coldness
almost of all, in the ecclesiastical order, among whom that study ought
principally to have flourished, impeded in the sixteenth century, as it
has perhaps ever since, the diffusion of Grecian literature in all
countries of the Romish communion. We do not find much evidence of
classical, at least of Greek, learning in any university of France,
except that of Paris, to which students repaired from every quarter of
the kingdom.[649] But a few once distinguished names of the age of
Francis I. deserve to be mentioned. William Cop, physician to the king,
and John Ruel, one of the earliest promoters of botanical science, the
one translator of Galen, the other of Dioscorides; Lazarus Baif, a poet
of some eminence in that age, who rendered two Greek tragedies
into French verse; with a few rather more obscure, such as Petit, Pin,
Deloin, De Chatel, who are cursorily mentioned in literary history, or
to whom Erasmus sometimes alludes. Let us not forget John Grollier, a
gentleman who, having filled with honour some public employments, became
the first perhaps on this side of the Alps who formed a very extensive
library and collection of medals. He was the friend and patron of the
learned during a long life; a character little affected in that age by
private persons of wealth on the less sunny side of the Alps. Grollier’s
library was not wholly sold till the latter part of the seventeenth
century.[650]
[648] The faculty of theology in 1530 condemned these propositions:
1. Scripture cannot be well understood without Greek and Hebrew; 2.
A preacher cannot explain the epistle and gospel without these
languages. In the same year they summoned Danés and Vatable with
two more to appear in Parliament, that they might be forbidden to
explain scripture by the Greek and Hebrew, without permission of
the university; or to say, the Hebrew, or the Greek, is so and so;
lest they should injure the credit of the Vulgate. They admitted,
however, that the study of Hebrew and Greek was praiseworthy in
skilful and orthodox theologians, disposed to maintain the
inviolable authority of the Vulgate. Contin. de Fleury, Hist.
Ecclesiast., xxvii. 233. See also Gaillard, Hist. de François I.,
vi. 289.
[649] We find, however, that a Greek and Latin school was set up in
the diocese of Sadolet (Carpentras), about 1533; he endeavoured to
procure a master from Italy, and seems, by a letter of the year
1540, to have succeeded. Sadol. Epist., lib. ix. and xvi.
[650] Biog. Univ., Grollier.
|Learning in Spain.|
18. In Spain, the same dislike of innovation stood in the way. Greek
professorships existed, however, in the universities; and Nunnes,
usually called Pincianus (from the Latin name for the city of
Valladolid), a disciple of Lebrixa, whom he surpassed, taught the
language at Alcala, and afterwards at Salamanca. He was the most learned
man Spain had possessed; and his edition of Seneca, in 1536, has
obtained the praise of Lipsius.[651] Resende, the pupil of Arias Barbosa
and Lebrixa in Greek, has been termed the restorer of letters in
Portugal. None of the writings of Resende, except a Latin Grammar,
published in 1540, fall within the present period; but he established,
about 1531, a school at Lisbon, and one afterwards at Evora, where
Estaco, a man rather better known, was educated.[652] School divinity
and canon law over-rode all liberal studies throughout the Peninsula; of
which the catalogue of books at the end of Antonio’s Bibliotheca Nova is
a sufficient witness.
[651] Antonio, Bibl. Nova. Biogr. Univ.
[652] Biogr. Univ.
|Effects of Reformation on learning.|
19. The first effects of the great religious schism in Germany were not
favourable to classical literature.[653] An all-absorbing subject left
neither relish nor leisure for human studies. Those who had made the
greatest advances in learning were themselves generally involved in
theological controversy; and, in some countries, had to encounter either
personal suffering on account of their opinions, or, at least, the
jealousy of a church that hated the advance of knowledge. The knowledge
of Greek and Hebrew was always liable to the suspicion of heterodoxy. In
Italy, where classical antiquity was the chief object, this dread of
learning could not subsist. But few learned much of Greek in these parts
of Europe without some reference to theology,[654] especially to the
grammatical interpretation of the Scriptures. In those parts which
embraced the Reformation a still more threatening danger arose from the
distempered fanaticism of its adherents. Men who interpreted the
Scripture by the Spirit could not think human learning of much value in
religion; and they were as little likely to perceive any other advantage
it could possess. There seemed, indeed, a considerable peril, that,
through the authority of Carlostadt, or even of Luther, the lessons of
Crocus and Mosellanus would be totally forgotten.[655] And this would
very probably have been the case, if one man, Melanchthon, had not
perceived the necessity of preserving human learning as a bulwark to
theology itself, against the wild waves of enthusiasm. It was owing to
him that both the study of the Greek and Latin languages, and that of
the Aristotelian philosophy, were maintained in Germany. Nor did his
activity content itself with animating the universities. The schools of
preparatory instruction, which had hitherto furnished merely the
elements of grammar, throwing the whole burthen of philological learning
on the universities, began before the middle of the century to be
improved by Melanchthon, with the assistance of a friend, even superior
to him, probably, in that walk of literature, Joachim Camerarius. “Both
these great men,” says Eichhorn, “laboured upon one plan, upon the same
principle, and with equal zeal; they were, in the strictest sense, the
fathers of that pure taste and solid learning by which the next
generation was distinguished.” Under the names of Lycæum or Gymnasium,
these German schools gave a more complete knowledge of the two
languages, and sometimes the elements of philosophy.[656]
[653] Erasm. Epist. passim.
[654] Erasm. Adag. chil. iv. c. v. § 1. Vives, apud Meiners, Vergl.
der sitten, ii. 737.
[655] Seckendorf, p. 198.
[656] Eichhorn, iii. 254, et post.
|Sturm’s account of German schools.|
20. We derive some acquaintance with the state of education in this age
from the writings of John Sturm, than whom scarce any one more
contributed to the cause of letters in Germany. He became in 1538, and
continued for above forty years, rector of a celebrated school at
Strasburg. Several treatises on education, especially one, De Literarum
Ludis rectè instituendis, bear witness to his assiduity. If the scheme
of classical instruction which he has here laid down may be considered
as one actually in use, there was a solid structure of learning erected
in the early years of life, which none of our modern academies would
pretend to emulate. Those who feel any curiosity about the details of
this course of education, which seems almost too rigorous for practice,
will find the whole in Morhof’s Polyhistor.[657] It is sufficient to
say, that it occupies the period of life between the ages of six and
fifteen, when the pupil is presumed to have acquired a very extensive
knowledge of the two languages. Trifling as it may appear to take notice
of this subject, it serves at least as a test of the literary
pre-eminence of Germany. For we could, as I conceive, trace no such
education in France, and certainly not in England.
[657] Lib. ii. c. 10.
|Learning in Germany.|
21. The years of the life of Camerarius correspond to those of the
century. His most remarkable works fall partly into the succeeding
period; but many of the editions and translations of Greek authors,
which occupied his laborious hours, were published before 1550. He was
one of the first who knew enough of both languages, and of the subjects
treated, to escape the reproach which has fallen on the translators of
the fifteenth century. His Thucydides, printed in 1540, was superior to
any preceding edition. The universities of Tubingen and Leipsic owed
much of their prosperity to his superintending care. Next to Camerarius
among the German scholars we may place Simon Grynæus, professor of Greek
at Heidelberg in 1523, and translator of Plutarch’s Lives. Micyllus, his
successor in this office, and author of a treatise De Re Metrica, of
which Melanchthon speaks in high terms of praise, was more celebrated
than most of his countymen for Latin poetry. Yet in this art he fell
below Eobanus Hessus, whose merit is attested by the friendship of
Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Camerarius, as well as by the best verses that
Germany had to boast. It would be very easy to increase the list of
scholars in that empire; but we should find it more difficult to exhaust
the enumeration. Germany was not only far elevated in literary progress
above France, but on a level, as we may fairly say, with Italy herself.
The university of Marburg was founded in 1526, that of Copenhagen in
1539, of Königsberg in 1544, of Jena in 1548.
|In England. Linacre.|
22. We come now to investigate the gradual movement of learning in
England, the state of which about 1520 we have already seen. In 1521,
the first Greek characters appear in a book printed at Cambridge,
Linacre’s Latin translation of Galen de Temperamentis, and in the
title-page, but there only, of a treatise περι Διψαδων [peri Dipsadôn], by
Bullock. They are employed several times for quotations in Linacre de
Emendata Structura Orationis, 1524.[658] This treatise is chiefly a
series of grammatical remarks, relating to distinctions in the Latin
language now generally known. It must have been highly valuable, and
produced a considerable effect in England, where nothing of that
superior criticism had been attempted. In order to judge of its proper
merit, it should be compared with the antecedent works of Valla and
Perotti. Every rule is supported by authorities; and Linacre, I observe,
is far more cautious than Valla in asserting what is not good Latin,
contenting himself, for the most part, with showing what is. It has been
remarked that, though Linacre formed his own style on the model of
Quintilian, he took most of his authorities from Cicero. This treatise,
the first fruits of English erudition, was well received, and frequently
printed on the Continent. Melanchthon recommended its use in the schools
of Germany. Linacre’s translation of Galen has been praised by Sir John
Cheke, who in some respects bears rather hardly on his learned
precursor.[659]
[658] The author begins by bespeaking the reader’s indulgence for the
Greek printing. Pro tuo candore, optime lector, æquo animo feras,
si quæ literæ in exemplis Hellenismi vel tonis, vel spiritibus, vel
affectionibus careant. Iis enim non satis erat instructus
typographus, videlicet recens ab eo fusis characteribus Græcis, nec
parata ea copia quæ ad hoc agendum opus est.
[659] Johnson’s Life of Linacre.
|Lectures in the universities.|
23. Croke, who become tutor to the Duke of Richmond, son of Henry VIII.,
did not remain at Cambridge long after the commencement of this period.
But in 1524, Robert Wakefield, a scholar of some reputation, who had
been professor in a German university, opened a public lecture there in
Greek, endowed with a salary by the king. We know little individually of
his hearers; but notwithstanding the confident assertions of Antony
Wood, there can be no doubt that Cambridge was, during the whole of this
reign, at least on a level with the sister university, and indeed, to
speak plainly, above it. Wood enumerates several persons educated at
Oxford about this time, sufficiently skilled in Greek to write in that
language, or to translate from it, or to comment upon Greek authors. The
list might be enlarged by the help of Pits; but he is less of a scholar
than Wood. This much, after all, is certain, that the only
editions of classical authors published in England before 1540, except
those already mentioned, are five of Virgil’s Bucolics, two of a small
treatise of Seneca, with one of Publius Syrus; all evidently for the
mere use of schoolboys. Lectures in Greek and Latin were, however,
established in a few Colleges at Oxford.
|Greek perhaps taught to boys.|
24. If Erasmus, writing in 1528, is to be believed, the English boys
were wont to disport in Greek epigrams.[660] But this must be understood
as only applicable to a very few, upon whom some extraordinary pains had
been bestowed. Thus Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Governor, first published
in 1531, points out a scheme of instruction which comprehends the
elements of the Greek language. There is no improbability in the
supposition, and some evidence to support it, that the masters of our
great schools, a Lily, a Cox, an Udal, a Nowell, did not leave boys of
quick parts wholly unacquainted with the rudiments of a language they so
much valued.[661] It tends to confirm this supposition, that in the
statutes of the new cathedrals established by Henry in 1541, it is
provided, that there shall be a grammar-school for each, with a head
master, “learned in Latin and Greek.” Such statutes, however, are not
conclusive evidences that they were put in force.[662] In the statutes
of Wolsey’s intended foundation at Ipswich, some years earlier, though
the course of instruction is amply detailed, we do not find it extend to
the merest elements of Greek.[663] It is curious to compare this with
the course prescribed by Sturm for the German schools.
[660] An tu credidisses unquam fore, ut apud Britannos aut Batavos
pueri Græcè garrirent, Græcis epigrammatiis non infeliciter
luderent? Dial. de Pronuntiatione, p. 48, edit. 1528.
[661] Churton, in his Life of Nowell, says that he taught the Greek
testament to the boys at Westminster school, referring for
authority to a passage in Strype, which I have not been able to
find. There is nothing at all improbable in the fact. These
inquiries will be deemed too minute by some in this age. But they
are not unimportant in their bearing on the history of literature;
and an exaggerated estimate of English learning in the age of the
Reformation generally prevails. Sir Thomas Pope, founder of Trinity
college, Oxford, observes in a letter to Cardinal Pole in 1556,
that when he was “a young scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was
growing apace; the study of which is now alate much decayed.”
Warton, iii. 279. I do not think this implies more than a reference
to the time, which was about 1520.
[662] Warton, iii. 265.
[663] Strype’s Ecclesiast. Memorials. Appendix, No. 35.
|Teaching of Smith at Cambridge.|
25. But English learning was chiefly indebted for its more rapid advance
to two distinguished members of the university of Cambridge, Smith,
afterwards secretary of state to Elizabeth, and Cheke. The former began
to read the Greek lecture in 1533. And both of them, soon afterwards,
combined to bring in the true pronunciation of Greek, upon which Erasmus
had already written. The early students of that language, receiving
their instructions from natives, had acquired the vicious uniformity of
sounds belonging to the corrupted dialect. Reuchlin’s school, of which
Melanchthon was one, adhered to this, and were called Itacists, from the
continual recurrence of the sound of Iota in modern Greek, being thus
distinguished from the Etists of Erasmus’s party.[664] Smith and Cheke
proved by testimonies of antiquity, that the latter were right; and “by
this revived pronunciation,” says Strype, “was displayed the flower and
plentifulness of that language, the variety of vowels, the grandeur of
diphthongs, the majesty of long letters, and the grace of distinct
speech.”[665] Certain it is, that about this time some Englishmen began
to affect a knowledge of Greek. Sir Ralph Saddler, in his embassy to the
king of Scotland, in 1540, had two or three Greek words embroidered on
the sleeves of his followers, which led to a ludicrous mistake on the
part of the Scotch bishops. Scotland, however, herself was now beginning
to receive light; the Greek language was first taught in 1534 at
Montrose, which continued for many years to be what some call a
flourishing school.[666] But the whole number of books printed in
Scotland before the middle of the century was only seven. No classical
author, or even a grammar, is among these.[667]
[664] Eichhorn, iii. 217. Melanchthon, in his Greek grammar, follows
Reuchlin; Luscinius is on the side of Erasmus. Ibid. In very recent
publications, I observe that attempts have been made to set up
again the “lugubres sonos, et illud flebile iota” of the modern
Greeks. To adopt their pronunciation, even if right, would be
buying truth very dear.
[665] Strype’s Life of Smith, p. 17. “The strain I heard was of a
higher mood.” I wonder what author honest John Strype has copied or
translated in this sentence; for he never leaves the ground so far
in his own style.
[666] M’Crie’s Life of Knox, i. 6, and note C. p. 342.
[667] The list in Herbert’s History of Printing, iii. 468, begins with
the Breviary of the Church of Aberdeen; the first part printed at
Edinburgh in 1509, the second in 1510. A poem without date,
addressed to James V., De Suscepto Regni Regimine, which seems to
be in Latin, and must have been written about 1528, comes the
nearest to a learned work. Two editions of Lindsay’s Poems, two of
a translation of Hector Boece’s Chronicles, two of a temporary
pamphlet called Scotland’s Complaint, with one of the statutes of
the kingdom, printed in pursuance of an act of parliament passed in
1540, and a religious tract by one Balnaves, compose the rest.
|Succeeded by Cheke.|
26. Cheke, successor of Smith as lecturer in Greek at Cambridge, was
appointed the first royal professor of that language in 1540, with a
respectable salary. He carried on Smith’s scheme, if indeed it were not
his own, for restoring the true pronunciation, in spite of the strenuous
opposition of bishop Gardiner, chancellor of the university. This
prelate, besides a literary controversy in letters between himself and
Cheke, published at Basle in 1555, interfered, in a more orthodox way,
by prohibiting the new style of speech in a decree which, for its
solemnity, might relate to the highest articles of faith. Cheke however
in this, as in greater matters, was on the winning side; and the corrupt
pronunciation was soon wholly forgotten.
|Ascham’s character of Cambridge.|
27. Among the learned men who surrounded Cheke at Cambridge, none was
more deserving than Ascham; whose knowledge of ancient languages was not
shown in profuse quotation, or enveloped in Latin phrase, but served to
enrich his mind with valuable sense, and taught him to transfer the
firmness and precision of ancient writers to our own English, in which
he is nearly the first that deserves to be named, or that is now read.
He speaks in strong terms of his university. “At Cambridge also, in St.
John’s college, in my time, I do know that not so much the good statutes
as two gentlemen of worthy memory, Sir John Cheke and Dr. Redman, by
their only example of excellency in learning, of godliness in living, of
diligence in studying, of counsel in exhorting, by good order in all
things, did breed up so many learned men in that one college of St.
John’s at one time as I believe the whole university of Louvain in many
years was never able to afford.”[668] Lectures in humanity, that is, in
classical literature, were, in 1535, established by the king’s authority
in all colleges of the university of Oxford where they did not already
exist; and in the royal injunctions at the same time for the reformation
of academical studies a regard to philological learning is
enforced.[669]
[668] Ascham’s Schoolmaster. In the Life of Ascham by Grant, prefixed
to the former’s Epistles, he enumerates the learned of Cambridge
about 1530. Ascham was himself under Pember, homini Græcæ linguæ
admirabili facilitate excultissimo. The others named are Day,
Redman, Smith, Cheke, Ridley, Grindal (not the archbishop), Watson,
Haddon, Pilkington, Horn, Christopherson, Wilson, Seton, et
infiniti alii, excellenti doctrinâ præditi. Most of these are men
afterwards distinguished in the church on one side or the other.
This is a sufficient refutation of Wood’s idle assertion of the
superiority of Oxford; the fact seems to have been wholly
otherwise. Ascham himself, in a letter without date, but evidently
written about the time that the controversy of Cheke and Gardiner
began, praises thus the learning of Cambridge. Aristoteles nunc et
Plato, quod factum est etiam apud nos hic quinquennium, in sua
lingua a pueris leguntur. Sophocles et Euripides sunt hic
familiariores, quam olim Plautus fuerat, cum tu hic eras.
Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, magis in ore et manibus omnium
tenuntur, quam tum Titus Livius, etc. Ibid. p. 74. What then can be
thought of Antony Wood when he says, “Cambridge was in the said
king’s reign overspread with barbarism and ignorance, as ’tis often
mentioned by several authors?” Hist. and Antiq. of Oxford, A.D.
1545.
[669] Warton, iii. 272.
|Wood’s account of Oxford.|
28. Antony Wood, though he is by no means always consistent, gives
rather a favourable account of the state of philological learning at
Oxford in the last years of Henry VIII. There can, indeed, be no doubt
that it had been surprisingly increasing in all England through his
reign. More grammar schools, it is said by Knight, were founded in
thirty years before the Reformation, meaning, I presume, the age of
Henry, than in three hundred years preceding. But the suddenness with
which the religious establishment was changed on the accession of
Edward, and still more the rapacity of the young king’s council, who
alienated or withheld the revenues designed for the support of learning,
began to cloud the prospect before the year 1550.[670] Wood, in reading
whom allowance is to be made for a strong, though not quite avowed bias
towards the old system of ecclesiastical and academical government,
inveighs against the visitors of the university appointed by the crown
in 1548, for burning and destroying valuable books. And this seems to be
confirmed by other evidence. It is true that these books, though it was
a vile act to destroy them, would have been more useful to the English
antiquary than to the classical student. Ascham, a contemporary
protestant, denies that the university of Cambridge declined at all
before the accession of Mary in 1553.
[670] Strype, ii. 258. Todd’s Cranmer, ii. 33.
|Education of Edward and his sisters.|
29. Edward himself received a learned education, and, according to
Ascham, read the ethics of Aristotle in Greek. Of the princess
Elizabeth, his favourite pupil, we have a similar testimony.[671] Mary
was not by any means illiterate. It is hardly necessary to mention Jane
Grey and the wife of Cecil. Their proficiency was such as to excite the
admiration of every one, and is no measure of the age in which they
lived. And their names carry us on a little beyond 1550, though Ascham’s
visit to the former was in that year.
[671] Of the king he says: Dialecticam didicit, et nunc Græcè discit
Aristotelis Ethica. Eo progressus est in Græca lingua, ut in
philosophia Ciceronis ex Latinis Græca facillime faciat, Dec. 1550.
Ascham, Epist. iv. Elizabeth spoke French and Italian as well as
English; Latin fluently and correctly; Greek tolerably. She began
every day by reading the Greek Testament, and afterwards the
orations of Isocrates, and tragedies of Sophocles. Some years
afterwards, in 1555, he writes of her to Sturm: Domina Elizabeth et
ego una legimus Græcè orationes Æschinis et Demosthenis περι
στεφανου [peri stephanou]. Illa prælegit mihi et primo aspectu tam
scienter intelligit non solum proprietatem linguæ et oratoris
sensum, sed totam causæ contentionem, populi scita, consuetudinem
et mores illius urbis, ut summopere admireris, p. 53. In 1560 he
asserts that there are not four persons, in court or college (in
aula, in academia), who know Greek better than the queen.
Habemus Angliæ reginam, says Erasmus long before of Catherine,
feminan egregiè doctam, cujus filia Maria scribit bene Latinas
epistolas. Thomæ Mori domus nihil aliud quam musarum est
domicilium. Epist. Mxxxiv.
|The progress of learning is still slow.|
30. The reader must be surprised to find that, notwithstanding these
high and just commendations of our scholars, no Greek grammars or
lexicons were yet printed in England, and scarcely any works in that or
the Latin languages. In fact, there was no regular press in either
university at this time, though a very few books had been printed in
each about 1520; nor had they one till near the end of Elizabeth’s
reign. Reginald Wolfe, a German printer, obtained a patent, dated April
19th, 1541, giving him the exclusive right to print in Latin, Greek, and
Hebrew, and also Greek and Latin grammars, though mixed with English,
and charts and maps. But the only productions of his press before the
middle of the century, are two homilies of Chrysostom, edited by Cheke
in 1543. Elyot’s Latin and English Dictionary, 1538, was the first, I
believe, beyond the mere vocabularies of schoolboys; and it is itself
but a meagre performance.[672] Latin grammars were of course so
frequently published, that it has not been worth while to take notice of
them. But the Greek and Latin lexicon of Hadrian Junius, though
dedicated to Edward VI., and said to have been compiled in England, (I
know not how this could be the case), being the work of a foreigner, and
printed at Basle in 1548, cannot be reckoned as part of our stock.[673]
[672] Elyot boasts that this “contains a thousand more Latin words
than were together in any one dictionary published in this realm at
the time when I first began to write this commentary.” Though far
from being a good, or even, according to modern notions, a
tolerable dictionary, it must have been of some value at the time.
It was afterwards much augmented by Cooper.
[673] Wood ascribes to one Tolley or Tolleius a sort of Greek grammar,
Progymnasmata Linguæ Græcæ, dedicated to Edward VI. And Pits, in
noticing also other works of the same kind, says of this: Habentur
Monachii in Bavaria in bibliotheca ducali. As no mention is made of
such a work by Herbert or Dibdin, I had been inclined to think its
existence apocryphal. It is certainly foreign.
|Want of books and public libraries.|
31. It must appear on the whole, that under Edward VI. there was as yet
rather a commendable desire of learning, and a few vigorous minds at
work for their own literary improvement, than any such diffusion of
knowledge as can entitle us to claim for that age an equality with the
chief continental nations. The means of acquiring true learning were not
at hand. Few books, as we have seen, useful to the scholar, had been
published in England; those imported were of course expensive. No public
libraries of any magnitude had yet been formed in either of the
universities; those of private men were exceedingly few. The king had a
library, of which honourable mention is made; and Cranmer possessed a
good collection of books at Lambeth; but I do not recollect any other
person of whom this is recorded.
|Destruction of monasteries no injury to learning.|
32. The progress of philological literature in England was connected
with that of the Reformation. The learned of the earlier generation were
not all protestants, but their disciples were zealously such. They
taunted the adherents of the old religion with ignorance; and though by
that might be meant ignorance of the Scriptures, it was by their own
acquaintance with languages that they obtained their superiority in this
respect. And here I may take notice, that we should be greatly deceived
by acquiescing in the strange position of Warton, that the dissolution
of the monasteries in 1536 and the next two years gave a great
temporary check to the general state of letters in England.[674] This
writer, however, is inconsistent with himself; for no one had a greater
contempt for the monastic studies, dialectics and theology. But, as a
desire to aggravate, in every possible respect, the supposed mischiefs
of the dissolution of monasteries, is abundantly manifest in many
writers later than Warton, I shall briefly observe, that men are
deceived, or deceive others, by the equivocal use of the word learning.
If good learning, _bonæ literæ_, which for our present purpose
means a sound knowledge of Greek and Latin, was to be promoted, there
was no more necessary step in doing so, than to put down bad learning,
which is worse than ignorance, and which was the learning of the monks,
so far as they had any at all. What would Erasmus have thought of one
who should in his days have gravely intimated, that the abolition of
monastic foundations would retard the progress of literature? In what
protestant country was it accompanied with such a consequence, and from
whom, among the complaints sometimes made, do we hear this cause
assigned? I am ready to admit, that in the violent courses pursued by
Henry VIII. many schools attached to monasteries were broken up, and I
do not think it impossible that the same occurred in other parts of
Europe. It is also to be fully stated and kept in mind, that by the
Reformation the number of ecclesiastics, and consequently of those
requiring what was deemed a literate education, was greatly reduced. The
English universities, as we are well aware, do not contain by any means
the number of students that frequented them in the thirteenth century.
But are we therefore a less learned nation than our fathers of the
thirteenth century? Warton seems to lament, that “most of the youth of
the kingdom betook themselves to mechanical or other illiberal
employments, the profession of letters being now supposed to be without
support or reward.” Doubtless many who would have learned the Latin
accidence, and repeated the breviary, became useful mechanics. But is
this to be called, not rewarding the profession of letters? and are the
deadliest foes of the Greek and Roman muses to be thus confounded with
their worshippers? The loss of a few schools in the monasteries was well
compensated by the foundation of others on a more enlightened plan and
with much better instructors, and after the lapse of some years, the
communication of substantial learning came in the place of that tincture
of Latin which the religious orders had supplied. Warton, it should be
remarked, has been able to collect the names of not more than four or
five abbots and other regulars, in the time of Henry VIII., who either
possessed some learning themselves, or encouraged it in others.
[674] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 268.
|Ravisius Textor.|
33. We may assist our conception of the general state of learning in
Europe, by looking at some of the books which were then deemed most
usefully subsidiary to its acquisition. Besides the lexicons and
grammatical treatises that have been mentioned, we have a work first
published about 1522, but frequently reprinted, and in much esteem, the
Officina of Ravisius Textor. Of this book Peter Danés, a man highly
celebrated in his day for erudition, speaks as if it were an abundant
storehouse of knowledge, admirable for the manner of its execution, and
comparable to any work of antiquity. In spite of this praise, it is no
more than a commonplace book from Latin authors, and from translations
of the Greek, and could deserve no regard except in a half-informed
generation.
|Conrad Gesner.|
34. A far better evidence of learning was given by Conrad Gesner, a man
of prodigious erudition, in a continuation of his Bibliotheca
Universalis (the earliest general catalogue of books with an estimate of
their merits), to which he gave the rather ambitious title of Pandectæ
Universales, as if it were to hold the same place in general science
that the Digest of Justinian does in civil law. It is a sort of index to
all literature, containing references only, and therefore less generally
useful, though far more learned and copious in instances, than the
Officina of Ravisius. It comprehends, besides all ancient authors, the
schoolmen and other writers of the middle ages. The references are
sometimes very short, and more like hints to one possessed of a large
library, than guides to the general student. In connection with the
Bibliotheca Universalis, it forms a literary history or encyclopædia, of
some value to those who are curious to ascertain the limits of knowledge
in the middle of the sixteenth century.
CHAPTER VI.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
_Advance of the Reformation--Differences of Opinion--Erasmus--The
Protestant Opinions spread farther--Their Prevalence in Italy--
Reaction of Church of Rome--Theological Writings--Luther--Spirit of
the Reformation--Translations of Scripture._
|Progress of the Reformation.|
1. The separation of part of Europe from the church of Rome is the great
event that distinguishes these thirty years. But as it is not our object
to traverse the wide field of civil or ecclesiastical history, it will
suffice to make a few observations rather in reference to the spirit of
the times, than to the public occurrences that sprung from it. The new
doctrine began to be freely preached, and with immense applause of the
people, from the commencement of this period, or, more precisely, from
the year 1522, in many parts of Germany and Switzerland; the Duke of
Deuxponts in that year, or, according to some authorities, in 1523,
having led the way in abolishing the ancient ceremonies, and his example
having been successively followed in Saxony, Hesse, Brandenburg,
Brunswick, many imperial cities, and the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden,
by the disciples of Luther; while those who adhered to Zwingle made
similar changes in several cantons of Switzerland.
|Interference of civil power.|
2. The magistrates generally proceeded, especially at the outset, with
as great caution and equity as were practicable in so momentous a
revolution; though perhaps they did not always respect the laws of the
empire. They commonly began by allowing freedom of preaching, and forbad
that any one should be troubled about his religion. This, if steadily
acted upon, repressed the tumultuous populace, who were eager for
demolishing images, the memorials of the old religion, as much as it did
the episcopal courts, which, had they been strong enough, might have
molested those who so plainly came within their jurisdiction. The
Reformation depended chiefly on zealous and eloquent preachers; the more
eminent secular clergy, as well as many regulars, having espoused its
principles. They encountered no great difficulty in winning over the
multitude; and when thus a decisive majority was obtained, commonly in
three or four years from the first introduction of free preaching, the
government found it time to establish, by a general edict, the abolition
of the mass, and of such ceremonies as they did not deem it expedient to
retain. The conflict between the two parties in Germany seems to have
been less arduous than we might expect. It was usually accompanied by an
expulsion of the religious of both sexes from their convents, a measure,
especially as to women, unjust and harsh,[675] and sometimes by an
alienation of ecclesiastical revenues to the purposes of the state, but
this was not universal in Germany, nor was it countenanced by Luther. I
cannot see any just reason to charge the Protestant princes of the
empire with having been influenced generally by such a motive. In
Sweden, however, the proceedings of Gustavus Vasa, who confiscated all
ecclesiastical estates, subject only to what he might deem a sufficient
maintenance for the possessors, have very much the appearance of
arbitrary spoliation.[676]
[675] Bilibald Pirckheimer wrote to Melanchthon complaining that a
convent of nuns at Nuremberg, among whom were two of his sisters,
had been molested and insulted because they would not accept
confessors appointed by the senate. Res eo deducta est ut quicunque
miserandas illas offendere et incessere audet, obsequium Deo se
præstitisse arbitretur. Idque non solum a viris agitur, sed et a
mulieribus; et illis mulieribus, quarum liberis omnem exhibuere
caritatem. Non solum enim viris, qui alios docere contendunt, se
ipsos vero minime emendant, urbs nostra referta est, sed et
mulieribus curiosis, garrulis et otiosis, quæ omnia potius quam
domum propriam gubernare satagunt. Pirckheimer Opera, Frankf. 1610,
p. 375. He was a moderate man, concurring with the Lutherans in
most of their doctrine, but against the violation of monastic vows.
Several letters passed between him and Erasmus. The latter, though
he could not approve the hard usage of women, hated the monks so
much, that he does not greatly disapprove what was done towards
them. In Germaniâ multa virginum ac monachorum monasteria
crudeliter direpta sunt. Quidam magistratus agunt moderatius.
Ejecerunt eos duntaxat, qui illic non essent professi, et vetuerunt
novitios recipi; ademerunt illis curam virginum, et jus alibi
concionandi quam in suis monasteriis. Breviter, absque magistratus
permissu nihil licet illis agere. Videntur huc spectare, ut ex
monasteriis faciant parochias. Existimant enim hos conjuratos
phalangas et tot privilegiis armatos diutius ferri non posse.
(Basil. Aug. 1525.) Epist. Dcccliv. Multis in locis durè tractati
sunt monachi; verum plerique cum sint intolerabiles, alia tamen
ratione corrigi non possunt. Epist. Dcclvii.
[676] Gerdes Hist. Evangel. Reform. Seckendorf, et alii supra nominati.
The best account I have seen of the Reformation in Denmark and
Sweden is in the third volume of Gerdes, p. 279, &c.
|Excitement of revolutionary spirit.|
3. But while these great innovations were brought in by the civil power,
and sometimes with too despotic a contempt of legal rights, the mere
breaking up of old settlements had so disturbed the minds of the people,
that they became inclined to further acts of destruction, and more
sweeping theories of revolution. It is one of the fallacious views of
the Reformation, to which we have adverted in a former page, to fancy
that it sprung from any notions of political liberty, in such a sense as
we attach to the word. But, inasmuch as it took away a great deal of
coercive jurisdiction exercised by the bishops, without substituting
much in its place, it did unquestionably relax the bonds of laws not
always unnecessary; and inasmuch as the multitude were in many parts
instrumental in destroying by force the exterior symbols of the Roman
worship, it taught them a habit of knowing and trying the efficacy of
that popular argument. Hence the insurrection of the German peasants in
1525 may, in a certain degree, be ascribed to the influence of the new
doctrine; and, in fact, one of their demands was the establishment of
the Gospel. But as the real cause of that rebellion was the oppressive
yoke of their lords, which, in several instances before the Reformation
was thought of, had led to similar efforts at relief, we should not lay
too much stress on this additional incitement.[677]
[677] Seckendorf.
|Growth of fanaticism.|
4. A more immediate effect of overthrowing the ancient system was the
growth of fanaticism, to which, in its worst shape, the antinomian
extravagances of Luther yielded too great encouragement. But he was the
first to repress the pretences of the Anabaptists;[678] and when he saw
the danger of general licentiousness which he had unwarily promoted, he
listened to the wiser counsels of Melanchthon, and permitted his early
doctrine upon justification to be so far modified, or mitigated in
expression, that it ceased to give apparent countenance to immorality;
though his differences with the church of Rome, as to the very question
from which he had started, thus became of less practical importance, and
less tangible to ordinary minds than before.[679] Yet in his own
writings we may find to the last such language as to the impossibility
of sin in the justified man, who was to judge solely by an internal
assurance as to the continuance of his own justification, as would now
be universally condemned in all our churches, and is hardly to be heard
from the lips of the merest enthusiast.
[678] Id. Melanchthon was a little staggered by the first Anabaptists,
who appeared during the concealment of Luther in the castle of
Wartburg. Magnis rationibus, he says, adducor certè ut contemnere
eos nolim, nam esse in iis spiritus quosdam multis argumentis
apparet, sed de quibus judicare præter Martinum nemo facile possit.
As to infant baptism, he seemed to think it a difficult question.
But the Elector observed that they passed for heretics already, and
it would be unwise to moot a new point. Luther, when he came back,
rejected the pretences of the Anabaptists at once.
[679] See two remarkable passages in Seckendorf, part ii. p. 90, and
p. 106. The æra of what may be called the palinodia of early
Lutheranism was in 1527, when Melanchthon drew up instructions for
the visitation of the Saxon churches. Luther came into this; but it
produced that jealousy of Melanchthon among the rigid disciples,
such as Amsdorf and Justus Jonas, which led to the molestation of
his latter years. In 1537, Melanchthon writes to a correspondent:
Scis me quædam minus horridè dicere, de prædestinatione, de assensu
voluntatis, de necessitate obedientiæ nostræ, de peccato mortali.
De his omnibus scio re ipsa Lutherum sentire eadem, sed ineruditi
quædam ejus Φορτικωτερα [Phortikôtera] dicta, cum non videant quo
pertineant, nimium amant. Epist. p. 445. (edit. 1647.)
I am not convinced that this apology for Luther is sufficient.
Words are of course to be explained, when ambiguous, by the context
and scope of the argument. But when single detached aphorisms, or
even complete sentences in a paragraph, bear one obvious sense, I
do not see that we can hold the writer absolved from the imputation
of that meaning, because he may somewhere else have used a language
inconsistent with it. If the Colloquia Mensalia are to be fully
relied upon, Luther continued to talk in the same antinomian strain
as before, though he grew sometimes more cautious in writing. See
chap. xii. of that work; and compare with the passages quoted by
Milner, v. 517, from the second edition (in 1536) of his Commentary
on the Galatians. It would be well to know if these occur in that
of 1519. But Luther had not gone greater lengths than Melanchthon
himself.
|Differences of Luther and Zwingle.|
5. It is well known that Zwinglius, unconnected with Luther in throwing
off his allegiance to Rome, took in several respects rather different
theological views, but especially in the article of the real presence,
asserted by the Germans as vigorously as in the Church of Rome, though
with a modification sufficient, in the spirit of uncompromising
orthodoxy, to separate them entirely from her communion, but altogether
denied by the Swiss and Belgian reformers. The attempts made to disguise
this division of opinion, and to produce a nominal unanimity by
ambiguous and incoherent jargon, belong to ecclesiastical history, of
which they form a tedious and not very profitable portion.
|Confession of Augsburg.|
6. The Lutheran princes, who the year before had acquired the name of
Protestants, by their protest against the resolutions of the majority in
the diet of Spire, presented in 1530 to that held at Augsburg the
celebrated confession, which embodies their religious creed. It has been
said that there are material changes in subsequent editions, but this is
denied by the Lutherans. Their denial can only be as to the materiality,
for the fact is clear.[680]
[680] Bossuet, Variations des Eglises Protestantes, vol. i. Seckendorf,
p. 170. Clement, Bibliothèque Curieuse, vol. ii. In the editions of
1531 we read: De cœna Domini docent, quod corpus et sanguis Christi
vere adsint, et distribuantur vescentibus in cœna Domini, et
improbant secus docentes. In those of 1540, it runs thus: De cœna
Domini docent, quod cum pane et vino vere exhibeantur corpus et
sanguis Christi vescentibus in cœna Domini.
|Conduct of Erasmus.|
7. Meantime, it was not all the former opponents of abuses in the church
who now served under the banner of either Luther or Zwingle. Some few,
like Sir Thomas More, went violently back to the extreme of maintaining
the whole fabric of superstition; a greater number, without abandoning
their own private sentiments, shrunk, for various reasons, from an
avowed separation from the church. Such we may reckon Faber Stapulensis,
the most learned Frenchman of that age after Budæus; such perhaps was
Budæus himself;[681] and such were Bilibaldus Pirckheimer,[682] Petrus
Mosellanus, Beatus Rhenanus, and Wimpfeling, all men of just renown in
their time. Such, above all, was Erasmus himself, the precursor of
bolder prophets than himself, who, in all his later years, stood in a
very unenviable state, exposed to the shafts of two parties who forgave
no man that moderation which was a reproach to themselves. At the
beginning of this period, he had certainly an esteem for Melanchthon,
Œcolampadius, and other reformers; and though already shocked by the
violence of Luther, which he expected to ruin the cause altogether, had
not begun to speak of him with disapprobation.[683] In several points of
opinion, he professed to coincide with the German reformers; but his own
temper was not decisive; he was capable of viewing a subject in various
lights; his learning, as well as natural disposition, kept him
irresolute; and it might not be easy to determine accurately the tenets
of so voluminous a theologian. One thing was manifest, that he had
greatly contributed to the success of the Reformation. It was said, that
Erasmus had laid the egg, and Luther had hatched it. Erasmus afterwards,
when more alienated from the new party, observed, that he had laid a
hen’s egg, but Luther had hatched a crow’s.[684] Whatever was the bird,
it pecked still at the church. In 1522, came out the Colloquies of
Erasmus, a book even now much read, and deserving to be so. It was
professedly designed for the instruction and amusement of youth; but
both are conveyed at the expense of the prevalent usages in religion.
The monkish party could not be blind to its effect. The faculty of
theology at Paris, in 1526, led by one Beda, a most bigoted enemy of
Erasmus, censured the Colloquies for slighting the fasts of the church,
virginity, monkery, pilgrimages, and other established parts of the
religious system. They incurred of course the displeasure of Rome, and
have several times been forbidden to be read in schools. Erasmus
pretended that in his Ιχθυοφαγια [Ichthyophagia] he only turned into
ridicule the abuse of fasting, and not the ordinances of the church. It
would be difficult, however, to find out this distinction in the
dialogue, or, indeed, anything favourable to the ecclesiastical cause in
the whole book of Colloquies. The clergy are everywhere represented as
idle and corrupt. No one who desired to render established institutions
odious could set about it in a shorter or surer way; and it would be
strange if Erasmus had not done the church more harm by such
publications than he could compensate by a few sneers at the reformers
in his private letters. In the single year 1527, Colinæus printed 24,000
copies of the Colloquies, all of which were sold.
[681] Budæus was suspected of Protestantism, and disapproved many
things in his own church; but the passages quoted from him by
Gerdes, i. 186, prove that he did not mean to take the leap.
[682] Gerdes, vol. i. § 66-83. We have seen above the moderation of
Pirckheimer in some respects. I am not sure, however, that he did
not comply with the Reformation after it was established at
Nuremberg.
[683] Male metuo misero Luthero; sic undique fervet conjuratio; sic
undique irritantur in illum principes, ac præcipuè Leo pontifex.
Utinam Lutherus meum secutus consilium, ab odiosis illis ac
seditiosis abstinuisset. Plus erat fructus et minus invidiæ. Parum
esset unum hominem perire; si res hæc illis succedit, nemo feret
illorum insolentiam. Non conquiescent donec linguas ac bonas
literas omnes subverterint. Epist. Dxxviii Sept. 1520.
Lutherus, quod negari non potest, optimam fabulam susceperat, et
Christi pene aboliti negotium summo cum orbis applausu cœperat
agere. Sed utinam rem tantam gravioribus ac sedatioribus egisset
consiliis, majoreque cum animi calamique moderatione; atque utinam
in scriptis illius non essent tam multa bona, aut sua bona non
vitiasset malis haud ferendis. Epist. Dcxxxv. 3d Sept.
1521.
[684] Epist. Dccxix. Dec. 1524.
|Estimate of it.|
8. But about the time of this very publication we find Erasmus growing
by degrees more averse to the radical innovations of Luther. He has been
severely blamed for this by most Protestants; and doubtless, so far as
an undue apprehension of giving offence to the powerful, or losing his
pensions from the emperor and king of England might influence him, no
one can undertake his defence. But it is to be remembered, that he did
not by any means espouse all the opinions either of Luther or Zwingle;
that he was disgusted at the virulent language too common among the
reformers, and at the outrages committed by the populace; that he
anticipated great evils from the presumptuousness of ignorant men in
judging for themselves in religion; that he probably was sincere in what
he always maintained as to the necessity of preserving the communion of
the Catholic church, which he thought consistent with much latitude of
private faith; and that, if he had gone among the reformers, he must
either have concealed his real opinions more than he had hitherto done,
or lived, as Melanchthon did afterwards, the victim of calumny and
oppression. He had also to allege, that the fruits of the Reformation
had by no means shown themselves in a more virtuous conduct; and that
many heated enthusiasts were depreciating both all profane studies, and
all assistance of learning in theology.[685]
[685] The letters of Erasmus, written under the spur of immediate
feelings, are a perpetual commentary on the mischiefs with which
the Reformation, in his opinion, was accompanied. Civitates aliquot
Germaniæ implentur erroribus, desertoribus monasteriorum,
sacerdotibus conjugatis, plerisque famelicis ac nudis. Nec aliud
quam saltatur, editur, bibitur ac subatur; nec docent nec discunt;
nulla vitæ sobrietas, nulla sinceritas. Ubicunque sunt, ibi jacent
omnes bonæ disciplinæ cum pietate (1527) Epist. Dccccii. Satis jam
diu audivimus, Evangelium, Evangelium, Evangelium; mores
Evangelicos desideramus. Epist. Dccccxlvi. Duo tantum quærunt,
censum et uxorem. Cætera præstat illis Evangelium, hoc est,
potestatem vivendi ut volunt. Epist. Mvi. Tales vidi mores
(Basileæ) ut etiamsi minus displicuissent dogmata, non placuisset
tamen cum hujusmodi [sic] fœdus inire. Epist. Mlxvi. Both these
last are addressed to Pirckheimer, who was rather more a protestant
than Erasmus; so that there is no fair suspicion of temporising.
The reader may also look at the 788th and 793d Epistle, on the wild
doctrines of the Anabaptists and other reformers, and at the 731st,
on the effects of Farel’s first preaching at Basle in 1525. See
also Bayle, Farel, note B.
It is become very much the practice with our English writers to
censure Erasmus for his conduct at this time. Milner rarely does
justice to any one who did not servilely follow Luther. And Dr.
Cox, in his life of Melanchthon, p. 35, speaks of a third party,
“at the head of which the learned, witty, vacillating, avaricious,
and artful Erasmus is unquestionably to be placed.” I do not deny
his claim to this place; but why the last three epithets? Can
Erasmus be shown to have vacillated in his tenets? If he had done
so, it might be no great reproach; but his religious creed was
nearly that of the moderate members of the church of Rome, nor have
I observed any proof of a change in it. But vacillation may be
imputed to his conduct. I hardly think this word is applicable;
though he acted from particular impulses, which might make him seem
a little inconsistent in spirit; and certainly wrote letters not
always in the same tone, according to his own temper at the moment,
or that of his correspondent. Nor was he avaricious; at least I
know no proof of it; and as to the epithet artful, it ill applies
to a man who was perpetually involving himself by an unguarded and
imprudent behaviour. Dr. Cox proceeds to charge Erasmus with
seeking a cardinal’s hat. But of this there is neither proof nor
probability; he always declared his reluctance to accept that
honour, and I cannot think that in any part of his life he went the
right way to obtain it.
Those who arraign Erasmus so severely (and I am not undertaking the
defence of every passage in his voluminous Epistles), must proceed
either on the assumption that no man of his learning and ability
could honestly remain in the communion of the church of Rome, which
is the height of bigotry and ignorance; or that, according to his
own religious opinions, it was impossible for him to do so. This is
somewhat more tenable, inasmuch as it can only be answered by a
good deal of attention to his writings. But from various passages
in them, it may be inferred, that, though his mind was not made up
on several points, and perhaps for that reason, he thought it right
to follow, in assent as well as conformity, the catholic tradition
of the church, and above all, not to separate from her communion.
The reader may consult, for Erasmus’s opinions on some chief points
of controversy, his Epistles, Dcccxxiii.,
Dcccclxxvii. (which Jortin has a little misunderstood),
Mxxxv., Mliii., Mxciii. And see Jortin’s
own fair statement of the case, i. 274.
Melanchthon had doubtless a sweeter temper and a larger measure of
human charities than Erasmus, nor would I wish to vindicate one
great man at the expense of another. But I cannot refrain from
saying, that no passage in the letters of Erasmus is read with so
much pain as that in which Melanchthon, after Luther’s death, and
writing to one not very friendly, says of his connection with the
founder of the Reformation, Tuli servitutem pœne deformen, &c.
Epist. Melanchthon, p. 21 (edit. 1647). But the characters of
literary men are cruelly tried by their correspondence, especially
in an age when more conventional dissimulation was authorised by
usage than at present.
|His controversy with Luther.|
9. In 1524, Erasmus, at the instigation of those who were resolved to
dislodge him from a neutral station his timidity rather affected,
published his diatribe, De Libero Arbitrio, selecting a topic upon which
Luther, in the opinion of most reasonable men, was very open to
attack. Luther answered in a treatise, De Servo Arbitrio, flinching not,
as suited his character, from any tenet because it seemed paradoxical,
or revolting to general prejudice. The controversy ended with a reply of
Erasmus, entitled Hyperaspistes.[686] It is not to be understood, from
the titles of these tracts, that the question of free will was discussed
between Luther and Erasmus in a philosophical sense; though Melanchthon,
in his Loci Communes, like the modern Calvinists, had combined the
theological position of the spiritual inability of man with the
metaphysical tenet of general necessity. Luther on most occasions,
though not uniformly, acknowledged the freedom of the will as to
indifferent actions, and also as to what they called the works of the
law. But he maintained that, even when regenerated and sanctified by
faith and the Spirit, man had no spiritual free will; and as before that
time he could do no good, so after it, he had no power to do ill; nor,
indeed, could he, in a strict sense, do either good or ill, God always
working in him, so that all his acts were properly the acts of God,
though, man’s will being of course the proximate cause, they might, in a
secondary sense, be ascribed to him. It was this that Erasmus denied, in
conformity with the doctrine afterwards held by the council of Trent, by
the church of England, and, if we may depend on the statements of
writers of authority, by Melanchthon and most of the later Lutherans.
From the time of this controversy Luther seems to have always spoken of
Erasmus with extreme ill-will; and if the other was a little more
measured in his expressions, he fell not a jot behind in dislike.[687]
[686] Seckendorf took hold of a few words in a letter of Erasmus, to
insinuate that he had taken a side against his conscience in
writing his treatise, De Libero Arbitrio. Jortin, acute as he was,
seems to have understood the passage the same way, and endeavours
to explain away the sense, as if he meant only that he had
undertaken the task unwillingly. Milner of course repeats the
imputation; though it must be owned that, perceiving the absurdity
of making Erasmus deny what in all his writings appears to have
been his real opinion, he adopts Jortin’s solution. I am persuaded
that they are all mistaken, and that Erasmus was no more referring
to his treatise against Luther, than to the Trojan war. The words
occur in an answer to a letter of Vives, written from London,
wherein he had blamed some passages in the Colloquies on the usual
grounds of their freedom as to ecclesiastical practices. Erasmus,
rather piqued at this, after replying to the observations,
insinuates to Vives, that the latter had not written of his own
free will, but at the instigation of some superior. Verum, ut
ingenue dicam, perdidimus liberum arbitrium. Illic mihi aliud
dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus. By a figure of speech far
from unusual, he delicately suggests his own suspicion as Vives’s
apology. And the next letter of Vives leaves no room for doubt:
Liberum arbitrium non perdidimus, quod tu asserueris,--words, that
could have no possible meaning upon the hypothesis of Seckendorf.
There is nothing in the context that can justify it; and it is
equally difficult to maintain the interpretation Jortin gives of
the phrase, aliud dictabat animus, aliud scribebat calamus, which
can mean nothing but that he wrote what he did not think. The
letters are Dcccxxix. Dccclxxi. Dccclxxvi. in Erasmus’s Epistles;
or the reader may turn to Jortin, i. 413.
[687] Many of Luther’s strokes at Erasmus occur in the Colloquia
Mensalia, which I quote from the translation. “Erasmus can do
nothing but cavil and flout, he cannot confute.” “I charge you in
my will and testament, that you hate and loath Erasmus, that
viper.” ch. xliv. “He called Erasmus an epicure and ungodly
creature, for thinking that if God dealed with men here on earth as
they deserved, it would not go so ill with the good, or so well
with the wicked.” ch. vii. Lutherus, says the other, sic respondit
(diatribæ De Libero Arbitrio), ut antehac in neminem virulentius;
et homo suavis post editum librum per literas dejerat se in me esse
animo candidissimo, ac propemodum postulat, ut ipsi gratias agam,
quod me tam civiliter tractavit, longe aliter scripturus si cum
hoste fuisset res. Ep. Dcccxxxvi.
|Character of his epistles.|
10. The epistles of Erasmus, which occupy two folio volumes in the best
edition of his works, are a vast treasure for the ecclesiastical
and literary history of his times. Morhof advises the student to
commonplace them; a task which, even in his age, few would have spared
leisure to perform, and which the good index of the Leyden edition
renders less important. Few men carry on so long and extensive a
correspondence without affording some vulnerable points to the criticism
of posterity. The failings of Erasmus have been already adverted to; it
is from his own letters that we derive our chief knowledge of them. An
extreme sensibility to blame in his own person, with little regard to
that of others; a genuine warmth of friendship towards some, but an
artificial pretence of it too frequently assumed; an inconsistency of
profession both as to persons and opinions, partly arising from the
different character of his correspondents, but in a great degree from
the varying impulses of his ardent mind, tend to abate that respect
which the name of Erasmus at first excites, and which, on a candid
estimate of his whole life, and the tenor even of this correspondence,
it ought to retain. He was the first conspicuous enemy of ignorance and
superstition, the first restorer of Christian morality on a scriptural
foundation, and, notwithstanding the ridiculous assertion of some
moderns that he wanted theological learning, the first who possessed it
in its proper sense, and applied it to its proper end.
|His alienation from the reformers increases.|
11. In every succeeding year the letters of Erasmus betray increasing
animosity against the reformers. He had long been on good terms with
Zwingle and Œcolampadius, but became so estranged by these party
differences, that he speaks of their death with a sort of triumph.[688]
He still however kept up some intercourse with Melanchthon. The latter
years of Erasmus could not have been happy; he lived in a perpetual
irritation from the attacks of adversaries on every side; his avowed
dislike of the reformers by no means assuaging the virulence of his
original foes in the church, or removing the suspicion of lukewarmness
in the orthodox cause. Part of this should fairly be ascribed to the
real independence of his mind in the formation of his opinions, though
not always in their expression, and to their incompatibility with the
extreme doctrines of either side. But an habitual indiscretion, the
besetting sin of literary men, who seldom restrain their wit, rendered
this hostility far more general than it need have been, and, accompanied
as it was with a real timidity of character, exposed him to the charge
of insincerity, which he could better palliate by the example of others
than deny to have some foundation. Erasmus died in 1536, having returned
to Basle, which, on pretence of the alterations in religion, he had
quitted for Friburg in Brisgau a few years before. No differences of
opinion had abated the pride of the citizens of Basle in their
illustrious visitor. Erasmus lies interred in their cathedral, the
earliest, except Œcolampadius, in the long list of the literary dead,
which has rendered that cemetery conspicuous in Europe.
[688] Bene habet, quod duo Coryphæi perierint, Zuinglius in acie,
Œcolampadius paulo post febri et apostemate. Quod si illis favisset
ενυαλιορ [enyalior], actum fuisset de nobis. Epist. Mccv. It is of
course to be regretted, that Erasmus allowed this passage to escape
him, even in a letter. With Œcolampadius he had long carried on a
correspondence. In some book the latter had said, Magnus Erasmus
noster. This was at a time when much suspicion was entertained of
Erasmus, who writes rather amusingly, in Feb. 1525, to complain,
telling Œcolampadius that it was best neither to be praised nor
blamed by his party; but if they must speak of him, he would prefer
their censure to being styled _noster_. Epist. Dccxxviii. Milner
quotes this, leaving poor Erasmus to his reader’s indignation for
what he would insinuate to be a piece of the greatest baseness. But
in good truth, what right had Œcolampadius to use the word
_noster_, if it could be interpreted as claiming Erasmus to his
ownside? He was not theirs as Œcolampadius well knew, in exterior
profession nor theirs in the course they had seen fit to pursue.
It is just towards Erasmus to mention, that he never dissembled his
affection for Lewis Berquin, the first martyr to protestantism in
France, who was burned in 1528, even in the time of his danger.
Epist. Dcccclxxvi. Erasmus had no more inveterate enemies
than in the university of Paris.
|Appeal of the reformers to the ignorant.|
12. The most striking effect of the first preaching of the Reformation
was that it appealed to the ignorant; and though political liberty, in
the sense we use the word, cannot be reckoned the aim of those who
introduced it, yet there predominated that revolutionary spirit which
loves to witness destruction for its own sake, and that intoxicated
self-confidence which renders folly mischievous. Women took an active
part in religious dispute; and though in many respects the Roman
catholic religion is very congenial to the female sex, we cannot be
surprised that many ladies might be good protestants against the right
of any to judge better than themselves. The translation of the New
Testament by Luther in 1522, and of the Old a few years later, gave
weapons to all disputants; it was common to hold conferences before the
burgomasters of German and Swiss towns, who settled the points in
controversy, one way or other, perhaps as well as the learned would have
done.
|Parallel of those times with the present.|
13. We cannot give any attention to the story of the Reformation,
without being struck by the extraordinary analogy it bears to that of
the last fifty years. He who would study the spirit of this mighty age
may see it reflected as in a mirror from the days of Luther and Erasmus.
Man, who, speaking of him collectively, has never reasoned for himself,
is the puppet of impulses and prejudices, be they for good or for evil.
These are, in the usual course of things, traditional notions and
sentiments, strengthened by repetition, and running into habitual trains
of thought. Nothing is more difficult, in general, than to make a nation
perceive any thing as true, or seek its own interest in any manner, but
as its forefathers have opined or acted. Change in these respects has
been, even in Europe, where there is most of flexibility, very gradual;
the work, not of argument or instruction, but of exterior circumstances
slowly operating through a long lapse of time. There have been, however,
some remarkable exceptions to this law of uniformity, or, if I may use
the term, of _secular variation_. The introduction of Christianity
seems to have produced a very rapid subversion of ancient prejudices, a
very conspicuous alteration of the whole channel through which moral
sentiments flow, in nations that have at once received it. This has also
not unfrequently happened through the influence of Mohammedism in the
East. Next to these great revolutions in extent and degree, stand the
two periods we have begun by comparing; that of the Reformation in the
sixteenth century, and that of political innovation wherein we have long
lived. In each, the characteristic features are a contempt for
antiquity, a shifting of prejudices, an inward sense of self-esteem
leading to an assertion of private judgment in the most uninformed, a
sanguine confidence in the amelioration of human affairs, a fixing of
the heart on great ends with a comparative disregard of all things
intermediate. In each there has been so much of alloy in the motives,
and, still more, so much of danger and suffering in the means, that the
cautious and moderate have shrunk back, and sometimes retraced their own
steps, rather than encounter evils which at a distance they had not seen
in their full magnitude. Hence we may pronounce with certainty what
Luther, Hutten, Carlostadt, what again More, Erasmus, Melanchthon,
Cassander, would have been in the nineteenth century, and what our own
contemporaries would have been in their times. But we are too apt to
judge others, not as the individualities of personal character and the
varying aspects of circumstances rendered them, and would have rendered
us, but according to our opinion of the consequences, which, even if
estimated by us rightly, were such as they could not determinately have
foreseen.
|Calvin.|
|His Institutes.|
14. In 1531, Zwingle lost his life on the field of battle. It was the
custom of the Swiss that their pastors should attend the citizens in war
to exhort the combatants, and console the dying. But the reformers soon
acquired a new chief in a young man superior in learning and probably in
genius, John Calvin, a native of Noyon in Picardy. His Institutions,
published in 1536, became the text-book of a powerful body, who deviated
in some few points from the Helvetic school of Zwingle. They are
dedicated to Francis I., in language, good, though not perhaps as choice
as would have been written in Italy, temperate, judicious, and likely to
prevail upon the general reader, if not upon the king. This treatise was
the most systematic and extensive defence and exposition of the
protestant doctrine which had appeared. Without the over-strained
phrases and wilful paradoxes of Luther’s earlier writings, the
Institutes of Calvin seem to contain most of his predecessor’s
theological doctrine, except as to the corporal presence. He adopted a
middle course as to this, and endeavoured to distinguish himself from
the Helvetic divines. It is well known that he brought forward the
predestinarian tenets of Augustin more fully than Luther, who seems
however to have maintained them with equal confidence. They appeared to
Calvin, as doubtless they are, clearly deducible from their common
doctrine as to the sinfulness of all natural actions, and the arbitrary
irresistible conversion of the passive soul by the power of God. The
city of Geneva, throwing off subjection to its bishop, and embracing the
reformed religion in 1536, invited Calvin to an asylum, where he soon
became the guide and legislator, though never the ostensible magistrate,
of the new republic.
|Increased differences among reformers.|
15. The Helvetian reformers at Zurich and Bern were now more and more
separated from the Lutherans; and in spite of frequent endeavours to
reconcile their differences, each party, but especially the latter,
became as exclusive and nearly as intolerant as the church which they
had quitted. Among the Lutherans themselves, those who rigidly adhered
to the spirit of their founder’s doctrine, grew estranged, not
externally, but in language and affection, from the followers of
Melanchthon.[689] Luther himself, who never withdrew his friendship from
the latter, seems to have been alternately under his influence, and that
of inferior men. The Anabaptists, in their well-known occupation of
Munster, gave such proof of the tremendous consequences of fanaticism,
generated, in great measure, by the Lutheran tenet of assurance, that
the paramount necessity of maintaining human society tended more to
silence these theological subtilties, than any arguments of the same
class. And from this time that sect, if it did not lose all its
enthusiasm, learned how to regulate it in subordination to legal and
moral duties.
[689] Amsdorfius Luthero scripsit, viperam eum in sinu alere, me
significans, omitto alia multa. Epist. Melanchthon, p. 450 (edit.
1647). Luther’s temper seems to have grown more impracticable as he
advanced in life. Melanchthon threatened to leave him. Amsdorf and
that class of men flattered his pride. See the following letters.
In one, written about 1549, he says: Tuli etiam antea servitutem
pæne deformem, cum sæpe Lutherus magis suæ naturæ, in qua
φιλονεικια [philoneikia] erat haud exigua, quam vel personæ suæ,
vel utilitati communi serviret, p. 21. This letter is too
apologetical and temporising. Nec movi has controversias quæ
distraxerunt rempublicam; sed incidi in motas, quæ cum et multæ
essent et inexplicatæ, quodam simplici studio quaerendæ veritatis,
præsertim cum multi docti et sapientes initio applauderent,
considerare eas cœpi. Et quamquam materias quasdam horridiores
autor initio miscuerat, tamen alia vera et necessaria non putavi
rejicienda esse. Hæc cum excerpta amplecterer, paulatim aliquas
absurdas opiniones vel sustuli vel lenii. Melanchthon should have
remembered, that no one had laid down these opinions with more
unreserve, or in a more “horrid” way of disputation than himself in
the first edition of his Loci Communes. In these and other
passages, he endeavours to strike at Luther for faults which were
equally his own, though doubtless not so long persisted in.
Melanchthon, in the first edition of the Loci Communes, which will
scarcely be found except in Von der Hardt, sums up the free will
question thus:
Si ad prædestinationem referas humanum voluntatem, nec in externis,
nec in internis operibus ulla est libertas, sed eveniunt omnia
juxta destinationem divinam.
Si ad opera externa referas voluntatem, quædam videtur esse,
judicio naturæ, libertas.
Si ad affectus referas voluntatem, nulla plane libertas est, etiam
naturæ judicio. This proves what I have said in another place, that
Melanchthon held the doctrine of strict philosophical necessity.
Luther does the same, in express words, once at least in the
treatise De Servo Arbitrio, vol. ii. fol. 429 (edit. Wittenberg,
1554).
In an epistle often quoted, Melanchthon wrote: Nimis horridæ
fuerunt apud nostros disputationes de fato, et disciplinæ
nocuerunt. But a more thoroughly ingenuous man might have said
nostros for apud nostros. Certain it is, however, that he had
changed his opinions considerably before 1540, when he published
his Moralis Philosophiæ Epitome, which contains evidence of his
holding the synergism, or activity and co-operation with divine
grace, of the human will. See p. 39.
The animosity excited in the violent Lutherans by Melanchthon’s
moderation in drawing up the confession of Augsburg is shown in
Camerarius, Vita Melanchthon, p. 124 (edit. 1696). From this time
it continued to harass him till his death.
|Reformed tenets spread in England.|
|In Italy.|
16. England, which had long contained the remnants of Wicliffe’s
followers, could not remain a stranger to this revolution. Tyndale’s New
Testament was printed at Antwerp in 1526; the first translation that had
been made into English. The cause of this delay has been already
explained; and great pains were taken to suppress the circulation of
Tyndale’s version. But England was then inclined to take its religion
from the nod of a capricious tyrant. Persecution would have long
repressed the spirit of free judgment, and the king, for Henry’s life at
least, have retained his claim to the papal honour conferred on him as
defender of the faith, if “Gospel light,” as Gray has rather affectedly
expressed it, had not “flashed from Boleyn’s eyes.” But we shall not
dwell on so trite a subject. It is less familiar to every one, that in
Italy the seeds of the Reformation were early and widely sown. A
translation of Melanchthon’s Loci Communes under the name of Ippofilo da
Terra Nigra, was printed at Venice in 1521, the very year of its
appearance at Wittenberg; the works of Luther, Zwingle, and Bucer, were
also circulated under false names.[690] The Italian translations of
Scripture made in the fifteenth century were continually reprinted; and
in 1530 a new version was published at Venice by Brucioli, with a
preface written in a protestant tone.[691] The great intercourse
of Italy with the cisalpine nations, through war and commerce, and the
partiality of Renée of France, duchess of Ferrara, to the new doctrines,
whose disciples she encouraged at her court, under the pretext of
literature, contributed to spread an active spirit of inquiry. In almost
every considerable city, between 1525 and 1540, we find proofs of a
small band of protestants, not in general abandoning the outward
profession of the church, but coinciding in most respects with Luther or
Zwingle. It has lately been proved that a very early proselyte to the
Reformation, and one whom we should least expect to find in that number,
was Berni, before the completion, if not the commencement, of his labour
on the Orlando Innamorato; which he attempted to render in some places
the vehicle of his disapprobation of the church. This may account for
the freedom from indecency which distinguishes that poem, and contrasts
with the great licentiousness of Berni’s lighter and earlier
productions.[692]
[690] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Italy. Epigrams were written in
favour of Luther as early as 1521 (p. 32).
[691] Id. p. 53, 55.
[692] This curious and unexpected fact was brought to light by
Mr. Panizzi, who found a short pamphlet of extreme scarcity, and
unnoticed, I believe, by Zeno or any other bibliographer (except
Niceron, xxxviii. 76), in the library of Mr. Grenville. It is
written by Peter Paul Vergerio, and printed at Basle in 1554. This
contains eighteen stanzas, intended to have been prefixed by Berni
to the twentieth canto of the Orlando Innamorato. They are of a
decidedly protestant character. For these stanzas others are
substituted in the printed editions, much inferior, and, what is
remarkable, almost the only indecent passage in the whole poem. Mr.
Panizzi is of opinion, that great liberties have been taken with
the Orlando Innamorato, which is a posthumous publication, the
earliest edition being at Venice, 1541, five years after the
author’s death. Vergerio, in this tract, the whole of which has
been reprinted by Mr. P. in iii. 361 of his Boiardo, says of Berni:
Costui quasi agli ultimi suoi anni non fù altro che carne e mondo;
di che ci fanno ampia fede alcuni suoi capitoli e poesie, delle
quali egli molti fogli imbrattò. Ma perchè il nome suo era scritto
nel libro della vita, ne era possibile ch’egli potesse fuggire
delle mani del celeste padre, &c. Veggendo egli che questo gran
tiranno non permittea onde alcuno potesse comporre all’aperta di
quei libri, per li quali altri possa penetrare nella cognizione del
vero, andando attorno per le man d’ognuno un certo libro profano
chiamato innamoramento d’Orlando, che era inetto e mal composto, il
Berna [sic] s’immaginò di fare un bel trattato; e ciò fù ch’egli si
pose a racconciare le rime e le altre parti di quel libro, di che
esso n’era ottimo artefice, e poi aggiungendovi di suo alcune
stanze, pensò di entrare con questa occasione e con quel mezzo
(insin che d’Altro migliore ne avesse potuto avere) ad insegnare la
verità dell’Evangelio, &c. Whether Vergerio is wholly to be
trusted in all this account, more of which will be found on
reference to Panizzi’s edition of the Orlando Innamorato, I must
leave to the competent reader. The following expressions of Mr. P.,
though, I think, rather strong, will show the opinion of one
conversant with the literature and history of those times. “The
more we reflect on the state of Italy at that time, the more have
we reason to suspect that the reforming tenets were as popular
among the higher classes in Italy in those days, as liberal notions
in ours.” P. 361.
|Italian heterodoxy.|
17. The Italians are an imaginative, but not essentially a superstitious
people, or liable, nationally speaking, to the gloomy prejudices that
master the reason. Among the classes, whose better education had
strengthened and developed the acuteness and intelligence so general in
Italy, a silent disbelief of the popular religion was far more usual
than in any other country. In the majority, this has always taken the
turn of a complete rejection of all positive faith; but, at the æra of
the Reformation especially, the substitution of Protestant for Romish
Christianity was an alternative to be embraced by men of more serious
temperaments. Certain it is, that we find traces of this aberration from
orthodoxy, in one or the other form, through much of the literature of
Italy, sometimes displaying itself only in censures of the vices of the
clergy; censures, from which, though in other ages they had been almost
universal, the rigidly Catholic party began now to abstain. We have
already mentioned Pontanus and Mantuan. Trissino, in his Italia
Liberata, introduces a sharp invective against the church of Rome.[693]
The Zodiacus Vitæ of Manzolli, whose assumed Latin name, by which he is
better known, was Palingenius Stellatus, teems with invectives against
the monks, and certainly springs from a protestant source.[694] The
first edition is of 1537, at Basle. But no one writer is more
indignantly severe than Alamanni.[695]
[693] This passage, which is in the sixteenth canto, will be found in
Roscoe’s Leo X., Append. No. 164; but the reader would be mistaken
in supposing, as Roscoe’s language seems to imply, that it is only
contained in the first edition of 1548. The fact is that Trissino
cancelled these lines in the unsold copies of that edition, so that
very few are found to contain them; but they are restored in the
edition of the Italia Liberata, printed at Verona in 1729.
[694] The Zodiacus Vitæ is a long moral poem, the books of which are
named from the signs of the zodiac. It is not very poetical, but by
no means without strong passages of sense and spirit in a lax
Horatian metre. The author has said more than enough to incur the
suspicion of Lutheranism. I have observed several proofs of this;
the following will suffice:--
Sed tua præsertim non intret limina quisquam
Frater, nec monachus, vel quavis lege sacerdos.
Hos fuge; pestis enim nulla hac immanior; hi sunt
Fæx hominum, fons stultitiæ, sentina malorum,
Agnorum sub pelli lupi, mercede colentes,
Non pietate Deum; falsa sub imagine vecti
Decipiunt stolidos, ac religionis in umbra
Mille actus vetitos, et mille piacula condunt, &c.
Leo (lib. 5).
I could find, probably, more decisive Lutheranism in searching
through the poem, but have omitted to make notes in reading it.
[695] Ahi cieca gente, che l’hai troppo ’n pregio;
Tu credi ben, che questa ria semenza
Habbian più d’Altri gratia e privilegio;
Ch’altra trovi hoggi in lei vera scienza
Che di simulation, menzogne e frodi.
Beato ’l mondo, che sarà mai senza, &c.
Satir. i.
The twelfth Satire concludes with a similar execration, in the name
of Italy, against the church of Rome.
|Its progress in the literary classes.|
18. This rapid, though rather secret progress of heresy among the more
educated Italians, could not fail to alarm their jealous church. They
had not won over the populace to their side; for, though censures on the
superior clergy were listened to with approbation in every country,
there was little probability that the Italians would generally abjure
modes of faith so congenial to their national temper as to have been
devised, or retained from heathen times, in compliance with it. Even of
those who had associated with the reformers, and have been in
consequence reckoned among them, some were far from intending to break
off from a church which had been identified with all their prejudices
and pursuits. Such was Flaminio, one of the most elegant of poets and
best of men; and such was the accomplished and admirable Vittoria
Colonna.[696] But those who had drunk deeper of the cup of free thought
had no other resource, when their private assemblies had been detected,
and their names proscribed, than to fly beyond the Alps. Bernard Ochino,
a Capuchin preacher of great eminence, being summoned to Rome, and
finding his death resolved upon, fled to Geneva. His apostacy struck his
admirers with astonishment, and possibly put the Italians more on their
guard against others. Peter Martyr, well known afterwards in England,
soon followed him; the academy of Modena, a literary society highly
distinguished, but long suspected of heresy, was compelled, in 1542, to
subscribe a declaration of faith; and though Lombardy was still full of
secret protestants, they lived in continual terror of persecution during
the rest of this period. The small reformed church of Ferrara was broken
up in 1550; many were imprisoned and one put to death.[697]
[696] M’Crie discusses at length the opinions of these two, p. 164-177,
and seems to leave those of Flaminio in doubt; but his letters,
published at Nuremberg in 1571, speak in favour of his orthodoxy.
[697] Besides Dr. M’Crie’s History of the Reformation in Italy, which
has thrown a collected light upon a subject interesting and little
familiar, I have made use of his predecessor Gerdes, Specimen
Italiæ Reformatæ; of Tiraboschi, viii. 150; of Giannone, iv. 108,
et alibi; and of Galluzzi, Istoria del Gran Ducato, ii. 292, 369.
|Servetus.|
19. Meantime the natural tendency of speculative minds to press forward,
though checked at this time by the inflexible spirit of the leaders of
the Reformation, gave rise to some theological novelties. A Spanish
physician, Michael Reves, commonly called Servetus, was the first to
open a new scene in religious innovation. The ancient controversies on
the Trinity had long subsided; if any remained whose creed was not
unlike that of the Arians, we must seek for them among the Waldenses, or
other persecuted sects. But even this is obscure; and Erasmus, when
accused of Arianism, might reply with apparent truth, that no heresy was
more extinct. Servetus, however, though not at all an Arian, framed a
scheme, not probably quite novel, which is a difficult matter, but
sounding very unlike what was deemed orthodoxy. Being an imprudent and
impetuous man, he assailed the fundamental doctrines of reformers as
much as of the Catholic church, with none of the management necessary in
such cases, as the title of his book, printed in 1531, De Trinitatis
Erroribus, is enough to show. He was so little satisfied with his own
performance, that in a second treatise, called Dialogues on the Trinity,
he retracts the former as ill written, though without having changed any
of his opinions. These works are very scarce and obscurely worded, but
the tenets seem to be nearly what are called Sabellian.[698]
[698] The original editions of the works of Servetus very rarely occur:
but there are reprints of the last century, which themselves are by
no means common.
|Arianism in Italy.|
20. The Socinian writers derive their sect from a small knot of
distinguished men, who met privately at Vicenza about 1540; including
Lælius Socinus, at that time too young to have had any influence,
Ochino, Gentile, Alciati, and some others. This fact has been doubted by
Mosheim and M’Crie, and does not rest on much evidence; while some of
the above names are rather improbable.[699] It is certain, however, that
many of the Italian reformers held anti-trinitarian opinions, chiefly of
the Arian form. M’Crie suggests, that these had been derived from
Servetus; but it does not appear that they had any acquaintance, or
concurred in general with him, who was very far from Arianism; and it is
much more probable that their tenets originated among themselves. If,
indeed, it were necessary to look for an heresiarch, a Spanish
gentleman, resident at Naples, by name Valdes, is far more likely than
Servetus. It is agreed that Valdes was one of the chief teachers of the
Reformation in Italy; and he has also been supposed to have inclined
towards Arianism.[700]
[699] Lubienecius, Hist. Reformat. Polonicæ. M’Crie’s Hist. of
Reformation in Italy, p. 154.
[700] Dr. M’Crie is inclined to deny the Arianism of Valdes, and says
it cannot be found in his writings (p. 122); others have been of a
different opinion. See Chalmers’s Dictionary, art. Valdesso, and
Bayle. His considerations were translated into English in 1638; I
can find no evidence as to this point one way or the other in the
book itself, which betrays a good deal of fanaticism, and
confidence in the private teaching of the Spirit. The tenets are
high Lutheranism as to human action, and derived perhaps from the
Loci Communes of Melanchthon. Beza condemned the book.
|Protestants in Spain and Low Countries.|
21. Even in Spain, the natural soil of tenacious superstition, and the
birthplace of the Inquisition, a few seeds of Protestantism were early
sown. The first writings of Luther were translated into Spanish soon
after their appearance; the Holy Office began to take alarm about 1530.
Several suspected followers of the new creed were confined in
monasteries, and one was burnt at Valladolid in 1541.[701] But in no
country, where the Reformation was severely restrained by the
magistrate, did it spread so extensively as in the Netherlands. Two
Augustine monks were burned at Brussels in 1523, and their death had the
effect, as Erasmus tells us, of increasing prodigiously the number of
heretics.[702] From that time a bitter persecution was carried on, both
by destroying books, and punishing their readers; but most of the
seventeen provinces were full of sectaries.
[701] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Spain.
[702] Cœpta est carnificina. Tandem Bruxellæ tres Augustinenses [duo?]
publicitus affecti sunt supplicio. Quæris exitum? Ea civitas antea
purissima cœpit habere Lutheri discipulos, et quidem non paucos.
Sævitum est et in Hollandiâ. Quid multis? Ubicunque fumos excitavit
nuncius, ubicunque sævitiam exercuit Carmelita, ibi diceres fuisse
factam hæresion sementem. Ep. Mclxiii. The history of the
Reformation in the Low Countries has been copiously written by
Gerard Brandt, to whose second and third books I refer the reader.
|Order of Jesuits.|
22. Deeply shaken by all this open schism and lurking disaffection, the
church of Rome seemed to have little hope in the superstition of the
populace, the precarious support of the civil power, or the quarrels of
her adversaries. But she found an unexpected source of strength in her
own bosom; a green shoot from the yet living trunk of an aged tree. By a
bull, dated the 27th of September, 1540, Paul III. established the order
of Jesuits, planned a few years before by Ignatius Loyola. The leading
rules of this order were, that a general should be chosen for life, whom
every Jesuit was to obey as he did God; and that besides the three vows
of the regulars, poverty, chastity, and obedience, he should promise to
go wherever the pope should command. They were to wear no other dress
than the clergy usually did; no regular hours of prayer were enjoined;
but they were bound to pass their time usefully for their neighbours, in
preaching, in the direction of consciences, and the education of youth.
Such were the principles of an institution which has, more effectually
than any other, exhibited the moral power of a united association in
moving the great unorganised mass of mankind.
|Their popularity.|
23. The Jesuits established their first school in 1546, at Gandia in
Valencia, under the auspices of Francis Borgia, who derived the title of
duke from that city. It was erected into a university by the pope and
king of Spain.[703] This was the commencement of that vast influence
they were speedily to acquire by the control of education. They began
about the same time to scatter their missionaries over the East. This
had been one of the great objects of their foundation. And when news was
brought, that thousands of barbarians flocked to the preaching of
Francis Xavier, that he had poured the waters of baptism on their heads,
and raised the cross over the prostrate idols of the East, they had
enough, if not to silence the envy of competitors, at least to secure
the admiration of the Catholic world. Men saw in the Jesuits courage and
self-devotion, learning and politeness; qualities the want of which had
been the disgrace of monastic fraternities. They were formidable to the
enemies of the church; and those who were her friends cared little for
the jealousy of the secular clergy, or for the technical opposition of
lawyers. The mischiefs and dangers that might attend the institution
were too remote for popular alarm.
[703] Fleury, Hist. Eccles. xxix. 221.
|Council of Trent.|
24. In the external history of protestant churches, two events, not long
preceding the middle of the sixteenth century, served to compensate each
other,--the unsuccessful league of the Lutheran princes of Germany,
ending in their total defeat, and the establishment of the reformed
religion in England by the council of Edward VI. It admits however of no
doubt, that the principles of the Reformation were still progressive,
not only in those countries where they were countenanced by the
magistrate, but in others, like France and the Low Countries, where they
incurred the risk of martyrdom. Meantime Paul III. had, with much
reluctance, convoked a general council at Trent. This met on the 13th of
December, 1545; and after determining a large proportion of the disputed
problems in theology, especially such as related to grace and original
sin, was removed by the pope in March, 1547, to his own city of Bologna,
where they sat but a short time before events occurred which compelled
them to suspend their sessions. They did not reassemble till 1551.
|Its chief difficulties.|
25. The greatest difficulties which embarrassed the council of Trent,
appear to have arisen from the clashing doctrines of scholastic divines,
especially the respective followers of Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus,
embattled as rival hosts of Dominicans and Franciscans.[704] The fathers
endeavoured, as far as possible, to avoid any decision which might give
too unequivocal a victory to either; though it has generally been
thought, that the former, having the authority of Augustin, as well as
their own great champion, on their side, have come off, on the whole,
superior in the decisions of the council.[705] But we must avoid these
subtilties, into which it is difficult not to slide when we touch on
such topics.
[704] Fleury, xxix., 154, et alibi. F. Paul, lib. ii. and iii. passim.
[705] It is usual for protestant writers to inveigh against the
Tridentine fathers. I do not assent to their decision, which is not
to the purpose, nor vindicate the intrigues of the papal party. But
I must presume to say, that, reading their proceedings in the pages
of that very able and not very lenient historian, to whom we have
generally recourse, an adversary as decided as any that could have
come from the reformed churches, I find proofs of much ability,
considering the embarrassments with which they had to struggle, and
of an honest desire of reformation, among a large body, as to those
matters which, in their judgment, ought to be reformed. The notes
of Courayer on Sarpi’s history, though he is not much less of a
protestant than his original, are more candid, and generally very
judicious. Pallavicini I have not read: but what is valuable in him
will doubtless be found in the continuation of Fleury, vol. xxix.
et alibi.
|Character of Luther.|
26. In the History of the Reformation, Luther is incomparably the
greatest man. We see him, in the skilful composition of Robertson, the
chief figure of a group of gownsmen, standing in contrast on the canvas
with the crowned rivals of France and Austria, and their attendant
warriors, but blended in the unity of that historic picture. This
amazing influence on the revolutions of his own age, and on the opinions
of mankind, seems to have produced, as is not unnatural, an exaggerated
notion of his intellectual greatness. It is admitted on all sides, that
he wrote his own language with force and purity; and he is reckoned one
of its best models. The hymns in use with the Lutheran church, many of
which are his own, possess a simple dignity and devoutness, never,
probably, excelled in that class of poetry, and alike distinguished from
the poverty of Sternhold or Brady, and from the meretricious ornament of
later writers. But, from the Latin works of Luther, few readers, I
believe, will rise without disappointment. Their intemperance, their
coarseness, their inelegance, their scurrility, their wild paradoxes,
that menace the foundations of religious morality, are not compensated,
so far at least as my slight acquaintance with them extends, by much
strength or acuteness, and still less by any impressive eloquence. Some
of his treatises, and we may instance his reply to Henry VIII., or the
book “against the falsely-named order of bishops,” can be described as
little else than bellowing in bad Latin. Neither of these books display,
as far as I can judge, any striking ability. It is not to be imagined,
that a man of his vivid parts fails to perceive an advantage in that
close grappling, sentence by sentence, with an adversary, which
fills most of his controversial writings; and in scornful irony he had
no superior. His epistle to Erasmus, prefixed to the treatise De servo
Arbitrio, is bitterly insolent in terms as civil as he could use. But
the clear and comprehensive line of argument, which enlightens the
reader’s understanding, and resolves his difficulties, is always
wanting. An unbounded dogmatism, resting on an absolute confidence in
the infallibility, practically speaking, of his own judgment, pervades
his writings; no indulgence is shown, no pause allowed, to the
hesitating; whatever stands in the way of his decisions, the fathers of
the church, the schoolmen and philosophers, the canons and councils, are
swept away in a current of impetuous declamation; and as everything
contained in Scripture, according to Luther, is easy to be understood,
and can only be understood in his sense, every deviation from his
doctrine incurs the anathema of perdition. Jerome, he says, far from
being rightly canonised, must, but for some special grace, have been
damned for his interpretation of St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans.[706]
That the Zwinglians, as well as the whole church of Rome, and the
Anabaptists, were shut out by their tenets from salvation, is more than
insinuated in numerous passages of Luther’s writings. Yet he had passed
himself through several changes of opinion. In 1518, he rejected
auricular confession; in 1520, it was both useful and necessary; not
long afterwards, it was again laid aside. I have found it impossible to
reconcile, or to understand, his tenets concerning faith and works; and
can only perceive, that, if there be any reservation in favour of the
latter, not merely sophistical, of which I am hardly well convinced, it
consists in distinctions too subtle for the people to apprehend. These
are not the oscillations of the balance in a calm understanding,
conscious of the difficulty which so often attends the estimate of
opposite presumptions, but alternate gusts of dogmatism, during which,
for the time, he was as tenacious of his judgment as if it had been
uniform.
[706] Infernum potius quam cœlum Hieronymus meruit; tantum abest ut
ipsum canonizare aut sanctum esse audeam dicere. Vol. ii. fol. 478.
(Witt. 1554.)
27. It is not impossible, that some offence will be taken at this
character of his works by those who have thought only of the man;
extraordinary as he doubtless was in himself, and far more so as the
instrument of mighty changes on the earth. Many of late years,
especially in Germany, without holding a single one of Luther’s more
peculiar tenets, have thought it necessary to magnify his intellectual
gifts. Frederic Schlegel is among these; but in his panegyric there
seems a little wish to insinuate, that the reformer’s powerful
understanding had a taint of insanity. This has not unnaturally occurred
to others, from the strange tales of diabolical visions Luther very
seriously recounts, and from the inconsistencies as well as the
extravagance of some passages. But the total absence of self-restraint,
with the intoxicating effects of presumptuousness, is sufficient to
account for aberrations, which men of regular minds construe into actual
madness. Whether Luther were perfectly in earnest as to his personal
interviews with the devil, may be doubtful; one of them he seems to
represent as internal.
|Theological writings. Erasmus.|
28. Very little of theological literature, published between 1520 and
1550, except such as bore immediately on the great controversies of the
age, has obtained sufficient reputation to come within our researches,
which, upon this most extensive portion of ancient libraries, do not
extend to disturb the slumbers of forgotten folios. The paraphrase of
Erasmus was the most distinguished work in scriptural interpretation.
Though not satisfactory to the violent of either party, it obtained the
remarkable honour of being adopted in the infancy of our own
protestantism. Every parish church in England, by an order of council in
1547, was obliged to have a copy of this paraphrase. It is probable, or
rather obviously certain, that this order was not complied with.[707]
[707] Jortin says that, “taking the Annotations and the Paraphrase of
Erasmus together, we have an interpretation of the New Testament as
judicious and exact as could be made in his time, and to which very
few deserve to be preferred of those which have since been
published.” ii. 91.
|Melanchthon. Romish writers.|
29. The Loci Communes of Melanchthon have already been mentioned. The
writings of Zwingle, collectively published in 1544, did not attain
equal reputation; with more of natural ability than erudition, he was
left behind in the general advance of learning. Calvin stands on higher
ground. His Institutes are still in the hands of that numerous body who
are usually denominated from him. The works of less conspicuous
advocates of the Reformation, which may fall within this earlier period
of controversy, will not detain us; nor is it worth while to do
more on this occasion than mention the names of a few once celebrated
men in the communion of Rome, Vives, Cajetan, Melchior Cano, Soto, and
Catharin.[708] The two latter were prominent in the council of Trent,
the first being of the Dominican party, or that of Thomas Aquinas, which
was virtually that of Augustin; the second a Scotist, and in some points
deviating a little from what passed for the more orthodox tenets either
in the catholic or protestant churches.[709]
[708] Eichhorn, vi. 210-226. Andrès, xviii. 236.
[709] Sarpi and Fleury, passim.
|This literature nearly forgotten.|
30. These elder champions of a long war, especially the Romish, are,
with a very few exceptions, known only by their names and lives. These
are they, and many more there were down to the middle of the seventeenth
century, at whom, along the shelves of an ancient library, we look and
pass by. They belong no more to man, but to the worm, the moth, and the
spider. Their dark and ribbed backs, their yellow leaves, their thousand
folio pages, do not more repel us than the unprofitableness of their
substance. Their prolixity, their barbarous style, the perpetual
recurrence, in many, of syllogistic forms, the reliance, by way of
proof, on authorities that have been abjured, the temporary and partial
disputes, which can be neither interesting nor always intelligible at
present, must soon put an end to the activity of the most industrious
scholar.[710] Even the coryphæi of the Reformation are probably more
quoted than read, more praised than appreciated; their works, though not
scarce, are voluminous and expensive; and it may not be invidious to
surmise, that Luther and Melanchthon serve little other purpose, at
least in England, than to give an occasional air of erudition to a
theological paragraph, or to supply its margin with a reference that few
readers will verify. It will be unnecessary to repeat this remark
hereafter; but it must be understood as applicable, with such few
exceptions as will from time to time appear, throughout at least the
remainder of the sixteenth century.
[710] Eichhorn.
|Sermons.|
31. No English treatise on a theological subject, published before the
end of 1550, seems to deserve notice in the general literature of
Europe, though some may be reckoned interesting in the history of our
Reformation. The sermons of Latimer, however, published in 1548, are
read for their honest zeal and lively delineation of manners. They are
probably the best specimens of a style then prevalent in the pulpit, and
which is still not lost in Italy, nor among some of our own sectaries; a
style that came at once home to the vulgar, animated and effective,
picturesque and intelligible, but too unsparing both of ludicrous
associations and commonplace invective. The French have some preachers,
earlier than Latimer, whose great fame was obtained in this manner,
Maillard and Menot. They belong to the reign of Louis XII. I am but
slightly acquainted with the former, whose sermons, printed if not
preached in Latin, with sometimes a sort of almost macaronic
intermixture of French, appeared to me very much inferior to those of
Latimer. Henry Stephens, in his Apologie pour Herodote, has culled many
passages from these preachers, in proof of the depravity of morals in
the age before the Reformation. In the little I have read of Maillard, I
did not find many ridiculous, though some injudicious passages; but
those who refer to the extracts of Niceron, both from him and Menot,
will have as much gratification, as consummate impropriety and bad taste
can furnish.[711]
[711] Niceron, vols. xxiii. and xxiv. If these are the original
sermons, it must have been the practice in France, as it was in
Italy, to preach in Latin; but Eichhorn tells us that the sermons
of the fifteenth century, published in Germany, were chiefly
translated from the mother tongue. vi. 113. Tauler certainly
preached in German, yet Eichhorn in another place (iii. 282), seems
to represent Luther and his protestant associates as the first who
used that language in the pulpit.
|Spirit of the Reformation.|
32. The vital spirit of the Reformation, as a great working in the
public mind, will be inadequately discerned in the theological writings
of this age. Two controversies overspread their pages, and almost efface
more important and more obvious differences between the old and the new
religions. Among the Lutherans, the tenet of justification or salvation
by faith alone, called, in the barbarous jargon of polemics,
solifidianism, was always prominent: it was from that point their
founder began; it was there that, long afterwards, and when its original
crudeness had been mellowed, Melanchthon himself thought the whole
principle of the contest was grounded.[712] In the disputes again of the
Lutherans with the Helvetic reformers, as well as in those of the latter
school, including the church of England, with that of Rome, the corporal
or real presence (which are synonymous with the writers of that
century) in the Lord’s supper was the leading topic of debate. But in
the former of these doctrines, after it had been purged from the
Antinomian extravagances of Luther, there was found, if not absolutely a
verbal, yet rather a subtle, and by no means practical, difference
between themselves and the church of Rome;[713] while, in the
Eucharistic controversy, many of the reformers bewildered themselves,
and strove to perplex their antagonists, with incompatible and
unintelligible propositions, to which the mass of the people paid as
little regard as they deserved. It was not for these trials of
metaphysical acuteness that the ancient cathedrals shook in their inmost
shrines; and though it would be very erroneous to deny, that many not
merely of the learned laity, but of the inferior ranks, were apt to
tread in such thorny paths, we must look to what came closer to the
apprehension of plain men for their zeal in the cause of reformed
religion, and for the success of that zeal. The abolition of
saint-worship, the destruction of images, the sweeping away of
ceremonies, of absolutions, of fasts and penances, the free circulation
of the Scriptures, the communion in prayer by the native tongue, the
introduction, if not of a good, yet of a more energetic and attractive
style of preaching than had existed before; and besides this, the
eradication of monkery which they despised, the humiliation of
ecclesiastical power which they hated, the immunity from exactions which
they resented, these are what the north of Europe deemed its gain by the
public establishment of the Reformation, and to which the common name of
protestantism was given. But it is rather in the history, than in the
strictly theological literature of this period, that we are to seek for
the character of that revolution in religious sentiment, which ought to
interest us from its own importance, and from its analogy to other
changes in human opinion.
[712] Melanchth. Epist. p. 290. ed. Peucer, 1570.
[713] Burnet on eleventh article.
|Limits of private judgment.|
33. It is often said, that the essential principle of protestantism, and
that for which the struggle was made, was something different from all
we have mentioned, a perpetual freedom from all authority in religious
belief, or what goes by the name of the right of private judgment. But,
to look more nearly at what occurred, this permanent independence was
not much asserted and still less acted upon. The Reformation was a
change of masters; a voluntary one, no doubt, in those who had any
choice; and in this sense, an exercise, for the time, of their personal
judgment. But no one having gone over to the confession of Augsburg, or
that of Zurich, was deemed at liberty to modify those creeds at his
pleasure. He might of course become an Anabaptist or an Arian; but he
was not the less a heretic in doing so, than if he had continued in the
church of Rome. By what light a protestant was to steer, might be a
problem which at that time, as ever since, it would perplex a theologian
to decide; but in practice, the law of the land, which established one
exclusive mode of faith was the only safe, as, in ordinary
circumstances, it was, upon the whole, the most eligible guide.
|Passions instrumental in Reformation.|
34. The adherents to the church of Rome have never failed to cast two
reproaches on those who left them: one, that the reform was brought
about by intemperate and calumnious abuse, by outrages of an excited
populace, or by the tyranny of princes; the other, that after
stimulating the most ignorant to reject the authority of their church,
it instantly withdrew this liberty of judgment, and devoted all who
presumed to swerve from the line drawn by law, to virulent obloquy, or
sometimes to bonds and death. These reproaches, it may be a shame for us
to own, “can be uttered, and cannot be refuted.” But, without
extenuating what is morally wrong, it is permitted to observe that the
protestant religion could, in our human view of consequences, have been
established by no other means. Those who act by calm reason are always
so few in number, and often so undeterminate in purpose, that without
the aid of passion and folly, no great revolution can be brought about.
A persuasion of some entire falsehood, in which every circumstance
converges to the same effect on the mind; an exaggerated belief of good
or evil disposition in others; a universal inference peremptorily
derived from some particular case; these are what sway mankind, not the
simple truth, with all its limits and explanations, the fair partition
of praise and blame, or the measured assent to probability that excludes
not hesitation. That condition of the heart and understanding which
renders men cautious in their judgment, and scrupulous in their
dealings, unfits them for revolutionary seasons. But of this temper
there is never much in the public. The people love to be told that they
can judge; but they are conscious that they can act. Whether a saint in
sculpture ought to stand in the niches of their cathedrals, it was
equally tedious and difficult to inquire; that he could be defaced, was
certain; and this was achieved. It is easy to censure this as
precipitancy; but it was not a mere act of the moment; it was, and much
more was of the same kind, the share that fell naturally to the
multitude in a work which they were called to fulfil, and for which they
sometimes encountered no slight danger.
|Establishment of new dogmatism.|
35. But, if it were necessary, in the outset of the Reformation, to make
use of that democratic spirit of destruction, by which the populace
answered to the bidding of Carlostadt or of Knox, if the artizans of
Germany and Switzerland were to be made arbiters of controversy, it was
not desirable that this reign of religious anarchy should be more than
temporary. Protestantism, whatever, from the generality of the word, it
may since be considered, was a positive creed; more distinctly so in the
Lutheran than in the Helvetic churches, but in each, after no great
length of time, assuming a determinate and dogmatic character. Luther
himself, as has been already observed, built up before he pulled down;
but the confession of Augsburg was the first great step made in giving
the discipline and subordination of regular government to the rebels
against the ancient religion. In this, however, it was taken for
granted, that their own differences of theological opinion were neither
numerous nor inevitable: a common symbol of faith, from which no man
could dissent without criminal neglect of the truth or blindness to it,
seemed always possible, though never attained; the pretensions of
catholic infallibility were replaced by a not less uncompromising and
intolerant dogmatism, availing itself, like the other, of the secular
power, and arrogating to itself, like the other, the assistance of the
Spirit of God. The mischiefs that have flowed from this early
abandonment of the right of free inquiry are as evident as its
inconsistency with the principles upon which the reformers had acted for
themselves; yet, without the confession of Augsburg and similar creeds,
it may be doubtful whether the protestant churches would have possessed
a sufficient unity to withstand their steady, veteran adversaries,
either in the war of words, or in those more substantial conflicts to
which they were exposed for the first century after the Reformation. The
schism of the Lutheran and Helvetic protestants did injury enough to
their cause; a more multitudinous brood of sectaries would, in the
temper of those times, have been such a disgrace as it could not have
overcome. It is still very doubtful, whether the close phalanx of Rome
can be opposed, in ages of strong religious zeal, by anything except
established or at least confederate churches.
|Editions of Scripture.|
36. We may conclude this section with mentioning the principal editions
of translations of Scripture published between 1520 and 1550. The
Complutensian edition of the New Testament, suspended since the year
1514, when the printing was finished, became public in 1522. The
Polyglott of the Old Testament, as has been before mentioned, had
appeared in 1517. An edition of the Septuagint and of the Greek
Testament was published at Strasburg by Cephalæus in 1524 and 1526. The
New Testament appeared at Haguenaw in 1521, and from the press of
Colinæus at Paris in 1534; another at Venice in 1538. But these, which
have become very scarce, were eclipsed in reputation by the labours of
Robert Stephens, who printed three editions in 1546, 1549, and 1550; the
two former of a small size, the last in folio. In this he consulted more
manuscripts than any earlier editor had possessed; and his margin is a
register of their various readings. It is therefore, though far from the
most perfect, yet the first endeavour to establish the text on critical
principles.
|Translations of Scripture.|
|English.|
37. The translation of the Old and New Testament by Luther is more
renowned for the purity of its German idiom, than for its adherence to
the original text. Simon has charged him with ignorance of Hebrew; and
when we consider how late he came to the study of either that or the
Greek language, and the multiplicity of his employments, it may be
believed that his knowledge of them was far from extensive.[714] From
this translation, however, and from the Latin Vuglate, the English one
of Tyndale and Coverdale, published in 1535 or 1536, is avowedly
taken.[715] Tyndale had printed his version of the New Testament in
1526. That of 1537, commonly called Matthew’s Bible, from the name of
the printer, though in substance the same as Tyndale’s, was
superintended by Rogers, the first martyr in the persecution of Mary,
who appears to have had some skill in the original languages. The Bible
of 1539, more usually called Cranmer’s Bible, was certainly revised by
comparison with the original. It is however questionable, whether there
was either sufficient leisure, or adequate knowledge of the Hebrew and
Greek languages, in the reign of Henry VIII., to consummate so arduous a
task as the thorough censure of the Vulgate text.
[714] Simon, Hist. Critique, V. T., p. 432. Andrès, xix. 160. Eichhorn
however says, that Luther’s translation must astonish any impartial
judge, who reflects on the lamentable deficiency of subsidiary
means in that age, iii. 317. The Lutherans have always highly
admired this work on account of its pure Germanism: it has been
almost as ill spoken of among Calvinists as by the Catholics
themselves. St. Aldegonde says, it is farther from the Hebrew than
any one he knows; ex qua manavit nostra ex vitiosa Germanicâ facta
vitiosior Belgico-Teutonica. Gerdes, iii. 60.
[715] Tyndale’s translation of the Pentateuch had been published in
1530. It has been much controverted of late years, whether he were
acquainted or not with Hebrew.
|In Italy and Low Countries.|
38. Bruccioli of Venice published a translation of the Scriptures into
Italian, which he professes to have formed upon the original text.[716]
It was retouched by Marmocchini, and printed as his own in 1538.
Zaccarias, a Florentine monk, gave another version in 1542, taken
chiefly from his two predecessors. The earlier translation of Malerbi
passed through twelve editions in this century.[717] The Spanish New
Testament by Francis de Enzina was printed at Antwerp in 1543, as the
Pentateuch in the same language was by some Jews at Constantinople in
1547.[718] Olaus Petri, the chief ecclesiastical adviser of Gustavus
Vasa, translated the Scriptures into Swedish, and Palladius into Danish,
before the middle of the century. But in no language were so many
editions of Scripture published as in that of Flanders or Holland; the
dialects being still more slightly different, I believe, at that time
than they are now. The old translation from the Vulgate, first printed
at Delft in 1497, appeared several times before the Reformation from the
presses of Antwerp and Amsterdam. A Flemish version of the New Testament
from that of Luther came out at Antwerp in 1522, the very year of its
publication at Wittenberg; and twelve times more in the next five years.
It appears from the catalogue of Panzer, that the entire Bible was
printed in the Flemish or Dutch language, within the first thirty-six
years of the sixteenth century, in fifteen editions, one of which was at
Louvain, one at Amsterdam, and the rest at Antwerp. Thirty-four editions
of the New Testament alone in that language appeared within the same
period; twenty-four of them at Antwerp.[719] Most of these were taken
from Luther, but some from the Vulgate. There can be no sort of
comparison between the number of these editions, and consequently the
eagerness of the people of the Low Countries for biblical knowledge,
considering the limited extent of their language, and anything that
could be found in the protestant states of the empire.
[716] The truth of this assertion is denied by Andrès, xix. 188.
[717] M’Crie’s Reformation in Italy, p. 43.
[718] This translation, which could have been of little use, was printed
in Hebrew characters, with the original, and with a version in
modern Greek, but in the same characters. It was reprinted in 1553
by some Italian Jews, in the ordinary letter. This Spanish
translation is of considerable antiquity, appearing by the language
to be of the twelfth century: it was made for the use of the
Spanish Jews, and preserved privately in their synagogues and
schools. This is one out of several translations of Scripture that
were made in Spain during the middle ages; one of them, perhaps, by
order of Alfonso X. Andrès, xix. 151. But in the sixteenth century,
even before the alarm about the progress of heresy began in Spain,
a stop was put to their promulgation, partly through the suspicions
entertained of the half-converted Jews. Id. 183. The translation of
Enzina, a suspected protestant, was of course not well received,
and was nearly suppressed. Id. ibid. M’Crie’s Hist. of the
Reformation in Spain.
[719] Panzer, Annales Typographici, Index.
|Latin translations.|
39. Notwithstanding the authority given to the Vulgate by the church of
Rome, it has never been forbidden either to criticise the text of that
version, or to publish a new one. Sanctes Pagninus, an oriental scholar
of some reputation, published a translation of the Old and New Testament
at Lyons in 1528. This has been reckoned too literal, and consequently
obscure and full of solecisms. That of Sebastian Munster, a more eminent
Hebraist, printed at Basle in 1534, though not free from oriental
idioms, which indeed very few translations have been, or perhaps rightly
can be, and influenced, according to some, by the false interpretations
of the rabbins, is more intelligible. Two of the most learned and candid
Romanists, Huet and Simon, give it a decided preference over the version
of Pagninus. Another translation by Leo Juda and Bibliander, at Zurich
in 1543, though more elegant than that of Munster, deviates too much
from the literal sense. This was reprinted at Paris in 1545 by
Robert Stephens, with notes attributed to Vatable.[720]
[720] Simon, Hist. Crit. du V. T. Biogr. Univ. Eichhorn, v. 565, et
post. Andrès, xix. 165.
|French translations.|
40. The earliest protestant translation in French is that by Olivetan at
Neufchatel in 1535. It has been said that Calvin had some share in this
edition; which, however, is of little value, except from its scarcity,
if it be true that the text of the version from the Vulgate, by Faber
Stapulensis, has been merely retouched. Faber had printed this, in
successive portions some time before; at first in France; but the
parliament of Paris, in 1525, having prohibited his translation, he was
compelled to have recourse to the press of Antwerp. This edition of
Faber appeared several times during the present period. The French Bible
of Louvain, which is that of Faber, revised by the command of Charles
V., appeared as a new translation in 1550.[721]
[721] Idem.
CHAPTER VII.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE, MORAL, AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, AND OF
JURISPRUDENCE IN EUROPE, FROM 1520 TO 1550.
SECT. I. 1520-1550.
_Speculative Philosophy._
|Logic included under this head.|
1. Under this head we shall comprehend not only what passes by the
loose, yet not unintelligible, appellation metaphysics, but those
theories upon the nature of things, which, resting chiefly upon assumed
dogmas, could not justly be reduced to the division of physical science.
The distinction may sometimes be open to cavil; but every man of a
reflecting mind will acknowledge the impossibility of a rigorous
classification of books. The science of logic, not only for the sake of
avoiding too many partitions, but on account of its peculiar connection,
in this period of literature, with speculative philosophy, will be
comprised in the same department.
|Slow defeat of scholastic philosophy.|
2. It might be supposed that the old scholastic philosophy, the
barbarous and unprofitable disputations which occupied the universities
of Europe for some hundred years, would not have endured much longer
against the contempt of a more enlightened generation. Wit and reason,
learning and religion, combined their forces to overthrow the idols of
the schools. They had no advocates able enough to say much in their
favour; but established possession, and that inert force which ancient
prejudices retain, even in a revolutionary age, especially when united
with civil and ecclesiastical authority, rendered the victory of good
sense and real philosophy very slow.
|It is sustained by the universities and regulars.|
3. The defenders of scholastic disputation availed themselves of the
commonplace plea, that its abuses furnished no conclusion against its
use. The barbarousness of its terminology might be in some measure
discarded; the questions which had excited ridicule might be abandoned
to their fate; but it was still contended that too much of theology was
involved in the schemes of school philosophy erected by the great
doctors of the church to be sacrificed for heathen or heretical
innovations. The universities adhered to their established exercises;
and though these, except in Spain, grew less active, and provoked less
emulation, they at least prevented the introduction of any more liberal
course of study. But the chief supporters of scholastic philosophy,
which became, in reality or in show, more nearly allied to the genuine
authority of Aristotle, than it could have been, while his writings were
unknown or ill translated, were found, after the revival of letters,
among the Dominican or Franciscan orders; to whom the Jesuits, inferior
to none in acuteness, lent, in process of time, their own very powerful
aid.[722] Spain was, above all countries, and that for a very long time,
the asylum of the schoolmen; and this seems to have been one among many
causes, which have excluded, as we may say, the writers of that kingdom,
with but few exceptions, from the catholic communion of European
literature.
[722] Brucker, iv. 117, et post. Buhle has drawn copiously from his
predecessor, ii. 448.
|Commentators on Aristotle.|
4. These men, or many of them, at least towards the middle of the
century, were acquainted with the writings of Aristotle. But commenting
upon the Greek text, they divided it into the smallest fragments, gave
each a syllogistic form, and converted every proposition into a complex
series of reasonings, till they ended, says Buhle, in an endless and
insupportable verbosity. “In my own labours upon Aristotle,” he
proceeds, “I have sometimes had recourse, in a difficult passage, to
these scholastic commentators, but never gained anything else by my
trouble than an unpleasant confusion of ideas; the little there is of
value being scattered and buried in a chaos of endless words.”[723]
[723] ii. 417.
|Attack of Vives on scholastics.|
5. The scholastic method had the reformers both of religion and
literature against it. One of the most strenuous of the latter was
Ludovic Vives, in his great work, De corruptis Artibus et tradendis
Disciplinis. Though the main object of this is the restoration of what
were called the studies of humanity (humaniores literæ), which were ever
found incompatible with the old metaphysics, he does not fail to lash
the schoolmen directly in parts of this long treatise, so that no one,
according to Brucker, has seen better their weak points or struck them
with more effect. Vives was a native of Valencia, and at one time
preceptor to the princess Mary in England.[724]
[724] Brucker, iv. 87. Meiners (Vergleich. der Sitten, ii. 730-755),
has several extracts from Vives as to the scholasticism of the
beginning of this century. He was placed by some of his
contemporaries in a triumvirate with Erasmus and Budæus.
|Contempt of them in England.|
6. In the report of the visitation of Oxford, ordered by Henry VIII. in
1535, contempt for the scholastic philosophy is displayed in the
triumphant tone of conquerors. Henry himself had been an admirer of
Thomas Aquinas. But the recent breach with the see of Rome made it
almost necessary to declare against the schoolmen, its steadiest
adherents. And the lovers of ancient learning, as well as the favourers
of the Reformation, were gaining ground in the English government.[725]
[725] Wood’s Hist. of University of Oxford. The passage wherein Antony
Wood deplores the “setting Duns in Bocardo” has been often quoted
by those who make merry with the lamentations of ignorance.
|Veneration for Aristotle.|
7. But while the subtle, though unprofitable, ingenuity of the Thomists
and Scotists was giving way, the ancient philosophy, of which that of
the scholastic doctors was a corruption, restored in its genuine
lineaments, kept possession of the field with almost redoubled honour.
What the doctors of the middle ages had been in theology, that was
Aristotle in all physical and speculative science; and the church
admitted him into an alliance of dependency for her own service. The
Platonic philosophy, to which the patronage of the Medici and the
writings of Ficinus had given countenance in the last century, was much
fallen, nor had, at this particular time, any known supporters in
Europe. Those who turned their minds to physical knowledge, while they
found little to their purpose in Plato, were furnished by the rival
school with many confident theories and some useful truth. Nor was
Aristotle without adherents among the conspicuous cultivators of polite
literature; who willingly paid that deference to a sage of Greece, they
blushed to show for a barbarian dialectician of the thirteenth century.
To them at least he was indebted for appearing in a purer text, and in
more accurate versions; nor was the criticism of the sixteenth century
more employed on any other writer. By the help of philology, as her
bounden handmaid, philosophy trimmed afresh her lamp. The true
peripatetic system, according to so competent a judge as Buhle, was
first made known to the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century; and the
new disciples of Aristotle, endeavouring to possess themselves of the
spirit, as well as literal sense of his positions, prepared the way for
a more advanced generation to poise their weight in the scale of
reason.[726]
[726] Buhle, ii. 462.
|Melanchthon countenances him.|
8. The name of Aristotle was sovereign in the continental universities;
and the union between his philosophy, or what bore that title, and the
church, appeared so long established, that they must stand or fall
together. Luther accordingly, in the commencement of the Reformation,
inveighed against the Aristotelian logic and metaphysics, or rather
against those sciences themselves; nor was Melanchthon at that time much
behind him. But time ripened in this, as it did in theology, the
disciple’s excellent understanding; and he even obtained influence
enough over the master to make him retract some of that invective
against philosophy, which at first threatened to bear down all human
reason. Melanchthon became a strenuous advocate of Aristotle, in
opposition to all other ancient philosophy. He introduced into the
university of Wittenberg, to which all protestant Germany looked up, a
scheme of dialectics and physics, founded upon the peripatetic
school, but improved, as Buhle tells us, by his own acuteness and
knowledge. Thus in his books logic is taught with a constant reference
to rhetoric; and the physical science of antiquity is enlarged by all
that had been added in astronomy and physiology. It need hardly be said,
that the authority of Scripture was always resorted to as controlling a
philosophy, which had been considered unfavourable to natural
religion.[727]
[727] Buhle, ii. 427.
|His own philosophical treatises.|
9. I will not contend, after a very cursory inspection of this work of
Melanchthon, against the elaborate panegyric of Buhle; but I cannot
think the Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ much calculated to advance the
physical sciences. He insists very fully on the influence of the stars
in producing events which we call fortuitous, and even in moulding the
human character; a prejudice under which this eminent man is well known
to have laboured. Melanchthon argues sometimes from the dogmas of
Aristotle, sometimes from a literal interpretation of Scripture, so as
to arrive at strange conclusions. Another treatise, entitled De Animâ,
which I have not seen, is extolled by Buhle as comprehending not only
the psychology but the physiology also of man, and as having rendered
great service in the age for which it was written. This universality of
talents, and we have not yet adverted to the ethics and dialectics of
Melanchthon, enhanced his high reputation; nor is it surprising, that
the influence of so great a name should have secured the preponderance
of the Aristotelian philosophy in the protestant schools of Germany for
more than a century.
|Aristotelians of Italy.|
10. The treatise of the most celebrated Aristotelian of his age,
Pomponatius, on the immortality of the soul, has been already mentioned.
In 1525 he published two books, one on incantations, the other on fate
and free will. They are extremely scarce, but, according to the analysis
of Brucker, indicate a scheme of philosophy by no means friendly to
religion.[728] I do not find any other of the Aristotelian school who
falls within the present thirty years, of sufficient celebrity to
deserve mention in this place. But the Italian Aristotelians were
divided into two classes; one to which Pomponatius belonged, following
the interpretation of the ancient Greek scholiasts, especially Alexander
of Aphrodisea; the other, that of the famous Spanish philosopher of the
twelfth century, Averroes, who may rather be considered an heresiarch in
the peripatetic church, than a genuine disciple of its founder. The
leading tenet of Averrhoism was the numerical unity of the soul of
mankind, notwithstanding its partition among millions of living
individuals.[729] This proposition, which it may seem difficult to
comprehend, and which Buhle deems a misapprehension of a passage in
Aristotle, natural enough to one who read him in a bad Arabic version,
is so far worthy of notice, that it contains the germ of an atheistical
philosophy, which spread far, as we shall hereafter see, in the latter
part of this century, and in the seventeenth.
[728] Brucker, iv. 166.
[729] See Bayle, Averroes, note E, to which I omitted to refer on a
former mention of the subject, p. 98.
|University of Paris.|
11. Meantime the most formidable opposition to the authority of
Aristotle sprung up in the very centre of his dominions; a conspiracy
against the sovereign in his court itself. For, as no university had
been equal in renown for scholastic acuteness to that of Paris, there
was none so tenacious of its ancient discipline. The very study of Greek
and Hebrew was a dangerous innovation in the eyes of its rulers, which
they sought to restrain by the intervention of the civil magistrate. Yet
here, in their own schools, the ancient routine of dialectics was
suddenly disturbed by an audacious hand.
|New logic of Ramus.|
12. Peter Ramus (Ramée) a man of great natural acuteness, an intrepid,
though too arrogant a spirit, and a sincere lover of truth, having
acquired a considerable knowledge of languages as well as philosophy in
the university, where he originally filled, it is said, a menial office
in one of the colleges, began publicly to attack the Aristotelian method
of logic, by endeavouring to substitute a new system of his own. He had
been led to ask himself, he tells us, after three years passed in the
study of logic, whether it had rendered him more conversant with facts,
more fluent in speech, more quick in poetry, wiser, in short, any way
than it had found him; and being compelled to answer all this in the
negative, he was put on considering, whether the fault were in himself,
or in his course of study. Before he could be quite satisfied as to this
question, he fell accidentally upon reading some dialogues of Plato; in
which, to his infinite satisfaction, he found a species of logic very
unlike the Aristotelian, and far more apt, as it appeared, to the
confirmation of truth. From the writings of Plato, and from his
own ingenious mind, Ramus framed a scheme of dialectics, which
immediately shook the citadel of the Stagyrite; and, though in itself it
did not replace the old philosophy, contributed very powerfully to its
ultimate decline. The Institutiones Dialecticæ of Ramus were published
in 1543.
|It meets with unfair treatment.|
13. In the first instance, however, he met with the strenuous opposition
which awaits such innovators. The university laid their complaint before
the parliament of Paris; the king took it out of the hands of the
parliament, and a singular trial was awarded as to the merits of the
rival systems of logic, two judges being nominated by Goveanus, the
prominent accuser of Ramus, two by himself, and a fifth by the king.
Francis, it seems, though favourable to the classical scholars, whose
wishes might generally go against the established dialectics, yet,
perhaps, from connecting this innovation with those in religion, took
the side of the university; and after a regular hearing, though, as is
alleged, a very partial one, the majority of the judges pronouncing an
unfavourable decision, Ramus was prohibited from teaching, and his book
was suppressed. This prohibition, however, was taken off a few years
afterwards, and his popularity as a lecturer in rhetoric gave umbrage to
the university. It was not till some time afterwards that his system
spread over part of the continent.[730]
[730] Launoy de Variâ Aristot. Fortuna in Acad. Paris. The sixth stage
of Aristotle’s fortune, Launoy reckons to be the Ramean
controversy, and the victory of the Greek philosopher. He quotes a
passage from Omer Talon, which shows that the trial was conducted
with much unfairness and violence, p. 112. See also Brucker, v.
548-583, for a copious account of Ramus; and Buhle, ii. 579-602;
also Bayle.
|Its merits and character.|
14. Ramus has been once mentioned by Lord Bacon, certainly no bigot to
Aristotle, with much contempt, and another time with limited
praise.[731] It is however generally admitted by critical historians of
philosophy, that he conferred material obligations on science, by
decrying the barbarous logic of the schoolmen. What are the merits of
his own method, is a different question. It seems evidently to have been
more popular and convenient than that in use. He treated logic as merely
the art of arguing to others, _ars disserendi_; and, not unnaturally
from this definition, comprehended in it much that the ancients had
placed in the province of rhetoric, the invention and disposition of
proofs in discourse.
[731] Hooker also says with severe irony: “In the poverty of that other
new-devised aid, two things there are notwithstanding singular. Of
marvellous quick despatch it is, and doth show them that have it as
much almost in three days, as if it had dwelt threescore years with
them,” &c. Again: “Because the curiosity of man’s wit doth many
times with peril wade farther in the search of things, than were
convenient, the same is hereby restrained into such generalities,
as everywhere offering themselves, are apparent unto men of the
weakest conceit that need be: so as following the rules and
precepts thereof, we may find it to be an art, which teacheth the
way of speedy discourse, and restraineth the mind of man, that it
may not wax over-wise.” Eccles. Pol. i. § 6.
|Buhle’s account of it.|
15. “If we compare,” says Buhle, “the logic of Ramus with that which was
previously in use, it is impossible not to recognise its superiority. If
we judge of it by comparison with the extent of the science itself and
the degree of perfection it has attained in the hands of modern writers,
we shall find but an imperfect and faulty attempt.” Ramus neglected, he
proceeds to say, the relation of the reason to other faculties of the
mind, the sources of error, and the best means of obviating them, the
precautions necessary in forming and examining our judgments. His rules
display the pedantry of system as much as those of the Aristotelians.[732]
[732] Buhle, ii. 593, 595.
16. As the logic of Ramus appears to be of no more direct utility than
that of Aristotle in assisting us to determine the absolute truth of
propositions, and consequently could not satisfy Lord Bacon, so perhaps
it does not interfere with the proper use of syllogisms, which indeed,
on a less extended scale than in Aristotle, form part of the Ramean
dialectics. Like all those who assailed the authority of Aristotle, he
kept no bounds in depreciating his works; aware perhaps that the public,
and especially younger students, will pass more readily from admiration
to contempt, than to a qualified estimation, of any famous man.
|Paracelsus.|
17. While Ramus was assaulting the stronghold of Aristotelian despotism,
the syllogistic method of argumentation, another province of that
extensive empire, its physical theory, was invaded by a still more
audacious, and we must add, a much more unworthy innovator, Theophrastus
Paracelsus. Though few of this extraordinary person’s writings were
published before the middle of the century, yet as he died in
1541, and his disciples began very early to promulgate his theories, we
may introduce his name more appropriately in this than in any later
period. The system, if so it may be called, of Paracelsus had a primary
regard to medicine, which he practised with the boldness of a wandering
empiric. It was not unusual in Germany to carry on this profession; and
Paracelsus employed his youth in casting nativities, practising
chiromancy, and exhibiting chemical tricks. He knew very little Latin,
and his writings are as unintelligible from their style as their
substance. Yet he was not without acuteness in his own profession; and
his knowledge of pharmaceutic chemistry was far beyond that of his age.
Upon this real advantage he founded those extravagant theories, which
attracted many ardent minds in the sixteenth century, and were
afterwards woven into new schemes of fanciful philosophy. His own models
were the oriental reveries of the Cabbala, and the theosophy of the
mystics. He seized hold of a notion which easily seduces the imagination
of those who do not ask for rational proof, that there is a constant
analogy between the macrocosm, as they called it, of external nature,
and the microcosm of man. This harmony and parallelism of all things, he
maintains, can only be made known to us by Divine revelation; and hence
all heathen philosophy has been erroneous. The key to the knowledge of
nature is in the Scriptures only, studied by means of the Spirit of God
communicating an interior light to the contemplative soul. So great an
obscurity reigns over the writings of Paracelsus, which, in Latin at
least, are not originally his own, for he had but a scanty acquaintance
with that language, that it is difficult to pronounce upon his opinions,
especially as he affects to use words in senses imposed by himself; the
development of his physical system consisted in an accumulation of
chemical theorems, none of which are conformable to sound
philosophy.[733]
[733] Brucker, iv. 646-684, has copiously descanted on the theosophy
of Paracelsus; and a still more enlarged account of it will be
found in the third volume of Sprengel’s Geschichte der
Arzneykunste, which I use in the French translation. Buhle is very
brief in this instance, though he has a general partiality to
mystical rhapsodies.
|His impostures.|
18. A mixture of fanaticism and imposture is very palpable in
Paracelsus, as in what he calls his Gabalistic art, which produces by
imagination and natural faith, “per fidem naturalem ingenitam,” all
magical operations, and counterfeits by these means whatever we see in
the external world. Man has a sidereal as well as material body, an
astral element, which all do not partake in equal degrees; and therefore
the power of magic which is in fact the power of astral properties, or
of producing those effects which the stars naturally produce, is not
equally attainable by all. This astral element of the body survives for
a time after death, and explains the apparition of dead persons; but in
this state it is subject to those who possess the art of magic, which is
then called necromancy.
|And extravagancies.|
19. Paracelsus maintained the animation of everything; all minerals both
feed and render their food. And besides this life of every part of
nature, it is peopled with spiritual beings, inhabitants of the four
elements, subject to disease and death like man. These are the silvains
(sylphs), undines, or nymphs, gnomes, and salamanders. It is thus
observable that he first gave these names, which rendered afterwards the
Rosicrucian fables so celebrated. These live with man, and sometimes,
except the salamanders, bear children to him; they know future events
and reveal them to us; they are also guardians of hidden treasures,
which may be obtained by their means.[734] I may perhaps have said too
much about paradoxes so absurd and mendacious; but literature is a
garden of weeds as well as flowers; and Paracelsus forms a link in the
history of opinion, which should not be overlooked.
[734] Sprengel, iii. 305.
|Cornelius Agrippa.|
20. The sixteenth century was fertile in men, like Paracelsus, full of
arrogant pretensions, and eager to substitute their own dogmatism for
that they endeavour to overthrow. They are, compared with Aristotle,
like the ephemeral demagogues who start up to a power they abuse as well
as usurp on the overthrow of some ancient tyranny. One of these was
Cornelius Agrippa, chiefly remembered by the legends of his magical
skill. Agrippa had drunk deep at the turbid streams of cabbalistic
philosophy, which had already intoxicated two men of far greater merit,
and born for greater purposes, Picus of Mirandola and Reuchlin. The
treatise of Agrippa on occult philosophy is a rhapsody of wild theory
and juggling falsehood. It links, however, the theosophy of Paracelsus
and the later sect of Behmenists with an oriental lore, venerable in
some measure for its antiquity, and full of those aspirations of the
soul to break her limits, and withdraw herself from the dominion
of sense, which soothed, in old time, the reflecting hours of many a
solitary sage on the Ganges and the Oxus. The Jewish doctors had
borrowed much from this eastern source, and especially the leading
principle of their Cabbala, the emanation of all finite being from the
infinite. But this philosophy was in all its successive stages mingled
with arbitrary, if not absurd, notions as to angelic and demoniacal
intelligences, till it reached a climax in the sixteenth century.
|His pretended philosophy.|
21. Agrippa, evidently the precursor of Paracelsus, builds his pretended
philosophy on the four elements, by whose varying forces the phenomena
of the world are chiefly produced; yet not altogether, since there are
occult forces of greater efficacy than the elementary, and which are
derived from the soul of the world, and from the influence of the stars.
The mundane spirit actuates every being, but in different degrees, and
gives life and form to each; form being derived from the ideas which the
Deity has empowered his intelligent ministers, as it were by the use of
his seal, to impress. A scale of being, that fundamental theorem of the
emanative philosophy, connects the higher and lower orders of things;
and hence arises the power of magic; for all things have, by their
concatenation, a sympathy with those above and below them, as sound is
propagated along a string. But besides these natural relations, which
the occult philosophy brings to light, it teaches us also how to
propitiate and influence the intelligences, mundane, angelic, or
demoniacal, which people the universe. This is best done by fumigations
with ingredients corresponding to their respective properties. They may
even thus be subdued, and rendered subject to man. The demons are
clothed with a material body, and attached to the different elements;
they always speak Hebrew, as the oldest tongue.[735] It would be
trifling to give one moment’s consideration to this gibberish, were it
not evidently connected with superstitious absurdities, that enchained
the mind of Europe for some generations. We see the credence in
witchcraft and spectral appearances, in astrology and magical charms, in
demoniacal possessions, those fruitful springs of infatuation,
wretchedness, and crime, sustained by an impudent parade of metaphysical
philosophy. The system of Agrippa is the mere creed of magical
imposture, on which Paracelsus, and still more Jacob Behmen, grafted a
sort of religious mysticism. But in their general influence these
theories were still more pernicious than the technical pedantry of the
schools. A Venetian monk, Francis Georgius, published a scheme of
blended Cabbalistic and Platonic, or Neo-platonic, philosophy, in 1525;
but having no collateral pretensions to fame, like some other
worshippers of the same phantom, he can only be found in the historians
of obsolete paradoxes.[736]
[735] Brucker, iv. 410. Sprengel, iii. 226. Buhle, ii. 368.
[736] Brucker, iv. 374-386. Buhle, ii. 367.
|His sceptical treatise.|
22. Agrippa has left, among other forgotten productions, a treatise on
the uncertainty of the sciences, which served in some measure to promote
a sceptical school of philosophy; no very unnatural result of such
theories as he had proposed. It is directed against the imperfections
sufficiently obvious in most departments of science, but contains
nothing which has not been said more ably since that time. It is
remarkable that he contradicts much that he had advanced in favour of
the occult philosophy, and of the art of Raymond Lully.[737]
[737] Brucker, Buhle.
|Cardan.|
23. A man far superior to both Agrippa and Paracelsus was Jerome Cardan;
his genius was quick, versatile, fertile, and almost profound; yet no
man can read the strange book on his own life, wherein he describes, or
pretends to describe, his extraordinary character, without suspecting a
portion of insanity; a suspicion which the hypothesis of wilful
falsehood would, considering what the book contains, rather augment than
diminish. Cardan’s writings are extremely voluminous; the chief that
relate to general philosophy are those entitled De Subtilitate et
Varietate Rerum. Brucker praises these for their vast erudition,
supported by innumerable experiments and observations on nature, which
furnish no trifling collection of facts to readers of judgment; while
his incoherence of ideas, his extravagance of fancy, and confused
method, have rendered him of little service to philosophy. Cardan
professed himself a staunch enemy of Aristotle.[738]
[738] Brucker, v. 85. Cardan had much of the same kind of superstition
as Paracelsus and Agrippa. He admits as the basis of his physical
philosophy a sympathy between the heavenly bodies and our own; not
only general, but distributive: the sun being in harmony with the
heart, the moon with the animal juices. All organised bodies he
held to be animated, so that there is no principle which may not be
called nature. All is ruled by the properties of numbers. Heat and
moisture are the only real qualities in nature; the first being the
formal, the second the material cause of all things. Sprengel, iii.
278.
SECT. II. 1520-1550.
_On Moral and Political Philosophy._
|Influence of moral writers.|
24. By moral philosophy, we are to understand not only systems of
ethics, and exhortations to virtue, but that survey of the nature or
customs of mankind, which men of reflecting minds are apt to take, and
by which they become qualified to guide and advise their fellows. The
influence of such men, through the popularity of their writings, is not
the same in all periods of society; it has sensibly abated in modern
times, and is chiefly exercised through fiction, or at least a more
amusing style than was found sufficient for our forefathers; and from
this change of fashion, as well as from the advance of real knowledge,
and the greater precision of language, many books, once famous, have
scarcely retained a place in our libraries, and never lie on our tables.
|Cortegiano of Castiglione.|
25. In this class of literature, good writing, such at least as at the
time appears to be good, has always been the condition of public esteem.
They form a large portion of the classical prose in every language. And
it is chiefly in this point of view that several of the most
distinguished can deserve any mention at present. None was more renowned
in Italy than the Cortegiano of Castiglione, whose first edition is in
1528. We here find both the gracefulness of the language in this,
perhaps its best age, and the rules of polished life in an Italian
court. These, indeed, are rather favourably represented, if we compare
them with all we know of the state of manners from other sources; but it
can be no reproach to the author that he raised the standard of
honourable character above the level of practice. The precepts however
are somewhat trivial, and the expression diffuse; faults not a little
characteristic of his contemporaries. A book that is serious, without
depth of thought or warmth of feeling, cannot be read through with
pleasure.
26. At some distance below Castiglione in merit, and equally in
reputation, we may place the dialogues of Sperone Speroni, a writer
whose long life embraced two ages of Italian literature. These dialogues
belong to the first, and were published in 1544. Such of them as relate
to moral subjects, which he treats more theoretically than Castiglione,
are solemn and dry; they contain good sense in good language; but the
one has no originality, and the other no spirit.
|Marco Aurelio of Guevara.|
27. A Spanish prelate in the court of Charles obtained an extraordinary
reputation in Europe by a treatise so utterly forgotten at present, that
Bouterwek has even omitted his name. This was Guevara, author of Marco
Aurelio con el Relox de Principes, as the title-page awkwardly runs. It
contains several feigned letters of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, which
probably in a credulous age passed for genuine, and gave vogue to the
book. It was continually reprinted in different languages for more than
a century; scarce any book except the Bible, says Casaubon, has been so
much translated, or so frequently printed.[739] It must be owned that
Guevara is dull; but he wrote in the infancy of Spanish literature. The
first part of this book is properly entitled Marco Aurelio, and is
filled with the counterfeited letters; the second, Relox de Principes,
the Watch or Dial of Princes, is but a farago of trite moral and
religious reflections, with an intermixture of classical quotations. It
is fair to observe, that Guevara seems uniformly a friend to good and
just government, and that he probably employs Roman stories as a screen
to his satire on the abuses of his time. Antonio and Bayle censure this
as a literary forgery more severely than is quite reasonable. Andrès
extols the style very highly.[740]
[739] Bayle speaks of Guevara’s Marco Aurelio with great contempt; its
reputation had doubtless much declined before that time.
[740] vii. 148. In 1541, Sir Thomas Elyot published “The Image of
Government, compiled of the Acts and Sentences of Alexander
Severus,” as the work of Encolpius, an imaginary secretary to that
emperor. Some have thought this genuine, or at least no forgery of
Elyot’s; but I see little reason to doubt that he imitated Guevara.
Fabric. Bibl. Lat. and Herbert.
|His Menosprecio di Corte.|
28. Guevara wrote better, or more pleasingly, in some other moral
essays. One of them Menosprecio di Corte y Alabanza d’Aldea,
indifferently translated into English by Thomas Tymme in 1575, contains
some eloquent passages; and being dictated apparently by his own
feelings, instead of the spirit of book-making, is far superior to the
more renowned Marco Aurelio. Antonio blames Guevara for affectation of
antithesis, and too studious desire to say everything well. But this
sententious and antithetical style of the Spanish writers is
worthy of our attention; for it was imitated by their English admirers,
and formed a style much in vogue in the reigns of Elizabeth and James.
Thus, to take a very short specimen from Tymme’s translation: “In the
court,” says Guevara, “it profits little to be wise, forasmuch as good
service is soon forgotten, friends soon fail and enemies augment, the
nobility doth forget itself, science is forgotten, humility despised,
truth cloaked and hid, and good counsel refused.” This elaborately
condensed antithetical manner cannot have been borrowed from the
Italians, of whom it is by no means a distinguishing feature.
|Perez d’Oliva.|
29. Bouterwek has taken notice of a moral writer contemporary with
Guevara, though not so successful in his own age, Perez d’Oliva. Of him,
Andrès says, that the slight specimen he has left in his dialogue on the
dignity of man, displays the elegance, politeness, and vigour of his
style. It is written, says Bouterwek, in a natural and easy manner; the
ideas are for the most part clearly and accurately developed, and the
oratorical language, particularly where it is appropriately introduced,
is powerful and picturesque.[741]
[741] Bouterwek, p. 309. Andres, vii. 149.
|Ethical writings of Erasmus and Melanchthon.|
30. The writings of Erasmus are very much dedicated to the inculcation
of Christian ethics. The Enchiridion Militis Christiani, the Lingua,
and, above all, the Colloquies, which have this primary object in view,
may be distinguished from the rest. The Colloquies are, from their
nature, the most sportive and amusing of his works; the language of
Erasmus has no prudery; nor his moral code, though strict, any
austerity; it is needless to add, that his piety has no superstition.
The dialogue is short and pointed, the characters display themselves
naturally, the ridicule falls, in general, with skill and delicacy; the
moral is not forced, yet always in view; the manners of the age, in some
of the Colloquies, as in the German Inn, are humorously and agreeably
represented. Erasmus, perhaps, in later times, would have been
successful as a comic writer. The works of Vives breathe an equally pure
spirit of morality. But it is unnecessary to specify works of this
class, which, valuable as they are in their tendency, form too much the
staple literature of every generation to be enumerated in its history.
The treatise of Melanchthon, Moralis Philosophiæ Epitome, stands on
different grounds. It is a compendious system of ethics, built in great
measure on that of Aristotle, but with such variation as the principles
of Christianity, or his own judgment, led him to introduce. Hence,
though he exhorts young students, as the result of his own long
reflection on the subject, to embrace the Peripatetic theory of morals,
in preference of those of the Stoic or Epicurean school,[742] and
contends for the utility of moral philosophy, as part of the law of God,
and the exposition of that of nature, he admits that the reason is too
weak to discern the necessity of perfect obedience, or the sinfulness of
natural appetite.[743] In this epitome, which is far from servilely
following the Aristotelian dogmas, he declares wholly against usury,
less wise in this than Calvin, and asserts the magistrate’s right to
punish heretics.
[742] Ego vero qui has sectarum controversias diu multumque agitavi,
ἄνω καὶ κάτω στρέφων [anô kai katô strephôn], ut Plato facere
præcipit, valde adhortor adolescentulos, ut repudiatis Stoicis et
Epicureis, amplectantur Peripatetica. Præfat. ad. Mor. Philos.
Epist. (1549).
[743] Id. p. 4. The following passage, taken nearly at random, may
serve as a fair specimen of Melanchthon’s style:
Primum cum necesse sit legem Dei, item magistratuum leges nosse, ut
disciplinam teneamus ad coercendas cupiditates, facile intelligi
potest, hanc philosophiam etiam prodesse, quæ est quædam domestica
disciplina, quæ cum demonstrat fontes et causas virtutum, accendit
animos ad earum amorem; abeunt enim studia in mores, atque hoc
magis invitantur animi, quia quo propius aspicimus res bonas, eo
magis ipsas et admiramur et amamus. Hic autem perfecta notitia
virtutis quæritur. Neque vero dubium est, quin, ut Plato ait,
sapientia, si quod ejus simulacrum manifestum in oculos incurreret,
acerrimos amores excitaret. Nulla autem fingi effigies potest, quæ
propius exprimat virtutem et clarius ob oculos ponat spectantibus,
quam hæc doctrina. Quare ejus tractatio magnam vim habet ad
excitandos animos, ad amorem rerum honestarum, præsertim in bonis
ac mediocribus ingeniis, p. 6.
He tacitly retracts in this treatise all he had said against
free will in the first edition of the Loci Communes; in hac
quæstione moderatio adhibenda est, ne quas amplectamur opiniones
immoderatas in utramque partem, quæ aut moribus officiant, aut
beneficia Christi obscurent, p. 34.
|Sir T. Elyot’s Governor.|
31. Sir Thomas Elyot’s Governor, published in 1531, though it might also
find a place in the history of political philosophy, or of classical
literature, seems best to fall under this head; education of youth being
certainly no insignificant province of moral science. The author was a
gentleman of good family, and had been employed by the king in several
embassies. The Biographia Britannica pronounces him “an excellent
grammarian, poet, rhetorician, philosopher, physician, cosmographer, and
historian.” For some part of this sweeping eulogy we have no evidence;
but it is a high praise to have been one of our earliest English writers
of worth, and though much inferior in genius to Sir Thomas More, equal
perhaps in learning and sagacity to any scholar of the age of Henry
VIII. The plan of Sir Thomas Elyot in his Governor, as laid down in his
dedication to the king, is bold enough. It is “to describe in our vulgar
tongue the form of a just public weal, which matter I have gathered as
well of the sayings of most noble authors, Greek and Latin, as by mine
own experience, I being continually pained in some daily affairs of the
public weal of this most noble realm almost from my childhood.” But it
is far from answering to this promise. After a few pages on the
superiority of regal over every other government, he passes to the
subject of education, not of a prince only, but any gentleman’s son,
with which he fills up the rest of his first book.
|Severity of education.|
32. This contains several things worthy of observation. He advises that
children be used to speak Latin from their infancy, and either learn
Latin and Greek together, or begin with Greek. Elyot deprecates “cruel
and _yrous_ schoolmasters, by whom the wits of children be dulled,
whereof we need no better author to witness, than daily
experience.”[744] All testimonies concur to this savage ill-treatment of
boys in the schools of this period. The fierceness of the Tudor
government, the religious intolerance, the polemical brutality, the
rigorous justice, when justice it was, of our laws, seem to have
engendered a hardness of character, which displayed itself in severity
of discipline, when it did not even reach the point of arbitrary or
malignant cruelty. Every one knows the behaviour of Lady Jane Grey’s
parents towards their accomplished and admirable child; the slave of
their temper in her brief life, the victim of their ambition in death.
The story told by Erasmus of Colet is also a little too trite for
repetition. The general fact is indubitable; and I think we may ascribe
much of the hypocrisy and disingenuousness, which became almost national
characteristics in this and the first part of the next century, to the
rigid scheme of domestic discipline so frequently adopted; though I will
not say but that we owe some part of the firmness and power of
self-command, which were equally manifest in the English character, to
the same cause.
[744] Chap. x.
|He seems to avoid politics.|
33. Elyot dwells much and justly on the importance of elegant arts, such
as music, drawing, and carving, by which he means sculpture, and of
manly exercises, in liberal education; and objects with reason to the
usual practice of turning mere boys at fifteen to the study of the
laws.[745] In the second book he seems to come back to his original
subject, by proposing to consider what qualities a governor ought to
possess. But this soon turns to long commonplace ethics, copiously
illustrated out of ancient history, but perhaps, in general, little more
applicable to kings than to private men, at least those of superior
station. It is plain that Elyot did not venture to handle the political
part of his subject as he wished to do. He seems worthy, upon the whole,
on account of the solidity of his reflections, to hold a higher place
than Ascham, to whom, in some respects, he bears a good deal of
resemblance.
[745] Chap. xiv.
|Nicholas Machiavel.|
34. Political philosophy was not yet a common theme with the writers of
Europe, unless so far as the moral duties of princes may have been
vaguely touched by Guevara or Elyot, or their faults strongly, but
incidentally adverted to by Erasmus and More. One great luminary,
however, appeared at this time, though, as he has been usually deemed,
rather a sinister meteor than a benignant star. It is easy to anticipate
the name of Nicolas Machiavel. His writings are posthumous, and were
first published at Rome early in 1532, with an approbation of the pope.
It is certain, however, that the treatise called The Prince was written
in 1513, and the Discourses on Livy about the same time.[746] Few are
ignorant that Machiavel filled for nearly fifteen years the post of
secretary to that government of Florence which was established between
the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 and their return in 1512. This was
in fact the remnant of the ancient oligarchy, which had yielded to the
ability and popular influence of Cosmo and Lorenzo de’ Medici.
Machiavel, having served this party, over which the gonfalonier Pietro
Soderini latterly presided, with great talents and activity, was
naturally involved in their ruin; and having undergone imprisonment and
torture on a charge of conspiracy against the new government, was living
in retired poverty when he set himself down to the composition of his
two political treatises. The strange theories, that have been brought
forward to account for The Prince of Machiavel, could never be revived
after the publication of Ginguéné’s history of Italian literature, and
the article on Machiavel in the Biographie Universelle, if men had not
sometimes a perverse pleasure in seeking refinements, after the simple
truth has been laid before them.[747] His own language may assure us of
what surely is not very improbable, that his object was to be employed
in the service of Julian de’ Medici, who was at the head of the state in
Florence, almost in the situation of a prince, though without the title;
and that he wrote this treatise to recommend himself in his eyes. He had
been faithful to the late powers; but these powers were dissolved; and
in a republic, a dissolved government, itself the recent creature of
force and accident, being destitute of the prejudice in favour of
legitimacy, could have little chance of reviving again. It is probable,
from the general tenor of Machiavel’s writings, that he would rather
have lived under a republic than under a prince; but the choice was not
left; and it was better, in his judgment, to serve a master usefully for
the state, than to waste his life in poverty and insignificance.
[746] There are mutual references in each of these books to the other,
from which Ginguéné has reasonably inferred that they were in
progress at the same time. Hist. Litt. de l’Italie, viii. 46.
[747] Ginguéné has taken great pains with his account of Machiavel,
and I do not know that there is a better. The Biographie
Universelle has a good anonymous article. Tiraboschi had treated
the subject in a most slovenly manner.
|His motives in writing The Prince.|
35. We may also in candour give Machiavel credit for sincerity in that
animated exhortation to Julian which concludes the last chapter of The
Prince, where he calls him forth to the noble enterprise of rescuing
Italy from the barbarians. Twenty years that beautiful land had been the
victim of foreign armies, before whom in succession every native state
had been humiliated or overthrown. His acute mind easily perceived that
no republican institution would possess stability or concert enough to
cast off this yoke. He formed therefore the idea of a prince; one raised
newly to power, for Italy furnished no hereditary line; one sustained by
a native army, for he deprecates the employment of mercenaries; one
loved, but feared also, by the many; one to whom, in so magnanimous an
undertaking as the liberation of Italy, all her cities would render a
willing obedience. It might be, in part, a strain of flattery, in which
he points out to Julian of Medici a prospect so disproportionate, as we
know historically, to his opportunities and his character; yet it was
one also perhaps of sanguine fancy and unfeigned hope.
|Some of his rules not immoral.|
36. None of the explanations assigned for the motives of Machiavel in
The Prince is more groundless than one very early suggested, that by
putting the house of Medici on schemes of tyranny, he was artfully
luring them to their ruin. Whether this could be reckoned an excuse, may
be left to the reader; but we may confidently affirm that it contradicts
the whole tenor of that treatise. And, without palliating the worst
passages, it may be said that few books have been more misrepresented.
It is very far from true, that he advises a tyrannical administration of
government, or one likely to excite general resistance, even to those
whom he thought, or rather knew from experience, to be placed in the
most difficult position for retaining power, by having recently been
exalted to it. The Prince, he repeatedly says, must avoid all that will
render him despicable or odious, especially injury to the property of
citizens, or to their honour.[748] This will leave him nothing to guard
against but the ambition of a few. Conspiracies, which are of little
importance while the people are well affected, become unspeakably
dangerous as soon as they are hostile.[749] Their love, therefore, or at
least the absence of their hatred, is the basis of the governor’s
security, and far better than any fortresses.[750] A wise prince will
honour the nobility, at the same time that he gives content to the
people.[751] If the observance of these maxims is likely to subvert a
ruler’s power, he may be presumed to have designed the ruin of the
Medici. The first duke in the new dynasty of that house, Cosmo I., lived
forty years in the practice of all Machiavel would have advised, for
evil as well as good; and his reign was not insecure.
[748] c. xvii. and xix.
[749] c. xix.
[750] c. xx. la miglior fortezza che sia è non essere odiato de’ popoli.
[751] c. xix.
|But many dangerous.|
37. But much of a darker taint is found in The Prince. Good faith,
justice, clemency, religion, should be ever in the mouth of the ideal
ruler; but he must learn not to fear the discredit of any actions which
he finds necessary to preserve his power.[752] In a new government, it
is impossible to avoid the charge of cruelty; for new states are always
exposed to dangers. Such cruelties perpetrated at the outset and from
necessity, “if we may be permitted to speak well of what is evil,” may
be useful; though when they become habitual and unnecessary, they are
incompatible with the continuance of this species of power.[753] It is
best to be both loved and feared; but if a choice must be made, it
should be of the latter. For men are naturally ungrateful, fickle,
dissembling, cowardly, and will promise much to a benefactor, but desert
him in his need, and will break the bonds of love much sooner than those
of fear. But fear does not imply hatred; nor need a prince apprehend
that, while he abstains from the properties and the wives of his
subjects. Occasions to take the property of others never cease, while
those of shedding blood are rare; and besides, a man will sooner forgive
the death of his father, than the loss of his inheritance.[754]
[752] c. xvi., xviii.
[753] c. viii.
[754] c. xvii.
|Its only palliation.|
38. The eighteenth chapter, on the manner in which princes should
observe faith, might pass for a satire on their usual violations of it,
if the author did not too seriously manifest his approbation of them.
The best palliation of this, and of what else has been justly censured
in Machiavel, is to be derived from his life and times. These led him to
consider every petty government as in a continual state of self-defence
against treachery and violence, from its ill-affected citizens, as well
as from its ambitious neighbours. It is very difficult to draw the
straight line of natural right in such circumstances; and neither
perhaps the cool reader of a remote age, nor the secure subject of a
well-organised community, is altogether a fair arbiter of what has been
done or counselled in days of peril and necessity; relatively, I mean,
to the persons, not to the objective character of actions. There is
certainly a steadiness of moral principle and Christian endurance, which
tells us that it is better not to exist at all, than to exist at the
price of virtue; but few indeed of the countrymen and contemporaries of
Machiavel had any claim to the practice, whatever they might have to the
profession, of such integrity. His crime, in the eyes of the world, and
it was truly a crime, was to have cast away the veil of hypocrisy, the
profession of a religious adherence to maxims which at the same moment
were violated.[755]
[755] Morhof has observed that all the arts of tyranny which we read
in Machiavel, had been unfolded by Aristotle; and Ginguéné has
shown this in some measure from the eleventh chapter of the fifth
book of the latter’s politics. He might also have quoted the
Œconomics; the second book, however, of which, full of the
stratagems and frauds of Dionysius, though nearly of his age, is
not genuine. Mitford, with his usual partiality to tyrants (chap.
xxxi. sect. 8), seems to think them all laudable.
|His discourses on Livy.|
39. The Discourses of Machiavel upon the first books of Livy, though not
more celebrated than The Prince, have been better esteemed. Far from
being exempt from the same bias in favour of unscrupulous politics, they
abound with similar maxims, especially in the third book; but they
contain more sound and deep thinking on the spirit of small republics,
than could be found in any preceding writer that has descended to us;
more probably, in a practical sense, than the Politics of Aristotle,
though they are not so comprehensive. In reasoning upon the Roman
government, he is naturally sometimes misled by confidence in Livy; but
his own acquaintance with modern Italy was in some measure the
corrective that secured him from the errors of ordinary antiquaries.
|Their leading principles.|
40. These discourses are divided into three books, and contain 143
chapters with no great regard to arrangement; written probably as
reflections occasionally presented themselves to the author’s mind. They
are built upon one predominant idea; that the political and military
annals of early Rome having had their counterparts in a great variety of
parallel instances which the recent history of Italy furnished, it is
safe to draw experimental principles from them, and to expect the
recurrence of similar consequences in the same circumstances. This
reasoning, founded upon a single repetition of the event, though it may
easily mislead us, from an imperfect estimate of the conditions, and
does not give a high probability to our anticipations, is such as those
intrusted with the safety of commonwealths ought not to neglect. But
Machiavel sprinkles these discourses with thoughts of a more general
cast, and often applies a comprehensive knowledge of history, and a long
experience of mankind.
41. Permanence, according to Machiavel, is the great aim of
government.[756] In this very common sentiment among writers accustomed
to republican forms, although experience of the mischiefs generally
attending upon change might lead to it, there is, no doubt, a little of
Machiavel’s original taint, the reference of political ends to
the benefit of the rulers rather than that of the community. But the
polity which he seems for the most part to prefer, though he does not
speak explicitly, nor always perhaps consistently, is one wherein the
people should at least have great weight. In one passage he recommends,
like Cicero and Tacitus, the triple form, which endeavours to conciliate
the power of a prince with that of a nobility and a popular assembly; as
the best means of preventing that cycle of revolutions through which, as
he supposes, the simpler institutions would naturally, if not
necessarily, pass; from monarchy to aristocracy, from that to democracy,
and finally to monarchy again; though, as he observes, it rarely happens
that there is time given to complete this cycle, which requires a long
course of ages, the community itself, as an independent state, being
generally destroyed before the close of the period.[757] But, with his
predilection for a republican polity, he yet saw its essential weakness
in difficult circumstances; and hence observes that there is no surer
way to ruin a democracy than to set it on bold undertakings, which it is
sure to misconduct.[758] He has made also the profound and important
remark, that states are rarely either formed, or reformed, except by one
man.[759]
[756] l. i. c. 2.
[757] c. 2 and 6.
[758] c. 53.
[759] c. 9. Corniani, iv. 70, has attempted to reduce into system the
Discourses of Machiavel, which have no regular arrangement, so that
nearly the same thoughts recur in different chapters.
|Their use and influence.|
42. Few political treatises can even now be read with more advantage
than the Discourses of Machiavel; and in proportion as the course of
civil society tends farther towards democracy, and especially if it
should lead to what seems the inevitable consequence of democracy, a
considerable subdivision of independent states, they may acquire an
additional value. The absence of all passion, the continual reference of
every public measure to a distinct end, the disregard of vulgar
associations with names or persons, render him, though too cold of heart
for a very generous reader, a sagacious and useful monitor for any one
who can employ the necessary methods of correcting his theorems. He
formed a school of subtle reasoners upon political history, which, both
in Italy and France, was in vogue for two centuries; and, whatever might
be its errors, has hardly been superseded for the better by the loose
declamation that some dignify with the name of philosophical politics,
and in which we continually find a more flagitious and undisguised
abandonment of moral rules for the sake of some idol of a general
principle, than can be imputed to The Prince of Machiavel.
|His History of Florence.|
43. Besides these two works, the History of Florence is enough to
immortalise the name of Nicolas Machiavel. Seldom has a more giant
stride been made in any department of literature, than by this
judicious, clear, and elegant history: for the preceding historical
works, whether in Italy or out of it, had no claims to the praise of
classical composition, while this has ranked among the greatest of that
order. Machiavel was the first who gave at once a general and a luminous
development of great events in their causes and connections, such as we
find in the first book of his History of Florence. That view of the
formation of European societies, both civil and ecclesiastical, on the
ruins of the Roman empire, though it may seem now to contain only what
is familiar, had never been attempted before, and is still, for its
conciseness and truth, as good as any that can be read.
|Treatises on Venetian government.|
44. The little treatises of Giannotti and Contarini on the republic of
Venice, being chiefly descriptive of actual institutions, though the
former, a Florentine by birth, sometimes reasons upon and even censures
them, would not deserve notice, except as they display an attention to
the workings of a most complicated, and at the same time a most
successful machine. The wonderful permanency, tranquillity, and
prosperity of Venice became the admiration of Europe, and especially, as
was most natural, of Italy; where she stood alone, without internal
usurpation or foreign interference, strong in wisdom more than in arms,
the survivor of many lines of petty princes, and many revolutions of
turbulent democracy, which had, on either side of the Apennine, run
their race of guilt and sorrow for several preceding centuries.[760]
[760] These are both published in Grævius, Thesaur. Antiq. Italiæ.
See too Ginguéné, viii. 186.
|Calvin’s political principles.|
45. Calvin alone, of the reformers in this period, has touched upon
political government as a theme of rational discussion; though he admits
that it is needless to dispute which is the best form of polity, since
private men have not the right of altering that under which they live.
The change from monarchy to despotism, he says, is easy; nor, is that
from aristocracy to the dominion of a few much more difficult; but
nothing is so apt to follow as sedition from a popular regimen.
But upon the whole he considers an aristocratic form to be far better
than the other two, on account of the vices and infirmity of human
nature.[761]
[761] Calv. Inst. l. iv. c. 20, § 8.
SECT. III. 1501-1510.
_Jurisprudence._
|Jurisprudence confined to Roman law.|
46. Under the name of jurisprudence, we are not yet to seek for writings
on that high department of moral philosophy, which treats of the rules
of universal justice, by which positive legislation and the courts of
judicature ought to be directed. Whatever of this kind may appear in
works of this period, arises incidentally out of their subject, and does
not constitute their essence. According to the primary and established
sense of the word, especially on the Continent, jurisprudence is the
science of the Roman law, and is seldom applied to any other positive
system, but least of all to the law of nature. Yet the application of
this study has been too extensive in Europe, and the renown of its chief
writers too high, to admit of our passing wholly over this department of
literature, as we do some technical and professional subjects.
|The laws not well arranged.|
47. The civil or Roman law is comprehended in four leading divisions
(besides some later than the time of Justinian), very unequal in length,
but altogether forming that multifarious collection usually styled the
Corpus Juris Civilis. As this has sometimes been published in a single,
though a vast and closely printed volume, it may seem extraordinary,
that by means of arranged indexes, marginal references, and similar
resources, it was not, soon after it came into use as a standard
authority, or, at least, soon after the invention of printing, reduced
into a less disorderly state than its present disposition exhibits. But
the labours of the oldest jurists, in accumulating glosses or short
marginal interpretations, were more calculated to multiply than to
disentangle the intricacies of the Pandects.
|Adoption of the entire system.|
48. It is at first sight more wonderful, that many nations of Europe,
instead of selecting the most valuable portion of the civil law, as
directory to their own tribunals, should have bestowed decisive
authority on that entire unwieldy body which bore the name of Justinian;
laws, which they could not understand, and which, in great measure,
must, if understood, have been perceived to clash with the new order of
human society. But the homage paid to the Roman name, the previous
reception of the Theodosian code in the same countries, the vague notion
of the Italians, artfully encouraged by one party, that the Conrads and
Frederics were really successors of the Theodosii and Justinians, the
frequent clearness, acuteness, and reasonableness of the decisions of
the old lawyers which fill the Pandects, the immense difficulty of
separating the less useful portion, and of obtaining public authority
for a new system, the deference, above all, to great names, which
cramped every effort of the human mind in the middle ages, will
sufficiently account for the adoption of a jurisprudence so complicated,
uncertain, unintelligible, and ill-fitted to the times.
|Utility of general learning to lawyers.|
49. The portentous ignorance of the earlier jurists in everything that
could aid their textual explanations has been noticed in the first
chapter of this volume. This could not hold out long after the revival
of learning. Budæus, in his Observations on the Pandects, was the first
to furnish better verbal interpretations; but his philological erudition
was not sustained by that knowledge of the laws themselves which nothing
but long labour could impart.[762] Such a knowledge of the Latin
language as even after the revival of letters was given in the schools,
or we may add, as is now obtained by those who are counted learned among
us, serves but little towards the understanding those Roman lawyers,
whose short decisions, or, as we should call them, opinions, occupy the
fifty books of the Pandects. They had not only a technical terminology,
as is perhaps necessary in professional usage, but many words and
phrases not merely technical occur, as to the names and notions of
things, which the classical authors, especially such as are commonly
read, do not contain. Yet these writers of antiquity, when diligently
pursued, throw much light upon jurisprudence; they assist conjecture, if
they do not afford proof, as to the meaning of words; they explain
allusions, they connect the laws with their temporary causes or general
principles; and if they seem a little to lead us astray from the great
object of jurisprudence, the adjudication of right, it was still highly
important, in the conditions that Europe had imposed upon herself, to
ascertain what it was that she had chosen to obey.
[762] Gravina, Origines Jur. Civ. p. 211.
|Alciati; his reform of law.|
50. Ulric Zasias, a professor at Friburg, and Garcia d’Erzilla, whose
commentaries were printed in 1515, should have the credit, according to
Andrès, of leading the way to a more elegant jurisprudence.[763] The
former of these is known, in some measure, as a scholar and a
correspondent of Erasmus; for the latter I have to depend on the
testimony of his countrymen. But the general voice of Europe has always
named Andrew Alciati of Milan as the restorer of the Roman law. He
taught, from the year 1518 to his death in 1550, in the universities of
Avignon, Milan, Bourges, Paris, and Bologna. Literature became with him
the handmaid of law; the historians of Rome, her antiquaries, her
orators and poets, were called upon to elucidate the obsolete words and
obscure allusions of the Pandects; to which, the earlier as well as the
most valuable and extensive portion of the civil law, this method of
classical interpretation is chiefly applicable. Alciati had another
advantage, denied to his predecessors of the middle ages, in the
possession of the Byzantine jurists, with whom, says Gravina, the
learning of Roman law had been preserved in a more perfect state amidst
other vestiges of the empire, and while almost extinguished in Italy by
the barbarians, had been in daily usage at Constantinople down to its
capture. Alciati was the first who taught the lawyers to write with
purity and elegance. Erasmus has applied to him the eulogy of Cicero on
Scævola, that he was the most jurisprudent of orators, and the most
eloquent of lawyers. But he deserved also the higher praise of sweeping
away the rubbish of conflicting glosses, which had so confounded the
students by their contrary subtilties, that it had become a practice to
count, instead of weighing, their authorities. It has been regretted
that he made little use of philosophy in the exposition of law; but this
could not have been attempted in the sixteenth century without the
utmost danger of misleading the interpreter.[764]
[763] Andrès, xvi. 143. Savigny agrees with Andrès as to the merits of
Zasius, and observes that the revival of the study of the laws in
their original sources, instead of the commentators, had been
announced by several signs before the sixteenth century. Ambrogio
Traversari had recommended this, and Lebrixa wrote against the
errors of Accursius, though in a superficial manner. Gesch. des
Römischen Rechts, vi. 364.
[764] Bayle, art. Alciati. Gravina, p. 206. Tiraboschi, ix. 115.
Corniani, v. 57.
|Opposition to him.|
|Agustino.|
51. The practical lawyers, whose prejudices were nourished by their
interests, conspired with the professors of the old school to clamour
against the introduction of literature into jurisprudence. Alciati was
driven sometimes from one university to another by their opposition; but
more frequently his restless disposition and his notorious desire of
gain were the causes of his migrations. They were the means of diffusing
a more liberal course of studies in France as well as Italy, and
especially in the great legal university of Bourges. He stood not
however alone in scattering the flowers of polite literature over the
thorny brakes of jurisprudence. An eminent Spaniard, Antonio Agustino,
might perhaps be placed almost on a level with him. The first work of
Agustino, Emendationes Juris Civilis, was published in 1544. Andrès,
seldom deficient in praising his compatriots, pronounces such an eulogy
on the writings of Agustino, as to find no one but Cujacius worthy of
being accounted his equal, if indeed he does not give the preference in
genius and learning to the older writer.[765] Gravina is less diffusely
panegyrical; and in fact it is certain that Agustino, though a lawyer of
great erudition and intelligence, has been eclipsed by those for whom he
prepared the way.
[765] Vol. xvi. p. 148.
CHAPTER VIII.
HISTORY OF THE LITERATURE OF TASTE IN EUROPE FROM 1520 TO 1550.
SECT. I. 1520-1550.
_Poetry in Italy--In Spain and Portugal--In France and Germany--In
England--Wyatt and Surrey--Latin Poetry._
|Poetry of Bembo.|
1. The singular grace of Ariosto’s poem had not less distinguished it
than his fertility of invention and brilliancy of language. For the
Italian poetry, since the days of Petrarch, with the exception of
Lorenzo and Politian, the boasts of Florence, had been very deficient in
elegance; the sonnets and odes of the fifteenth century, even those
written near its close, by Tibaldeo, Serafino d’Aquila, Benivieni, and
other now obscure names, though the list of poets in Crescimbeni will be
found very long, are hardly mentioned by the generality of critics but
for the purpose of censure; while Boiardo, who deserved most praise for
bold and happy inventions, lost much of it through an unpolished and
inharmonious style. In the succeeding period, the faults of the Italian
school were entirely opposite; in Bembo, and those who, by their
studious and servile imitation of one great master, were called
Petrarchists, there was an elaborate sweetness, a fastidious delicacy, a
harmony of sound, which frequently served as an excuse for coldness of
imagination and poverty of thought. “As the too careful imitation of
Cicero,” says Tiraboschi, “caused Bembo to fall into an affected
elegance in his Latin style, so in his Italian poetry, while he labours
to restore the manner of Petrarch, he displays more of art than of
natural genius. Yet, by banishing the rudeness of former poetry, and
pointing out the right path, he was of no small advantage to those who
knew how to imitate his excellencies and avoid his faults.”[766]
[766] Vol. x. p. 3.
|Its beauties and defects.|
2. The chief care of Bembo was to avoid the unpolished lines which
deformed the poetry of the fifteenth century in the eyes of one so
exquisitely sensible to the charms of diction. It is from him that the
historians of Italian literature date the revival of the Petrarchan
elegance; of which a foreigner, unless conversant with the language in
all its varieties, can hardly judge, though he may perceive the want of
original conception, and the monotony of conventional phrases, which is
too frequently characteristic of the Italian sonnet. Yet the sonnets of
Bembo on the death of his Morosina, the mother of his children, display
a real tenderness not unworthy of his master; and the canzone on that of
his brother has obtained not less renown; though Tassoni, a very
fastidious critic, has ridiculed its centonism, or studious
incorporation of lines from Petrarch; a practice which the habit of
writing Latin poetry, wherein it should be sparingly employed, but not
wholly avoided, would naturally encourage.[767]
[767] Tiraboschi, ibid. Corniani, iv. 102.
|Character of Italian poetry.|
3. The number of versifiers whom Italy produced in the sixteenth century
was immensely great. Crescimbeni gives a list of eighty earlier than
1550, whom he selects from many hundred ever forgotten names. By far the
larger proportion of these confined themselves to the sonnet and the
canzone or ode; and the theme is generally love, though they sometimes
change it to religion. A conventional phraseology, an interminable
repetition of the beauties and coldness of perhaps an ideal, certainly
to us an unknown mistress, run through these productions; which so much
resemble each other, as sometimes to suggest to any one who reads the
Sceltas which bring together many extracts from these poets, no other
parallel than that of the hooting of owls in concert: a sound melancholy
and not unpleasing to all ears in its way, but monotonous,
unintellectual, and manifesting as little real sorrow or sentiment in
the bird as these compositions do in the poet.[768]
[768] Muratori himself observes the tantalising habit in which
sonnetteers indulge themselves, of threatening to die for love,
which never comes to anything; quella volgare smania che mostrano
gl’amanti di voler morire, e che tante volte s’ode in bocca loro,
ma non mai viene ad effetto.
|Alamanni.|
|Vittoria Colonna.|
4. A few exceptions may certainly be made. Alamanni, though the sonnet
is not his peculiar line of strength, and though he often follows the
track of Petrarch with almost servile imitation, could not, with his
powerful genius, but raise himself above the common level. His Lygura
Pianta, a Genoese lady, the heroine of many sonnets, is the shadow of
Laura; but when he turns to the calamities of Italy and his own, that
stern sound is heard again, that almost reminds us of Dante and Alfieri.
The Italian critics, to whom we must of course implicitly defer as to
the grace and taste of their own writers, speak well of Molza, and some
other of the smaller poets; though they are seldom exempt from the
general defects above mentioned. But none does Crescimbeni so much
extol, as a poetess, in every respect the most eminent of her sex in
Italy, the widow of the Marquis of Pescara, Vittoria Colonna, surnamed,
he says, by the public voice, the divine. The rare virtues and
consummate talents of this lady were the theme of all Italy, in that
brilliant age of her literature; and her name is familiar to the
ordinary reader at this day. The canzone dedicated to the memory of her
illustrious husband is worthy of both.[769]
[769] Crescimbeni della Volgar Poesia, vols. ii. and iii. For the
character of Vittoria Colonna, see ii. 360. Roscoe (Leo X. iii.
314) thinks her canzone on her husband in no respect inferior to
that of Bembo on his brother. It is rather by a stretch of
chronology, that this writer reckons Vittoria, Berni, and several
more, among the poets of Leo’s age.
|Satires of Ariosto and Alamanni.|
5. The satires of Ariosto, seven in number, and composed in the Horatian
manner, were published after his death in 1534. Tiraboschi places them
at the head of that class of poetry. The reader will find an analysis of
these satires, with some extracts, in Ginguéné.[770] The twelve satires
of Alamanni, one of the Florentine exiles, of which the first edition is
dated in 1532, though of earlier publication than those of Ariosto,
indicate an acquaintance with them. They are to one another as Horace
and Juvenal, and as their fortunes might lead us to expect; one gay,
easy, full of the best form of Epicurean philosophy, cheerfulness, and
content in the simpler enjoyments of life; the other ardent, scornful,
unsparing, declamatory, a hater of vice, and no great lover of mankind,
pouring forth his moral wrath in no feeble strain. We have seen in
another place his animadversions on the court of Rome; nor does anything
in Italy escape his resentment.[771] The other poems of Alamanni are of
a very miscellaneous description; eclogues, little else than close
imitations of Theocritus and Virgil, elegies, odes, hymns, psalms,
fables, tragedies, and what were called selve, a name for all unclassed
poetry.
[770] ix. 100-129. Corniani, iv. 55. In one passage of the second
satire, Ariosto assumes a tone of higher dignity than Horace
ever ventured, and inveighs against the Italian courts in the
spirit of his rival Alamanni.
[771] The following lines, which conclude the twelfth and last satire,
may serve as a specimen of Alamanni’s declamatory tone of
invective, and his bitter attacks on Rome, whom he is addressing.
O chi vedesse il ver, vedrebbe come
Più disnor tu che ’l tuo Luther Martino
Porti a te stessa, e più gravose some;
Non la Germania, nò, ma l’ocio, il vino,
Avarizia, ambition, lussuria e gola,
Ti mena al fin, che già veggiam vicino.
Non pur questo dico io, non Francia sola,
Non pur la Spagna, tutta Italia ancora
Che ti tien d’heresia, di vizi scuola.
E che nol crede, ne dimandi ogn’ora
Urbin, Ferrara, l’Orso, e la Colonna,
La Marca, il Romagnuol, ma più che plora
Per te servendo, che fù d’Altri donna.
|Alamanni.|
|Rucellai.|
|Trissino.|
6. Alamanni’s epic, or rather romantic poem, the Avarchide, is admitted
by all critics to be a work of old age, little worthy of his name. But
his poem on agriculture, la Coltivazione, has been highly extolled. A
certain degree of languor seems generally to hang on Italian blank
verse; and in didactic poetry it is not likely to be overcome. The Bees
of Rucellai is a poem written with exquisite sweetness of style; but the
critics have sometimes forgotten to mention, that it is little else than
a free translation from the fourth Georgic.[772] No one has ever
pretended to rescue from the charge of dulness and insipidity the epic
poem of the father of blank verse, Trissino, on the liberation of Italy
from the Goths by Belisarius. It is, of all long poems that are
remembered at all, the most unfortunate in its reputation.
[772] Roscoe’s Leo, iii. 351. Tiraboschi, x. 85. Algarotti, and
Corniani (v. 116), who quotes him, do not esteem the poem of
Rucellai highly.
|Berni.|
7. A very different name is that of Berni, partly known by his ludicrous
poetry, which has given that style the appellation of Poesia Bernesca,
rather on account of his excellence than originality, for nothing is so
congenial to the Italians,[773] but far more by his _rifaccimento_,
or remoulding of the poem of Boiardo. The Orlando Innamorato, an
ill-written poem, especially to Tuscan ears, had been encumbered by the
heavy continuation of Agostini. Yet if its own intrinsic beauties of
invention would not have secured it from oblivion, the vast success of
the Orlando Furioso, itself only a continuation, and borrowing most of
its characters from Boiardo’s poem, must have made it impossible for
Italians of any curiosity to neglect the primary source of so much
delight. Berni, therefore, undertook the singular office of writing over
again the Orlando Innamorato, preserving the sense of almost every
stanza, though every stanza was more or less altered, and inserting
nothing but a few introductory passages, in the manner of Ariosto, to
each canto.[774] The genius of Berni, playful, satirical, flexible, was
admirably fitted to perform this labour; the rude Lombardisms of the
lower Po gave way to the racy idiom of Florence; and the Orlando
Innamorato has descended to posterity as the work of two minds,
remarkably combined in this instance; the sole praise of invention,
circumstance, description, and very frequently that of poetical figure
and sentiment, belonging to Boiardo: that of style, in the peculiar and
limited use of the word, to Berni. The character of the poem, as thus
adorned, has sometimes been misconceived. Though Berni is almost always
sprightly, he is not, in this romance, a burlesque or buffoon poet.[775]
I once heard Foscolo prefer him to Ariosto. A foreigner, not so familiar
with the peculiarities of language, would probably think his style less
brilliant and less pellucid; and it is in execution alone that he claims
to be considered as an original poet. The Orlando Innamorato was also
remoulded by Domenichi in 1545; but the excellence of Berni has caused
this feeble production to be nearly passed over by the Italian
critics.[776]
[773] Corniani, iv. 252. Roscoe, iii. 323.
[774] The first edition of the Rifaccimento is in 1541, and the second
in 1542. In that of 1545, the first eighty-two stanzas are very
different from those that correspond in former editions; some that
follow are suspected not to be genuine. It seems that we have no
edition on which we can wholly depend. No edition of Berni appeared
from 1545 to 1725, though Domenichi was printed several times. This
reformer of Boiardo did not alter the text nearly so much as Berni.
Panizzi, vol. ii.
[775] Tiraboschi, vii. 195, censures Berni for “motti e racconti troppo
liberi ed empi, che vi ha inseriti.” Ginguéné exclaims, as well he
may, against this imputation. Berni has inserted no stories; and
unless it were the few stanzas that remain at the head of the
twentieth canto, it is hard to say what Tiraboschi meant by
impieties. But though Tiraboschi must have read Berni, he has here
chosen to copy Zeno, who talks of “il poema di Boiardo, rifatto dal
Berni, e di serio trasformato in ridicolo, e di onesto in
iscandoloso, e però giustamente dannato dallo chiesa.” (Fontanini,
p. 273). Zeno, even more surely than Tiraboschi, was perfectly
acquainted with Berni’s poem: how could he give so false a
character of it? Did he copy some older writer? And why? It seems
hard not to think that some suspicion of Berni’s bias towards
Protestantism had engendered a prejudice against his poem, which
remained when the cause had been forgotten, as it certainly was in
the days of Zeno and Tiraboschi.
[776] “The ingenuity,” says Mr. Panizzi, “with which Berni finds a
resemblance between distant objects, and the rapidity with which he
suddenly connects the most remote ideas; the solemn manner in which
he either alludes to ludicrous events or utters an absurdity; the
air of innocence and naïveté with which he presents remarks full of
shrewdness and knowledge of the world; that peculiar bonhommie with
which he seems to look kindly and at the same time unwillingly on
human errors or wickedness; the keen irony which he uses with so
much appearance of simplicity and aversion to bitterness; the
seeming singleness of heart with which he appears anxious to excuse
men and actions, at the very moment that he is most inveterate in
exposing them; these are the chief elements of Berni’s poetry. Add
to this the style, the loftiness of the verse contrasting with the
frivolity of the argument, the gravest conception expressed in the
most homely manner; the seasonable use of strange metaphors and of
similes sometimes sublime, and for this very reason the more
laughable, when considered with relation to the subject which they
are intended to illustrate, form the most remarkable features of
his style.” P. 120.
“Any candid Italian scholar who will peruse the Rifaccimento of
Berni with attention, will be compelled to admit that, although
many parts of the poem of Boiardo have been improved in that work,
such has not always been the case; and will moreover be convinced
that some parts of the Rifaccimento, besides those suspected in
former times, are evidently either not written by Berni, or have
not received from him, if they be his, such corrections as to be
worthy of their author.” P. 141. Mr. P. shows in several passages
his grounds for this suspicion.
|Spanish poets.|
|Boscan. Garcilasso.|
8. Spain now began to experience one of those revolutions in fashionable
taste, which await the political changes of nations. Her native poetry,
whether Castilian or Valencian, had characteristics of its own, that
placed it in a different region from the Italian. The short heroic,
amatory, or devotional songs, which the Peninsular dialects were
accustomed to exhibit, were too ardent, too hyperbolical for a taste
which, if not correctly classical, was at least studious of a grace not
easily compatible with extravagance. But the continual intercourse of
the Spaniards with Italy, partly subject to their sovereign, and the
scene of his wars, accustomed their nobles to relish the charms of a
sister language, less energetic, but more polished than their own. Two
poets, Boscan and Garcilasso de la Vega, brought from Italy the softer
beauties of amorous poetry, embodied in the regular sonnet, which had
hitherto been little employed in the Peninsula. These poems seem not to
have been printed till 1543, when both Boscan and Garcilasso were dead,
and their new school had already met with both support and opposition at
the court of Valladolid. The national character is not entirely lost in
these poets; love still speaks with more impetuous ardour, with more
plaintive sorrow, than in the contemporary Italians; but the restraints
of taste and reason are perceived to control his voice. An eclogue of
Garcilasso, called Salicio and Nemoroso, is pronounced by the Spanish
critics to be one of the finest works in their language. It is sadder
than the lament of saddest nightingales. We judge of all such poetry
differently in the progressive ages of life.
|Mendoza.|
9. Diego Mendoza, one of the most remarkable men for variety of talents
whom Spain has produced, ranks with Boscan and Garcilasso as a
reformer of Castilian poetry. His character as a soldier, as the severe
governor of Siena, as the haughty minister of Charles at the court of
Rome and the council at Trent, is notorious in history.[777] His
epistles, in an Horatian style, full of a masculine and elevated
philosophy, though deficient in harmony and polish, are preferred to his
sonnets; a species of composition where these faults are more
perceptible; and for which, at least in the style then popular, the
stern understanding of Mendoza seems to have been ill adapted. “Though
he composed,” says Bouterwek, “in the Italian manner with less facility
than Boscan and Garcilasso, he felt more correctly than they or any
other of his countrymen the difference between the Spanish and Italian
languages, with respect to their capabilities for versification. The
Spanish admits of none of those pleasing elisions, which, particularly
when terminating vowels are omitted, render the mechanism of Italian
versification so easy, and enable the poet to augment or diminish the
number of syllables according to his pleasure; and this difference in
the two languages renders the composition of a Spanish sonnet a
difficult task. Still more does the Spanish language seem hostile to the
soft termination of a succession of feminine rhymes, for the Spanish
poet, who adopts this rule of the Italian sonnet, is compelled to banish
from his rhymes all infinitives of verbs, together with a whole host of
sonorous substantives and adjectives. Mendoza therefore availed himself
of the use of masculine rhymes in his sonnets; but this metrical licence
was strongly censured by all partizans of the Italian style.
Nevertheless, had he given to his sonnets more of the tenderness of
Petrarch, it is probable that they would have found imitators. Some of
them, indeed, may be considered as successful productions, and
throughout all the language is correct and noble.”[778]
[777] Sadolet, in one of his epistles dated 1532 (lib. vi. p. 309 edit.
1554), gives an interesting character of Mendoza, then young, who
had visited him at Carpentras on his way to Rome; a journey
undertaken solely for the sake of learning.
[778] P. 198.
|Saa di Miranda.|
10. The lyric poems of Mendoza, written in the old national style,
tacitly improved and polished, are preferred by the Spaniards to his
other works. Many of them are printed in the Romancero General. Saa di
Miranda, though a Portuguese, has written much in Castilian, as well as
in his own language. Endowed by nature with the melancholy temperament
akin to poetic sensibility, he fell readily into the pastoral strain,
for which his own language is said to be peculiarly formed. The greater
and better part of his eclogues, however, are in Castilian. He is said
to have chosen the latter language for imagery, and his own for
reflection.[779] Of this poet, as well as of his Castilian contemporaries,
the reader will find a sufficient account in Bouterwek and Sismondi.
[779] Bouterwek, p. 240. Sismondi.
|Ribeyro.|
11. Portugal, however, produced one who did not abandon her own soft and
voluptuous dialect, Ribeyro; the first distinguished poet she could
boast. His strains are chiefly pastoral, the favourite style of his
country, and breathe that monotonous and excessive melancholy, with
which it requires some congenial emotion of our own to sympathise. A
romance of Ribeyro, Menina e Moça, is one of the earliest among the few
specimens of noble prose which we find in that language. It is said to
be full of obscure allusions to real events in the author’s life, and
cannot be read with much interest; but some have thought that it is the
prototype of the Diana of Montemayor, and the whole school of pastoral
romance, which was afterwards admired in Europe for an entire century.
We have however seen that the Arcadia of Sannazzaro has the priority;
and I am not aware that there is any specific distinction between that
romance and this of Ribeyro. It should be here observed, that Ribeyro
should perhaps have been mentioned before; his eclogues seem to have
been written and possibly published, before the death of Emanuel in
1521. The romance however was a later production.[780]
[780] Bouterwek, Hist. of Portuguese Liter., p. 24. Sismondi, iv. 280.
|French poetry.|
|Marot.|
12. The French versifiers of the age of Francis I. are not few. It does
not appear that they rise above the level of the preceding reigns, Louis
XI., Charles VIII., and Louis XII.; some of them mistaking insipid
allegory for the creations of fancy, some tamely describing the events
of their age, others, with rather more spirit, satirising the vices of
mankind, and especially of the clergy; while many, in little songs,
expressed their ideal love with more perhaps of conventional gallantry
than passion or tenderness,[781] yet with some of those light and
graceful touches which distinguish this style of French poetry.
Clément Marot ranks far higher. The psalms of Marot, though famous in
their day, are among his worst performances. His distinguishing
excellence is a naïveté, or pretended simplicity, of which it is the
highest praise to say, that it was the model of La Fontaine. This style
of humour, than which nothing is more sprightly or diverting, seems much
less indigenous among ourselves, if we may judge by our older
literature, than either among the French or Italians.
[781] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française vols. x. and xi. passim. Auguis,
Recueil des Anciens Poëtes Français, vols. ii. and iii.
|Their metrical structure.|
13. In the days of Marot, French poetry had not put on all its chains.
He does not observe the regular alternation of masculine and feminine
rhymes, nor scruple the open vowel, the suppression of a mute e before a
consonant in scanning the verse, the carrying on the sense, without a
pause, to the middle of the next line. These blemishes, as later usage
accounts them, are common to Marot with all his contemporaries. In
return, they dealt much in artificial schemes of recurring words or
lines, as the chant royal, where every stanza was to be in the same
rhyme, and to conclude with the same verse; or the rondeau, a very
popular species of metre long afterwards, wherein two or three initial
words were repeated at the refrain or close of every stanza.[782]
[782] Goujet, Bibl. Française, xi. 36. Gaillard, Vie de François I.,
vii. 20. Pasquier, Recherches de la France, l. vii. c. 5. Auguis,
vol. iii.
|German poetry.|
|Hans Sachs.|
14. The poetical and imaginative spirit of Germany, subdued as it had
long been, was never so weak as in this century. Though we cannot say
that this poverty of genius was owing to the Reformation, it is certain
that the Reformation aggravated very much in this sense the national
debasement. The controversies were so scholastic in their terms, so
sectarian in their character, so incapable of alliance with any warmth
of soul, that, so far as their influence extended, and that was to a
large part of the educated classes, they must have repressed every poet,
had such appeared, by rendering the public insensible to his
superiority. The meister-singers were sufficiently prosaic in their
original constitution; they neither produced, nor perhaps would have
suffered to exhibit itself, any real excellence in poetry. But they
became in the sixteenth century still more rigorous in their
requisitions of a mechanical conformity to rule; while at the same time
they prescribed a new code of law to the versifier, that of theological
orthodoxy. Yet one man, of more brilliant fancy and powerful feeling
than the rest, Hans Sachs, the shoemaker of Nuremberg, stands out from
the crowd of these artizans. Most conspicuous as a dramatic writer, his
copious muse was silent in no line of verse. Heinsius accounts the
bright period of Hans Sachs’s literary labours to have been from 1530 to
1538; though he wrote much both sooner and after that time. His poems of
all kinds are said to have exceeded six thousand; but not more than
one-fourth of them are in print. In this facility of composition he is
second only to Lope de Vega; and it must be presumed that, uneducated,
unread, accustomed to find his public in his own class, so wonderful a
fluency was accompanied by no polish, and only occasionally by gleams of
vigour and feeling. The German critics are divided concerning the genius
of Hans Sachs: Wieland and Goethe gave him lustre at one time by their
eulogies; but these having been as exaggerated as the contempt of a
former generation, the place of the honest and praiseworthy shoemaker
seems not likely to be fixed very high; and there has not been demand
enough for his works, which are very scarce, to encourage their
republication.[783]
[783] Heinsius, iv. 150. Bouterwek, ix. 381. Retrospective Review,
vol. x.
|German hymns.|
15. The Germans, constitutionally a devout people, were never so much so
as in this first age of protestantism. And this, in combination with
their musical temperament, displayed itself in the peculiar line of
hymns. No other nation has so much of this poetry. At the beginning of
the eighteenth century, the number of religious songs was reckoned at
33,000, and that of their authors at 500. Those of Luther have been more
known than the rest; they are hard and rude, but impressive and deep.
But this poetry, essentially restrained in its flight, could not develop
the creative powers of genius.[784]
[784] Bouterwek. Heinsius.
|Theuerdanks of Pfintzing.|
16. Among the few poems of this age none has been so celebrated as the
Theuerdanks of Melchior Pfintzing, secretary to the emperor Maximilian;
a poem at one time attributed to the master, whose praises it records,
instead of the servant. This singular work, published originally in
1517, with more ornament of printing and delineation than was usual, is
an allegory, with scarce any spirit of invention or language; wherein
the knight Theuerdanks, and his adventures in seeking the
marriage of the princess Ehrreich, represent the memorable union of
Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy. A small number of German poets
are commemorated by Bouterwek and Heinsius, superior no doubt in ability
to Pfintzing, but so obscure in our eyes, and so little extolled by
their countrymen, that we need only refer to their pages.
|English poetry. Lyndsay.|
17. In the earlier part of this period of thirty years, we can find very
little English poetry. Sir David Lyndsay, an accomplished gentleman and
scholar of Scotland, excels his contemporary Skelton in such qualities,
if not in fertility of genius. Though inferior to Dunbar in vividness of
imagination and in elegance of language, he shows a more reflecting and
philosophical mind; and certainly his satire upon James V. and his court
is more poignant than the other’s panegyric upon the Thistle. But in the
ordinary style of his versification he seems not to rise much above the
prosaic and tedious rhymers of the fifteenth century. His descriptions
are as circumstantial without selection as theirs; and his language,
partaking of a ruder dialect, is still more removed from our own. The
poems of Lyndsay were printed in 1540, and are among the very
first-fruits of the Scottish press; but one of these, the Complaint of
the Papingo, had appeared in London two years before. Lyndsay’s poetry
is said to have contributed to the Reformation in Scotland; in which,
however, he is but like many poets of his own and preceding times. The
clergy were an inexhaustible theme of bitter reproof.
|Wyatt and Surrey.|
18. “In the latter end of king Henry VIII.’s reign,” says Puttenham in
his Art of Poesie, “sprung up a new company of courtly makers, of whom
Sir Thomas Wyatt the elder, and Henry, Earl of Surrey, were the two
chieftains, who, having travailed into Italy, and there tasted the sweet
and stately measures and stile of the Italian poesie, as novices newly
crept out of the schools of Dante, Ariosto, and Petrarch, they greatly
polished our rude and homely manner of vulgar poesie, from that it had
bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers
of our English meeter and stile. In the same time or not long after was
the Lord Nicolas Vaux, a man of much facilitie in vulgar makings.”[785]
The poems of Sir John Wyatt, who died in 1544, and of the Earl of
Surrey, executed in 1547, were published in 1557, with a few by other
hands, in a scarce little book called Tottel’s Miscellanies. They were,
however, in all probability known before; and it seems necessary to
mention them in this period, as they mark an important epoch in English
literature.
[785] Puttenham, book i. ch. 31.
19. Wyatt and Surrey, for we may best name them in the order of time,
rather than of civil or poetical rank, have had recently the good
fortune to be recommended by an editor of extensive acquaintance with
literature, and of still superior taste. It will be a gratification to
read the following comparison of the two poets, which I extract the more
willingly that it is found in a publication somewhat bulky and expensive
for the mass of readers.
|Dr. Nott’s character of them.|
20. “They were men whose minds may be said to have been cast in the same
mould; for they differ only in those minuter shades of character which
always must exist in human nature; shades of difference so infinitely
varied, that there never were and never will be two persons in all
respects alike. In their love of virtue and their instinctive hatred and
contempt of vice, in their freedom from personal jealousy, in their
thirst after knowledge and intellectual improvement, in nice observation
of nature, promptitude to action, intrepidity and fondness for romantic
enterprise, in magnificence and liberality, in generous support of
others and high-spirited neglect of themselves, in constancy in
friendship, and tender susceptibility of affections of a still warmer
nature, and in everything connected with sentiment and principle, they
were one and the same; but when those qualities branch out into
particulars, they will be found in some respects to differ.
21. “Wyatt had a deeper and more accurate penetration into the
characters of men than Surrey had; hence arises the difference in their
satires. Surrey, in his satire against the citizens of London, deals
only in reproach; Wyatt, in his, abounds with irony, and those nice
touches of ridicule which make us ashamed of our faults, and therefore
often silently effect amendment.[786] Surrey’s observation of nature was
minute; but he directed it towards the works of nature in general, and
the movements of the passions, rather than to the foibles and characters
of men; hence it is that he excels in the description of rural objects,
and is always tender and pathetic. In Wyatt’s Complaint we hear a strain
of manly grief which commands attention, and we listen to it with
respect for the sake of him that suffers. Surrey’s distress is painted
in such natural terms, that we make it our own, and recognise in his
sorrows emotions which we are conscious of having felt ourselves.
[786] Wyatt’s best poem, in this style, the Epistle to John Poins, is
a very close imitation of the tenth satire of Alamanni; it is
abridged, but every thought and every verse in the English is taken
from the Italian. Dr. Nott has been aware of this; but it certainly
detracts a leaf from the laurel of Wyatt, though he has translated
well.
The lighter poems of Wyatt are more unequal than those of Surrey;
but his ode to his lute does not seem inferior to any production of
his noble competitor. The sonnet in which he intimates his secret
passion for Anne Boleyn, whom he describes under the allegory of a
doe, bearing on her collar--
Noli me tangere: I Cæsar’s am,
is remarkable for more than the poetry, though that is pleasing. It
may be doubtful whether Anne were yet queen: but in one of Wyatt’s
latest poems, he seems to allude penitentially to his passion for
her.
22. “In point of taste and perception of propriety in composition,
Surrey is more accurate and just than Wyatt; he therefore seldom either
offends with conceits, or wearies with repetition, and when he imitates
other poets, he is original as well as pleasing. In his numerous
translations from Petrarch, he is seldom inferior to his master; and he
seldom improves upon him. Wyatt is almost always below the Italian, and
frequently degrades a good thought by expressing it so that it is hardly
recognizable. Had Wyatt attempted a translation of Virgil, as Surrey
did, he would have exposed himself to unavoidable failure.”[787]
[787] Nott’s edition of Wyatt and Surrey, ii. 156.
|Perhaps rather exaggerated.|
23. To remarks so delicate in taste and so founded in knowledge, I
should not venture to add much of my own. Something, however, may
generally be admitted to modify the ardent panegyrics of an editor.
Those who, after reading this brilliant passage, should turn for the
first time to the poems either of Wyatt or of Surrey, might think the
praise too unbounded, and, in some respects perhaps, not appropriate. It
seems to be now ascertained, after sweeping away a host of foolish
legends and traditionary prejudices, that the Geraldine of Surrey, Lady
Elizabeth Fitzgerald, was a child of thirteen, for whom his passion, if
such it is to be called, began several years after his own
marriage.[788] But in fact there is more of the conventional tone of
amorous song, than of real emotion, in Surrey’s poetry. The
“Easy sighs, such as men draw in love,”
are not like the deep sorrows of Petrarch, or the fiery transports of
the Castilians.
[788] Surrey was born about 1518, married Lady Frances Vere 1535,
fell in love, if so it was, in 1541, with Geraldine, who was born
in 1528.
|Surrey improves our versification.|
24. The taste of this accomplished man is more striking than his
poetical genius. He did much for his own country and his native
language. The versification of Surrey differs very considerably from
that of his predecessors. He introduced, as Dr. Nott says, a sort of
involution into his style, which gives an air of dignity and remoteness
from common life. It was in fact borrowed from the licence of Italian
poetry, which our own idiom has rejected. He avoids pedantic words,
forcibly obtruded from the Latin, of which our earlier poets, both
English and Scots, had been ridiculously fond. The absurd epithets of
Hoccleve, Lydgate, Dunbar, and Douglas are applied equally to the most
different things, so as to show that they annexed no meaning to them.
Surrey rarely lays an unnatural stress on final syllables, merely as
such, which they would not receive in ordinary pronunciation; another
usual trick of the school of Chaucer. His words are well chosen and well
arranged.
|Introduces blank verse.|
25. Surrey is the first who introduced blank verse into our English
poetry. It has been doubted whether it had been previously employed in
Italian, save in tragedy; for the poems of Alamanni and Rucellai were
not published before many of our noble poet’s compositions had been
written. Dr. Nott, however, admits that Boscan and other Spanish poets
had used it. The translation by Surrey of the second book of the Æneid,
in blank verse, is among the chief of his productions. No one had,
before his time, known how to translate or imitate with appropriate
expression. But the structure of his verse is not very harmonious, and
the sense is rarely carried beyond the line.
|Dr. Nott’s hypothesis as to his metre.|
26. If we could rely on a theory, advanced and ably supported by his
editor, Surrey deserves the still more conspicuous praise of having
brought about a great revolution in our poetical numbers. It had been
supposed to be proved by Tyrwhitt, that Chaucer’s lines are to be read
metrically, in ten or eleven syllables, like the Italian, and, as I
apprehend, the French of his time. For this purpose, it is necessary
to presume that many terminations, now mute, were syllabically
pronounced; and where verses prove refractory after all our endeavours,
Tyrwhitt has no scruple in declaring them corrupt. It may be added, that
Gray, before the appearance of Tyrwhitt’s essay on the versification of
Chaucer, had adopted without hesitation the same hypothesis.[789] But,
according to Dr. Nott, the verses of Chaucer, and of all his successors
down to Surrey, are merely rhythmical, to be read by cadence, and
admitting of considerable variety in the number of syllables, though ten
may be the more frequent. In the manuscripts of Chaucer, the line is
always broken by a cæsura in the middle, which is pointed out by a
virgule; and this is preserved in the early editions down to that of
1532. They come near, therefore, to the short Saxon line, differing
chiefly by the alternate rhyme, which converts two verses into one. He
maintains that a great many lines of Chaucer cannot be read metrically,
though harmonious as verses of cadence. This rhythmical measure he
proceeds to show in Hoccleve, Lydgate, Hawes, Barclay, Skelton, and even
Wyatt; and thus concludes, that it was first abandoned by Surrey, in
whom it very rarely occurs.[790]
[789] Gray’s Works (edit. Mathias), ii. 1.
[790] Nott’s Dissertation, subjoined to second volume of his Wyatt
and Surrey.
27. This hypothesis, it should be observed, derives some additional
plausibility from a passage in Gascoyne’s “Notes of Instruction
concerning the making of Verse or Rhyme in English,” printed in 1575.
“Whosoever do peruse and well consider his (Chaucer’s) works, he shall
find that, although his lines are not always of one self-same number of
syllables, yet being read by one that hath understanding, the longest
verse, and that which hath most syllables in it, will fall (to the ear)
correspondent unto that which hath fewest syllables; and likewise that
which hath fewest syllables shall be found yet to consist of words that
have such natural sound, as may seem equal in length to a verse which
hath many more syllables of lighter accents.”
|But seems too extensive.|
28. A theory so ingeniously maintained, and with so much induction of
examples, has naturally gained a good deal of credit. I cannot, however,
by any means concur in the extension given to it. Pages may be read in
Chaucer, and still more in Dunbar, where every line is regularly and
harmoniously decasyllabic; and though the cæsura may perhaps fall rather
more uniformly than it does in modern verse, it would be very easy to
find exceptions, which could not acquire a rhythmical cadence by any
artifice of the reader.[791] The deviations from the normal type, or
decasyllable line, were they more numerous than, after allowance for the
licence of pronunciation, as well as the probable corruption of the
text, they appear to be, would not, I conceive, justify us in concluding
that it was disregarded. These aberrant lines are much more common in
the dramatic blank verse of the seventeenth century. They are,
doubtless, vestiges of the old rhythmical forms; and we may readily
allow that English versification had not, in the fifteenth or even
sixteenth centuries, the numerical regularity of classical or Italian
metre. In the ancient ballads, Scots and English, the substitution of
the anapæst for the iambic foot is of perpetual recurrence, and gives
them a remarkable elasticity and animation; but we never fail to
recognise a uniformity of measure, which the use of nearly equipollent
feet cannot, on the strictest metrical principles, be thought to impair.
[791] Such as these, among multitudes more:--
A lover, and a lusty bachelor.
Chaucer.
But reason, with the shield of gold so shene.
Dunbar.
The rock, again the river resplendent.
Id.
Lydgate apologises for his own lines,--
Because I know the verse therein is wrong,
As being some too short, and some too long,--
in Gray, ii. 4. This seems at once to exclude the rhythmical
system, and to account for the imperfection of the metrical.
Lydgate has perhaps on the whole more aberrations from the
decasyllable standard than Chaucer.
Puttenham, in his Art of Poesie (1586), book ii. ch. 3, 4, though
he admits the licentiousness of Chaucer, Lydgate, and other poets
in occasionally disregarding the cæsura, does not seem to doubt
that they wrote by metrical rules; which indeed is implied in the
other. Dr. Nott’s theory cannot allow a want of cæsura.
|Politeness of Wyatt and Surrey.|
29. If we compare the poetry of Wyatt and Surrey with that of Barclay or
Skelton, about thirty or forty years before, the difference must appear
wonderful. But we should not, with Dr. Nott, attribute this wholly to
superiority of genius. It is to be remembered that the later poets wrote
in a court, and in one which, besides the aristocratic manners of
chivalry, had not only imbibed a great deal of refinement from France
and Italy, but a considerable tinge of ancient literature. Their
predecessors were less educated men, and they addressed a more vulgar
class of readers. Nor was this polish of language peculiar to
Surrey and his friend. In the short poems of Lord Vaux, and of others
about the same time, even in those of Nicolas Grimoald, a lecturer at
Oxford, who was no courtier, but had acquired a classical taste, we find
a rejection of obsolete and trivial phrases, and the beginnings of what
we now call the style of our older poetry.
|Latin poetry.|
|Sannazarius.|
30. No period since the revival of letters has been so conspicuous for
Latin poetry as the present. Three names of great reputation adorn it,
Sannazarius, Vida, Fracastorius. The first of these, Sannazarius, or San
Nazaro, or Actius Sincerus, was a Neapolitan, attached to the fortunes
of the Aragonese line of kings; and following the last of their number
Frederic, after his unjust spoliation, into France, remained there till
his master’s death. Much of his poetry was written under this reign,
before 1503; but his principal work, De Partu Virginis, did not appear
till 1522. This has incurred not unjust blame for the intermixture of
classical mythology, at least in language, with the Gospel story; nor is
the latter very skilfully managed. But it would be difficult to find its
equal for purity, elegance, and harmony of versification. The
unauthorised word, the doubtful idiom, the modern turn of thought, so
common in Latin verse, scarce ever appear in Sannazarius; a pure taste
enabled him to diffuse a Virgilian hue over his language; and a just
ear, united with facility in command of words, rendered his
versification melodious and varied beyond any competitor. The Piscatory
Eclogues of Sannazarius, which are perhaps better known, deserve at
least equal praise; they seem to breathe the beauty and sweetness of
that fair bay they describe. His elegies are such as may compete with
Tibullus. If Sannazarius does not affect sublimity, he never sinks below
his aim; the sense is sometimes inferior to the style, as he is not
wholly free from conceits;[792] but it would probably be more difficult
to find cold and prosaic passages in his works than in those of any
other Latin poet in modern times.
[792] The following lines, on the constellation Taurus, are more
puerile than any I have seen in this elegant poet:
Torva bovi facies; sed qua non altera cœlo
Dignior, imbriferum quæ cornibus inchoet annum,
Nec _quæ tam claris mugitibus astra lacessat_.
|Vida.|
31. Vida of Cremona is not by any means less celebrated than Sannazarius;
his poem on the Art of Poetry, and that on the Game of Chess, were
printed in 1527; the Christiad, an epic poem, as perhaps it deserves to
be called, in 1535; and that on silk worms in 1537. Vida’s precepts are
clear and judicious, and we admire in his Game of Chess especially, and
the poem on Silk worms, the skill with which the dry rules of art, and
descriptions the most apparently irreducible to poetical conditions,
fall into his elegant and classical language. It has been observed, that
he is the first who laid down rules for imitative harmony, illustrating
them by his own example. The Christiad shows not so much, I think, of
Vida’s great talents, at least in poetical language; but the subject is
better managed than by Sannazarius. Yet, notwithstanding some brilliant
passages, among which the conclusion of the second book De Arte Poetica
is prominent, Vida appears to me far inferior to the Neapolitan poet.
His versification is often hard and spondaic, the elisions too frequent,
and the cæsura too much neglected. The language, even where the subject
best admits of it, is not so elevated as we should desire.
|Fracastorius.|
32. Fracastorius has obtained his reputation by the Syphilis, published
in 1530; and certainly, as he thought to make choice of the subject,
there is no reader but must admire the beauty and variety of his
digressions, the vigour and nobleness of his style. Once only has it
been the praise of genius, to have delivered the rules of practical art
in all the graces of the most delicious poetry, without inflation,
without obscurity, without affectation, and generally perhaps with the
precision of truth. Fracastorius, not emulous in this of the author of
the Georgics, seems to have made Manilius rather, I think, than
Lucretius, his model in the didactic portion of his poem.
|Latin verse not to be disdained.|
33. Upon a fair comparison we should not err much, in my opinion, by
deciding that Fracastorius is the greater poet, and Sannazarius the
better author of Latin verses. In the present age it is easy to
anticipate the supercilious disdain of those who believe it ridiculous
to write Latin poetry at all, because it cannot, as they imagine, be
written well. I must be content to answer, that those who do not know
when such poetry is good, should be as slow to contradict those who do,
as the ignorant in music to set themselves against competent judges. No
one pretends that Sannazarius was equal to Ariosto. But it may be truly
said, that his poetry, and a great deal more that has been written in
Latin, beyond comparison excels most of the contemporary
Italian; we may add, that its reputation has been more extended and
European.
|Other Latin poets in Italy.|
34. After this famous triumvirate, we might reckon several in different
degrees of merit. Bembo comes forward again in these lists. His Latin
poems are not numerous; that upon the lake Benacus is the best known. He
shone more however in elegiac than hexameter verse. This is a common
case in modern Latin, and might be naturally expected of Bembo, who had
more of elegance than of vigour. Castiglione has left a few poems, among
which the best is in the archaic lapidary style, on the statue of
Cleopatra in the Vatican. Molza wrote much in Latin; he is the author of
the epistle to Henry VIII., in the name of Catherine, which has been
ascribed to Joannes Secundus. It is very spirited and Ovidian. These
poets were perhaps surpassed by Naugerius and Flaminius; both, but
especially the latter, for sweetness and purity of style, to be placed
in the first rank of lyric and elegiac poets in the Latin language. In
their best passages, they fall not by any means short of Tibullus or
Catullus. Aonius Palearius, though his poem on the Immortality of the
Soul is equalled by Sadolet himself to those of Vida and Sannazarius,
seems not entitled to anything like such an eulogy. He became afterwards
suspected of Lutheranism, and lost his life on the scaffold at Rome. We
have in another place mentioned the Zodiacus Vitæ of Palingenius
Stellatus, whose true name was Manzolli. The Deliciæ Poetarum Italorum
present a crowd of inferior imitations of classical models; but I must
repeat that the volumes selected by Pope, and entitled Poemata Italorum,
are the best evidences of the beauties of these poets.
|In Germany.|
35. The cisalpine nations, though at a vast distance from Italy, cannot
be reckoned destitute, in this age, of respectable Latin poets. Of these
the best known, and perhaps upon the whole the best, is Joannes
Secundus, who found the doves of Venus in the dab-chicks of Dutch
marshes. The Basia, however, are far from being superior to his elegies,
many of which, though not correct, and often sinning by false quantity,
a fault pretty general with these early Latin poets, especially on this
side of the Alps, are generally harmonious, spirited, and elegant. Among
the Germans, Eobanus Hessus, Micyllus, professor at Heidelberg, and
Melanchthon, have obtained considerable praise.
SECT. II. 1520-1550.
_State of Dramatic Representation in Italy--Spain and
Portugal--France--Germany--England._
|Italian comedy.|
|Machiavel.|
|Aretin.|
36. We have already seen the beginnings of Italian comedy, founded in
its style, and frequently in its subjects, upon Plautus. Two of
Ariosto’s comedies have been mentioned, and two more belong to this
period. Some difference of opinion has existed with respect to their
dramatic merit. But few have hesitated to place above them the
Mandragola and Clitia of a great contemporary genius, Machiavel. The
Mandragola was probably written before 1520, but certainly in the fallen
fortunes of its author, as he intimates in the prologue. Ginguéné,
therefore, forgot his chronology, when he supposes Leo X. to have been
present, as cardinal, at its representation.[793] It seems however to
have been acted before this pope at Rome. The story of the Mandragola
which hardly bears to be told, though Ginguéné has done it, is said to
be founded on a real and recent event at Florence, one of its striking
resemblances to the Athenian comedy. It is admirable for its comic
delineations of character, the management of the plot, and the
liveliness of its idiomatic dialogue. Peter Aretin, with little of the
former qualities, and inferior in all respects to Machiavel, has enough
of humorous extravagance to amuse the reader. The licentiousness of the
Italian stage in its contempt of morality, and even, in the comedies of
Peter Aretin, its bold satire on the great, remind us rather of Athens
than of Rome; it is more the effrontery of Aristophanes than the
pleasant freedom of Plautus. But the depravity which had long been
increasing in Italy, gained in this first part of the sixteenth century
a zenith which it could not surpass, and from which it has very
gradually receded. These comedies are often very satirical on the
clergy; the bold strokes of Machiavel surprise us at present; but the
Italian stage had something like the licence of a masquerade; it was a
tacit agreement that men should laugh at things sacred within those
walls, but resume their veneration for them at the door.[794]
[793] Ginguéné, vi. 222.
[794] Besides the plays themselves, see Ginguéné, vol. vi., who gives
more than a hundred pages to the Calandra, and the comedies of
Ariosto, Machiavel, and Aretin. Many of the old comedies are
reprinted in the great Milan collection of Classici Italiani. Those
of Machiavel and Ariosto are found in most editions of their works.
|Tragedy.|
|Sperone. Cinthio.|
37. Those who attempted the serious tone of tragedy were less happy in
their model; Seneca generally represented to them the ancient buskin.
The Canace of Sperone Speroni, the Tullia of Martelli, and the Orbecche
of Giraldo Cinthio, esteemed the best of nine tragedies he has written,
are within the present period. They are all works of genius. But
Ginguéné observes how little advantage the first of these plays afforded
for dramatic effect, most of the action passing in narration. It is true
that he could hardly have avoided this without aggravating the censures
of those who, as Crescimbeni tells us, thought the subject itself unfit
for tragedy.[795] The story of the Orbecche is taken by Cinthio from a
novel of his own invention, and is remarkable for its sanguinary and
disgusting circumstances. This became the characteristic of tragedy in
the sixteenth century; not by any means peculiarly in England, as some
half-informed critics of the French school used to pretend. The
Orbecche, notwithstanding its passages in the manner of Titus
Andronicus, is in many parts an impassioned and poetical tragedy.
Riccoboni, though he censures the general poverty of style, prefers one
scene in the third act to any thing on the stage: “If one scene were
sufficient to decide the question, the Orbecche would be the finest play
in the world.”[796] Walker observes, that this is the first tragedy
wherein the prologue is separated from the play, of which, as is very
well known, it made a part on the ancient theatre. But in Cinthio, and
in other tragic writers long afterwards, the prologue continued to
explain and announce the story.[797]
[795] Della volgar Poesia, ii 391. Alfieri went still farther than
Sperone in his Mirra. Objections of a somewhat similar kind were
made to the Tullia of Martelli.
[796] Hist. du Théâtre Italian, vol. i.
[797] Walker, Essay on Italian Tragedy. Ginguéné, vi. 61, 69.
|Spanish drama.|
|Torres Naharro.|
38. Meantime, a people very celebrated in dramatic literature was
forming its national theatre. A few attempts were made in Spain to copy
the classical model. But these seem not to have gone beyond translation,
and had little effect on the public taste. Others in imitation of the
Celestina, which passed for a moral example, produced tedious scenes, by
way of mirrors, of vice and virtue, without reaching the fame of their
original. But a third class was far more popular, and ultimately put an
end to competition. The founders of this were Torres Naharro, in the
first years of Charles, and Lope de Rueda, a little later. “There is
very little doubt,” says Bouterwek, “that Torres Naharro was the real
inventor of the Spanish comedy. He not only wrote his eight comedies in
redondillas in the romance style, but he also endeavoured to establish
the dramatic interest solely on an ingenious combination of intrigues,
without attaching much importance to the development of character, or
the moral tendency of the story. It is besides probable, that he was the
first who divided plays into three acts, which, being regarded as three
days’ labour in the dramatic field, were called jornadas. It must
therefore be unreservedly admitted, that these dramas, considered both
with respect to their spirit and their form, deserve to be ranked as the
first in the history of the Spanish national drama; for in the same path
which Torres Naharro first trod, the dramatic genius of Spain advanced
to the point attained by Calderon, and the nation tolerated no dramas
except those which belonged to the style which had thus been
created.”[798]
[798] P. 285. Andrès thinks Naharro low, insipid, and unworthy of the
praise of Cervantes. v. 136.
|Lope de Rueda.|
39. Lope de Rueda, who is rather better known than his predecessor, was
at the head of a company of players, and was limited in his inventions
by the capacity of his troop and of the stage upon which they were to
appear. Cervantes calls him the great Lope de Rueda, even when a greater
Lope was before the world. “He was not,” to quote again from Bouterwek,
“inattentive to general character, as is proved by his delineation of
old men, clowns, &c., in which he was particularly successful. But his
principal aim was to interweave in his dramas a succession of intrigues;
and as he seems to have been a stranger to the art of producing stage
effect by striking situations, he made complication the great object of
his plots. Thus mistakes, arising from personal resemblances, exchanges
of children, and such like commonplace subjects of intrigue, form the
groundwork of his stories, none of which are remarkable for ingenuity of
invention. There is usually a multitude of characters in his dramas, and
jests and witticisms are freely introduced, but these in general consist
of burlesque disputes in which some clown is engaged.”[799]
[799] P. 282.
|Gil Vicente.|
40. The Portuguese Gil Vicente may perhaps compete with Torres Naharro
for the honour of leading the dramatists of the peninsula. His Autos
indeed, as has been observed, do not, so far as we can perceive, differ
from the mysteries, the religious dramas of France and England.
Bouterwek, strangely forgetful of these, seems to have assigned a
character of originality, and given a precedence, to the Spanish and
Portuguese Autos which they do not deserve. The specimen of one of these
by Gil Vicente in the History of Portuguese Literature, is far more
extravagant and less theatrical than our John Parfre’s contemporary
mystery of Candlemas Day. But a few comedies, or, as they are more
justly styled, farces, remain; one of which, mentioned by the same
author, is superior in choice and management of the fable to most of the
rude productions of that time. Its date is unknown: Gil Vicente’s
dramatic compositions of various kinds were collectively published in
1562; he had died in 1557, at a very advanced age.
41. “These works,” says Bouterwek of the dramatic productions of Gil
Vicente in general, “display a true poetic spirit, which however
accommodated itself entirely to the age of the poet, and which disdained
cultivation. The dramatic genius of Gil Vicente is equally manifest from
his power of invention, and from the natural turn and facility of his
imitative talent. Even the rudest of these dramas is tinged with a
certain degree of poetic feeling.”[800] The want of complex intrigue,
such as we find afterwards in the Castilian drama, ought not to surprise
us in these early compositions.
[800] Hist. of Portuguese Lit. p. 83-111. It would be vain to look
elsewhere for so copious an account of Gil Vicente, and very
difficult probably to find his works. See too Sismondi, Hist. de la
Litt. du Midi, iv. 448.
|Mysteries and moralities in France.|
42. We have no record of any original dramatic composition belonging to
this age in France, with the exception of mysteries and moralities,
which are very abundant. These were considered, and perhaps justly, as
types of the regular drama. “The French morality,” says an author of
that age, “represents in some degree the tragedy of the Greeks and
Romans; particularly because it treats of serious and important
subjects; and if it were contrived in French that the conclusion of the
morality should be always unfortunate, it would become a tragedy. In the
morality, we treat of noble and virtuous actions, either true, or at
least probable; and choose what makes for our instruction in life.”[801]
It is evident from this passage and the whole context, that neither
tragedy nor comedy were yet known. The circumstance is rather
remarkable, when we consider the genius of the nation, and the
politeness of the court. But from about the year 1540 we find
translations from Latin and Italian comedies into French. These probably
were not represented. Les Amours d’Erostrate, by Jacques Bourgeois,
published in 1545, is taken from the Suppositi of Ariosto. Sibilet
translated the Iphigenia of Euripedes in 1549, and Bouchetel the Hecuba
in 1550; Lazarus Baif, two plays about the same time. But a great
dramatic revolution was now prepared by the strong arm of the state. The
first theatre had been established at Paris about 1400 by the Confrairie
de la Passion de N. S., for the representation of scriptural mysteries.
This was suppressed by the parliament in 1547, on account of the scandal
which this devout buffoonery had begun to give. The company of actors
purchased next year the Hotel de la Bourgogne, and were authorised by
the parliament to represent profane subjects, “lawful and decent”
(licites et honnêtes), but enjoined to abstain from “all mysteries of
the passion, or other sacred mysteries.”[802]
[801] Sibilat, Art Poëtique (1548), apud Beauchamps, Recherches sur le
Théâtre Français, i. 82.
In the Jardin de Plaisance, an anonymous undated poem, printed at
Lyons probably before the end of the fifteenth century, we have
rules given for composing moralities. Beauchamps (p. 86) extracts
some of these; but they seem not worth copying.
[802] Beauchamps, i. 91.
|German theatre.|
|Hans Sachs.|
43. In Germany, meantime, the pride of the meister-singers, Hans Sachs,
was alone sufficient to pour forth a plenteous stream for the stage. His
works, collectively printed at Nuremberg in five folio volumes, 1578,
and reprinted in five quartos at Kempten, 1606, contain 197 dramas among
the rest. Many of his comedies in one act, called Schwanken, are coarse
satires on the times. Invention, expression, and enthusiasm, if we may
trust his admirers, are all united in Hans Sachs.[803]
[803] Hans Sachs has met with a very laudatory critic in the
Retrospective Review, x. 113, who even ventures to assert that
Goethe has imitated the old shoemaker in Faust.
The Germans had many plays in this age. Gesner says, in his
Pandectæ Universales: Germanicæ fabulæ multæ extant. Fabula decem
ætatum et Fusio stultorum Colmariæ actæ sunt. Fusio edita est 1537,
chartis quatuor. Qui volet hoc loco plures ascribat in vulgaribus
linguis, nos ad alia festinamus.
|Moralities and similar plays in England.|
44. The mysteries founded upon scriptural or legendary histories, as
well as the moralities, or allegorical dramas, which, though there might
be an intermixture of human character with abstract personification, did
not aim at that illusion which a possible fable affords, continued to
amuse the English public. Nor were they confined, as perhaps they were
before, to churches and monasteries. We find a company of players in the
establishment of Richard III. while Duke of Gloucester; and in the
subsequent reigns, especially under Henry VIII., this seems to have been
one of the luxuries of the great. The frugal Henry VII. maintained two
distinct sets of players; and his son was prodigally sumptuous in every
sort of court-exhibition, bearing the general name of revels, and
superintended by a high priest of jollity, styled the abbot of misrule.
The dramatic allegories, or moral plays, found a place among them. It
may be presumed that from their occasionality, or want of merit, far the
greater part have perished.[804] Three or four, which we may place
before 1550, are published in Hawkins’s Ancient Drama, and Dodsley’s Old
Plays; one is extant, written by Skelton, the earliest of a known
author.[805] A late writer, whose diligence seems to have almost
exhausted our early dramatic history, has retrieved the names of a few
more. The most ancient of these moral plays he traces to the reign of
Henry VI. They became gradually more complicated, and approached nearer
to a regular form. It may be observed that a line is not easily defined
between the scriptural mysteries and the legitimate drama; the choice of
the story, the succession of incidents, are those of tragedy; even the
intermixture of buffoonery belongs to all our ancient stage; and it is
only by the meanness of the sentiments and diction that we exclude the
Candlemas-Day, which is one of the most perfect of the mysteries, or
even those of the fifteenth century, from our tragic series.[806] Nor
were the moralities, such as we find them in the reign of Henry VIII.,
at a prodigious distance from the regular stage; deviations from the
original structure of these, as Mr. Collier has well observed, “by the
relinquishment of abstract for individual character, paved the way, by a
natural and easy gradation, for tragedy and comedy, the representations
of real life and manners.”[807]
[804] Collier’s Annals of the Stage, i. 34, &c.
[805] Warton, iii. 188.
[806] Candlemas-Day, a mystery, on the murder of the Innocents, is
published in Hawkins’s Early English Drama. It is by John Parffre,
and may be referred to the first years of Henry VIII.
[807] Hist. of English Dramatic Poetry, ii. 260. This I quote by its
proper title; but it is in fact the same work as the Annals of the
Stage, so far as being incorporated, and sold together, renders it
the same.
|They are turned to religious satire.|
45. The moralities were, in this age, distinguished by the constant
introduction of a witty, mischievous, and profligate character,
denominated the Vice. This seems originally to have been an allegorical
representation of what the word denotes; but the vice gradually acquired
a human individuality, in which he came very near to our well-known
Punch. The devil was generally introduced in company with the vice, and
had to endure many blows from him. But the moralities had another
striking characteristic in this period. They had always been religious,
but they now became theological. In the crisis of that great revolution
then in progress, the stage was found a ready and impartial instrument
for the old or the new faith. Luther and his wife were satirised in a
Latin morality represented at Gray’s Inn in 1529. It was easy to turn
the tables on the clergy. Sir David Lyndsay’s satire of the Three
Estatis, a direct attack upon them, was played before James V. and his
queen at Linlithgow in 1539;[808] and in 1543 an English statute was
made, prohibiting all plays and interludes, which meddle with the
interpretation of Scripture. In 1549, the council of Edward VI. put a
stop by proclamation to all kinds of stage-plays.[809]
[808] Warton, iv. 23.
[809] Collier, i. 144.
|Latin Plays.|
|First English Comedy.|
46. Great indulgence, or a strong antiquarian prejudice, is required to
discover much genius in these moralities and mysteries. There was,
however, a class of dramatic productions that appealed to a more
instructed audience. The custom of acting Latin plays prevailed in our
universities at this time, as it did long afterwards. Whether it were
older than the fifteenth century seems not to be proved; and the
presumption is certainly against it. “In an original draught,” says
Warton, “of the statutes of Trinity College at Cambridge, founded in
1456, one of the chapters is entitled, “De Præfecto ludorum qui
imperator dicitur,” under whose direction and authority Latin comedies
and tragedies are to be exhibited in the hall at Christmas.”[810] It is
probable that Christopherson’s tragedy of Jephthah, and another by
Grimoald on John the Baptist, both older than the middle of the century,
were written for academical representation. Nor was this confined to the
universities. Nicolas Udal, head master of Eton, wrote several plays in
Latin to be acted in the long nights of winter by his boys.[811] And if
we had to stop here, it might seem an unnecessary minuteness to take
notice of the diversions of schoolboys, especially as the same is
recorded of other teachers besides Udal. But there is something more in
this. Udal has lately become known in a new and more brilliant light, as
the father of English comedy. It was mentioned by Warton, but without
any comment, that Nicolas Udal wrote some English plays to be
represented by his scholars, a passage from one of which is quoted by
Wilson in his Art of Logic dedicated to Edward VI.[812] It might have
been conjectured, by the help of this quotation, that these plays were
neither of the class of moralities or mysteries, nor mere translations
from Plautus and Terence, as it would not have been unnatural at first
to suppose. Within a few years, however, the comedy from which Wilson
took his extract has been discovered. It was printed in 1565, but
probably written not later than 1540. The title of this comedy is Ralph
Roister Doister, a name uncouth enough, and from which we should expect
a very barbarous farce. But Udal, an eminent scholar, knew how to
preserve comic spirit and humour without degenerating into licentious
buffoonery. Ralph Roister Doister, in spite of its title, is a play of
some merit, though the wit may seem designed for the purpose of natural
merriment rather than critical glory. We find in it, what is of no
slight value, the earliest lively picture of London manners among the
gallants and citizens, who furnished so much for the stage down to the
civil wars. And perhaps there is no striking difference in this respect
between the dramatic manners under Henry VIII. and James I. This comedy,
for there seems no kind of reason why it should be refused that
honourable name, is much superior to Gammar Gurton’s Needle, written
twenty years afterwards, from which it has wrested a long-established
precedence in our dramatic annals.[813]
[810] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 205.
[811] Udal was not the first, if we could trust Harwood’s Alumni
Etonenses, who established an Eton theatre. Of Rightwise, who
succeeded Lily as master of St. Paul’s, it is said by him, that he
was “a most eminent grammarian, and wrote the tragedy of Dido from
Virgil, which was acted before Cardinal Wolsey with great applause
by himself and other scholars of Eton.” But as Rightwise left Eton
for King’s College in 1508, this cannot be true, at least so far as
Wolsey is concerned. It is said afterwards in the same book of one
Hallewill, who went to Cambridge in 1532, that he wrote “the
tragedy of Dido.” Which should we believe, or were there two Didos?
But Harwood’s book is not reckoned of much authority beyond the
mere records which he copied.
[812] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iii. 213.
[813] See an analysis with extracts of Ralph Roister Doister, in
Collier’s Hist. of Dram. Poetry, ii. 445-460.
SECT. III.
_Romances and Novels--Rabelais._
|Romances of chivalry.|
47. The popularity of Amadis de Gaul gave rise to a class of romances,
the delight of the multitude in the sixteenth century, though since
chiefly remembered by the ridicule and ignominy that has attached itself
to their name, those of knight-errantry. Most of these belong to Spanish
or Portuguese literature. Palmerin of Oliva, one of the earliest, was
published in 1525. Palmerin, less fortunate than his namesake of
England, did not escape the penal flame to which the barber and curate
consigned many also of his younger brethren. It has been observed by
Bouterwek that every respectable Spanish writer, as well as Cervantes,
resisted the contagion of bad taste which kept the prolix mediocrity of
these romances in fashion.[814]
|Novels.|
48. A far better style was that of the short novel, which the Italian
writers, especially Boccaccio, had rendered popular in Europe. But,
though many of these were probably written within this period of thirty
years, none of much distinction come within it, as the date of their
earliest publication, except the celebrated Belphegor of Machiavel.[815]
The amusing story of Lazarillo de Tormes was certainly written
by Mendoza in his youth. But it did not appear in print till 1586. This
is the first known specimen in Spain of the picaresque, or rogue style,
in which the adventures of the low and rather dishonest part of the
community are made to furnish amusement for the great. The Italian
novelists are by no means without earlier instances; but it became the
favourite, and almost peculiar class of novel with the Spanish writers
about the end of the century.
[814] Hist. of Spanish Literature, p. 304. Dunlop’s Hist. of Fiction,
vol. ii.
[815] I cannot make another exception for Il Pellegrino by Caviceo of
Parma, the first known edition of which, published at Venice in
1526, evidently alludes to one earlier; diligentemente in lingua
tosca corretto, e nuovamente stampato et historiato. The editor
speaks of the book as obsolete in orthography and style. It is
probably, however, not older than the last years of the fifteenth
century, being dedicated to Lucrezia Borgia. It is a very prolix
and tedious romance, in three books and two hundred and nineteen
chapters, written in a semi-poetical diffuse style, and much in the
usual manner of love stories. Ginguéné and Tiraboschi do not
mention it; the Biographie Universelle does.
Mr. Dunlop has given a short account of a French novel, entitled
Les Aventures de Lycidas et de Cleorithe, which he considers as the
earliest and best specimen of what he calls the spiritual romance,
unmixed with chivalry or allegory, iii. 51. It was written in 1529,
by Basire, archdeacon of Sens. I should suspect that there had been
some of this class already in Germany; they certainly became common
in that country afterwards.
|Rabelais.|
49. But the most celebrated, and certainly the most brilliant performance
in the path of fiction, that belongs to this age, is that of Rabelais.
Few books are less likely to obtain the praise of a rigorous critic; but
few have more the stamp of originality, or show a more redundant
fertility, always of language, and sometimes of imagination. He bears a
slight resemblance to Lucian, and a considerable one to Aristophanes.
His reading is large, but always rendered subservient to ridicule; he is
never serious in a single page, and seems to have had little other aim,
in his first two volumes, than to pour out the exuberance of his animal
gaiety. In the latter part of Pantagruel’s history, that is, the fourth
and fifth books, one published in 1552, the other, after the author’s
death, in 1561, a dislike to the church of Rome, which had been slightly
perceived in the first volumes, is not at all disguised; but the vein of
merriment becomes gradually less fertile, and weariness anticipates the
close of a work which had long amused while it disgusted us. Allusions
to particular characters are frequent, and, in general, transparent
enough with the aid of a little information about contemporaneous
history, in several parts of Rabelais; but much of what has been taken
for political and religious satire cannot, as far as I perceive, be
satisfactorily traced beyond the capricious imagination of the author.
Those who have found Montluc, the famous bishop of Valence, in Panurge,
or Antony of Bourbon, father of Henry IV., in Pantagruel, keep no
measures with chronology. Panurge is so admirably conceived, that we may
fairly reckon him original; but the germ of the character is in the
gracioso, or clown, of the extemporaneous stage; the roguish, selfish,
cowardly, cunning attendant, who became Panurge in the plastic hands of
Rabelais, and Sancho in those of Cervantes. The French critics have not
in general done justice to Rabelais, whose manner was not that of the
age of Louis XIV. The Tale of a Tub appears to me by far the closest
imitation of it, and to be conceived altogether in a kindred spirit; but
in general those who have had reading enough to rival the copiousness of
Rabelais have wanted his invention and humour, or the riotousness of his
animal spirits.
SECT. IV.
_Struggle between Latin and Italian Languages--Italian and Spanish
polite Writers--Criticism in Italy--In France and England._
|Contest of Latin and Italian languages.|
50. Among the polished writers of Italy, we meet on every side the name
of Bembo; great in Italian as well as in Latin literature, in prose as
in verse. It is now the fourth time that it occurs to us; and in no
instance has he merited more of his country. Since the fourteenth
century, to repeat what has been said before, so absorbing had become
the love of ancient learning, that the natural language, beautiful and
copious as it really was, and polished as it had been under the hands of
Boccaccio, seemed to a very false-judging pedantry scarce worthy of the
higher kinds of composition. Those too who with enthusiastic diligence
had acquired the power of writing Latin well, did not brook so much as
the equality of their native language. In an oration delivered at
Bologna in 1529 before the emperor and pope, by Romolo Amaseo, one of
the good writers of the sixteenth century, he not only pronounced a
panegyric upon the Latin tongue, but contended that the Italian should
be reserved for shops and markets, and the conversation of the
vulgar;[816] nor was this doctrine, probably in rather a less degree,
uncommon during that age. A dialogue of Sperone relates to this debated
question, whether the Latin or Italian language should be preferred; one
of the interlocutors (probably Lazaro Buonamici, an eminent scholar)
disdaining the latter as a mere corruption. It is a very ingenious
performance, well conducted on both sides, and may be read with
pleasure. The Italians of that age are as clever in criticism as they
are wearisome on the commonplaces of ethics. It purports to have been
written the year after the oration of Romolo Amaseo, to which it
alludes.
[816] Tiraboschi, x. 389.
|Influence of Bembo in this.|
51. It is an evidence of the more liberal spirit that generally
accompanies the greatest abilities, that Bembo, much superior to Amaseo
in fame as a Latin writer, should have been among the first to retrieve
the honour of his native language by infusing into it that elegance and
selection of phrase which his taste had taught him in Latin, and for
which the Italian is scarcely less adapted. In the dialogue of Sperone
quoted above, it is said that “it was the general opinion no one would
write Italian who could write Latin; a prejudice in some measure
lightened by the poem of Politian on the tournament of Julian de’
Medici, but not taken away till Bembo, a Venetian gentleman, as learned
in the ancient languages as Politian, showed that he did not disdain his
maternal tongue.”[817]
[817] P. 430. (edit. 1596).
|Apology for Latinists.|
52. It is common in the present age to show as indiscriminating a
disdain of those who wrote in Latin as they seem to have felt towards
their own literature. But the taste and imagination of Bembo are not
given to every one; and we must remember, in justice to such men as
Amaseo, who, though they imitate well, are yet but imitators in style,
that there was really scarce a book in Italian prose written with any
elegance, except the Decamerone of Boccaccio; the manner of which, as
Tiraboschi justly observes, however suitable to those sportive fictions,
was not very well adapted to serious eloquence.[818] Nor has the Italian
language, we may add, in its very best models, attained so much energy
and condensation as will satisfy the ear or the understanding of a good
Latin scholar; and there can be neither pedantry nor absurdity in
saying, that it is an inferior organ of human thought. The most valid
objection to the employment of Latin in public discourses or in moral
treatises, is its exclusion of those whose advantage we are supposed to
seek, and whose sympathy we ought to excite. But this objection, though
not much less powerful in reality than at present, struck men less
sensibly in that age, when long use of the ancient language, in which
even the sermons of the clergy were frequently delivered, had taken away
the sense of its impropriety.[819]
[818] x. 402.
[819] Sadolet himself had rather discouraged Bembo from writing Italian,
as appears from one of his epistles, thanking his friend for the
present of a book, perhaps Le Prose. Sed tu fortasse conjicis ex
eo, illa mihi non placere, quod te avocare solebam ab illis
literis. Faciebam ego id quidem, sed consilio, ut videbar, bono.
Cum enim in Latinis major multo inesset dignitas, tuque in ea
facultate princeps mihi longe viderere, non tam abstrahebam te
illinc, quam huc vocabam. Nec studium reprehendebam in illis tuum,
sed te majora quædam spectare debere arbitrabar. Epist. lib. ii. p.
55.
|Character of the controversy.|
53. This controversy points out some degree of change in public opinion,
and the first stage of that struggle against the aristocracy of
erudition, which lasted more or less for nearly two centuries, till,
like other struggles of still more importance, it ended in the victory
of the many. In the days of Poggio and Politian, the native Italian no
more claimed an equality, than the plebeians of Rome demanded the
consulship in the first years of the republic. These are the revolutions
of human opinion, bearing some analogy and parallelism to those of civil
society, which it is the business of an historian of literature to
indicate.
|Life of Bembo.|
54. The life of Bembo was spent, after the loss of his great patron Leo
X., in literary elegance at Padua. Here he formed an extensive library
and collection of medals: and here he enjoyed the society of the
learned, whom that university supplied, or who visited him from other
parts of Italy and Europe. Far below Sadolet in the solid virtues of his
character, and not probably his superior in learning, he has certainly
left a greater name, and contributed more to the literary progress of
his native country. He died at an advanced age in 1547; having a few
years before obtained a cardinal’s hat on the recommendation of
Sadolet.[820]
[820] Tiraboschi, ix. 296. Corniani, iv. 99. Sadolet. Epist. lib. xii.
p. 555.
|Character of Italian and Spanish style.|
55. The style of some other Italian and Spanish writers, Castiglione,
Sperone, Machiavel, Guevara, Oliva, has been already adverted to
when the subject of their writings was before us; and it would be
tedious to dwell upon them again in this point of view. The Italians
have been accustomed to associate almost every kind of excellence with
the word cinquecento. They extol the elegant style and fine taste of
those writers. But Andrès has remarked with no injustice, that if we
find purity, correctness, and elegance of expression in the chief prose
writers of this century, we cannot but also acknowledge an empty
prolixity of periods, a harsh involution of words and clauses, a jejune
and wearisome circuity of sentences, with a striking deficiency of
thought. “Let us admit the graces of mere language in the famous authors
of this period; but we must own them to be far from models of eloquence,
so tedious and languid as they are.”[821] The Spanish writers of the
same century, he says afterwards, nourished as well as the Italian with
the milk of antiquity, transfused the spirit and vigour of these
ancients into their own compositions, not with the servile imitation of
the others, nor seeking to arrange their phrases and round their
periods, the source of languor and emptiness, so that the best Spanish
prose is more flowing and harmonious than the contemporary Italian.[822]
[821] Andrès, vii. 68.
[822] Id. 72.
|English writers.|
|More.|
|Ascham.|
56. The French do not claim, I believe, to have produced at the middle
of the sixteenth century any prose writer of a polished or vigorous
style, Calvin excepted, the dedication of whose Institutes to Francis I.
is a model of purity and elegance for the age.[823] Sir Thomas More’s
Life of Edward V., written about 1509, appears to me the first example
of good English language; pure and perspicuous, well-chosen, without
vulgarisms or pedantry.[824] His polemical tracts are inferior, but not
ill-written. We have seen that Sir Thomas Elyot had some vigour of
style. Ascham, whose Toxophilus, or dialogue on archery, came out in
1544, does not excel him. But his works have been reprinted in modern
times, and are consequently better known than those of Elyot. The early
English writers are seldom select enough in their phrases to bear such a
critical judgment as the academicians of Italy were wont to exercise.
[823] Neufchâteau, Essai sur les Meilleurs Ouvrages dans la langue
Française, p. 135.
[8244] This has been reprinted entire in Holingshed’s Chronicle; and
the reader may find a long extract in the preface to Todd’s edition
of Johnson’s Dictionary. I should name the account of Jane Shore as
a model of elegant narration.
|Italian criticism.|
|Bembo.|
57. Next to the models of style, we may place those writings which, are
designed to form them. In all sorts of criticism, whether it confines
itself to the idioms of a single language, or rises to something like a
general principle of taste, the Italian writers had a decided priority
in order of time as well as of merit. We have already mentioned the
earliest work, that of Fortunio, on Italian grammar. Liburnio, at
Venice, in 1521, followed with his Volgari Eleganzie. But this was
speedily eclipsed by a work of Bembo, published in 1525, with the rather
singular title, Le Prose. These observations of the native language,
commenced more than twenty years before, are written in dialogue,
supposed to originate in the great controversy of that age, whether it
were worthy of a man of letters to employ his mother-tongue instead of
Latin. Bembo well defended the national cause; and by judicious
criticism on the language itself, and the best writers in it, put an end
to the most specious argument under which the advocates of Latin
sheltered themselves,--that the Italian, being a mere congeries of
independent dialects, varying not only in pronunciation and orthography,
but in their words and idioms, and having been written with unbounded
irregularity and constant adoption of vulgar phrases, could afford no
certain test of grammatical purity or graceful ornament. It was thought
necessary by Bembo to meet this objection by the choice of a single
dialect; and though a Venetian, he had no hesitation to recognise the
superiority of that spoken in Florence. The Tuscan writers of that
century proudly make use of his testimony in aid of their pretensions to
dictate the laws of Italian idiom. Varchi says, “The Italians cannot be
sufficiently thankful to Bembo, for having not only purified their
language from the rust of past ages, but given it such regularity and
clearness, that it has become what we now see.” This early work,
however, as might be expected, has not wholly escaped the censure of a
school of subtle and fastidious critics, in whom Italy became
fertile.[825]
[825] Ginguéné, vii. 390. Corniani, iv. 111.
58. Several other treatises on the Italian language appeared even before
the middle of the century; though few comparatively with the more
celebrated and elaborate labours of criticism in its latter portion.
None seem to deserve mention, unless it be the Observations of Ludovico
Dolce (Venice 1550), which were much improved in subsequent editions. Of
the higher kind of criticism which endeavours to excite and guide our
perceptions of literary excellence, we find few or no specimens, even in
Italy, within this period, except so far as the dialogues of Bembo
furnish instances.
|Grammarians and critics in France.|
59. France was not destitute of a few obscure treatises at this time,
enough to lay the foundations of her critical literature. The complex
rules of French metre were to be laid down; and the language was
irregular in pronunciation, accent, and orthography. These meaner, but
necessary, elements of correctness occupied three or four writers, of
whom Goujet has made brief mention; Sylvius, or Du Bois, who seems to
have been the earliest writer on grammar; Stephen Dolet, better known by
his unfortunate fate, than by his essay on French punctuation;[826] and
though Goujet does not name him, we may add an Englishman, Palsgrave,
who published a French grammar in English as early as 1530.[827] An
earlier production than any of these is the Art de Plaine Rhétorique, by
Peter Fabry, 1521; in which, with the help of some knowledge of Cicero,
he attempted, but with little correctness, and often in absurd
expressions, to establish the principles of oratory. If his work is no
better than Goujet represents it to be, its popularity must denote a low
condition of literature in France.[828] The first who aspired to lay
down anything like laws of taste in poetry, was Thomas Sibilet, whose
Art Poétique appeared in 1548. This is in two books; the former relating
to the metrical rules of French verse, the latter giving precepts, short
and judicious, for different kinds of composition. It is not, however, a
work of much importance.[829]
[826] Goujet, Bibliothèque Française, i. 42, 81.
[827] Biogr. Univ., Palsgrave.
[828] Goujet, i. 361.
[829] Goujet, iii. 92.
|Orthography of Meigret.|
60. A more remarkable grammarian of this time was Louis Meigret, who
endeavoured to reform orthography by adapting it to pronunciation. In a
language where these had come to differ so prodigiously as they did in
French, something of this kind would be silently effected by the
printers; but the bold scheme of Meigret went beyond their ideas of
reformation; and he complains that he could not prevail to have his
words given to the public in the form he preferred. They were ultimately
less rigid; and the new orthography appears in some grammatical
treatises of Meigret, published about 1550. It was not, as we know, very
successful; but he has credit given him for some improvements which have
been retained in French printing. Meigret’s French grammar, it has been
said, is the first that contains any rational or proper principles of
the language. It has been observed, I know not how correctly, that he
was the first who denied the name of case to those modifications of
sense in nouns which are not marked by inflexion; and the writer to whom
I am indebted for this adds, what is more worth attention, that this
limited meaning of the word case, which the modern grammars generally
adopt, is rather an arbitrary deviation from their predecessors.[830]
[830] Biogr. Univ., Meigret, a good article. Goujet, i. 83.
|Cox’s Art of Rhetoric.|
61. It would have been strange, if we could exhibit a list of English
writers on the subject of our language in the reign of Henry VIII., when
it has, at all times, been the most neglected department of our
literature. The English have ever been as indocile in acknowledging the
rules of criticism, even those which determine the most ordinary
questions of grammar, as the Italians and French have been voluntarily
obedient. Nor had they as yet drunk deep enough of classical learning to
discriminate, by any steady principle, the general beauties of
composition. Yet among the scanty rivulets that the English press
furnished, we find “The Art or Craft of Rhetoryke,” dedicated by Leonard
Cox to Hugh Faringdon, abbot of Reading. This book, which, though now
very scarce, was translated into Latin, and twice printed at Cracow in
the year 1526,[831] is the work of a schoolmaster and man of reputed
learning. The English edition has no date, but was probably published
about 1524. Cox says: “I have partly translated out of a work of
rhetoric written in the Latin tongue, and partly compiled of my own, and
so made a little treatise in manner of an introduction into this
aforesaid science, and that in the English tongue, remembering that
every good thing, after the saying of the philosopher, the more common
the better it is.” His Art of Rhetoric follows the usual distribution of
the ancients, both as to the kinds of oration and their parts; with
examples, chiefly from Roman history, to direct the choice of
arguments. It is hard to say how much may be considered as his own. The
book is in duodecimo, and contains but eighty-five pages; it would of
course be unworthy of notice in a later period.
[831] Panzer.
CHAPTER IX.
ON THE SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM
1520 to 1550.
SECT. I.
_On Mathematical and Physical Science._
|Geometrical treatises.|
1. The first translation of Euclid from the Greek text was made by
Zamberti of Venice, and appeared in 1505. It was republished at Basle in
1537. The Spherics of Theodosius and the Conics of Apollonius were
translated by men, it is said, more conversant with Greek than with
geometry. A higher praise is due to Werner of Nuremberg, the first who
aspired to restore the geometrical analysis of the ancients. The
treatise of Regiomontanus on triangles was first published in 1533. It
may be presumed that its more important contents were already known to
geometers. Montucla hints that the editor Schæner may have introduced
some algebraic solutions which appear in this work; but there seems no
reason to doubt, that Regiomontanus was sufficiently acquainted with
that science. The treatise of Vitello on optics, which belongs to the
thirteenth century, was first printed in 1533.[832]
[832] Montucla, Kästner.
|Fernel.|
|Rhœticus.|
2. Oronce Finée, with some reputation in his own times, has, according
to Montucla, no pretension to the name of a geometer; and another
Frenchman, Fernel, better known as a physician, who published a
Cosmotheoria in 1527, though he first gave the length of a degree of the
meridian, and came not far from the truth, arrived at it by so
unscientific a method, being in fact no other than counting the
revolutions of a wheel along the main road, that he cannot be reckoned
much higher.[833] These are obscure names in comparison with Joachim,
surnamed Rhœticus from his native country. After the publication of
the work of Regiomontanus on trigonometry, he conceived the project of
carrying those labours still further; and calculated the sines,
tangents, and secants, the last of which he first reduced to tables, for
every minute of the quadrant, to a radius of unity followed by fifteen
cyphers; one of the most remarkable monuments, says Montucla, of human
patience, or rather of a devotion to science, the more meritorious that
it could not be attended with much glory. But this work was not
published till 1594, and then not so complete as Rhœticus had left
it.[834]
[833] Montucla, ii. 316. Kästner, ii. 329.
[834] Montucla, i. 582. Biogr. Univ., art. Joachim Kästner, i. 561.
|Cardan and Tartaglia.|
|Cubic equations.|
3. Jerome Cardan is, as it were, the founder of the higher algebra; for,
whatever he may have borrowed from others, we derive the science from
his Ars Magna, published in 1545. It contains many valuable discoveries;
but that which has been most celebrated is the rule for the solution of
cubic equations, generally known by Cardan’s name, though he had
obtained it from a man of equal genius in algebraic science, Nicolas
Tartaglia. The original inventor appears to have been Scipio Ferreo,
who, about 1505, by some unknown process, discovered the solution of a
single case; that of _x_³ + _p_ _x_ = _q_. Ferreo imparted the secret to
one Fiore, or Floridus, who challenged Tartaglia to a public trial of
skill, not unusual in that age. Before he heard of this, Tartaglia, as
he assures us himself, had found out the solution of two other forms of
cubic equation; _x_³ + _p_ _x_² = _q_; and _x_³ - _p_ _x_² = _q_. When
the day of trial arrived, Tartaglia was able not only to solve the
problems offered by Fiore, but to baffle him entirely by others which
resulted in the forms of equation, the solution of which had been
discovered by himself. This was in 1535; and four years afterwards
Cardan obtained the secret from Tartaglia under an oath of secrecy. In
his Ars Magna, he did not hesitate to violate this engagement; and
though he gave Tartaglia the credit of the discovery, revealed the
process to the world.[835] He has said himself, that by the help of
Ferrari, a very good mathematician, he extended his rule to some cases
not comprehended in that of Tartaglia; but the best historian of early
algebra seems not to allow this claim.[836]
[835] Playfair, in his second dissertation in the Encyclopædia
Britannica, though he cannot but condemn Cardan, seems to think
Tartaglia rightly treated for having concealed his discovery; and
others have echoed this strain. Tartaglia himself says in a passage
I have read in Cossali, that he meant to have divulged it
ultimately; but in that age money as well as credit was to be got
by keeping the secret; and those who censure him wholly forget,
that the solution of cubic equations was, in the actual state of
algebra, perfectly devoid of any utility to the world.
[836] Cossali, Storia Critica d’Algebra (1797), ii. 96, &c. Hutton’s
Mathematical Dictionary-Montucla, i. 591. Kästner, i. 152.
|Beauty of the discovery.|
4. This writer, Cossali, has ingeniously attempted to trace the process
by which Tartaglia arrived at this discovery;[837] one which, when
compared with the other leading rules of algebra, where the invention,
however useful, has generally lain much nearer the surface, seems an
astonishing effort of sagacity. Even Harriott’s beautiful generalisation
of the composition of equations was prepared by what Cardan and Vieta
had done before, or might have been suggested by observation in the less
complex cases.[838]
[837] Ibid. p. 145. Tartaglia boasts of having discovered that the cube
of _p_ + _q_ = _p_³ + _p_² _q_ + _p_ _q_² + _q_³. Such was the
ignorance of literal algebra; yet in this state of the science he
solved cubic equations.
[838] Cardan strongly expresses his sense of this recondite discovery.
And as the passage in which he retraces the early progress of
algebra is short, and is quoted from Cardan’s works, which are
scarce in England, by Kästner, who is himself not very commonly
known here, I shall transcribe the whole passage, as a curiosity
for our philomaths. Hæc ars olim a Mahomete Mosis Arabis filio
initium sumpsit. Etenim hujus rei locuples testis Leonardus
Pisanus. Reliquit autem capitula quatuor, cum suis demonstrationibus
quas nos locis suis ascribemus. Post multa vero temporum intervalla
tria capitula derivativa addita illis sunt, incerto autore, quæ
tamen cum principalibus a Luca Paciolo posita sunt. Demum etiam ex
primis, alia tria derivativa, a quodam ignoto viro inventa legi,
hæc tamen minimè in lucem prodierant, cum essent aliis longe
utiliora, nam cubi et numeri et cubi quadrati æstimationem
docebant. Verum temporibus nostris Scipio Ferreus Bononiensis,
capitulum cubi et rerum numero æqualium [_x_³ + _p_ _x_ = _q_]
invenit, rem sane pulchram et admirabilem: _cum omnem humanam
subtilitatem, omnis ingenii mortalis claritatem ars hæc superet,
donum profecto cœleste, experimentum autem virtutis animorum, atque
adeo illustre, ut qui hæc attigerit nihil non intelligere posse se
credat_. Hujus æmulatione Nicolaus Tartalea Brixellensis, amicus
noster, cum in certamen cum illius discipulo Antonio Maria Florido
venisset, capitulum idem ne vinceretur invenit, qui mihi ipsum
multis precibus exoratus tradidit. Deceptus enim ego verbis Lucæ
Pacioli, qui ultra sua capitula generale ullum aliud esse posse
negat (quanquam tot jam antea rebus a me inventis sub manibus
esset, desperabam) tamen [et?] invenire _q._ quærere non audebam.
[sic, sed perperam nonnihil scribi liquet]. Inde autem illo habito
demonstrationem venatus, intellexi complura alia posse haberi. Ac
eo studio, auctaque jam confidentia, per me partim, ac etiam aliqua
per Ludovicum Ferrarium, olim alumnum nostrum, inveni. Porro quæ ab
his inventa sunt, illorum nominibus decorabuntur, cætera quæ nomine
carent nostra sunt. At etiam demonstrationes, præter tres
Mahometis, et duas Ludovici, omnes nostræ sunt, singulæque
capitibus suis præponentur, inde regula addita, subjicietur
experimentum. Kästner, p. 152. The passage in Italics is also
quoted by Cossali, p. 159.
|Cardan’s other discoveries.|
5. Cardan, though not entitled to the honour of this discovery, nor even
equal, perhaps, in mathematical genius to Tartaglia, made a great epoch
in the science of algebra; and, according to Cossali and Hutton, has a
claim to much that Montucla has unfairly or carelessly attributed to his
favourite Vieta. “It appears,” says Dr. Hutton, “from this short chapter
(lib. x. cap. 1. of the Ars Magna), that he had discovered most of the
principal properties of the roots of equations, and could point out the
number and nature of the roots, partly from the signs of the terms, and
partly from the magnitudes and relations of the coefficients.” Cossali
has given the larger part of a quarto volume to the algebra of Cardan;
his object being to establish the priority of the Italian’s claim to
most of the discoveries ascribed by Montucla to others, and especially
to Vieta. Cardan knew how to transform a complete cubic equation into
one wanting the second term; one of the flowers which Montucla has
placed on the head of Vieta; and this he explains so fully, that Cossali
charges the French historian of mathematics with having never read the
Ars Magna.[839] Leonard of Pisa had been aware that quadratic equations
might have two positive roots; but Cardan first perceived, or at least
first noticed, the negative roots, which he calls “fictæ radices.”[840]
In this perhaps there is nothing extraordinary; the algebraic language
must early have been perceived by such acute men as exercised themselves
in problems to give a double solution of every quadratic equation; but,
in fact, the conditions of these problems, being always numerical, were
such as to render a negative result practically false, and impertinent
to the solution. It is therefore, perhaps, without much cause that
Cossali triumphs in the ignorance shown of negative values by Vieta,
Bachet, and even Harriott, though Cardan had pointed them out;[841]
since we may better say, that they did not trouble themselves with what,
in the actual application of algebra, could be of no utility. Cardan
also discovered that every cubic equation has one or three real roots;
and that there are as many positive or true roots as changes of signs in
the equation; that the coefficient of the second term is equal to the
sum of the roots, so that where it is wanting, the positive and negative
values must compensate each other;[842] and that the known term is the
product of all the roots. Nor was he ignorant of a method of extracting
roots by approximation; but in this again the definiteness of solution,
which numerical problems admit and require, would prevent any great
progress from being made.[843] The rules are not perhaps all laid down
by him very clearly; and it is to be observed that he confined himself
chiefly to equations not above the third power; though he first
published the method of solving biquadratics, invented by his coadjutor
Ferrari. Cossali has also shown that the application of algebra to
geometry, and even to the geometrical construction of problems, was
known in some cases by Tartaglia and Cardan; thus plucking another
feather from the wing of Vieta, or of Descartes. It is a little amusing
to see that, after Montucla had laboured with so much success to despoil
Harriott of the glory which Wallis had, perhaps with too national a
feeling, bestowed upon him for a long list of discoveries contained in
the writings of Vieta, a claimant by an older title started up in Jerome
Cardan, who, by help of his very accomplished advocate, seems to have
established his right at the expense of both.
[839] P. 164.
[840] Montucla gives Cardan the credit due for this; at least in his
second edition (1799), p. 595.
[841] i. 23.
[842] It must, apparently, have been through his knowledge of this
property of the coefficient of the second term, that Cardan
recognised the existence of equal roots, even when affected by the
same sign (Cossali, ii. 362); which, considered in relation to the
numerical problems then in use, would seem a kind of absurdity.
[843] Kästner, p. 161. In one place Cossali shows, that Cardan had
transported all the quantities of an equation on one side, making
the whole equal to zero; which Wallis has ascribed to Harriott, as
his leading discovery, p. 324. Yet in another passage we find
Cossali saying: una somma di quantità uguale al zero avea un’aria
mostruosa, e non sapeasi di equazion si fatta concepire idea, p.
159.
|Imperfections of algebraic language.|
6. These anticipations of Cardan are the more truly wonderful, when we
consider that the symbolical language of algebra, that powerful
instrument not only in expediting the processes of thought, but in
suggesting general truths to the mind, was nearly unknown in his age.
Diophantus, Fra Luca, and Cardan make use occasionally of letters to
express indefinite quantities, besides the _res_ or _cosa_,
sometimes written shortly, for the assumed unknown number, of an
equation. But letters were not yet substituted for known quantities; and
it has been seen in a note, that Tartaglia first discovered, and that by
a geometrical construction, what appears so very simple as the equation
between the cube of a line and that of any two parts into which it may
be divided. Michael Stifel, in his Arithmetica Integra, Nuremberg, 1544,
is said to have first used the signs + and -, and numeral exponents of
powers.[844] It is very singular that discoveries of the greatest
convenience, and not above the ingenuity of a parish schoolmaster,
should have been overlooked by men of extraordinary acuteness, like
Tartaglia, Cardan, and Ferrari, and hardly less so, that by dint of this
acuteness, they dispensed with the aid of these contrivances in which we
almost fancy the utility of algebraic expression consists.
[844] Hutton, Kästner.
|Copernicus.|
7. But the great boast of science during this period is the treatise of
Copernicus on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in six books,
published at Nuremberg, in 1543.[845] This founder of modern astronomy
was born at Thorn, of a good family, in 1473; and after receiving the
best education his country furnished, spent some years in Italy,
rendering himself master of all the mathematical and astronomical
science at that time attainable. He became possessed afterwards
of an ecclesiastical benefice in his own country. It appears to have
been about 1507, that after meditating on various schemes besides the
Ptolemaic, he began to adopt and confirm in writing that of Pythagoras,
as alone capable of explaining the planetary motions with that
simplicity which gives a presumption of truth in the works of
nature.[846] Many years of exact observation confirmed his mind in the
persuasion that he had solved the grandest problem which can occupy the
astronomer. He seems to have completed his treatise about 1530; but
perhaps dreaded the bigoted prejudices which afterwards oppressed
Galileo. Hence he is careful to propound his theory as an hypothesis;
though it is sufficiently manifest that he did not doubt of its truth.
It was first publicly announced by his disciple Joachim Rhœticus,
already mentioned for his trigonometry, in the Narratio de Revolutionibus
Copernici, printed at Dantzic, in 1540. The treatise of Copernicus
himself, three years afterwards, is dedicated to the pope, Paul III., as
if to shield himself under that sacred mantle. But he was better
protected by the common safeguard against oppression. The book reached
him on the day of his death; and he just touched with his hands the
great legacy he was to bequeath to mankind. But many years were to
elapse before they availed themselves of the wisdom of Copernicus. The
progress of his system, even among astronomers, as we shall hereafter
see, was exceedingly slow.[847] We may just mention here, that no kind
of progress was made in mechanical or optical science during the first
part of the sixteenth century.
[845] The title-page and advertisement of so famous a work, and which
so few of my readers will have seen, are worth copying from
Kästner, ii. 595. Nicolai Copernici Torinensis, de Revolutionibus
Orbium Cœlestium, libri vi.
Habes in hoc opere jam recens nato et edito, studiose lector, motus
stellarum tam fixarum quam erraticarum, cum ex veteribus tum etiam
ex recentibus observationibus restitutos; et novis insuper ac
admirabilibus hypothesibus ornatos. Habes etiam tabulas
expeditissimas, ex quibus eosdem ad quodvis tempus quam facillime
calculare poteris. Igitur eme lege, fruere. Αγεωμετρητος ουδεις
εισιτω [Ageômetrêtos oudeis eisitô]. Noribergæ, apud Joh. Petreium,
anno MDxliii.
[846] This is the proper statement of the Copernican argument, as it
then stood; it rested on what we may call a metaphysical
probability, founded upon its beauty and simplicity; for it is to
be remembered that the Ptolemaic hypothesis explained all the
phenomena then known. Those which are only to be solved by the
supposition of the earth’s motion were discovered long afterwards.
This excuses the slow reception of the new system, interfering as
it did with so many prejudices, and incapable of that kind of proof
which mankind generally demand.
[847] Gassendi, Vita Copernici. Biogr. Univ. Montucla. Kästner.
Playfair. Gassendi, p. 14-22, gives a short analysis of the great
work of Copernicus, de orbium Cœlestium Revolutionibus, p. 22. The
hypothesis is generally laid down in the first of the six books.
One of the most remarkable passages in Copernicus is his conjecture
that gravitation was not a central tendency, as had been supposed,
but an attraction common to matter, and probably extending to the
heavenly bodies, though it does not appear that he surmised their
mutual influences in virtue of it: gravitatem esse affectionem non
terræ totius, sed partium ejus propriam, qualem soli etiam et lunæ
cæterisque astris convenire credibile est. These are the words of
Copernicus himself, quoted by Gassendi, p. 19.
SECT. II.
_On Medicine and Anatomy._
|Revival of Greek medicine.|
8. The revival of classical literature had an extensive influence where
we might not immediately anticipate it, on the science of medicine.
Jurisprudence itself, though nominally and exclusively connected with
the laws of Rome, was hardly more indebted to the restorers of ancient
learning than the art of healing, which seems to own no mistress but
nature, no code of laws but those which regulate the human system. But
the Greeks, among their other vast superiorities above the Arabians, who
borrowed so much, and so much perverted what they borrowed, were not
only the real founders, but the best teachers of medicine; a science
which in their hands seems, more than any other, to have anticipated the
Baconian philosophy; being founded on an induction proceeding by select
experience, always observant, always cautious, and ascending slowly to
the generalities of theory. But instead of Hippocrates and Galen, the
Arabians brought in physicians of their own, men doubtless of
considerable, though inferior merit, and substituted arbitrary or
empirical precepts for the enlarged philosophy of the Greeks. The
scholastic subtilty also obtruded itself even into medicine; and the
writings of the middle ages on these subjects are alike barbarous in
style and useless in substance. Pharmacy owes much to this oriental
school, but it has retained no reputation in physiological or
pathological science.
|Linacre and other physicians.|
9. Nicolas Leonicenus, who became professor at Ferrara before 1470, was
the first restorer of the Hippocratic method of practice. He lived to a
very advanced age, and was the first translator of Galen from the
Greek.[848] Our excellent countryman, Linacre, did almost as much for
medicine. The College of Physicians, founded by Henry VIII. in 1518,
venerates him as its original president. His primary object was to
secure a learned profession, to rescue the art of healing from
mischievous ignorance, and to guide the industrious student in
the path of real knowledge, which at that time lay far more through the
regions of ancient learning than at present. It was important not for
the mere dignity of the profession, but for its proper ends, to
encourage the cultivation of the Greek language, or to supply its want
by accurate versions of the chief medical writers.[849] Linacre himself,
and several eminent physicians on the continent, Cop, Ruel, Gonthier,
Fuchs, by such labours in translation, restored the school of
Hippocrates. That of the Arabians rapidly lost ground, though it
preserved through the sixteenth century an ascendancy in Spain; and some
traces of its influence, especially the precarious empiricism of judging
diseases by the renal secretion, without sight of the patient, which was
very general in that age, continued long afterwards in several parts of
Europe.[850]
[848] Biogr. Univ. Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine (traduit par
Jourdan), vol. ii.
[849] Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 207, 279. Biogr. Britann.
[850] Sprengel, vol. iii. passim.
|Medical innovators.|
|Paracelsus.|
10. The study of Hippocrates taught the medical writers of this century
to observe and describe like him. Their works, chiefly indeed after the
period with which we are immediately concerned, are very numerous, and
some of them deserve much praise, though neither the theory of the
science, nor the power of judiciously observing and describing, was yet
in a very advanced state. The besetting sin of all who should have
laboured for truth, an undue respect for authority, made Hippocrates and
Galen, especially the former, as much the idols of the medical world, as
Augustin and Aristotle were of theology and metaphysics. This led to a
pedantic erudition, and contempt of opposite experience, which rendered
the professors of medicine an inexhaustible theme of popular ridicule.
Some, however, even at an early time, broke away from the trammels of
implicit obedience to the Greek masters. Fernel, one of the first
physicians in France, rejecting what he could not approve in their
writings, gave an example of free inquiry. Argentier of Turin tended to
shake the influence of Galen by founding a school which combated many of
his leading theories.[851] But the most successful opponent of the
orthodox creed was Paracelsus. Of his speculative philosophy, or rather
the wild chimæras which he borrowed or devised, enough has been said in
former pages. His reputation was originally founded on a supposed skill
in medicine; and it is probable that, independently of his real merit in
the application of chemistry to medicine, and in the employment of very
powerful agents, such as antimony, the fanaticism of his pretended
philosophy would exercise that potency over the bodily frame, to which
disease has, in recent experience, so often yielded.[852]
[851] Sprengel, iii. 204. “Argentier,” he says, “was the first to lay
down a novel and true principle, that the different faculties of
the soul are not inherent in certain distinct parts of the brain.”
[852] Sprengel, vol. iii.
|Anatomy.|
|Berenger.|
11. The first important advances in anatomical knowledge since the time
of Mundinus were made by Berenger of Carpi, in his commentary upon that
author, printed at Bologna in 1521, which it was thought worth while to
translate into English as late as 1664, and in his Isagogæ Breves in
Anatomiam, Bologna, 1522. He followed the steps of Mundinus in human
dissection, and thus gained an advantage over Galen. Hence we owe to him
the knowledge of several specific differences between the human
structure and that of quadrupeds. Berenger is asserted to have
discovered two of the small bones of the ear, though this is contested
on behalf of Achillini. Portal observes, that though some have regarded
Berenger as the restorer of the science of anatomy, it is hard to strip
one so much superior to him as Vesalius of that honour.[853]
[853] Hist. de l’Anatomie, i. 277. Portal remarks in his preface,
p. xii, that many discoveries supposed to be modern may be detected
in the old anatomists; thus Berenger knew that the thorax is larger
in man, and the pelvis in woman, which a living anatomist, he says,
has assumed as his own. But the Greek sculptors surely knew this as
well as Berenger or Portal.
|Vesalius.|
12. Every early anatomist was left far behind when Vesalius, a native of
Brussels, who acquired in early youth an extraordinary reputation on
this side of the Alps, and in 1540 became professor of the science at
Pavia, published at Basle, in 1543, his great work De Corporis Humani
Fabrica. If Vesalius was not quite to anatomy what Copernicus was to
astronomy, he has yet been said, a little hyperbolically, to have
discovered a new world. A superstitious prejudice against human
dissection had restrained the ancient anatomists in general to pigs and
apes, though Galen, according to Portal, had some experience in the
former. Mundinus and Berenger, by occasionally dissecting the
human body, had thrown much additional light on its structure; and the
superficial muscles, those immediately under the integuments, had been
studied by Da Vinci and others for the purposes of painting and
sculpture. Vesalius first gave a complete description of the human body,
with designs which, at the time, were ascribed to Titian. We have here
therefore a great step made in science; the precise estimation of
Vesalius’s discoveries must be sought, of course, in anatomical
history.[854]
[854] Portal p. 394-433.
|Portal’s account of him.|
13. “Vesalius,” says Portal, in the rapturous strain of one devoted to
his own science, “appears to me one of the greatest men who ever
existed. Let the astronomers vaunt their Copernicus, the natural
philosophers their Galileo and Torricelli, the mathematicians their
Pascal, the geographers their Columbus, I shall always place Vesalius
above all their heroes. The first study for man is man. Vesalius has had
this noble object in view, and has admirably attained it, he has made on
himself and his fellows such discoveries as Columbus could only make by
travelling to the extremity of the world. The discoveries of Vesalius
are of direct importance to man; by acquiring fresh knowledge of his own
structure, man seems to enlarge his existence; while discoveries in
geography or astronomy affect him but in a very indirect manner.” He
proceeds to compare him with Winslow, in order to show how little had
been done in the intermediate time. Vesalius seems not to have known the
osteology of the ear. His account of the teeth is not complete; but he
first clearly described the bones of the feet. He has given a full
account of the muscles, but with some mistakes, and was ignorant of a
very few. In his account of the sanguineous and nervous systems, the
errors seem more numerous. He describes the intestines better than his
predecessors, and the heart very well; the organs of generation not
better than they, and sometimes omits their discoveries; the brain
admirably, little having since been added.
|His human dissections.|
14. The zeal of Vesalius and his fellow-students for anatomical science
led them to strange scenes of adventure. Those services, which have
since been thrown on the refuse of mankind, they voluntarily undertook.
Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.
They prowled by night in charnel-houses, they dug up the dead from the
grave, they climbed the gibbet, in fear and silence, to steal the
mouldering carcase of the murderer; the risk of ignominious punishment,
and the secret stings of superstitious remorse, exalting no doubt the
delight of these useful, but not very enviable pursuits.[855]
[855] Portal, p. 395.
|Fate of Vesalius.|
15. It may be mentioned here, that Vesalius, after living for some years
in the court of Charles and Philip as their physician, met with a
strange reverse, characteristic enough of such a place. Being absurdly
accused of having dissected a Spanish gentleman before he was dead,
Vesalius only escaped capital punishment, at the instance of the
inquisition, by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he
was shipwrecked, and died of famine in one of the Greek islands.[856]
[856] Portal, Tiraboschi, ix. 34. Biogr. Univ.
|Other anatomists.|
16. The best anatomists were found in Italy. But Francis I. invited one
of these, Vidus Vidius, to his royal college at Paris; and from that
time France had several of respectable name. Such were Charles Etienne,
one of the great typographical family, Sylvius, and Gonthier.[857] A
French writer about 1540, Levasseur, appears to have known, at least,
the circulation of the blood through the lungs, as well as the valves of
the arteries and veins, and their direction, and its purpose; treading
closely on an anticipation of Harvey.[858] Portal has erroneously
supposed the celebrated passage of Servetus on the circulation of the
blood to be contained in his book de Trinitatis Erroribus, published in
1531,[859] whereas it is really found in the Christianismi Restitutio,
which did not appear till 1553. This gives Levasseur a priority of some
importance in anatomical history.
[857] Portal, i. 330 et post.
[858] Portal p. 373, quotes the passage, which seems to warrant this
inference, but is rather obscurely worded. It contains, to my
apprehension, a much nearer approximation to the theory of a
general circulation than the more famous passage in Servetus; in
which I can only perceive an acquaintance with that through the
lungs.
[859] P. 300.
|Imperfection of the science.|
17. The practice of trusting to animal dissection, from which it was
difficult for anatomists to extricate themselves, led some men of real
merit into errors. They seem also not to have profited sufficiently by
the writings of their predecessors. Massa of Venice, one of the greatest
of this age, is ignorant of some things known to Berenger. Many
proofs occur in Portal, how imperfectly the elder anatomists could yet
demonstrate the more delicate parts of the human body.
SECT. III.
_On Natural History._
|Botany.|
|Botanical gardens.|
18. The progress of natural history, in all its departments, was very
slow, and should of course be estimated by the additions made to the
valuable materials collected by Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides,
and Pliny. The few botanical treatises that had appeared before this
time were too meagre and imperfect to require mention. Otto Brunfels of
Strasburg was the first who published, in 1530, a superior work,
Herbarum Vivæ Eicones in three volumes folio, with 238 wooden cuts of
plants.[860] Euricius Cordus of Marburg, in his Botanilogicon, or
dialogues on plants, displays, according to the Biographie Universelle,
but little knowledge of Greek, and still less observation of nature.
Cordus has deserved more praise (though this seems better due to Lorenzo
de’ Medici), as the first who established a botanical garden. This was
at Marburg, in 1530.[861] But the fortunes of private physicians were
hardly equal to the cost of an useful collection. The university of Pisa
led the way by establishing a public garden in 1545, according to the
date which Tiraboschi has determined. That of Padua had founded a
professorship of botany in 1533.[862]
[860] Biogr. Univ.
[861] Biogr. Univ. Andrès, xiii. 80. Eichhorn, iii. 304. See too
Roscoe’s Leo. X., iv. 125, for some pleasing notices of the
early studies in natural history. Pontanus was fond of it; and his
poem on the cultivation of the lemon, orange, and citron (de Hortis
Hesperidum) shows an acquaintance with some of the operations of
horticulture. The garden of Bembo was also celebrated. Theophrastus
and Dioscorides were published in Latin before 1500. But it was not
till about the middle of the sixteenth century that botany, through
the commentaries of Matthioli on Dioscorides, began to assume a
distinct form, and to be studied as a separate branch.
[862] ix. 10.
|Ruel.|
19. Ruel, a physician of Soissons, an excellent Greek scholar, had
become known by a translation of Dioscorides in 1516, upon which Huet
has bestowed high praise. His more celebrated treatise de Natura
Stirpium appeared at Paris in 1536, and is one of the handsomest
offsprings of that press. It is a compilation from the Greek and Latin
authors on botany, made with taste and judgment. His knowledge, however,
derived from experience, was not considerable, though he has sometimes
given the French names of species described by the Greeks, so far as his
limited means of observation and the difference of climate enabled him.
Many later writers have borrowed from Ruel their general definitions and
descriptions of plants, which he himself took from Theophrastus.[863]
[863] Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars.)
|Fuchs.|
20. Ruel, however, seems to have been left far behind by Leonard Fuchs,
professor of medicine in more than one German university, who has
secured a verdant immortality in the well-known Fuchsia. Besides many
works on his own art, esteemed in their time, he published at Basle in
1542 his Commentaries on the History of Plants, containing above 500
figures, a botanical treatise frequently reprinted, and translated into
most European languages. “Considered as a naturalist, and especially as
a botanist, Fuchs holds a distinguished place, and he has thrown a
strong light on that science. His chief object is to describe exactly
the plants used in medicine; and his prints, though mere outlines, are
generally faithful. He shows that the plants and vegetable products
mentioned by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Hippocrates, and Galen had
hitherto been ill known.”[864]
[864] Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars.)
|Matthioli.|
21. Matthioli, an Italian physician, in a peaceful retreat near Trent,
accomplished a laborious repertory of medical botany in his Commentaries
on Dioscorides, published originally, 1544, in Italian, but translated
by himself into Latin, and frequently reprinted throughout Europe.
Notwithstanding a bad arrangement, and the author’s proneness to
credulity, it was of great service at a time when no good work on that
subject was in existence in Italy; and its reputation seems to have been
not only general, but of long duration.[865]
[865] Tiraboschi, ix. 2. Andrès, xiii. 85. Corniani, vi. 5.
|Low state of zoology.|
22. It was not singular that much should have been published, imperfect
as it might be, on the natural history of plants, while that of animal
nature, as a matter of science, lay almost neglected. The importance of
vegetable products in medicine was far more extensive and various; while
the ancient treatises, which formed substantially the chief knowledge of
nature possessed in the sixteenth century, are more copious and minute
on the botanical than the animated kingdom. Hence we find an absolute
dearth of books relating to zoology. P. Jovius de Piscibus Romania is
rather the work of a philologer and a lover of good cheer than a
naturalist, and treats only of the fish eaten at the Roman tables.[866]
Gillius de Vi et Natura Animalium is little else than a compilation from
Ælian and other ancient authors, though Niceron says that the author has
interspersed some observations of his own.[867] No work of the least
importance, even for that time, can perhaps be traced in Europe on any
part of zoology, before the Avium præcipuarum Historia of our countryman
Turner, published at Cologne in 1548, though this is confined to species
described by the ancients. Gesner, in his Pandects, which bear date in
the same year, several times refers to it with commendation.[868]
[866] Andrès, xiii. 143. Roscoe’s Leo X. ubi suprà.
[867] Vol. xxili Biogr. Univ. Andrès, xiii. 144.
[868] Pandect. Univers., lib. 14. Gesner may be said to make great use
of Turner; a high compliment from so illustrious a naturalist. He
quotes also a book on quadrupeds lately printed in German by
Michael Herr. Turner, whom we shall find again as a naturalist,
became afterwards dean of Wells, and was one of the early puritans.
See Chalmers’s Dictionary.
|Agricola.|
23. Agricola, a native of Saxony, acquired a perfect knowledge of the
processes of metallurgy from the miners of Chemnitz, and perceived the
immense resources that might be drawn from the abysses of the earth. “He
is the first mineralogist,” says Cuvier, “who appeared after the revival
of science in Europe. He was to mineralogy what Gesner was to zoology;
the chemical part of metallurgy, and especially what relates to
assaying, is treated with great care, and has been little improved down
to the end of the eighteenth century.” It is plain that he was
acquainted with the classics, the Greek alchemists, and many
manuscripts. Yet he believed in the goblins, to whom miners ascribe the
effects of mephitic exhalations.[869]
[869] Biogr. Univ.
SECT. IV.
_On Oriental Literature._
|Hebrew.|
|Elias Levita.|
|Pellican.|
24. The study of Hebrew was naturally one of those which flourished best
under the influence of protestantism. It was exclusively connected with
scriptural interpretation; and could neither suit the polished
irreligion of the Italians, nor the bigotry of those who owned no other
standard than the Vulgate translation. Sperone observes in one of his
dialogues, that as much as Latin is prized in Italy, so much do the
Germans value the Hebrew language.[870] We have anticipated in another
place the translations of the Old Testament by Luther, Pagninus, and
other Hebraists of this age. Sebastian Munster published the first
grammar and lexicon of the Chaldee dialect in 1527. His Hebrew grammar
had preceded in 1525. The Hebrew lexicon of Pagninus appeared in 1529;
and that of Munster himself in 1543. Elias Levita, the learned Jew who
has been already mentioned, deserves to stand in this his natural
department above even Munster. Among several works that fall within this
period we may notice the Masorah (Venice, 1538, and Basle, 1539),
wherein he excited the attention of the world by denying the authority
and antiquity of vowel points, and a lexicon of the Chaldee and
Rabbinical dialects, in 1541. “Those,” says Simon, “who would thoroughly
understand Hebrew should read the treatises of Elias Levita, which are
full of important observations necessary for the explanation of the
sacred text.”[871] Pellican, one of the first who embraced the
principles of the Zwinglian reform, has merited a warm eulogy from Simon
for his Commentarii Bibliorum, (Zurich, 1531-1536, five volumes in
folio), especially for avoiding that display of rabbinical learning
which the German Hebraists used to affect.[872]
[870] P. 102 (edit. 1596).
[871] Biogr. Univ.
[872] Id.
|Arabic and Oriental literature.|
25. Few endeavours were made in this period towards the cultivation of
the other Oriental languages. Pagnino printed an edition of the Koran at
Venice in 1530; but it was immediately suppressed; a precaution hardly
required, while there was no one able to read it. But it may have been
supposed, that the leaves of some books, like that recorded in the
Arabian Nights, contain an active poison that does not wait for the slow
process of understanding their contents. Two crude attempts at
introducing the Eastern tongues were made soon afterwards. One of these
was by William Postel, a man of some parts and more reading, but chiefly
known, while he was remembered at all, for mad reveries of
fanaticism, and an idolatrous veneration for a saint of his own
manufacture, la mère Jeanne, the Joanna Southcote of the sixteenth
century. We are only concerned at present with his collection of
alphabets, twelve in number, published at Paris in 1538. The greater
part of these are Oriental. An Arabic grammar followed the same year;
but the types are so very imperfect, that it would be difficult to read
them. A polyglott alphabet on a much larger scale appeared at Pavia the
next year, through the care of Teseo Ambrogio, containing forty
languages. Ambrogio gave also an introduction to the Chaldee, Syriac,
and Armenian; but very defective, at least as to the two latter. Such
rude and incorrect publications hardly deserve the name of beginnings.
According to Andrès, Arabic was publicly taught at Paris by Giustiniani,
and at Salamanca by Clenardus. The Æthiopic version of the New Testament
was printed at Rome in 1548.
SECT. V.
_On Geography and History._
|Geography of Grynæus.|
26. The curiosity natural to mankind had been gratified by various
publications since the invention of printing, containing either the
relations of ancient travellers, such as Marco Polo, or of those under
the Spanish or Portuguese flags, who had laid open two new worlds to the
European reader. These were for the first time collected, to the number
of seventeen, by Simon Grynæus, a learned professor at Basle, in Novus
Orbis Regionum et Insularum Veteribus incognitarum, printed at Paris in
1532. We find also in this collection, besides an introduction to
cosmography by Sebastian Munster, a map of the world bearing the date
1531. The cosmography of Apianus, professor at Ingoldstadt, published in
1524, contains also a map of the four quarters of the world. In this of
Grynæus’s collection, a rude notion of the eastern regions of Asia
appears. Sumatra is called Taprobane, and placed in the 150th meridian.
A vague delineation of China and the adjacent sea is given; but Catay is
marked further north. The island of Gilolo, which seems to be Japan, is
about 240° east longitude. This is so far remarkable, that no voyages
had yet been made in that sea. South America is noted as Terra Australis
recenter inventa, sed nondum plane cognita; and there is as much of
North America as Sebastian Cabot had discovered, a little enlarged by
lucky conjecture. Magellan, by circumnavigating the world, had solved a
famous problem. We find accordingly in this map an attempt to divide the
globe by the 360 meridians of longitude. The best account of his voyage,
that by Pigafetta, was not published till 1556; but the first,
Maximilianus de Insulis Moluccis, appeared in 1523.
|Apianus.|
|Munster.|
27. The Cosmography of Apianus, above mentioned, was reprinted with
additions by Gemma Frisius in 1533 and 1550. It is however, as a work of
mere geography, very brief and superficial; though it may exhibit as
much of the astronomical part of the science as the times permitted.
That of Sebastian Munster, published in 1546, notwithstanding its title,
extends only to the German empire.[873] The Isolario of Bordone (Venice,
1528) contains a description of all the islands of the world, with
maps.[874]
[873] Eichhorn, iii. 294.
[874] Tiraboschi, ix. 179.
|Voyages.|
|Oviedo.|
28. A few voyages were printed before the middle of the century, which
have, for the most part, found their way into the collection of Ramusio.
The most considerable is the history of the Indies, that is, of the
Spanish dominions in America, by Gonzalo Hernandez, sometimes called
Oviedo, by which name he is placed in the Biographie Universelle. The
author had resided for some years in St. Domingo. He published a summary
of the general and natural history of the Indies in 1526; and twenty
books of this entire work in 1535. The remaining thirty did not appear
till 1783. In the long list of geographical treatises given by Ortelius,
a small number belong to this earlier period of the century. But it may
be generally said, that the acquaintance of Europe with the rest of the
world could as yet be only obtained orally from Spanish and Portuguese
sailors or adventurers, and was such as their falsehood and blundering
would impart.
|Historical works.|
29. It is not my design to comprehend historical literature, except as
to the chief publications, in these volumes; and it is hitherto but a
barren field; for though Guicciardini died in 1540, his great history
did not appear till 1564. Some other valuable histories, those of Nardi,
Segni, Varchi, were also kept back through political or other causes,
till a comparatively late period. That of Paulus Jovius, which is not in
very high estimation, appeared in 1550, and may be reckoned,
perhaps, after that of Machiavel, the best of this age. Upon this side
of the Alps, several works of this class, to which the historical
student has recourse, might easily be enumerated; but none of a
philosophical character, or remarkable for beauty of style. I should,
however, wish to make an exception for the Memoirs of the Chevalier
Bayard, written by his secretary, and known by the title of Le Loyal
Serviteur; they are full of warmth and simplicity. A chronicle bearing
the name of Carion, but really written by Melanchthon, and published in
the German language, 1532, was afterwards translated into Latin, and
became the popular manual of universal history.[875] But ancient and
mediæval history was as yet very imperfectly made known to those who had
no access to its original sources. Even in Italy little had yet been
done with critical or even extensive erudition.
[875] Bayle, art. Carion. Eichhorn, iii. 285.
* * * * *
|Italian academies.|
30. Italy in the sixteenth century was remarkable for the number of her
literary academies; institutions, which, though by no means peculiar to
her, have in no other country been so general or so conspicuous. We have
already taken notice of that established by Aldus Manutius at Venice
early in this century, and of those of older dates which had enjoyed the
patronage of princes at Florence and Naples, as well as of that which
Pomponius Lætus and his associates, with worse auspices, had endeavoured
to form at Rome. The Roman academy, after a long season of persecution
or neglect, revived in the genial reign of Leo X. “Those were happy
days,” says Sadolet in 1529, writing to Angelo Colocci, a Latin poet of
some reputation, “when in your suburban gardens, or mine on the
Quirinal, or in the Circus, or by the banks of the Tiber, we held those
meetings of learned men, all recommended by their own virtues and by
public reputation. Then it was that after a repast, which the wit of the
guests rendered exquisite, we heard poems or orations recited to our
great delight, productions of the ingenious Casanuova, the sublime Vida,
the elegant and correct Beroaldo, and many others still living or now no
more.”[876] Corycius, a wealthy German, encouraged the good-humoured
emulation of these Roman luminaries.[877] But the miserable reverse,
that not long after the death of Leo befell Rome, put an end to this
academy, which was afterwards replaced by others of less fame.
[876] Sadolet, Epist. p. 225 (edit. 1554). Roscoe has quoted this
interesting letter.
[877] Roscoe, iii. 480.
|They pay regard to the language.|
31. The first academies of Italy had chiefly directed their attention to
classical literature; they compared manuscripts, they suggested new
readings, or new interpretations, they deciphered inscriptions and
coins, they sat in judgment on a Latin ode, or debated the propriety of
a phrase. Their own poetry had, perhaps, never been neglected; but it
was not till the writings of Bembo founded a new code of criticism in
the Italian language, that they began to study it minutely, and judge of
compositions with that fastidious scrupulousness they had been used to
exercise upon modern Latinity. Several academies were established with a
view to this purpose, and became the self-appointed censors of their
native literature. The reader will remember what has been already
mentioned, that there was a peculiar source of verbal criticism in
Italy, from the want of a recognised standard of idiom. The very name of
the language was long in dispute. Bembo maintained that Florentine was
the proper appellation. Varchi and other natives of the city have
adhered to this very restrictive monopoly. Several, with more
plausibility, contended for the name Tuscan; and this, in fact, was so
long adopted, that it is hardly yet altogether out of use. The majority,
however, were not Tuscans, and while it is generally agreed that the
highest purity of their language is to be found in Tuscany, the word
Italian has naturally prevailed as its denomination.
|Their fondness for Petrarch.|
32. The academy of Florence was instituted in 1540 to illustrate and
perfect the _Tuscan_ language, especially by a close attention to
the poetry of Petrarch. Their admiration of Petrarch became an exclusive
idolatry; the critics of this age would acknowledge no defect in him,
nor excellence in any different style. Dissertations and commentaries on
Petrarch, in all the diffuseness characteristic of the age and the
nation, crowd the Italian libraries. We are, however, anticipating a
little in mentioning them; for few belong to so early a period as the
present. But by dint of this superstitious accuracy in style, the
language rapidly acquired a purity and beauty which has given the
writers of the sixteenth century a value in the eyes of their
countrymen, not always so easily admitted by those who, being less able
to perceive the delicacy of expression, are at leisure to yawn
over their frequent tediousness and inanity.
|They become numerous.|
33. The Italian academies, which arose in the first half of the century,
and we shall meet with others hereafter, are too numerous to be reckoned
in these pages. The most famous were the Intronati of Siena, founded in
1525, and devoted, like that of Florence, to the improvement of their
language; the Infiammati of Padua, founded by some men of high
attainments in 1534; and that of Modena, which, after a short career of
brilliancy, fell under such suspicions of heresy, and was subjected to
such inquisitorial jealousy about 1542, that it never again made any
figure in literary history.[878]
[878] Tiraboschi, viii. ch. 4, is my chief authority about the Italian
academies of this period.
|Their distinctions.|
34. Those academies have usually been distinguished by little
peculiarities, which border sometimes on the ridiculous, but serve
probably, at least, in the beginning, to keep up the spirit of such
societies. They took names humorously quaint; they adopted devices and
distinctions, which made them conspicuous, and inspired a vain pleasure
in belonging to them. The Italian nobility, living a good deal in
cities, and restrained from political business, fell willingly into
these literary associations. They have, perhaps, as a body, been better
educated, or, at least, better acquainted with their own literature and
with classical antiquity, than men of equal rank in other countries.
This was more the case in the sixteenth century than at present. Genius
and erudition have been always honoured in Italy; and the more probably
that they have not to stand the competition of overpowering wealth, or
of political influence.
|Evils connected with them.|
35. Academies of the Italian kind do not greatly favour the vigorous
advances in science, and much less the original bursts of genius, for
which men of powerful minds are designed by nature. They form an
oligarchy, pretending to guide the public taste, as they are guided
themselves, by arbitrary maxims and close adherence to precedents. The
spirit of criticism they foster is a salutary barrier against bad taste
and folly, but is too minute and scrupulous in repressing the
individualities which characterise real talents, and ends by producing
an unblemished mediocrity, without the powers of delight or excitement,
for which alone the literature of the imagination is desired.
|They succeed less in Germany.|
36. In the beginning of this century several societies were set on foot
in Germany, for the promotion of ancient learning, besides that already
mentioned of the Rhine, established by Camerarius of Dalberg, and Conrad
Celtes, in the preceding age. Wimpfeling presided over one at Strasburg
in 1514, and we find another at Augsburg in 1518. It is probable that
the religious animosities which followed stood in the way of similar
institutions; or they may have existed without obtaining much
celebrity.[879]
[879] Jugler, in his Hist. Litteraria, mentions none between that of
the Rhine, and one established at Weimar in 1617, p. 1994.
|Libraries.|
37. Italy was rich, far beyond any other country, in public and private
libraries. The Vatican, first in dignity, in antiquity, and in number of
books, increased under almost every successive pope, except Julius II.,
the least favourable to learning of them all. The Laurentian library,
purchased by Leo X., before his accession to the papacy, from a
monastery at Florence, which had acquired the collection after the fall
of the Medici in 1494, was restored to that city by Clement VII., and
placed in the newly-erected building which still contains it. The public
libraries of Venice and Ferrara were conspicuous; and even a private
citizen of the former, the Cardinal Grimani, is said to have left one of
8000 volumes; at that time, it appears, a remarkable number.[880] Those
of Heidelberg and Vienna, commenced in the fifteenth century, were still
the most distinguished in Germany; and Cardinal Ximenes founded one at
Alcala.[881] It is unlikely that many private libraries of great extent
existed in the empire; but the trade of bookselling, though not yet, in
general, separated from that of printing, had become of considerable
importance.
[880] Tiraboschi, viii. 197-219.
[881] Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, p. 206 et alibi.
CHAPTER X.
HISTORY OF ANCIENT LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1550 TO 1600.
SECT. I.
_Progress of classical learning--Principal critical scholars--Editions
of ancient authors--Lexicons and Grammars--Best writers of Latin--
Muretus--Manutius--Decline of taste--Scaliger--Casaubon--Classical
learning in England under Elizabeth._
|Progress of Philology.|
1. In the first part of the sixteenth century we have seen that the
foundations of a solid structure of classical learning had been laid in
many parts of Europe; the superiority of Italy had generally become far
less conspicuous, or might perhaps be wholly denied; in all the German
empire, in France, and partly in England, the study of ancient
literature had been almost uniformly progressive. But it was the
subsequent period of fifty years, which we now approach, that more
eminently deserved the title of an age of scholars, and filled our
public libraries with immense fruits of literary labour. In all matters
of criticism and philology, what was written before the year 1550 is
little in comparison with what the next age produced.
|First editions of classics.|
2. It may be useful in this place to lay before the reader at one view
the dates of the first editions of Greek and Latin authors, omitting
some of inconsiderable reputation or length. In this list I follow the
authority of Dr. Dibdin, to which no exception will probably be taken:--
Ælian 1545. _Rome._
Æschylus 1518. _Venice_, _Aldus_.
Æsop 1480? _Milan._
Ammianus 1474. _Rome._
Anacreon 1554. _Paris._
Antoninus 1558. _Zurich._
Apollonius Rhodius 1496. _Florence._
Appianus 1551. _Paris._
Apuleius 1469. _Rome._
Aristophanes 1498. _Venice._
Aristoteles 1495-8. _Venice._
Arrian 1535. _Venice._
Athenæus 1514. _Venice._
Aulus Gellius 1469. _Rome._
Ausonius 1472. _Venice._
Boethius Absque anno. circ. 1470.
Cæsar 1469. _Rome._
Callimachus Absque anno. Florence.
Catullus 1472. _Venice._
Ciceronis Opera 1498. _Milan._
Cicero de Officiis 1465. _Mentz._
Cicero Epistolæ Famil. 1467.} _Rome._
---- Epistolæ ad Attic. 1469.}
---- de Oratore 1465. _Mentz and Subiaco._
---- Rhetorica 1490. _Venice._
---- Orationes 1471. _Rome._
---- Opera Philosoph. 1469.} _Rome._
1471.}
Claudian. Absque anno. _Brescia._
Demosthenes 1504. _Venice._
Diodorus, v. lib. 1539. _Basle._
---- xv. lib. 1559. _Paris._
Diogenes Laertius 1533. _Basle._
Dio Cassius 1548. _Paris._
Dionysius Halicarn. 1546. _Paris._
Epictetus 1528. _Venice._
Euripides 1513. _Venice._
Euclid 1533. _Basle._
Florus 1470. _Paris._
Herodian 1513. _Venice._
Herodotus 1502. _Venice._
Hesiod. Op. et Dies 1493. _Milan._
---- Op. omnia 1495. _Venice._
Homer 1488. _Florence._
Horatius Absque anno.
Isocrates 1493. _Milan._
Josephus 1544. _Basle._
Justin 1470. _Venice._
Juvenal Absque anno. _Rome._
Livius 1469. _Rome._
Longinus 1584. _Basle._
Lucan 1469. _Rome._
Lucian 1496. _Florence._
Lucretius 1473. _Brescia._
Lysias 1513. _Venice._
Macrobius 1472. _Venice._
Manilius Ante 1474. _Nuremburg._
Oppian 1515. _Florence._
Orpheus 1500. _Florence._
Ovid 1471. _Bologna._
Pausanias 1516. _Venice._
Petronius 1476?
Phædrus 1596. _Troyes._
Photius 1601. _Augsburg._
Pindar 1513. _Venice._
Plato 1513. _Venice._
Plautus 1472. _Venice._
Plinii, Nat. Hist. 1469. _Venice._
Plinii Epist. 1471.
Plutarch Op. Moral. 1509. _Venice._
---- Vitæ 1517. _Venice._
Polybius 1530. _Haguenow._
Quintilian 1470. _Rome._
Quintus Curtius Absque anno. _Rome._
Sallust 1470. _Paris._
Seneca 1475. _Naples._
Senecæ Tragediæ 1484. _Ferrara._
Silius Italicus 1471. _Rome._
Sophocles 1512. _Venice._
Statius 1472?
Strabo 1516. _Venice._
Suetonius 1470. _Rome._
Tacitus 1468? _Venice._
Terence Ante 1470? _Strasburg._
Theocritus 1493. _Milan._
Thucydides 1502. _Venice._
Valerius Flaccus 1474. _Rome._
Valerius Maximus Ante 1470? _Strasburg._
Valleius Paterculus 1520. _Basle._
Virgil 1469. _Rome._
Xenophon 1516. _Florence._
|Change in character of learning.|
3. It will be perceived that even in the middle of this century, some
far from uncommon writers had not yet been given to the press. But most
of the rest had gone through several editions, which it would be tedious
to enumerate; and the means of acquiring an extensive, though not in all
respects very exact, erudition might perhaps be nearly as copious as at
present. In consequence, probably, among other reasons, of these
augmented stores of classical literature, its character underwent a
change. It became less polished and elegant, but more laborious and
profound. The German or Cisalpine type, if I may use the word, prevailed
over the Italian, the school of Budæus over that of Bembo; nor was Italy
herself exempt from its ascendancy. This advance of erudition at the
expense of taste was perhaps already perceptible in 1550, for we cannot
accommodate our arbitrary divisions to the real changes of things; yet
it was not hitherto so evident in Italy, as it became in the latter part
of the century. The writers of this age, between 1550 and 1600,
distinguish themselves from their predecessors not only by a disregard
for the graces of language, but by a more prodigal accumulation of
quotations, and more elaborate efforts to discriminate and to prove
their positions. Aware of the censors whom they may encounter in an
increasing body of scholars, they seek to secure themselves in the event
of controversy, or to sustain their own differences from those who have
gone already over the same ground. Thus books of critical as well as
antiquarian learning often contain little of original disquisition,
which is not interrupted at every sentence by quotation, and in some
instances are hardly more than the adversaria, or commonplace books, in
which the learned were accustomed to register their daily observations
in study. A late German historian remarks the contrast between the
Commentary of Paulus Cortesius on the scholastic philosophy, published
in 1503, and the Mythologia of Natalis Comes, in 1551. The first, in
spite of its subject, is classical in style, full of animation and good
sense; the second is a tedious mass of quotations, the materials of a
book rather than a book, without a notion of representing anything in
its spirit and general result.[882] This is, in great measure, a
characteristic of the age, and grew worse towards the end of the
century. Such a book as the Annals of Baronius, the same writer says, so
shapeless, so destitute of every trace of eloquence, could not have
appeared in the age of Leo. But it may be added, that, with all the
defects of Baronius, no one, in the age of Leo, could have put the
reader in the possession of so much knowledge.
[882] Ranke, Die Päpste des 16ten und 17ten Jahrhunderts, i. 484.
|Cultivation of Greek.|
4. We may reckon among the chief causes of this diminution of elegance
in style, the increased culture of the Greek language; not certainly
that the great writers in Greek are inferior models to those in Latin,
but because the practice of composition was confined to the latter. Nor
was the Greek really understood, in its proper structure and syntax,
till a much later period. It was however a sufficiently laborious task,
with the defective aids then in existence, to learn even the single
words of that most copious tongue; and in this some were eminently
successful. Greek was not very much studied in Italy; we may perhaps
say, on the contrary, that no one native of that country, after the
middle of the century, except Angelus Caninius and Æmilius Portus, both
of whom lived wholly on this side of the Alps, acquired any remarkable
reputation in it; for Petrus Victorius had been distinguished in the
earlier period. It is to France and Germany that we should look for
those who made Grecian literature the domain of scholars. It is
impossible to mention every name, but we must select the more eminent;
not however distinguishing the labourers in the two vineyards of ancient
learning, since they frequently lent their service alternately to each.
|Principal scholars: Turnebus.|
5. The university of Paris, thanks to the encouragement given by Francis
I., stood in the first rank for philological learning; and as no other
in France could pretend to vie with her, she attracted students from
every part. Toussain, Danes, and Dorat were conspicuous professors of
Greek. The last was also one of the celebrated pleiad of French poets,
but far more distinguished in the dead tongues than in his own. But her
chief boast was Turnebus, so called by the gods, but by men
Tournebœuf, and, as some have said, of a Scots family, who must have
been denominated Turnbull.[883] Turnebus was one of those industrious
scholars who did not scorn the useful labour of translating Greek
authors into Latin, and is among the best of that class. But his
reputation is chiefly founded on the Adversaria, the first part of which
appeared in 1564, the second in 1565, the third, posthumously, in 1580.
It is wholly miscellaneous, divided into chapters, merely as
resting-places to the reader; for the contents of each are mostly a
collection of unconnected notes. Such books, truly adversaria or
commonplaces, were not unusual; but can of course only be read in a
desultory manner, or consulted upon occasion. The Adversaria of Turnebus
contain several thousand explanations of Latin passages. They are
eminent for conciseness, few remarks exceeding half a page, and the
greater part being much shorter. He passes without notice from one
subject to another the most remote, and has been so much too rapid for
his editor, that the titles of each chapter, multifarious as they are,
afford frequently but imperfect notions of its contents. The phrases
explained are generally difficult; so that this miscellany gives a high
notion of the erudition of Turnebus, and it has furnished abundant
materials to later commentators. The best critics of that and the
succeeding age, Gesner, Scaliger, Lipsius, Barthius, are loud in his
praises; nor has he been blamed, except for his excess of brevity and
rather too great proneness to amend the text of authors, wherein he is
not remarkably successful.[884] Montaigne has taken notice of another
merit in Turnebus, that with more learning than any who had gone before
for a thousand years, he was wholly exempt from the pedantry
characteristic of scholars, and could converse upon topics remote from
his own profession, as if he had lived continually in the world.
[883] Biogr. Univ.--The penultimate of Turnebus is made both short and
long by the Latin poets of the age, but more commonly the latter,
which seems contrary to what we should think right. Even Greek will
not help us, for we find him called both τουρνεβος [tournebos] and
τουρνηβος [tournêbos]. Maittaire, Vitæ Stephanor, vol. iii.
[884] Blount, Baillet. The latter begins his collection of these
testimonies by saying that Turnebus has had as many admirers
as readers, and is almost the only critic whom envy has not
presumed to attack. Baillet, however, speaks of his correction of
_Greek_ and Latin passages. I have not observed any of the
former in the Adversaria; the book, if I am not mistaken, relates
wholly to Latin criticism. Muretus calls Turnebus, “Homo immensa
quadam doctrinæ copia instructus, sed interdum nimis propere, et
nimis cupidè amplexari solitus est ea quæ in mentem venerant.”
Variæ Lectiones, l. x. c. 18. Muretus, as usual with critics,
_vineta cædit sua_; the same change might be brought against
himself.
|Petrus Victorius.|
6. A work very similar in its nature to the Adversaria of Turnebus was
the Variæ Lectiones of Petrus Victorius (Vettori), professor of Greek
and Latin rhetoric at Florence during the greater part of a long life,
which ended in 1585. Thuanus has said, with some hyperbole, that
Victorius saw the revival and almost the extinction of learning in
Italy.[885] No one, perhaps, deserved more praise in the restoration of
the text of Cicero; no one, according to Huet, translated better from
Greek; no one was more accurate in observing the readings of
manuscripts, or more cautious in his own corrections. But his Variæ
Lectiones, in 38 books, of which the first edition appeared in 1583,
though generally extolled, has not escaped the severity of Scaliger, who
says that there is less of valuable matter in the whole work than in one
book of the Adversaria of Turnebus.[886] Scaliger, however, had
previously spoken in high terms of Victorius: there had been afterwards,
as he admits, some ill-will between them; and the tongue or pen of this
great scholar are never guided by candour towards an opponent. I am not
acquainted with the Variæ Lectiones of Victorius except through my
authorities.
[885] Petrus Victorius longæva ætate id consecutus est, ut literas in
Italia renascentes et pæne extinctas viderit. Thuanus ad ann, 1585,
apud Blount.
[886] Scaligerana Secunda.
|Muretus.|
7. The same title was given to a similar miscellany by Marc Antony
Muretus, a native of Limoges. The first part of this, containing eight
books, was published in 1559, seven more books in 1586, the last four in
1600. This great classical scholar of the sixteenth century found in the
eighteenth one well worthy to be his editor, Ruhnkenius of Leyden, who
has called the Variæ Lectiones of Muretus “a work worthy of Phidias,” an
expression rather amusingly characteristic of the value which verbal
critics set upon their labours. This book of Muretus contains only
miscellaneous illustrations of passages which might seem obscure, in the
manner of those we have already mentioned. Sometimes he mingles
conjectural criticisms; and in many chapters only points out parallel
passages, or relates incidentally some classical story. His emendations
are frequently good and certain, though at other times we may justly
think him too bold.[887] Muretus is read with far more pleasure than
Turnebus; his illustrations relate more to the attractive parts of Latin
criticism, and may be compared to the miscellaneous remarks of
Jortin.[888] But in depth of erudition he is probably much below the
Parisian professor. Muretus seems to take pleasure in censuring
Victorius.
[887] The following will serve as an instance. In the speech of
Galgacus (Taciti vita Agricolæ) instead of “libertatem non in
præsentia laturi,” which indeed is unintelligible enough, he would
read, “in libertatem, non in populi Romani servitium nati.” Such a
conjecture would not be endured in the present state of criticism.
Muretus, however, settles it in the current style; vulgus quid
probet, quid non probet, nunquam laboravi.
[888] The following titles of chapters, from the eighth book of the
Variæ Lectiones, will show the agreeable diversity of Muretus’s
illustrations:--
1. Comparison of poets to bees, by Pindar, Horace, Lucretius. Line
of Horace--
Necte meo Lamiæ coronam;
illustrated by Euripides.
2. A passage in Aristotle’s Rhetoric, lib. ii. explained
differently from P. Victorius.
3. Comparison of a passage in the Phædrus of Plato, with Cicero’s
translation.
4. Passage in the Apologia Socratis, corrected and explained.
5. Line in Virgil, shown to be imitated from Homer.
6. Slips of memory in P. Victorius, noticed.
7. Passage in Aristotle’s Rhetoric explained from his Metaphysics.
8. Another passage in the same book explained.
9. Passage in Cicero pro Rabirio, corrected.
10. Imitation of Æschines in two passages of Cicero’s 3rd
Catilinarian oration.
11. Imitation of Æschines and Demosthenes in two passages of
Cicero’s Declamation against Sallust. [Not genuine.]
12. Inficetus is the right word, not infacetus.
13. Passage in 5th book of Aristotle’s Ethics corrected.
14. The word διαψευδεσθαι [diapseudesthai], in the 2d book of
Aristotle’s Rhetoric, not rightly explained by Victorius.
15. The word asinus, in Catullus (Carm. 95) does not signify an
ass, but a mill-stone.
16. Lines of Euripides, ill-translated by Cicero.
17. Passage in Cicero’s Epistles misunderstood by Politian and
Victorius.
18. Passage in the Phædrus explained.
19. Difference between accusation and invective, illustrated from
Demosthenes and Cicero.
20. Imitation of Æschines by Cicero. Two passages of Livy amended.
21. Mulieres eruditas plerumque libidinosas esse, from Juvenal and
Euripides.
22. Nobleness of character displayed by Iphicrates.
23. That Hercules was a physician, who cured Alcestis when given
over.
24. Cruelty of king Dejotarus, related from Plutarch.
25. Humane law of the Persians.
|Grater’s Thesaurus Criticus.|
8. Turnebus, Victorius, Muretus, with two who have been mentioned in the
first volume, Cœlius Rhodiginus, and Alexander ab Alexandro, may be
reckoned the chief contributors to this general work of literary
criticism in the sixteenth century. But there were many more, and some
of considerable merit, whom we must pass over. At the beginning of the
next century, Gruter collected the labours of preceding critics in six
very thick and closely printed volumes, to which Paræus, in 1623, added
a seventh, entitled “Lampas, sive Fax Liberalium Artium,” but more
commonly called Thesaurus Criticus. A small portion of these belong to
the fifteenth century, but none extend beyond the following. Most of the
numerous treatises in this ample collection belong to the class of
Adversaria, or miscellaneous remarks. Though not so studiously concise
as those of Turnebus, each of these is generally contained in a page or
two, and their multitude is consequently immense. Those who now by
glancing at a note obtain the result of the patient diligence of these
men, should feel some respect for their names, and some admiration for
their acuteness and strength of memory. They had to collate the whole of
antiquity, they plunged into depths which the indolence of modern
philology, screening itself under the garb of fastidiousness, affects to
deem unworthy to be explored, and thought themselves bound to become
lawyers, physicians, historians, artists, agriculturists, to elucidate
the difficulties which ancient writers present. It may be doubted also,
whether our more recent editions of the classics have preserved all the
important materials which the indefatigable exertions of the men of the
sixteenth century accumulated. In the present state of philology, there
is incomparably more knowledge of grammatical niceties, at least in the
Greek language, than they possessed, and more critical acuteness perhaps
in correction, though in this they were not always deficient; but for
the exegetical part of criticism--the interpretation and illustration of
passages, not corrupt, but obscure--we may not be wrong in suspecting
that more has been lost than added in the eighteenth and present
centuries to the _savans in us_, as the French affect to call them, whom
we find in the bulky and forgotten volumes of Gruter.
|Editions of Greek and Latin Authors.|
9. Another and more numerous class of those who devoted themselves to
the same labour, were the editors of Greek and Roman authors. And here
again it is impossible to do more than mention a few, who seem, in the
judgment of the best scholars, to stand above their contemporaries. The
early translations of Greek, made in the fifteenth century, and
generally very defective through the slight knowledge of the language
that even the best scholars then possessed, were replaced by others more
exact; the versions of Xenophon by Leunclavius, of Plutarch by Xylander,
of Demosthenes by Wolf, of Euripides and Aristides by Canter, are
greatly esteemed. Of the first, Huet says, that he omits or perverts
nothing, his Latin often answering to the Greek, word for word, and
preserving the construction and arrangement, so that we find the
original author complete, yet with a purity of idiom, and a free and
natural air not often met with.[889] Stephens however, according to
Scaliger, did not highly esteem the learning of Leunclavius.[890]
France, Germany, and the Low Countries, besides Basle and Geneva, were
the prolific parents of new editions, in many cases very copiously
illustrated by erudite commentaries.
[889] Baillet. Blount. Niceron, vol. 26.
[890] Scaligerana Secunda.
|Tacitus of Lipsius.|
10. The Tacitus of Lipsius is his best work, in the opinion of Scaliger
and in his own. So great a master was he of this favourite author, that
he offered to repeat any passage with a dagger at his breast, to be used
against him on a failure of memory.[891] Lipsius, after residing several
years at Leyden in the profession of the reformed religion, went to
Louvain, and discredited himself by writing in favour of the legendary
miracles of that country, losing sight of all his critical sagacity. The
Protestants treated his desertion and these later writings with a
contempt which has perhaps sometimes been extended to his productions of
a superior character. The article on Lipsius, in Bayle, betrays some of
this spirit; and it appears in other Protestants, especially Dutch
critics. Hence they undervalue his Greek learning, as if he had not been
able to read the language, and impute plagiarism, when there seems to be
little ground for the charge. Casaubon admits that Lipsius has
translated Polybius better than his predecessors, though he does not
rate his Greek knowledge very high.[892]
[891] Niceron, xxiv. 219.
[892] Casaub. Epist. xxi. A long and elaborate critique on Lipsius
will be found in Baillet, vol. ii. (4to edit.), art. 437. See also
Blount, Bayle, and Niceron.
|Horace of Lambinus.|
11. Acidalius, whose premature death robbed philological literature of
one from whom much had been expected,[893] Paulus Manutius, and Petrus
Victorius, are to be named with honour for the criticism of Latin
authors, and the Lucretius of Giffen or Giphanius, published at Antwerp,
1566, is still esteemed.[894] But we may select the Horace of Lambinus
as a conspicuous testimony to the classical learning of this age. It
appeared in 1561. In this he claims to have amended the text, by the
help of ten manuscripts, most of them found by him in Italy, whither he
had gone in the suite of Cardinal Tournon. He had previously made large
collections for the illustration of Horace, from the Greek philosophers
and poets, from Athenæus, Stobæus and Pausanias, and other sources with
which the earlier interpreters had been less familiar. Those
commentators, however, among whom Hermannus Figulus, Badius Ascensius,
and Antonius Mancinellus, as well as some who had confined themselves to
the Ars Poetica, Grisolius, Achilles Statius (in his real name Estaço,
one of the few good scholars of Portugal), and Luisinius, are the most
considerable, had not left unreaped a very abundant harvest of mere
explanation. But Lambinus contributed much to a more elegant criticism,
by pointing out parallel passages, and by displaying the true spirit and
feeling of his author. The text acquired a new aspect, we may almost
say, in the hands of Lambinus, at least when we compare it with the
edition of Landino in 1482; but some of the gross errors in this had
been corrected by intermediate editors. It may be observed, that he had
far less assistance from prior commentators in the Satires and Epistles
than in the Odes. Lambinus, who became professor of Greek at Paris in
1561, is known also by his editions of Demosthenes, of Lucretius, and of
Cicero.[895] That of Plautus is in less esteem. He has been reproached
with a prolixity and tediousness, which has naturalised the verb
_lambiner_ in the French language. But this imputation is not in my
opinion applicable to his commentary upon Horace, which I should rather
characterise as concise. It is always pertinent and full of matter.
Another charge against Lambinus is for rashness in conjectural[896]
emendation, no unusual failing of ingenious and spirited editors.
[893] The notes of Acidalius (who died at the age of 28, in 1595), on
Tacitus, Plautus, and other Latin authors, are much esteemed. He is
a bold corrector of the text. The Biographie Universelle has a
better article than that in the 34th volume of Niceron.
[894] Biogr. Univ.
[895] This edition by Lambinus is said to mark the beginning of one of
the seven ages in which those of the great Roman orator have been
arranged. The first comprehends the early editions of separate
works. The second begins with the earliest entire edition, that of
Milan in 1498. The third is dated from the first edition which
contains copious notes, that of Venice, by Petrus Victorius, in
1534. The fourth, from the more extensive annotations given not
long afterwards by Paulus Manutius. The fifth, as has just been
said, from this edition by Lambinus, in 1566, which has been
thought too rash in correction of the text. A sixth epoch was made
by Gruter, in 1618; and this period is reckoned to comprehend most
editions of that and the succeeding century; for the seventh and
last age dates, it seems, only from the edition of Ernesti, in
1774. Biogr. Univ., art. Cicero. See Blount, for discrepant
opinions expressed by the critics about the general merits of
Lambinus.
[896] Henry Stephens says, that no one had been so audacious in
altering the text by conjecture as Lambinus. In Manutio non tantam
quantam in Lambino audaciam, sed valde tamen periculosam et citam.
Maittaire, vitæ Stephanorum, p. 401. It will be seen that Scaliger
finds exactly the same fault with Stephens himself.
|Of Cruquius.|
12. Cruquius (de Crusques) of Ypres, having the advantage of several new
manuscripts of Horace, which he discovered in a convent at Ghent,
published an edition with many notes of his own, besides an abundant
commentary, collected from the glosses he found in his manuscripts,
usually styled the Scholiast of Cruquius. The Odes appear at Bruges,
1565; the Epodes at Antwerp, 1569; the Satires in 1575; the whole
together was first published in 1578. But the Scholiast is found in no
edition of Cruquius’s Horace before 1595.[897] Cruquius appears to me
inferior as a critic to Lambinus; and borrowing much from him as well as
Turnebus, seldom names him except for censure. An edition of Horace at
Basle, in 1580, sometimes called that of the forty commentators,
including a very few before the extinction of letters, is interesting in
philological history, by the light it throws on the state of criticism
in the earlier part of the century, for it is remarkable that Lambinus
is not included in the number, and it will, I think, confirm what has
been said above in favour of those older critics.
[897] Biogr. Univ.
|Henry Stephens.|
13. Henry Stephens, thus better known among us than by his real surname
Etienne, the most illustrious (if indeed he surpassed his father) of a
family of great printers, began his labours at Paris in 1554, with the
princeps editio of Anacreon.[898] He had been educated in that city
under Danes Toussain and Turnebus;[899] and, though equally learned in
both languages, devoted himself to Greek, as being more neglected than
Latin.[900] The press of Stephens might be called the central point of
illumination to Europe. In the year 1557 alone, he published, as
Maittaire observes, more editions of ancient authors than would have
been sufficient to make the reputation of another author. His
publications, as enumerated by Niceron (I have not counted them in
Maittaire) amount to 103, of which by far the greater part are classical
editions, more valuable than his original works. Baillet says of Henry
Stephens, that he was second only to Budæus in Greek learning, though he
seems to put Turnebus and Camerarius nearly on the same level. But
perhaps the majority of scholars would think him superior on the whole
to all the three; and certainly Turnebus, whose Adversaria are confined
to Latin interpretation, whatever renown he might deserve by his oral
lectures, has left nothing that could warrant our assigning him
an equal place. Scaliger, however, accuses Henry Stephens of spoiling
all the authors he edited by wrong alterations of the text.[901] This
charge is by no means unfrequently brought against the critics of this
age.
[898] An excellent life of Henry Stephens, as well as others of the
rest of his family, was written by Maittaire, but which does not
supersede those formerly published by Almeloveen. These together
are among the best illustrations of the philological history of the
16th century that we possess. They have been abridged, with some
new matter, by Mr. Greswell, in his Early History of the Parisian
Greek Press. Almeloveen, Vitæ Stephanorum, p. 60. Maittaire, p. 200.
[899] Almeloveen, p. 70. His father made him learn Greek before he had
acquired Latin. Maittaire, p. 198.
[900] The life of Stephens in the 36th volume of Niceron is long and
useful. That in the Biographie Universelle is not bad, but
enumerates few editions published by this most laborious scholar,
and thus reduces the number of his works to twenty-six. Huet says
(whom I quote from Blount), that Stephens may be called “The
Translator par excellence;” such is his diligence and accuracy, so
happy his skill in giving the character of his author, so great his
perspicuity and elegance.
[901] Omnes quotquot edidit, editve libros, etiam meos, suo arbitrio
jam corrupit et deinceps corrumpet. Scalig. Prima, p. 96. Against
this sharp, and perhaps rash, judgment, we may set that of
Maittaire, a competent scholar, though not like Scaliger, and
without his arrogance and scorn of the world. Henrici editiones
ideo miror, quod eas, quam posset accuratissime aut ipse aut per
alios, quos complures noverat, viros eruditos, ad omnium tum
manuscriptorum tum impressorum codicum fidem, non sine maximo
delectu et suo (quo maximè in Græcis præsertim pollebat) aliorumque
judicio elaboravit. Vitæ Stephanorum, t. ii. p. 284. No man perhaps
ever published so many editions as Stephens; nor was any other
printer of so much use to letters; for he knew much more than the
Aldi or the Juntas. Yet he had planned many more publications, as
Maittaire has collected from what he has dropped in various places,
p. 469.
|Lexicon of Constantin.|
14. The year 1572 is an epoch in Greek literature, by the publication of
Stephens’s Thesaurus. A lexicon had been published at Basle in 1562, by
Robert Constantin, who, though he made use of that famous press, lived
at Caen, of which he was a native. Scaliger speaks in a disparaging tone
both of Constantin and his lexicon. But its general reputation has been
much higher. A modern critic observes, that “a very great proportion of
the explanations and authorities in Stephens’s Thesaurus are borrowed
from it.”[902] We must presume that this applies to the first edition;
for the second, enlarged by Æmilius Portus, which is more common, did
not appear till 1591.[903] “The principal defects of Constantin,” it is
added, “are first the confused and ill-digested arrangement of the
interpretation of words, and secondly, the absence of all distinction
between primitives and derivatives.” It appears by a Greek letter of
Constantin, prefixed to the first edition, that he had been assisted in
his labours by Gesner, Henry Stephens, Turnebus, Camerarius, and other
learned contemporaries. He gives his authorities, if not so much as we
should desire, very far more than the editors of the former Basle
lexicon. This lexicon, as was mentioned in the first volume, is
extremely defective and full of errors, though a letter of Grynæus,
prefixed to the edition of 1539, is nothing but a strain of unqualified
eulogy, little warranted by the suffrage of later scholars. I found,
however, on a loose calculation, the number of words in this edition to
be not much less than 50,000.[904]
[902] Quarterly Review, vol. xxvii.
[903] The first edition of this Lexicon sometimes bears the name of
Crespin, the printer at Basle; and both Baillet and Bayle have
fallen into the mistake of believing that there were two different
works. See Niceron, vol. xxvii.
[904] Henry Stephens in an epistle, De suæ Typographiæ statu ad quosdam
amicos, gives an account of his own labours on the Thesaurus. The
following passage on the earlier lexicons may be worth reading. Iis
quæ circumferuntur lexicis Græco-Latinis primam imposuit manum
monachus quidam, frater Johannes Crastonus, Placentinus,
Carmelitanus; sed cum is jejunis expositionibus, in quibus
vernaculo etiam sermone interdum, id est Italico, utitur, contentus
fuisset, perfunctoriè item constructiones verborum indicasset,
nullos autorum locos proferens ex quibus illæ pariter et
significationes cognosci possent; multi postea certatim multa hinc
inde sine ullo delectu ac judicio excerpta inseruerunt. Donec
tandem indoctis typographis de augenda lexicorum mole inter se
certantibus, et præmia iis qui id præstarent proponentibus, quæ
jejunæ, et, si ita loqui licet, macilentæ antea erant expositiones,
adeo pingues et crassæ redditæ sunt, ut in illis passim nihil aliud
quam Bœoticam suem agnoscamus. Nam pauca ex Budæo, aliisque idoneis
autoribus, et ea quidem parum fideliter descripta, utpote parum
intellecta, multa contra ex Lapo Florentino, Leonardo Aretino,
aliisque ejusdem farinæ interpretibus, ut similes habent labra
lactucas, in opus illud transtulerunt. Ex iis quidem certe locis in
quorum interpretatione felix fuit Laurentius Valla, paucissimos
protulerunt; sed pro perverso suo judicio, perversissimas quasque
ejus interpretationes, quales prope innumeras a me annotatas in
Latinis Herodoti et Thucydidis editionibus videbis, delegerunt
egregii illi lexicorum seu consarcinatores seu interpolatores,
quibus, tanquam gemmis, illa insignirent. Quod si non quam multa,
sed duntaxat quam multorum generum errata ibi sint, commemorare
velim, merito certe exclamabo, τί ηρῶτον, τί δ' επειτα, τί δ'
ὑστάτιον καταλέξω [ti prôton, ti d’ epeita, ti d’ hustation
katalexô]; vix enim ullum vitii genus posse a nobis cogitari aut
fingi existimo, cujus ibi aliquod exemplum non extat, p. 156. He
produces afterwards some gross instances of error.
|Thesaurus of Stephens.|
15. Henry Stephens had devoted twelve years of his laborious life to
this immense work, large materials for which had been collected by his
father. In comprehensive and copious interpretation of words it not only
left far behind every earlier dictionary, but is still the single Greek
lexicon; one which some have ventured to abridge or enlarge, but none
have presumed to supersede. Its arrangement, as is perhaps scarce
necessary to say, is not according to an alphabetical, but radical
order; that is, the supposed roots following each other alphabetically,
every derivative or compound, of whatever initial letter, is placed
after the primary word. This method is certainly not very convenient to
the uninformed reader; and perhaps, even with a view to the scientific
knowledge of the language, it should have been deferred for a more
advanced stage of etymological learning. The Thesaurus embodies the
critical writings of Budæus and Camerarius, with whatever else had been
contributed by the Greek exiles of the preceding age, and by their
learned disciples. Much, no doubt, has since been added to what we find
in the Thesaurus of Stephens, as to the nicety of idiom and syntax, or
to the principles of formation of words, but not, perhaps, in
copiousness of explanation, which is the proper object of a dictionary.
“The leading defects conspicuous in Stephens,” it is said by the critic
already quoted, “are inaccurate or falsified quotations, the deficiency
of several thousand words, and a wrong classification both of primitives
and derivatives. At the same time, we ought rather to be surprised that,
under existing disadvantages, he accomplished so much even in this last
department, than that he left so much undone.”
|Abridged by Scapula.|
16. It has been questioned among bibliographers, whether there are two
editions of the Thesaurus; the first in 1572, the second without a date,
and probably after 1580. The affirmative seems to be sufficiently
proved.[905] The sale, however, of so voluminous and expensive a work
did not indemnify its author; and it has often been complained of, that
Scapula, who had been employed under Stephens, injured his superior by
the publication of his well-known abridgment in 1579. The fact, however,
that Scapula had possessed this advantage, rests on little evidence, and
his preface, if it were true, would be the highest degree of effrontery:
it was natural that some one should abridge so voluminous a lexicon.
Literature, at least, owes an obligation to Scapula.[906] The temper of
Henry Stephens, restless and uncertain, was not likely to retain riches;
he passed several years in wandering over Europe, and having wasted a
considerable fortune amassed by his father, died in a public hospital at
Lyons in 1598,[907] “opibus,” says his biographer, “atque etiam ingenio
destitutus in nosocomio.”
[905] Niceron (vol. xxvi.) contends that the supposed second edition
differs only by a change in the title-page, wherein we find rather
an unhappy attempt at wit, in the following distich aimed at
Scapula:
Quidam επιτεμνων [epitemnôn] me capulo tenus abdidit ensem:
Æger eram a scapulis; sanus at huc redeo.
But it seems that Stephens, in his Palæstra de Lipsii Latinitate,
mentions this second edition, which is said by those who have
examined it, to have fewer typographical errors than the other,
though it is admitted that the leaves might be intermixed without
inconvenience, so close is the resemblance. Vid. Maittaire, p.
356-360. Brunet, Man. du Libr. Greswell, vol. ii. p. 289.
[906] Maittaire says that Scapula’s lexicon is as perfidious to the
reader as its author was to his master, and that Dr. Busby would
not suffer his boys to use it, p. 358. But this has hardly been the
general opinion. See Quarterly Review, _ubi suprâ_.
[907] Casaubon writes frequently to Scaliger about the strange behaviour
of his father-in-law, and complains that he had not even leave to
look at the books in the latter’s library, which he himself scarce
ever visited. Nôsti hominem, nôsti mores, nôsti quid apud eum
possim, hoc est, quam nihil possim, qui videtur in suam perniciem
conspirâsse. Epist. 21. And, still more severely, Epist. 41. Nam
noster, etsi vivens valensque, pridem numero hominum, certe
doctorum, eximi meruit; ea est illius inhumanitas, et quod invitus
dico, delirium; qui libros quoslibet veteres, ut Indici gryphi
aurum, aliis invidet, sibi perire sinit, sed quid ille habeat aut
non, juxta scio ego cum ignavissimo. After Stephens’s death, he
wrote in kinder terms than he had done before: but regretting some
publications, by which the editor of Casaubon’s letters thinks he
might mean the Apologie pour Herodote, and the Palæstra de Justi
Lipsii Latinitate; the former of which, a very well-known book,
contains a spirited attack on the Romish priesthood, but with less
regard either for truth or decorum in the selection of his stories
than became the character of Stephens; and the latter is of little
pertinence to its avowed subject. Henry Stephens had long been
subject to a disorder natural enough to laborious men, quædam
actionum consuetarum satietas et fastidium, Maittaire, p. 248.
Robert Stephens had carried with him to Geneva in 1550, the punches
of his types, made at the expense of Francis I., supposing,
perhaps, that they were a gift of the king. On the death, however,
of Henry Stephens, they were claimed by Henry IV., and the senate
of Geneva restored them. They had been pledged for 400 crowns, and
Casaubon complains as of a great injury, that the estate of
Stephens was made answerable to the creditor, when the pledge was
given up to the king of France. See Le Clerc’s remarks on this in
Bibliothèque Choisie, vol. xix. p. 219. Also a vindication of
Stephens by Maittaire from the charge of having stolen them (Vitæ
Stephanorum, i. 34), and again in Greswell’s Parisian Press, i.
399. He seems above the suspicion of theft; but whether he had just
cause to think the punches were his own, it is now impossible to
decide.
|Hellenismus of Caninius.|
|Vergara’s grammar.|
17. The Hellenismus of Angelus Caninius, a native of the Milanese, is
merely a grammar. Tanaquil Faber prefers it not only to that of
Clenardus, but to all which existed even in his own time. It was
published at Paris in 1555. Those who do not express themselves so
strongly, place him above his predecessors. Caninius is much fuller than
Clenardus; the edition by Crenius (Leyden, 1700), containing 380 pages.
The syntax is very scanty; but Caninius was well conversant with the
mutations of words, and is diligent in noting the differences of
dialects, in which he has been thought to excel. He was acquainted with
the digamma, and with its Latin form. I will take this opportunity of
observing that the Greek grammar of Vergara, mentioned in the first
volume of this work (p. 488), and of which I now possess the Paris
edition of 1557, printed by William Morel (ad Complutensem editionem
excusum et restitutum) appears superior to those of Clenardus or
Varenius. This book is doubtless very scarce; it is plain that Tanaquil
Faber, Baillet, Morhof, and, I should add, Nicolas Antonio, had never
seen it,[908] nor is it mentioned by Brunet or Watts.[909] There is,
however, a copy in the British Museum. Scaliger says that it is very
good, and that Caninius has borrowed from it the best parts.[910]
Vergara had, of course, profited by the commentaries of Budæus, the
great source of Greek philology in western Europe; but he displays, as
far as I can judge by recollection more than comparison, an ampler
knowledge of the rules of Greek than any of his other contemporaries.
This grammar contains 438 pages, more than 100 of which are given to the
syntax. A small grammar by Nunez, published at Valencia in 1555, seems
chiefly borrowed from Clenardus or Vergara.
[908] Blount, Baillet.
[909] Antonio says it was printed at Alcala, 1573; deinde Parisiis,
1550. The first is of course a false print; if the second is not so
likewise, he had never seen the book.
[910] Scaligerana Secunda. F. Vergara, Espagnol, a composé une bonne
grammaire Grecque, mais Caninius a pris tout le meilleur de tous,
et a mis du sien aussi quelque chose dans son Hellenismus. This, as
Bayle truly observes, reduces the eulogies Scaliger has elsewhere
given Cannius to very little. Scaliger’s loose expressions are not
of much value. Yet he who had seen Vergara’s grammar, might better
know what was original in others, than Tanaquil Faber, who had
never seen it.
|Grammars of Ramus and Sylburgius.|
18. Peter Ramus, in 1557, gave a fresh proof of his acuteness and
originality, by publishing a Greek grammar, with many important
variances from his precursors. Scaliger speaks of it with little
respect; but he is habitually contemptuous towards all but his immediate
friends.[911] Lancelot, author of the Port Royal grammar, praises highly
that of Ramus, though he reckons it too intricate. This grammar I have
not seen in its original state, but Sylburgius published one in 1582,
which he professes to have taken from the last edition of the Ramean
grammar. It has been said that Laurence Rhodomann was the first who
substituted the partition of the declensions of Greek nouns into three
for that of Clenardus, who introduced or retained the prolix and
unphilosophical division into ten.[912] But Ramus is clearly entitled to
this credit. It would be doubted whether he is equally to be praised, as
he certainly has not been equally followed, in making no distinction of
conjugations, nor separating the verbs in μι [mi] from those in
ὡ [ô], on the ground that their general flexion is the same. Much has
been added to this grammar by Sylburgius himself, a man in the first
rank of Greek scholars; “especially,” as he tells us, “in the latter
books, so that it may be called rather a supplement than an abridgment
of the grammar of Ramus.” The syntax in this grammar is much better than
in Clenardus, from whom some have erroneously supposed Sylburgius to
have borrowed; but I have not compared him with Vergara.[913] The Greek
grammar of Sanctius is praised by Lancelot; yet, from what he tells us
of it, we may infer that Sanctius, though a great master of Latin, being
comparatively unlearned in Greek, displayed such temerity in his
hypotheses as to fall into very great errors. The first edition was
printed at Antwerp in 1581.
[911] Scaligerana. Casaubon, it must be owned, who had more candour
than Scaliger, speaks equally ill of the grammar of Ramus. Epist.
878.
[912] Morhof, l. iv. c. 6. Preface to translation of Matthiæ’s Greek
grammar. The learned author of this preface has not alluded to
Ramus, and though he praises Sylburgius for his improvements in the
mode of treating grammar, seems unacquainted with that work which I
mention in the text. Two editions of it are in the British Museum,
1582 and 1600: but, upon comparison, I believe that there is no
difference between them.
The best of these grammars of the sixteenth century bear no sort of
comparison with those which have been latterly published in
Germany. And it seems strange at first sight, that the old
scholars, such as Budæus, Erasmus, Camerarius, and many more,
should have written Greek, which they were fond of doing, much
better than from their great ignorance of many fundamental rules of
syntax we could have anticipated. But reading continually, and
thinking in Greek, they found comparative accuracy by a secret
tact, and by continual imitation of what they read. Language is
always a mosaic work, made up of associated fragments, not of
separate molecules; we repeat, not the simple words, but the
phrases and even the sentences we have caught from others. Budæus
wrote Greek without knowing its grammar, that is, without a
distinct notion of moods or tenses, as men speak their own language
tolerably well without having ever attended to a grammatical rule.
Still many faults must be found in such writing on a close
inspection. The case was partly the same in Latin during the Middle
Ages, except that Latin was at that time better understood than
Greek was in the sixteenth century; not that so many words were
known, but those who wrote it best had more correct notions of the
grammar.
[913] Vossius says of the grammarians in general, ex quibus doctrinæ
et industriæ laudem maxime mihi meruisse videntur Angelus Caninius
et Fridericus Sylburgius. Aristarchus, p. 6. It is said that, in
his own grammar, which is on the basis of Clenardus, Vossius added
little to what he had taken from the two former. Baillet, in
Caninio.
|Camerarius, Canter, Robortellus.|
19. A few more books of a grammatical nature, falling within the present
period, may be found in Morhof, Baillet, and the bibliographical
collections; but neither in number nor importance do they deserve much
notice.[914] In a more miscellaneous philology, the Commentaries of
Camerarius, 1551, are superior to any publication of the kind since that
of Budæus in 1529. The Novæ Lectiones of William Canter, though the work
of a very young man, deserve to be mentioned as almost the first effort
of an art which has done much for ancient literature--that of restoring
a corrupt text, through conjecture, not loose and empirical, but guided
by a skilful sagacity, and upon principles which we may without
impropriety not only call scientific, but approximating sometimes to the
logic of the Novum Organum. The earlier critics, not always possessed of
many manuscripts, had recourse, more indeed in Latin than in Greek, to
conjectural emendation; the prejudice against which, often carried too
far by those who are not sufficiently aware of the enormous ignorance
and carelessness which ordinary manuscripts display, has also been
heightened by the random and sometimes very improbable guesses of
editors. Canter, besides the practice he showed in his Novæ Lectiones,
laid down the principles of his theory in a “Syntagma de Ratione
emendandi Græcos Auctores,” reprinted in the second volume of Jebb’s
edition of Aristides. He here shows what letters are apt to be changed
into others by error of transcription, or through a source not perhaps
quite so obvious--the uniform manner of pronouncing several vowels and
diphthongs among the later Greeks, which they were thus led to confound,
especially when a copyist wrote from dictation. But besides these
corruptions, it appears by the instances Canter gives, that almost any
letters are liable to be changed into almost any others. The
abbreviations of copyists are also great causes of corruption, and
require to be known by those who would restore the text. Canter,
however, was not altogether the founder of this school of criticism.
Robortellus, whose vanity and rude contempt of one so much superior to
himself as Sigonius, has perhaps caused his own real learning to be
undervalued, had already written a treatise, entitled “De Arte sive
Ratione corrigendi Antiquorum Libros Disputatio;” in which he claims to
be the first who devised this art, “nunc primum à me excogitata.” It is
not a bad work, though probably rather superficial, according to our
present views. He points out the general characters of manuscripts, and
the different styles of handwriting; after which he proceeds to the
rules of conjecture, making good remarks on the causes of corruption and
consequent means of restoration. It is published in the second volume of
Gruter’s Thesaurus Criticus. Robortellus, however, does not advert to
Greek manuscripts, a field upon which Canter first entered. The Novæ
Lectiones of William Canter are not to be confounded with the Variæ
Lectiones of his brother Theodore, a respectable but less eminent
scholar. Canter, it may be added, was the first, according to
Boissonade, who, in his edition of Euripides, restored some sort of
order and measure to the choruses.[915]
[914] In the British Museum is a book by one Guillon, of whom I find
no account in biography, called Gnomon, on the quantity of Greek
syllables. This seems to be the earliest work of the kind; and he
professes himself to write against those who think “quidvis licere
in quantitate syllabarum.” It is printed at Paris, 1556; and it
appears by Watts that there are other editions.
[915] Biogr. Univ. The Life of Canter in Melchior Adam is one of the
best his collection contains; it seems to be copied from one by
Miræus. Canter was a man of great moral as well as literary
excellence; the account of his studies and mode of life in this
biography is very interesting. The author of it dwells justly on
Canter’s skill in exploring the text of manuscripts, and in
observing the variations of orthography. See also Blount, Baillet,
Niceron, vol. xxix., and Chalmers.
|Editions by Sylburgius.|
20. Sylburgius, whose grammar has been already praised, was of great use
to Stephens in compiling the Thesaurus; it has even been said, but
perhaps with German partiality, that the greater part of its value is
due to him.[916] The editions of Sylburgius, especially those of
Aristotle and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, are among the best of that
age; none, indeed, containing the entire works of the Stagyrite, is
equally esteemed.[917] He had never risen above the station of a
schoolmaster in small German towns, till he relinquished the employment
for that of superintendent of classical editions in the press of Wechel,
and afterwards in that of Commelia. But the death of this humble and
laborious man, in 1596, was deplored by Casaubon as one of the heaviest
blows that learning could have sustained.
|Neander.|
21. Michael Neander, a disciple of Melanchthon and Camerarius, who
became rector of a flourishing school at Isfeld in Thuringia soon after
1550, and remained there till his death in 1595, was certainly much
inferior to Sylburgius; yet to him Germany was chiefly indebted for
keeping alive, in the general course of study, some little taste for
Grecian literature, which towards the end of the century was rapidly
declining. The “Erotemata Græcæ Linguæ” of Neander, according to
Eichhorn, drove the earlier grammars out of use in the schools.[918] But
the publications of Neander appear to be little more than such extracts
from the Greek writers as he thought would be useful in education.[919]
Several of them are gnomologies, or collections of moral sentences from
the poets; a species of compilation not uncommon in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, but neither exhibiting much learning nor
favourable to the acquisition of a true feeling for ancient poetry. The
Thesaurus of Basilius Faber, another work of the same class, published
in 1571, is reckoned by Eichhorn among the most valuable school-books of
this period, and continued to be used and reprinted for two hundred
years.[920]
[916] Melchior Adam, p. 193. In the article of the Quarterly Review,
several times already quoted, it is said that the Thesaurus “bears
much plainer marks of the sagacity and erudition of Sylburgius than
of the desultory and hasty studies of his master, than whom he was
more clear-sighted;” a compliment at the expense of Stephens, not
perhaps easily reconcileable with the eulogy a little before passed
by the reviewer on the latter, as the greatest of Greek scholars
except Casaubon. Stephens says of himself, quem habuit
(Sylburgius), novo quodam more dominum simul ac præceptorem, quod
ille beneficium pro sua ingenuitate agnoscit (apud Maittaire, p.
421). But it has been remarked that Stephens was not equally
ingenuous, and never acknowledges any obligation to Sylburgius, p.
583. Scaliger says, Stephanus non solus fecit Thesaurum; plusieurs
y ont mis la main; and in another place, Sylburgius a travaillé au
Trésor de H. Estienne. But it is impossible for us to apportion the
disciple’s share in this great work; which might be more than
Stephens owned, and less than the Germans have claimed. Niceron,
which is remarkable, has no life of Sylburgius.
[917] The Aristotle of Sylburgius is properly a series of editions of
that philosopher’s separate works, published from 1584 to 1596. It
is in great request when found complete, which is rarely the case.
It has no Latin translation.
[918] Geschichte der Cultur. iii. 277.
[919] Niceron, vol. xxx.
[920] Eichhorn, 274.
|Gesner.|
22. Conrad Gesner belongs almost equally to the earlier and later
periods of the sixteenth century. Endowed with unwearied diligence, and
with a mind capacious of omnifarious erudition, he was probably the most
comprehensive scholar of the age. Some of his writings have been
mentioned in the first volume. His “Mithridates, sive de Differentiis
Linguarum” is the earliest effort on a great scale to arrange the
various languages of mankind by their origin and analogies. He was
deeply versed in Greek literature, and especially in the medical and
physical writers; but he did not confine himself to that province. It
may be noticed here, that in his Stobæus, published in 1543, Gesner
first printed Greek and Latin in double columns.[921] He was followed by
Turnebus, in an edition of Aristotle’s Ethics (Paris, 1555), and the
practice became gradually general, though some sturdy scholars, such as
Stephens and Sylburgius, did not comply with it. Gesner seems to have
had no expectation that the Greek text would be much read, and only
recommends it as useful in conjunction with the Latin.[922] Scaliger,
however, deprecates so indolent a mode of study, and ascribes the
decline of Greek learning to these unlucky double columns.[923]
[921] This I give only on the authority of Chevillier, Origine de
l’Imprimerie de Paris.
[922] Id. p. 240.
[923] Scalig. Secunda. Accents on Latin words, it is observed by
Scaliger (in the Scaligerana Prima), were introduced within his
memory; and, as he says, which would be more important, the points
called comma and semi-colon, of which Paulus Manutius was the
inventor. But in this there must be some mistake: for the comma is
frequent in books much older than any edited by Manutius.
|Decline of taste in Germany.|
23. In the beginning of the century, as has been shown in the former
volume, the prospects of classical literature in Germany seemed most
auspicious. Schools and universities, the encouragement of liberal
princes, the instruction of distinguished professors, the formation of
public libraries, had given an impulse, the progressive effects of which
were manifest in every Protestant state of the empire. Nor was any
diminution of this zeal and taste discernible for a few years. But after
the death of Melanchthon in 1560, and of Camerarius in 1574, a literary
decline commenced, slow but uniform and permanent, during which Germany
had to lament a strange eclipse of that lustre which had distinguished
the preceding age. This was first shown in an inferiority of style, and
in a neglect of the best standards of good writing. The admiration of
Melanchthon himself led in some measure to this; and to copy his manner
(genus dicendi Philippicum, as it was called) was more the fashion than
to have recourse to his masters, Cicero and Quintilian.[924] But this,
which would have kept up a very tolerable style, gave way, not long
afterwards, to a tasteless and barbarous turn of phrase, in which all
feeling of propriety and elegance was lost. This has been called
Apuleianismus, as if that indifferent writer of the third century had
been set up for imitation, though probably it was the mere sympathy of
bad taste and incorrect expression. The scholastic philosophy came back
about the same time into the German universities, with all its technical
jargon, and triumphed over the manes of Erasmus and Melanchthon. The
disciples of Paracelsus spread their mystical rhapsodies far and wide,
as much at the expense of classical taste as of sound reason. And when
we add to these untoward circumstances the dogmatic and polemical
theology, studious of a phraseology certainly not belonging to the
Augustan age, and the necessity of writing on many other subjects almost
equally incapable of being treated in good language, we cannot be much
astonished that a barbarous and slovenly Latinity should become
characteristic of Germany, which, even in later ages, very few of its
learned men have been able to discard.[925]
[924] Eichhorn, iii. 268. The Germans usually said Philippus for
Melanchthon.
[925] Melchior Adam, after highly praising Wolf’s translation of
Demosthenes, proceeds to boast of the Greek learning of Germany,
which, rather singularly, he seems to ascribe to this translation:
Effecit ut ante ignotus plerisque Demosthenes, nunc familiariter
nobiscum versetur in scholis et academiis. Est sanè quod gratulemur
Germaniæ nostræ, quod per Wolfium tantorum fluminum eloquentiæ
particeps facta est. Fatentur ipsi Græci, qui reliqui sunt hodie
Constantinopoli, præ cæteris eruditi, et Christianæ religionis
amantes, totum musarum chorum, relicto Helicone, in Germaniam
transmigrâsse. (Vitæ Philosophurum.) Melchior Adam lived in the
early part of the seventeenth century, when this high character was
hardly applicable to Germany; but his panegyric must be taken as
designed for the preceding age, in which the greater part of his
eminent men flourished. Besides this, he is so much a compiler that
this passage may not be his own.
|German learning.|
|Greek verses of Rhodomann.|
24. In philological erudition we have seen that Germany long maintained
her rank, if not quite equal to France in this period, yet nearer to her
than to any third nation. We have mentioned several of the most
distinguished; and to these we might add many names from Melchior Adam,
the laborious biographer of his learned countrymen; such as Oporinus,
George Fabricius, Frischlin, Crusius, who first taught the Romaic Greek
in Germany. One, rather more known than these, was Laurence Rhodomann.
He was the editor of several authors; but his chief claim to a niche in
the temple seems to rest upon his Greek verses, which have generally
been esteemed superior to any of his generation. The praise does not
imply much positive excellence; for in Greek composition, and especially
in verse, the best scholars of the sixteenth century make but an
indifferent figure. Rhodomann’s life of Luther is written in Greek
hexameters. It is also a curious specimen of the bigotry of his church.
He boasts that Luther predicted the deaths of Zuingle, Carlostadt, and
Œcolampadius, as the punishment of their sacramentarian hypothesis.
The lines will be found in a note,[926] and may serve as a fair
specimen of as good Greek as could perhaps be written in that age of
celebrated erudition. But some other poems of Rhodomann, which I have
not seen, are more praised by the critics.
[926]
Και τα μεν ὡς τετελεστο μετα χρονον, ὡς μεμορητο
ὡς γαρ δωδεκαμηνος ἑλιξ τριτος ετρεχε Φαιβου,
δη τοτε μοιρα, θεου κρυφιην πρησσουσα μενοινην,
μαντοσυναις επεθηκε θεοφραδεεσσι τελευτην
ανδρος, ὁσ ουτιν' απρηκτον απο κραδιης βαλε μυθον.
αμφω γαρ στυγερον πλαγξηνορε δογματος αρχω
οικιολαμπαδιον και κιγκλιον εφθασεν ατη
ποτμου δακρυοεντος' ἱνα φριξειε και αλλος
ατρεκιης προς κεντρον αναιδεα ταρσον ιαψαι.
ουδε μεν οξυηορους καρολοσταδιος φυγε ποινας,
τον δε γαρ αντιβολών κρυερῳ μετα φασματι δαιμων
εξαπινης εταραξε, και ηρπασεν οὑ χρεος ηευ.
[Kai ta men hôs tetelesto meta chronon, hôs memorêto;
hôs gar dôdekamênos helix tritos etreche Phaibou,
dê tote moira, theou kryphiên prêssousa menoinên,
mantosynais epethêke theophradeessi teleutên
andros, hos outin' aprêkton apo kradiês bale mython.
amphô gar stygerou planxênore dogmatos archô
oikiolampadion kai kinklion ephthasen atê
potmou dakruoentos; hina phrixeie kai allos
atrekiês pros kentron anaidea tarson iapsai.
oude men oxymorous karolostadios phyge poinas,
ton de gar antibolôn kruerô meta phasmati daimôn
exapinês etaraxe, kai êrpasen hou chreos êeu.]
|Learning declines;|
|except in Catholic Germany.|
25. But, at the expiration of the century, few were left besides
Rhodomann of the celebrated philologers of Germany; nor had a new race
arisen to supply their place. Æmilius Portus, who taught with reputation
at Heidelberg, was a native of Ferrara, whose father, a Greek by origin,
emigrated to Genoa on account of religion. The state of literature, in a
general sense, had become sensibly deteriorated in the empire. This was
most perceptible, or perhaps only perceptible, in its most learned
provinces, those which had embraced the Reformation. In the opposite
quarter there had been little to lose, and something was gained. In the
first period of the Reformation, the Catholic universities, governed by
men whose prejudices were insuperable even by appealing to their
selfishness, had kept still in the same track, educating their students
in the barbarous logic and literature of the Middle Ages, careless that
every method was employed in Protestant education to develop and direct
the talents of youth; and this had given the manifest intellectual
superiority, which taught the disciples and contemporaries of the first
reformers a scorn for the stupidity and ignorance of the popish party,
somewhat exaggerated, of course, as such sentiments generally are, but
dangerous above measure to its influence. It was therefore one of the
first great services which the Jesuits performed to get possession of
the universities, or to found other seminaries for education. In these
they discarded the barbarous school-books then in use, put the
rudimentary study of the languages on a better footing, devoted
themselves, for the sake of religion, to those accomplishments which
religion had hitherto disdained; and by giving a taste for elegant
literature, with as much solid and scientific philosophy as the
knowledge of the times and the prejudices of the church would allow,
both wiped away the reproach of ignorance, and drew forth the native
talents of their novices and scholars. They taught gratuitously, which
threw, however unreasonably, a sort of discredit upon salaried
professors:[927] it was found that boys learned more from them in six
months than in two years under other masters; and, probably for both
these reasons, even protestants sometimes withdrew their children from
the ordinary gymnasia and placed them in Jesuit colleges. No one will
deny that, in their classical knowledge, particularly of the Latin
language, and in the elegance with which they wrote it, the order of
Jesuits might stand in competition with any scholars of Europe. In this
period of the sixteenth century, though not perhaps in Germany itself,
they produced several of the best writers whom it could boast.[928]
[927] Mox, ubi paululum firmitatis accessit, pueros sine mercede
docendos et erudiendos susceperunt; quo artificio non vulgarem
vulgi favorem emeruere, criminandis præsertim aliis doctoribus,
quorum doctrina venalis esset et scholæ nulli sine mercede
paterent, et interdum etiam doctrina peregrina personarent.
Incredibile dictu est, quantum hæc criminatio valuerit. Hospinian,
Hist. Jesuitarum, l. ii. c. 1. fol. 84. See also l. i. fol. 59.
[928] Ranke, ii. 32. Eichhorn, iii. 266. The latter scarcely does
justice to the Jesuits as promoters of learning in their way.
|Philological works of Stephens.|
26. It is seldom that an age of critical erudition is one also of fine
writing; the two have not perhaps a natural incompatibility with each
other, but the bond-woman too often usurps the place of the free-woman,
and the auxiliary science of philology controls, instead of adorning and
ministering to the taste and genius of original minds. As the study of
the Latin language advanced, as better editions were published, as
dictionaries and books of criticism were more carefully drawn up, we
naturally expect to find it written with more correctness, but not with
more force and truth. The expostulation of Henry Stephens de Latinitate
Falso Suspecta, 1576, is a collection of classical authorities for words
and idioms, which seem so like French, that the reader would not
hesitate to condemn them. Some of these, however, are so familiar to us
as good Latin, that we can hardly suspect the dictionaries not to have
contained them. I have not examined any earlier edition than that of
Calepin’s dictionary, as enlarged by Paulus Manutius, of the date of
1579, rather after this publication by Henry Stephens, and certainly it
does not appear to want these words, or to fail in sufficient authority
for them.
|Style of Lipsius.|
27. In another short production by Stephens, De Latinitate Lipsii
Palæstra, he turns into ridicule the affected style of that author, who
ransacked all his stores of learning to perplex the reader. A much later
writer, Scioppius, in his Judicium de Stylo Historico, points out
several of the affected and erroneous expressions of Lipsius. But he was
the founder of a school of bad writers, which lasted for some time,
especially in Germany. Seneca and Tacitus were the authors of antiquity
whom Lipsius strove to emulate. “Lipsius,” says Scaliger, “is the cause
that men have now little respect for Cicero, whose style he esteems
about as much as I do his own. He once wrote well, but his third century
of epistles is good for nothing.”[929] But a style of point and affected
conciseness will always have its admirers, till the excess of vicious
imitation disgusts the world.[930]
[929] Scaligerana Secunda.
[930] Miræus, quoted in Melchior Adam’s Life of Lipsius, praises his
eloquence, with contempt of those who thought their own feeble and
empty writing like Cicero’s. See also Eichhorn, iii. 299; Baillet,
who has a long article on the style of Lipsius and the school it
formed (Jugemens des Savans, vol. ii. p. 192, 4to edition); and
Blount; also the note M. in Bayle’s article on Lipsius. The
following passage of Scioppius I transcribe from Blount:--“In Justi
Lipsii stylo, scriptoris ætate nostra clarissimi, istæ apparent
dotes; acumen, venustas, delectus, ornatus vel nimius, cum vix
quicquam proprie dictum ei placeat, tum schemata nullo numero,
tandem verborum copia; desunt autem perspicuitas, puritas,
æquabilitas, collocatio, junctura et numerus oratorius. Itaque
oratio ejus est obscura, non paucis barbarismis et solœcismis,
pluribus vero archaismis et idiotismis, innumeris etiam neoterismis
inquinata, comprehensio obscura, compositio fracta et in particulas
concisa, vocum similium aut ambiguarum puerilis captatio.”
|Minerva of Sanctius.|
28. Morhof, and several authorities quoted by Baillet, extol the Latin
grammar of a Spaniard, Emanuel Alvarez, as the first in which the
fancies of the ancient grammarians had been laid aside. Of this work I
know nothing farther. But the Minerva of another native of Spain,
Sanchez, commonly called Sanctius, the first edition of which appeared
at Salamanca in 1587, far excelled any grammatical treatise that had
preceded it, especially as to the rules of syntax, which he has reduced
to their natural principles, by explaining apparent anomalies. He is
called the prince of grammarians, a divine man, the Mercury and Apollo
of Spain, the father of the Latin language, the common teacher of the
learned, in the panegyrical style of the Lipsii or Scioppii.[931] The
Minerva, enlarged and corrected at different times by the most eminent
scholars, Scioppius, Perizonius, and others more recent, still retains a
leading place in philology. “No one among those,” says its last editor
Bauer, “who have written well upon grammar, has attained such reputation
and even authority as the famous Spaniard whose work we now give to the
press.” But Sanctius has been charged with too great proneness to
censure his predecessors, especially Valla, and with an excess of
novelty in his theoretical speculations.
[931] Baillet.
|Orations of Muretus.|
|Panegyric of Ruhnkenius.|
29. The writers, who in this second moiety of the sixteenth century
appear to have been most conspicuous for purity of style, were Muretus,
Paulus Manutius Perpinianus, Osorius, Maphæus, to whom we may add our
own Buchanan, and perhaps Haddon. The first of these is celebrated for
his Orations, published by Aldus Manutius in 1576. Many of these were
delivered a good deal earlier. Ruhnkenius, editor of the works of
Muretus, says that he at once eclipsed Bembo, Sadolet, and the whole
host of Ciceronians; expressing himself so perfectly in that author’s
style that we should fancy ourselves to be reading him, did not the
subject betray a modern hand. “In learning,” he says, “and in knowledge
of the Latin language, Manutius was not inferior to Muretus; we may even
say, that his zeal in imitating Cicero was still stronger, inasmuch as
he seemed to have no other aim all his life than to bear a perfect
resemblance to that model. Yet he rather followed than overtook his
master, and in this line of imitation cannot be compared with Muretus.
The reason of this was that nature had bestowed on Muretus the same kind
of genius that she had given to Cicero, while that of Manutius was very
different. It was from this similarity of temperament that Muretus
acquired such felicity of expression, such grace in narration, such wit
in raillery, such perception of what would gratify the ear in the
structure and cadence of his sentences. The resemblance of natural
disposition made it a spontaneous act of Muretus to fall into
the footsteps of Cicero; while, with all the efforts of Manutius, his
dissimilar genius led him constantly away; so that we should not wonder
when the writings of one so delight us that we cannot lay them down,
while we are soon wearied with those of the other, correct and polished
as they are, on account of the painful desire of imitation which they
betray. No one, since the revival of letters,” Ruhnkenius proceeds,
“has written Latin more correctly than Muretus; yet even in him a few
inadvertencies may be discovered.”[932]
[932] Mureti opera, cura Ruhnkenii, Lugd. 1789.
|Defects of his style.|
30. Notwithstanding the panegyric of so excellent a scholar, I cannot
feel this very close approximation of Muretus to the Ciceronian
standard; and it even seems to me that I have not rarely met with modern
Latin of a more thoroughly classical character. His style is too
redundant and florid; his topics very trivial. Witness the whole oration
on the battle of Lepanto, where the greatness of his subject does not
raise them above the level of a schoolboy’s exercise. The celebrated
eulogy on the St. Bartholomew Massacre, delivered before the Pope, will
serve as a very fair specimen, to exemplify the Latinity of
Muretus.[933] Scaliger, invidious for the most part in his characters of
contemporary scholars, declares that no one since Cicero had written so
well as Muretus, but that he adopted the Italian diffuseness, and says
little in many words. This observation seems perfectly just.
[933] O noctem illam memorabilem et in fastis eximiæ alicujus notæ
adjectione signandam, quæ paucorum seditiosorum interitu regem a
præsenti cædis periculo, regnum a perpetua bellorum civilium
formidine liberavit! Qua quidem nocte stellas equidem ipsas luxisse
solito nitidius arbitror, et flumen Sequanam majores undas
volvisse, quo citius illa impurorum hominum cadavera evolveret et
exoneraret in mare. O felicissimam mulierem Catharinam, regis
matrem, quæ cum tot annos admirabili prudentia parique solicitudine
regnum filio, filium regno conservasset, tum demum secura regnantem
filium adspexit! O regis fratres ipsos quoque beatos! quorum alter
cum, qua ætate cæteri vix adhuc arma tractare incipiunt, eâ ipse
quater commisso prælio fraternos hostes fregisset ac fugasset,
hujus quoque pulcherrimi facti præcipuam gloriam ad se potissimum
voluit pertinere; alter, quamquam ætate nondum ad rem militarem
idonea erat, tanta tamen est ad virtutem indole, ut neminem nisi
fratrem in his rebus gerendis æquo animo sibi passurus fuerit
anteponi. O diem denique illum plenum lætitiæ et hilaritatis, quo
tu, beatissime pater, hoc ad te nuncio allato, Deo immortali, et
Divo Ludovico regi, cujus hæc in ipso pervigilio evenerant, gratias
acturus, indictas a te supplicationes pedes obiisti! Quis
optabilior ad te nuncius adferri poterat? aut nos ipsi quod
felicius optare poteramus principium pontificatus tui, quam ut
primis illis mensibus tetram illam caliginem, quasi exorto sole,
discussam cerneremus? vol. i. p. 197, edit. Ruhnken.
|Epistles of Manutius.|
31. The epistles of Paulus Manutius are written in what we may call a
gentleman-like tone, without the virulence or querulousness that
disgusts too often in the compositions of literary men. Of Panvinius,
Robortellus, Sigonius, his own peculiar rivals, he writes in a friendly
spirit and tone of eulogy. His letters are chiefly addressed to the
great classical scholars of his age. But, on the other hand, though
exclusively on literary subjects, they deal chiefly in generalities, and
the affectation of copying Cicero in every phase gives a coldness and
almost an air of insincerity to the sentiments. They have but one note,
the praise of learning; yet it is rarely that they impart to us much
information about its history and progress. Hence they might serve for
any age, and seem like pattern forms for the epistles of a literary man.
In point of mere style there can be no comparison between the letters of
a Sadolet or Manutius on the one hand, and those of a Scaliger, Lipsius,
or Casaubon on the other. But while the first pall on the reader by
their monotonous elegance, the others are full of animation and pregnant
with knowledge. Even in what he most valued, correct Latin, Manutius, as
Scioppius has observed, is not without errors. But the want of perfect
dictionaries made it difficult to avoid illegitimate expressions which
modern usage suggested to the writer.[934]
[934] Sciopp. Judicium de Stylo Historico.
|Care of the Italian Latinists.|
32. Manutius, as the passage above quoted has shown, is not reckoned by
Ruhnkenius quite equal to Muretus, at least in natural genius. Scioppius
thinks him consummate in delicacy and grace. He tells us that Manutius
could hardly speak three words of Latin, so that the Germans who came to
visit him looked down on his deficiency. But this, Scioppius remarks, as
Erasmus had done a hundred years before, was one of the rules observed
by the Italian scholars to preserve the correctness of their style. They
perceived that the daily use of Latin in speech must bring in a torrent
of barbarous phrases, which “claiming afterwards the privileges
of acquaintance” (quodam familiaritatis jure), would obtrude their
company during composition, and render it difficult for the most
accurate writer to avoid them.[935]
[935] Scioppius, Judicium de Stylo Historico, p. 65. This was so little
understood in England, that, in some of our colleges, and even
schools, it was the regulation for the students to speak Latin when
within hearing of their superiors. Even Locke was misled into
recommending this preposterous barbarism.
|Perpinianus, Osorius, Maphæus.|
33. Perpinianus, a Valencian Jesuit, wrote some orations, hardly
remembered at present, but Ruhnkenius has placed him along with Muretus,
as the two Cisalpines (if that word may be so used for brevity), who
have excelled the Italians in Latinity. A writer of more celebrity was
Osorius, a Portuguese bishop, whose treatise on glory, and, what is
better known, his History of the Reign of Emanuel, have placed him in a
high rank among the imitators of the Augustan language. Some extracts
from Osorius de Gloria will be found in the first volume of the
Retrospective Review. This has been sometimes fancied to be the famous
work of Cicero with that title, which Petrarch possessed and lost, and
which Petrus Alcyonius has been said to have transferred to his own book
De Exilio. But for this latter conjecture there is, I believe, neither
evidence nor presumption; and certainly Osorius, if we may judge from
the passages quoted, was no Cicero. Lord Bacon has said of him, that
“his vein was weak and waterish,” which these extracts confirm. They
have not elegance enough to compensate for their verbosity and
emptiness. Dupin, however, calls him the Cicero of Portugal.[936] Nor is
less honour due to the Jesuit Maffei (Maphæus), whose chief work is the
History of India, published in 1586. Maffei, according to Scioppius, was
so careful of his style, that he used to recite the breviary in Greek,
lest he should become too much accustomed to bad Latin.[937] This may
perhaps be said in ridicule of such purists. Like Manutius, he was
tediously elaborate in correction; some have observed that his History
of India has scarce any value except for its style.[938]
[936] Niceron, vol. ii.
[937] De Stylo Hist. p. 71.
[938] Tiraboschi, Niceron, vol. v. Biogr. Univ.
|Buchanan, Haddon.|
34. The writings of Buchanan, and especially his Scottish history, are
written with strength, perspicuity, and neatness.[939] Many of our own
critics have extolled the Latinity of Walter Haddon. His Orations were
published in 1567. They belong to the first years of this period. But
they seem hardly to deserve any high praise. Haddon had certainly
laboured at an imitation of Cicero, but without catching his manner or
getting rid of the florid, semi-poetical tone of the fourth century. A
specimen, taken much at random, but rather favourable than otherwise,
from his oration on the death of the young brothers of the house of
Suffolk, at Cambridge, in 1550, is given in a note.[940] Another work of
a different kind, wherein Haddon is said to have been concerned jointly
with Sir John Cheke, is the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, the
proposed code of the Anglican Church, drawn up under Edward VI. It is,
considering the subject, in very good language.
[939] Le Clerc, in an article of the Bibliotheque Choisie, vol. viii.,
pronounces a high eulogy on Buchanan, as having written better than
any one else in verse and prose; that is, as I understand him,
having written prose better than any one who has written verse so
well, and the converse.
[940] O laboriosam et si non miseram, certe mirabiliter exercitam, tot
cumulatam funeribus Cantabrigiam! Gravi nos vu’nere percussit
hyems, æstas saucios ad terram afflixit. Calendæ Martiæ stantem
adhuc Academiam nostram et erectam vehementer impulerunt, et de
priori statu suo depresserunt. Idus Juliæ nutantem jam et
inclinatam oppresserunt. Cum magnus ille fidei magister et
excellens noster in vera religione doctor, Martinus Bucerus,
frigoribus hybernis conglaciavisset, tantam in ejus occasu plagam
accepisse videbamur, ut majorem non solum ullam expectaremus, sed
ne posse quidem expectari crederemus. Verum postquam inundantes, et
in Cantabrigiam effervescentes æstivi sudores, illud præstans et
aureolum par Suffolciensium fratrum, tum quidem peregrinatum a
nobis, sed tamen plane nostrum obruerunt, sic ingemuimus, ut
infinitus dolor vix ullam tanti mali levationem invenire possit.
Perfectus omni scientia pater, et certe senex incomparabilis,
Martinus Bucerus, licet nec reipublicæ nec nostro, tamen suo
tempore mortuus est, nimirum ætate, et annis et morbo affectus.
Suffolcienses autem, quos ille florescentes ad omnem laudem,
tanquam alumnos disciplinæ reliquit suæ, tam repente sudorum
fluminibus absorpti sunt, ut prius mortem illorum audiremus, quam
morbum animadverteremus.
|Sigonius, de Consolatione.|
35. These are the chief writers of this part of the sixteenth century
who have attained reputation for the polish and purity of their Latin
style. Sigonius ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in the same class, since
his writings exhibit not only perspicuity and precision, but as much
elegance as their subjects would permit. He is also the acknowledged
author of the treatise De Consolatione, which long passed with many for
a work of Cicero. Even Tiraboschi was only undeceived of this opinion by
meeting with some unpublished letters of Sigonius, wherein he confesses
the forgery.[941] It seems, however, that he had inserted some authentic
fragments. Lipsius speaks of this counterfeit with the utmost contempt,
but after all his invective can scarcely detect any bad Latinity.[942]
The Consolatio is, in fact, like many other imitations of the
philosophical writings of Cicero, resembling their original in his
faults of verbosity and want of depth, but flowing and graceful in
language. Lipsius, who affected the other extreme, was not likely to
value that which deceived the Italians into a belief that Tully himself
was before them. It was, at least, not everyone who could have done this
like Sigonius.
[941] Biog. Univ. art. Sigonio.
[942] Lipsii Opera Critica. His style is abusive, as usual in this age.
Quis autem ille suaviludius qui latere se posse censuit sub illâ
personâ? Male mehercule de seculo nostra judicavit. Quid enim tam
dissimile ab illo auro, quam hoc plumbum? ne simia quidem Ciceronis
esse potest, nedum ut ille.... Habes judicium meum, in quo si
aliqua asperitas, ne mirere. Fatua enim hæc superbia tanto nomini
se inserendi dignissima insectatione fuit.
|Decline of taste and learning in Italy.|
36. Several other names, especially from the Jesuit colleges, might, I
doubt not, be added to the list of good Latin writers by any competent
scholar, who should prosecute the research through public libraries by
the aid of the biographical dictionaries. But more than enough may have
been said for the general reader. The decline of classical literature in
this sense, to which we have already alluded, was the theme of complaint
towards the close of the century, and above all in Italy. Paulus
Manutius had begun to lament it long before. But Latinus Latinius
himself, one of the most learned scholars of that country, states
positively in 1584, that the Italian universities were forced to send
for their professors from Spain and France.[943] And this abandonment by
Italy of her former literary glory, was far more striking in the next
age, an age of science, but not of polite literature. Ranke supposes
that the attention of Italy being more turned towards mathematics and
natural history, the study of the ancient writers, which do not
contribute greatly to these sciences, fell into decay. But this seems
hardly an adequate cause, nor had the exact sciences made any striking
progress in the period immediately under review. The rigorous orthodoxy
of the church, which in some measure revived an old jealousy of heathen
learning, must have contributed far more to the effect. Sixtus V.
notoriously disliked all profane studies, and was even kept with
difficulty from destroying the antiquities of Rome, several of which
were actually demolished by this bigoted and barbarous zeal.[944] No
other pope, I believe, has been guilty of what the Romans always deemed
sacrilege. In such discouraging circumstances we could hardly wonder at
what is reported, that Aldus Manutius, having been made professor of
rhetoric at Rome, about 1589, could only get one or two hearers. But
this, perhaps, does not rest on very good authority.[945] It is agreed
that the Greek language was almost wholly neglected at the end of the
century, and there was no one in Italy distinguished for a knowledge of
it. Baronius must be reckoned a man of laborious erudition; yet he wrote
his annals of ecclesiastical history of twelve centuries, without any
acquaintance with that tongue.
[943] Tiraboschi, x. 387.
[944] Ranke, i. 476.
[945] Id. 482. Renouard, Imprimerie des Aides, iii. 197, doubts the
truth of this story, which is said to come on the authority alone
of Rossi, a writer who took the name of Erythræus, and has
communicated a good deal of literary miscellaneous information, but
not always such as deserves confidence.
|Joseph Scaliger.|
37. The two greatest scholars of the sixteenth century, being rather
later than most of the rest, are yet unnamed; Joseph Scaliger and Isaac
Casaubon. The former, son of Julius Cæsar Scaliger, and, in the
estimation at least of some, his inferior in natural genius, though much
above him in learning and judgment, was perhaps the most extraordinary
master of general erudition that has ever lived. His industry was
unremitting through a length of life; his memory, though he naturally
complains of its failure in latter years, had been prodigious; he was,
in fact, conversant with all ancient, and very extensively with modern
literature. The notes of his conversations, taken down by some of his
friends, and well-known by the name of Scaligerana, though full of
vanity and contempt of others, and though not always perhaps faithful
registers of what he said, bear witness to his acuteness, vivacity, and
learning.[946] But his own numerous and laborious publications are the
best testimonies to these qualities. His name will occur to us more than
once again. In the department of philology, he was conspicuous as an
excellent critic, both of the Latin and Greek languages; though Bayle,
in his own paradoxical, but acute and truly judicious spirit, has
suggested, that Scaliger’s talents and learning were too great for a
good commentator; the one making him discover in authors more hidden
sense than they possessed, the other leading him to perceive a thousand
allusions which had never been designed. He frequently altered the text
in order to bring these more forward; and in his conjectures is bold,
ingenious, and profound, but not very satisfactory.[947] His critical
writings are chiefly on the Latin poets; but his knowledge of Greek was
eminent; and, perhaps, it may not be too minute to notice as a proof of
it, that his verses in that language, if not good according to our
present standard, are at least much better than those of Casaubon. The
latter, in an epistle to Scaliger, extols his correspondent as far above
Gaza, or any modern Greek in poetry, and worthy to have lived in Athens
with Aristophanes and Euripides. This cannot be said of his own
attempts, in which their gross faultiness is as manifest as their
general want of spirit.
[946] The Scaligerana Prima, as they are called, were collected by
Francis Vertunien, a physician of Poitiers; the Secunda, which are
much the longest, by two brothers, named De Vassan, who were
admitted to the intimacy of Scaliger at Leyden. They seem to have
registered all his table-talk in commonplace books alphabetically
arranged. Hence, when he spoke at different times of the same
person or subject, the whole was published in an undigested,
incoherent, and sometimes self-contradictory paragraph. He was not
strict about consistency, as men of his temper seldom are in their
conversation, and one would be slow in relying on what he has said;
but the Scaligerana, with its many faults, deserves perhaps the
first place among those amusing miscellanies, known by the name of
Ana.
It was little to the honour of the Scaligers, father and son, that
they lay under the strongest suspicions of extreme credulity, to
say nothing worse, in setting up a descent from the Scala princes
of Verona, though the world could never be convinced that their
proper name was not Burden, of a plebeian family, and known as such
in that city. Joseph Scaliger took as his device, Fuimus Troes; and
his letters, as well as the Scaligerana, bear witness to the stress
he laid on this pseudo-genealogy. Lipsius observes on this, with
the true spirit which a man of letters ought to feel, that it would
have been a great honour for the Scalas to have descended from the
Scaligers, who had more real nobility than the whole city of
Verona. (Thuana, p. 14). But unfortunately the vain, foolish, and
vulgar part of mankind cannot be brought to see things in that
light, and both the Scaligers knew that such princes as Henry II.
and Henry IV. would esteem them more for their ancestry than for
their learning and genius.
The epitaph of Daniel Heinsius on Joseph Scaliger, pardonably
perhaps on such an occasion, mingles the real and fabulous glories
of his friend.
Regius a Brenni deductus sanguine sanguis
Qui dominos rerum tot numerabat avos,
Cui nihil indulsit sors, nil natura negavit,
Et jure imperii conditor ipse sui,
Invidiæ scopulus, sed cœlo proximus, illa,
Illa Juliades conditur, hospes, humo.
Centum illic proavos et centum pone triumphos,
Sceptraque Veronæ sceptrigerosque Deos;
Mastinosque, Canesque, et totam ab origine gentem,
Et quæ præterea non bene nota latent.
Illic stent aquilæ priscique insignia regni,
Et ter Cæsareo munere fulta domus
Plus tamen invenies quicquid sibi contulit ipse,
Et minimum tantæ nobilitatis eget.
Aspice tot linguas, totumque in pectore mundum;
Innumeras gentes continet iste locus.
Crede illic Arabas, desertaque nomina Pœnos,
Et crede Armenios Æthiopasque tegi.
Terrarum instar habes; et quam natura negavit
Laudem uni populo, contigit illa viro.
[947] Niceron, vol. xxiii. Blount, Biogr. Univ.
|Isaac Casaubon.|
38. This eminent person, a native of Geneva[948]--that little city, so
great in the annals of letters--and the son-in-law of Henry Stephens,
rose above the horizon in 1583, when his earliest work, the Annotations
on Diogenes Laertius, was published; a performance of which he was
afterwards ashamed, as being unworthy of his riper studies. Those on
Strabo, an author much neglected before, followed in 1587. For more than
twenty years Casaubon employed himself upon editions of Greek authors,
many of which, as that of Theophrastus, in 1593, and that of Athenæus,
in 1600, deserve particular mention. The latter, especially, which he
calls, “molestissimum, difficillimum et tædii plenissimum opus,” has
always been deemed a noble monument of critical sagacity and extensive
erudition. In conjectural emendation of the text, no one hitherto had
been equal to Casaubon. He may probably be deemed a greater scholar than
his father-in-law Stephens, or even, in a critical sense, than his
friend Joseph Scaliger. These two lights of the literary world,
though it is said, that they had never seen each other,[949] continued
till the death of the latter in regular correspondence and unbroken
friendship. Casaubon, querulous but not envious, paid freely the homage
which Scaliger was prepared to exact, and wrote as to one superior in
age, in general celebrity, and in impetuosity of spirit. Their letters
to each other, as well as to their various other correspondents, are
highly valuable for the literary history of the period they embrace;
that is, the last years of the present, and the first of the ensuing
century.
[948] The father of Casaubon was from the neighbourhood of Bordeaux.
He fled to Geneva during a temporary persecution of the Huguenots,
but returned home afterwards. Casaubon went back to Geneva in his
nineteenth year for the sake of education. See his life by his son
Meric, prefixed to Almeloveen’s edition of his epistles.
[949] Morhof, l. i. c. xv. s. 57.
|General result.|
39. Budæus, Camerarius, Stephens, Scaliger, Casaubon, appear to stand
out as the great restorers of ancient learning, and especially of the
Greek language. I do not pretend to appreciate them by deep skill in the
subject, or by a diligent comparison of their works with those of
others, but from what I collect to have been the more usual suffrage of
competent judges. Canter, perhaps, or Sylburgius might be rated above
Camerarius; but the last seems, if we may judge by the eulogies bestowed
upon him, to have stood higher in the estimation of his contemporaries.
Their labours restored the integrity of the text in the far greater part
of the Greek authors--though they did not yet possess as much metrical
knowledge as was required for that of the poets--explained most dubious
passages, and nearly exhausted the copiousness of the language. For
another century mankind was content, in respect of Greek philology, to
live on the accumulations of the sixteenth; and it was not till after so
long a period had elapsed, that new scholars arose, more exact, more
philosophical, more acute in “knitting up the ravelled sleeve” of
speech, but not, to say the least, more abundantly stored with erudition
than those who had cleared the way, and upon whose foundations they
built.
|Learning in England under Edward and Mary.|
40. We come, in the last place, to the condition of ancient learning in
this island; a subject which it may be interesting to trace with some
minuteness, though we can offer no splendid banquet, even from the reign
of the Virgin Queen. Her accession was indeed a happy epoch in our
literary, as well as civil annals. She found a great and miserable
change in the state of the universities since the days of her father.
Plunder and persecution, the destroying spirits of the last two reigns,
were enemies, against which our infant muses could not struggle.[950]
Ascham, indeed, denies that there was much decline of learning at
Cambridge before the time of Mary. The influence of her reign was, not
indirectly alone, but by deliberate purpose, injurious to all useful
knowledge.[951] It was in contemplation, he tells us (and surely it was
congenial enough to the spirit of that government) that the ancient
writers should give place in order to restore Duns Scotus, and the
scholastic barbarians.
[950] The last editor of Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses bears witness to
having seen chronicles and other books mutilated, as he conceives,
by the protestant visitors of the university under Edward, “What is
most,” he says, “to the discredit of Cox (afterwards bishop of
Ely), was his unwearied diligence in destroying the ancient
manuscripts and other books in the public and private libraries at
Oxford. The savage barbarity with which he executed this hateful
office can never be forgotten,” &c., p. 478. One book only of the
famous library of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, bequeathed to
Oxford, escaped mutilation. This is a Valerius Maximus. But as Cox
was really a man of considerable learning, we may ask whether there
is evidence to lay these Vandal proceedings on him rather than on
his colleagues.
[951] “And what was the fruit of this seed? Verily, judgment in
doctrine was wholly altered; order in discipline very much changed;
the love of good learning began suddenly to wax cold; the knowledge
of the tongues, in spite of some that therein had flourished, was
manifestly contemned, and so the way of right study manifestly
perverted; the choice good authors of malice confounded; old
sophistry, I say not well, not old, but that new rotten sophistry,
began to beard and shoulder logic in their own tongue; yea, I know
that heads were cast together, and counsel devised, that Duns, with
all the rabble of barbarous questionists, should have dispossessed,
of their places and room, Aristotle, Plato, Tully, and Demosthenes;
whom good Mr. Redman, and those two worthy stars of the university,
Mr. Cheke and Mr. Smith, with their scholars, had brought to
flourish as notably in Cambridge, as ever they did in Greece and in
Italy; and for the doctrine of those four, the four pillars of
learning, Cambridge then giving no place to no university, neither
in France, Spain, Germany, nor Italy.”--P. 317.
|Revival under Elizabeth.|
41. It is indeed impossible to restrain the desire of noble minds for
truth and wisdom. Scared from the banks of Isis and Cam, neglected or
discountenanced by power, learning found an asylum in the closets of
private men, who laid up in silence stores for future use. And some of
course remained out of those who had listened to Smith and Cheke, or the
contemporary teachers of Oxford. But the mischief was effected,
in a general sense, by breaking up the course of education in the
universities. At the beginning of the new queen’s reign, but few of the
clergy, to whichever mode of faith they might conform, had the least
tincture of Greek learning, and the majority did not understand
Latin.[952] The protestant exiles, being far the most learned men of the
kingdom, brought back a more healthy tone of literary diligence. The
universities began to revive. An address was delivered in Greek verses
to Elizabeth at Cambridge in 1564, to which she returned thanks in the
same language.[953] Oxford would not be outdone. Lawrence, regius
professor of Greek, as we are told by Wood, made an oration at Carfax, a
spot often chosen for public exhibition, on her visit to the city in
1566; when her majesty, thanking the university in the same tongue,
observed “it was the best Greek speech she had ever heard.”[954] Several
slight proofs of classical learning appear from this time in the
“History and Antiquities of Oxford;” marks of a progress, at first slow
and silent, which I only mention, because nothing more important has
been recorded.
[952] Hallam’s Constit. Hist. of Eng. i. 249.
[953] Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, p. 270.
[954] Wood. Hist. and Antiq. of Oxford.
|Greek Lectures at Cambridge.|
42. In 1575, the queen having been now near twenty years on the throne,
we find on positive evidence, that Greek lectures were given in St.
John’s College, Cambridge; which, indeed, few would be disposed to
doubt, reflecting on the general character of the age and the length of
opportunity that had been afforded. It is said in the life of Mr. Bois,
or Boyse, one of the revisers of the translation of the Bible under
James, that “his father was a great scholar, being learned in the Hebrew
and Greek excellently well, which, considering the manners, that I say
not, the looseness of the times of his education, was almost a miracle.”
The son was admitted at St. John’s in 1575. “His father had well
educated him in the Greek tongue before his coming; which caused him to
be taken notice of in the college. For besides himself there was but one
there who could write Greek. Three lectures in that language were read
in the college. In the first, grammar was taught, as is commonly now
done in schools. In the second, an easy author was explained in the
grammatical way. In the third was read somewhat which might seem fit for
their capacities who had passed over the other two. A year was usually
spent in the first, and two in the second.”[955] It will be perceived,
that the course of instruction was still elementary; but it is well
known that many, perhaps most students, entered the universities at an
earlier age than is usual at present.[956]
[955] Peck’s Desiderata Curiosa, p. 327. Chalmers.
[956] It is probable that Cambridge was at this time better furnished
with learning than Oxford. Even Wood does not give us a favourable
notion of the condition of that university in the first part of the
queen’s reign. Oxford was for a long time filled with popish
students, that is, with conforming partisans of the former
religion; many of whom, from time to time, went off to Douay.
Leicester, as chancellor of the university, charged it, in 1582,
and in subsequent years, with great neglect of learning; the
disputations had become mere forms, and the queen’s lecturers in
Greek and Hebrew seldom read. It was as bad in all the other
sciences. Wood’s Antiquities and Athenæ, _passim_. The colleges of
Corpus Christi and Merton were distinguished beyond the rest in the
reign of Elizabeth; especially the former, where Jewel read the
lecture in rhetoric (at an earlier time, of course), Hooker in
logic, and Raynolds in Greek. Leicester succeeded in
_puritanizing_, as Wood thought, the university, by driving off the
old party, and thus rendered it a more effective school of learning.
Harrison, about 1586, does not speak much better of the
universities; “the quadrivials, I mean arithmetic, music, geometry
and astronomy, are now small regarded in either of them.”
Description of Britain, p. 252. Few learned preachers were sent out
from them, which he ascribes, in part, to the poor endowments of
most livings.
|Few Greek editions in England.|
43. We come very slowly to books, even subsidiary to education, in the
Greek language. And since this cannot be conveniently carried on to any
great extent without books, though I am aware that some contrivances
were employed as substitutes for them, and since it was as easy to
publish either grammars or editions of ancient authors in England as on
the Continent, we can, as it seems, draw no other inference from the
want of them than the absence of any considerable demand. I shall
therefore enumerate all the books instrumental to the study of Greek
which appeared in England before the close of the century.
|School books enumerated.|
44. It has been mentioned in another place that two alone had been
printed before 1550. In 1553 a Greek version of the second Æneid, by
George Etherege, was published. Two editions of the Anglican liturgy in
Latin and Greek, by Whitaker, one of our most learned theologians,
appeared in 1569;[957] a short catechism in both languages, 1573
and 1578. We find also in 1578 a little book entitled χριοτιανισμου
στοιχειωσις εις την παιδων ωθελειαν ἑλληνιστι και λατινιστι εκτεθεισα.
[christianismou stoicheiôsis eis tên paidôn ôpheleian hellênisti kai
latinsti ektetheisa.] This is a translation, made also by Whitaker, from
Nowell’s Christianæ Pietatis Prima Institutio, ad Usum Scholarum Latine
Scripta. The Biographia Britannica puts the first edition of this Greek
version in 1575; and informs us also that Nowell’s lesser Catechism was
published in Latin and Greek, 1575; but I do not find any confirmation
of this in Herbert or Watts. In 1575, Grant, master of Westminster
School, published Græcæ Linguæ Spicilegium, intended evidently for the
use of his scholars; and in 1581 the same Grant superintended an edition
of Constantin’s Lexicon, probably in the abridgment, under the name of
the Basle printer Crespin, enriching it with four or five thousand new
words, which he most likely took from Stephens’s Thesaurus. A Greek,
Latin, French, and English lexicon, by John Barret or Baret, in
1580,[958] and another by John Morel (without the French), in 1583, are
recorded in bibliographical works; but I do not know whether any copies
have survived.
[957] Scaliger says of Whitaker, O qu’il etoit bien docte! Scalig.
Secunda.
[958] Chalmers mentions an earlier edition of this dictionary in 1573,
but without the Greek.
|Greek taught in schools.|
45. It appears, therefore, that before even the middle of the queen’s
reign the rudiments of the Greek language were imparted to boys at
Westminster school, and no doubt also at those of Eton, Winchester, and
St. Paul’s.[959] But probably it did not yet extend to many others. In
Ascham’s Schoolmaster, a posthumous treatise, published in 1570, but
evidently written some years after the accession of Elizabeth, while
very detailed, and in general, valuable rules are given for the
instruction of boys in the Latin language, no intimation is found that
Greek was designed to be taught. In the statutes of Witton School in
Cheshire, framed in 1558, the founder says:--“I will there were always
taught good literature, both Latin and Greek.”[960] But this seems to be
only an aspiration after an hopeless excellence; for he proceeds to
enumerate the Latin books intended to be used, without any mention of
Greek. In the statutes of Merchant Taylor’s School, 1561, the high
master is required to be “learned in good and clean Latin literature,
and also in Greek, if such may be gotten.”[961] These words are copied
from those of Colet, in the foundation of St. Paul’s School. But in the
regulations of Hawkshead School in Lancashire, 1588, the master is
directed “to teach grammar and the principles of the Greek tongue.”[962]
The little tracts indeed, above-mentioned, do not lead us to believe
that the instruction, even at Westminster, was of more than the
slightest kind. They are but verbal translations of known religious
treatises, wherein the learner would be assisted by his recollection at
almost every word. But in the rules laid down by Mr. Lyon, founder of
Harrow School, in 1590, the books designed to be taught are enumerated,
and comprise some Greek orators and historians, as well as the poems of
Hesiod.[963]
[959] Harrison mentions, about the year 1586, that at the great
collegiate schools of Eton, Winchester, and Westminster, boys “are
well entered in the knowledge of the Latin and Greek tongues and
rules of versifying.” Description of England, prefixed to
Holingshed’s Chronicles, p. 254 (4to edition). He has just before
taken notice of “the great number of grammar-schools throughout the
realm, and those very liberally endowed for the relief of poor
scholars, so that there are not many corporate towns now under the
queen’s dominion that have not one grammar-school at the least,
with a sufficient living for a master and usher appointed for the
same.”
[960] Carlisle’s Endowed Schools, vol. i. p. 129.
[961] Id. vol. ii. p. 49.
[962] Id. vol. i. p. 656.
[963] Id. ii. 136. I have not discovered any other proofs of Greek
education in Mr. Carlisle’s work. In the statutes or regulations of
Bristol School, founded in the sixteenth century, it is provided
that the head master should be “well learned in the Latin, Greek,
and Hebrew.” But these must be modern, as appears, _inter alia_, by
the words “well affected to the Constitution in Church and State.”
|Greek better known after 1580.|
46. We have now, however, descended very low in the century. The
twilight of classical learning in England had yielded to its morning. It
is easy to trace many symptoms of enlarged erudition after 1580. Scot,
in his Discovery of Witchcraft, 1584, and doubtless many other writers,
employ Greek quotations rather freely; and the use of Greek words, or
adaptation of English forms to them, is affected by Webb and Puttenham
in their treatises on poetry. Greek titles are not infrequently given to
books; it was a pedantry many affected. Besides the lexicons
above-mentioned, it was easy to procure, at no great price, those of
Constantin and Scapula. We may refer to the ten years after 1580 the
commencement of that rapid advance, which gave the English nation, in
the reign of James, so respectable a place in the republic of letters.
In the last decennium of the century, the Ecclesiastical Polity of
Hooker is a monument of real learning, in profane as well as theological
antiquity. But certainly the reading of our scholars in this period was
far more generally among the Greek fathers than the classics. Even this,
however, required a competent acquaintance with the language.
|Editions of Greek.|
47. The two universities had abandoned the art of printing since the
year 1521. No press is known to have existed afterwards at Cambridge
till 1584, or at Oxford till 1586, when six homilies of Chrysostom in
Greek were published at a press erected by Lord Leicester at his own
expense.[964] The first book of Herodotus came out at the same place in
1591; the treatise of Barlaam on the Papacy in 1592; Lycophron in the
same year; the Knights of Aristophanes in 1593; fifteen orations of
Demosthenes, in 1593 and 1597; Agatharcides in the latter year. One
oration of Lysias was printed at Cambridge in 1593. The Greek testament
appeared from the London press in 1581, in 1587, and again in 1592; a
treatise of Plutarch, and three orations of Isocrates, in 1587; the
Iliad in 1591. These, if I have overlooked none, or if none have been
omitted by Herbert, are all the Greek publications (except grammars, of
which there are several, one by Camden, for the use of Westminster
School, in 1597,[965] and one in 1600, by Knolles, author of the History
of the Turks) that fall within the sixteenth century; and all,
apparently, are intended for classes in the schools and
universities.[966]
[964] Herbert.
[965] This grammar by Camden was probably founded on that of Grant,
above-mentioned; cujus rudimenta, says Smith, the author of
Camden’s life, cum multa ex parte laborarent deficerentque, non tam
reformanda, quam de novo instituenda censens, observationibus quas
ex Græcis omne genus scriptoribus acri judicio et longo usu
collegerat, sub severum examen revocatis, grammaticam novam non
soli scholæ cui præerat, sed universis per Angliam scholis deinceps
inservituram, eodem anno edidit.--P. 19, edit. 1691.
The excessive scarcity of early school-books makes it allowable to
mention the Progymnasma Scholasticum of John Stockwood, an edition
of which, with the date of 1597, is in the Inner Temple Library. It
is merely a selection of epigrams from the Anthologia of H.
Stephens, and shows but a moderate expectation of proficiency from
the studious youth for whom it was designed: the Greek being
written in interlinear Latin characters over the original, ad
faciliorem eorundem lectionem. A literal translation into Latin
follows, and several others in metre. Stockwood had been master of
Tunbridge School: Scholæ Tunbridgiensis olim ludimagister; so that
there may possibly have been earlier editions of this little book.
[966] The arrangement of editions recorded in Herbert, following the
names of the printers, does not afford facilities for any search. I
may, therefore, have omitted one or two trifles, and it is likely
that I have; but the conclusion will be the same. Angli, says
Scaliger, nunquam excuderunt bonos libros veteres, tantum vulgares.
|And of Latin classics.|
48. It must be expected that the best Latin writers were more honoured
than those of Greece. Besides grammars and dictionaries, which are too
numerous to mention, we find not a few editions, though principally for
the purposes of education:--Cicero de Officiis (in Latin and English),
1553; Virgil, 1570; Sallust, 1570 and 1571; Justin, 1572; Cicero de
Oratore, 1573; Horace and Juvenal, 1574. It is needless to proceed
lower, when they become more frequent. The most important classical
publication was a complete edition of Cicero, which was, of course, more
than a schoolbook. This appeared at London in 1585, from the press of
Ninian Newton. It is said to be a reprint from the edition of Lambinus.
|Learning lower than in Spain.|
49. It is obvious that foreign books must have been largely imported, or
we should place the learning of the Elizabethan period as much too low
as it has ordinarily been exaggerated. But we may feel some surprise
that so little was contributed by our native scholars. Certain it is,
that in most departments of literature they did not yet occupy a
distinguished place. The catalogue by Herbert, of books published down
to the end of the century, presents no favourable picture of the queen’s
reign. Without instituting a comparison with Germany or France, we may
easily make one with the classed catalogue of books printed in Spain,
which we find at the close of the Bibliotheca Nova of Nicolas Antonio.
Greek appears to have been little studied in Spain, though we have
already mentioned a few grammatical works; but the editions of Latin
authors, and the commentators upon them, are numerous; and upon the
whole it is undeniable that, in most branches of erudition, so far as we
can draw a conclusion from publications, Spain, under Philip II., held a
higher station than England under Elizabeth. The poverty of the English
church, the want of public libraries, and the absorbing influence of
polemical theology will account for much of this; and I am not by any
means inclined to rate our English gentlemen of Elizabeth’s age for
useful and even classical knowledge below the hidalgos of Castile. But
this class were not the chief contributors to literature. It is,
however, in consequence of the reputation for learning acquired by some
men distinguished in civil life, such as Smith, Sadler, Raleigh, and
even by ladies, among whom the queen herself, and the accomplished
daughters of Sir Antony Cooke, Lady Cecil, and Lady Russell, are
particularly to be mentioned, that the general character of her reign
has been, in this point of view, considerably overrated. No Englishman
ought, I conceive, to suppress this avowal, or to feel any mortification
in making it; with the prodigious development of wisdom and genius that
illustrated the last years of Elizabeth, we may well spare the
philologers and antiquaries of the Continent.
|Improvement at the end of the century.|
50. There had arisen, however, towards the conclusion of the century, a
very few men of such extensive learning as entitled them to an European
reputation. Sir Henry Savile stood at the head of these: we may justly
deem him the most learned Englishman, in profane literature, of the
reign of Elizabeth. He published, in 1581, a translation of part of
Tacitus, with annotations not very copious or profound, but pertinent,
and deemed worthy to be rendered into Latin in the next century by the
younger Gruter, and reprinted on the Continent.[967] Scaliger speaks of
him with personal ill-will, but with a respect he seldom showed to those
for whom he entertained such sentiments. Next to Savile we may rank
Camden, whom all foreigners name with praise for the Britannia. Hooker
has already been mentioned; but I am not sure that he could be said to
have much reputation beyond our own shores. I will not assert that no
other was extensively known even for profane learning: in our own
biographical records several may be found, at least esteemed at home.
But our most studious countrymen long turned their attention almost
exclusively to theological controversy, and toiled over the prolix
volumes of the fathers; a labour not to be defrauded of its praise, but
to which we are not directing our eyes on this occasion.[968]
[967] They are contained in a small volume, 1649, with Savile’s other
treatise on the Roman Militia.
[968] It is remarkable that, in Jewel’s Defence of the Apology, by far
the most learned work in theological erudition which the age
produced, he quotes the Greek fathers in Latin; and there is a
scanty sprinkling of Greek characters throughout this large volume.
|Learning in Scotland.|
51. Scotland had hardly as yet partaken of the light of letters; the
very slight attempts at introducing an enlarged scheme of education,
which had been made thirty years before, having wholly failed in
consequence of the jealous spirit that actuated the chiefs of the old
religion and the devastating rapacity that disgraced the partisans of
the new. But in 1575, Andrew Melville was appointed principal of the
university of Glasgow, which he found almost broken up and abandoned. He
established so solid and extensive a system of instruction, wherein the
best Greek authors were included, that Scotland, in some years time,
instead of sending her own natives to foreign universities, found
students from other parts of Europe repairing to her own.[969] Yet Ames
has observed that no Greek characters appear in any book printed in
Scotland before 1599. This assertion has been questioned by Herbert. In
the treatise of Buchanan, De Jure Regni (Edinburgh, 1580), I have
observed that the Greek quotations are inserted with a pen. It is at
least certain that no book in that language was printed north of the
Tweed within this century, nor any Latin classic, nor dictionary, nor
any thing of a philological nature except two or three grammars. A few
Latin treatises by modern authors on various subjects appeared.[970] It
seems questionable whether any printing-press existed in Ireland: the
evidence to be collected from Herbert is precarious; but I know not
whether any thing more satisfactory has since been discovered.
[969] M’Crie’s Life of Melville, vol. i. p. 72.
[970] The list of books printed in Scotland before 1550, which I have
given on p. 167, on the authority of Herbert, appears not to be
quite accurate. Pinkerton’s Scottish Poems (1786), i. 104; (1792),
i. 22.
|Latin little used in writing.|
52. The Latin language was by no means so generally employed in England
as on the Continent. Our authors have from the beginning been apt to
prefer their mother-tongue, even upon subjects which, by the usage of
the learned, were treated in Latin; though works relating to history,
and especially to ecclesiastical antiquity, such as those of Parker and
Godwin, were sometimes written in that language. It may be alleged that
very few books of a philosophical class appeared at all in the far-famed
reign of Elizabeth. But probably such as Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft,
Roger’s Anatomy of the Mind, and Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity would
have been thought to require a learned dress in any other country. And
we may think the same of the great volumes of controversial theology; as
Jewel’s Defence of the Apology, Cartwright’s Platform, and Whitgift’s
Reply to it. The free spirit, not so much of our government, as of the
public mind itself, and the determination of a large portion of the
community to choose their religion for themselves, rendered this descent
from the lofty grounds of learning indispensable. By such a deviation
from the general laws of the republic of letters, which, as it is
needless to say, was by no means less practised in the ensuing age, our
writers missed some part of that general renown they might have
challenged from Europe; but they enriched the minds of a more numerous
public at home; they gave their own thoughts with more precision,
energy, and glow; they invigorated and amplified their native language,
which became in their hands more accommodated to abstract and
philosophical disquisition, though, for the same reason, more formal and
pedantic than any other in Europe. This observation is as much intended
for the reigns of James and Charles as for that of Elizabeth.
SECT. II.
_Principal Writers--Manutius, Sigonius,
Lipsius--Numismatics--Mythology--Chronology of Scaliger_.
|Early works on antiquities.|
53. The attention of the learned had been frequently directed, since the
revival of letters, to elucidate the antiquities of Rome, her customs,
rites, and jurisprudence. It was more laborious than difficult to
commonplace all extant Latin authors; and, by this process of
comparison, most expressions, perhaps, in which there was no corruption
of the text, might be cleared up. This seems to have produced the works
already mentioned, of Cælius Rhodiginus and Alexander ab Alexandro,
which afford explanations of many hundred passages that might perplex a
student. Others had devoted their time to particular subjects, as
Pomponius Lætus, and Raphael of Volterra, to the distinctions of
magistrates; Marlianus, to the topography of ancient Rome; and
Robortellus, to family names. It must be confessed that most of these
early pioneers were rather praiseworthy for their diligence and
good-will, than capable of clearing away the more essential difficulties
that stood in the way: few treatises, written before the middle of the
sixteenth century, have been admitted into the collections of Grævius
and Sallengre. But soon afterwards an abundant light was thrown upon the
most interesting part of Roman antiquity, the state of government and
public law, by four more eminent scholars than had hitherto explored
that field, Manutius, Panvinius, and Sigonius in Italy, Gruchius (or
Grouchy) in France.
|P. Manutius on Roman Laws.|
54. The first of these published in 1558 his treatise De Legibus
Romanorum; and though that De Civitate did not appear till 1585, Grævius
believes it to have been written about the same time as the former.
Manutius has given a good account of the principal laws made at Rome
during the republic; not many of the empire. Augustinus, however,
archbishop of Tarragona, had preceded him with considerable success; and
several particular laws were better illustrated afterwards by Brisson,
Balduin, and Gothofred. It will be obvious to any one, very slightly
familiar with the Roman law, that this subject, as far as it relates to
the republican period, belongs much more to classical antiquity than to
jurisprudence.
|Manutius, De Civitate.|
55. The second treatise of Manutius, De Civitate, discusses the polity
of the Roman republic. Though among the very first scholars of his time,
he will not always bear the test of modern acuteness. Even Grævius, who
himself preceded the most critical age, frequently corrects his errors.
Yet there are marks of great sagacity in Manutius; and Niebuhr, who has
judged the antiquaries of the sixteenth century as they generally
deserve, might have found the germ of his own celebrated hypothesis,
though imperfectly developed, in what this old writer has suggested;
that the populus Romanus originally meant the inhabitants of Rome intra
pomœria, as distinguished from the cives Romani, who dwelt beyond
that precinct in the territory.[971]
[971] The first paragraph of the preface to Niebuhr’s history deserves
to be quoted. “The History of Rome was treated, during the first
two centuries after the revival of letters, with the same
prostration of the understanding and judgment to the written letter
that had been handed down, and with the same fearfulness of going
beyond it, which prevailed in all the other branches of knowledge.
If any one had asserted a right of examining the credibility of the
ancient writers and the value of their testimony, an outcry would
have been raised against his atrocious presumption. The object
aimed at was, in spite of all internal evidence, to combine what
was related by them; at the utmost, one authority was in some one
particular instance postponed to another as gently as possible, and
without inducing any further results. Here and there, indeed, a
free-born mind, such as Glareanus, broke through these bonds; but
infallibly a sentence of condemnation was forthwith pronounced
against him; besides, such men were not the most learned, and their
bold attempts were only partial, and were wanting in consistency.
In this department, as in others, men of splendid talents and the
most copious learning conformed to the narrow spirit of their age;
their labours extracted from a multitude of insulated details what
the remains of ancient literature did not afford united in any
single work, a systematic account of Roman antiquities. What they
did in this respect is wonderful; and this is sufficient to earn
for them an imperishable fame.”
|Panvinius--Sigonius.|
|Gruchius.|
56. Onuphrius Panvinius, a man of vast learning and industry, but of
less discriminating judgment, and who did not live to its full maturity,
fell short, in his treatise, De Civitate Romana, of what Manutius (from
whom, however, he could have taken nothing) has achieved on the same
subject, and his writings, according to Grævius, would yield a copious
harvest to criticism.[972] But neither of the two was comparable to
Sigonius of Modena,[973] whose works on the Roman government not only
form an epoch in this department of ancient literature, but have left,
in general, but little for his successors. Mistakes have of course been
discovered, where it is impossible to reconcile, or to rely upon, every
ancient testimony; and Sigonius, like the other scholars of his age,
might confide too implicitly in his authorities. But his treatises, De
Jure Civium Romanorum, 1560, and De Jure Italiæ, 1562, are still the
best that can be read in illustration of the Roman historians and the
orations of Cicero. Whoever, says Grævius, sits down to the study of
these orations, without being acquainted with Sigonius, will but lose
his time. In another treatise, published in 1574, De Judiciis Romanorum,
he goes through the whole course of judicial proceedings, more copiously
than Heineccius, the most celebrated of his successors, and with more
exclusive regard to writers of the republican period. The Roman
Antiquities of Grævius contain several other excellent pieces by
Sigonius, which have gained him the indisputable character of the first
antiquary, both for learning and judgment, whom the sixteenth century
produced. He was engaged in several controversies; one with
Robortellus,[974] another with a more considerable antagonist, Gruchius,
a native of Rouen, and professor of Greek at Bordeaux, who, in his
treatise, De Comitiis Romanorum, 1555, was the first that attempted to
deal with a difficult and important subject. Sigonius and he
interchanged some thrusts, with more urbanity and mutual respect than
was usual in that age. An account of this controversy, which chiefly
related to a passage in Cicero’s oration, De Lege Agraria, as to the
confirmation of popular elections by the comitia curiata, will be found
in the preface to the second volume of Grævius, wherein the treatises
themselves are published. Another contemporary writer, Latino Latini,
seems to have solved the problem much better than either Grouchy or
Sigone. But both parties were misled by the common source of error in
the most learned men of the sixteenth century, an excess of confidence
in the truth of ancient testimony. The words of Cicero, who often spoke
for an immediate purpose, those of Livy and Dionysius, who knew but
imperfectly the primitive history of Rome, those even of Gellius or
Pomponius, to whom all the republican institutions had become hardly
intelligible, were deemed a sort of infallible text, which a modern
might explain as best he could, but must not be presumptuous enough to
reject.
[972] In Onuphrio Panvinio fuerunt multæ literæ, multa industria, sed
tanta ingenii vis non erat, quanta in Sigonio et Manutio, quorum
scripta longe sunt limatiora.
Paulus Manutius calls Panvinius, ille antiquitatis helluo, spectatæ
juvenis industriæ ... sæpe litigat obscuris de rebus cum Sigonio
nostro, sed utriusque bonitas, mutuus amor, excellens ad
cognoscendam veritatem judicium facit ut inter eos facile
conveniat. Epist. lib. ii. p. 81.
[973] It appears from some of the Lettere Volgari of Manuzio, that the
proper name of Sigonius was not Sigonio, but Sigone. Corniani (vol.
vi. p. 151) has made the same observation on the authority of
Sigone’s original unpublished letters. But the biographers, as well
as Tiraboschi, though himself an inhabitant of the same city, do
not advert to it.
[974] The treatises of Robortellus, republished in the second volume
of Gruter’s Lampas, are full of vain glory and affected scorn of
Sigonius. Half the chapters are headed, Error Sigonii. One of their
controversies concerned female prænomina, which Robortellus denied
to be ancient, except in the formula of Roman marriage, Ubi tu
Cajus, ego Caja; though he admits that some appear in late
inscriptions. Sigonius proved the contrary by instances from
republican times. It is evident that they were unusual, but several
have been found in inscriptions. See Grævius, vol. ii. in
præfatione.
|Sigonius on Athenian polity.|
57. Besides the works of these celebrated scholars, one by Zamoscius, a
young Pole, De Senatu Romano (1563), was so highly esteemed, that some
have supposed him to have been assisted by Sigonius. The latter, among
his other pursuits, turned his mind to the antiquities of Greece, which
had hitherto, for obvious reasons, attracted far less attention than
those of ancient Italy. He treated the constitution of the Athenian
republic so fully, that, according to Gronovius, he left little for
Meursius and others who trod in his path.[975] He has, however,
neglected to quote the very words of his authorities, which alone can be
satisfactory to a diligent reader, translating every passage, so that
hardly any Greek words occur in a treatise expressly on the Athenian
polity. This may be deemed a corroboration of what has been said above,
as to the decline of Greek learning in Italy.
[975] Nonnulla quidem variis locis attigit Meursius et alii, sed
teretiore prorsus et rotundo magis ore per omnia Sigonius. Thesaur.
Antiq. Græc. vol. v.
|Patrizzi and Lipsius on Roman militia.|
58. Francis Patrizzi was the first who unfolded the military system of
Rome. He wrote in Italian a treatise, Della Milizia Romana, 1583, of
which a translation will be found in the tenth volume of Grævius.[976]
It is divided into fifteen parts, which seem to comprehend the whole
subject: each of these again is divided into sections; and each section
explains a text from the sixth book of Polybius, or from Livy. But he
comes down no lower in history than those writers extend, and is
consequently not aware of, or but slightly alludes to, the great
military changes that ensued in later times. On Polybius he comments
sentence by sentence. He had been preceded by Robortellus, and by
Francis, Duke of Urbino, in endeavouring to explain the Roman
castrametation from Polybius. Their plans differ a little from his
own.[977] Lipsius, who some years afterwards wrote on the same subject,
resembles Patrizzi in his method of a running commentary on Polybius.
Scaliger, who disliked Lipsius very much, imputes to him plagiarism from
the Italian antiquary.[978] But I do not perceive, on a comparison of
the two treatises, much pretence for this insinuation. The text of
Polybius was surely common ground, and I think it possible that the work
of Patrizzi, which was written in Italian, might not be known to
Lipsius. But whether this were so or not, he is much more full and
satisfactory than his predecessor, who, I would venture to hint, may
have been a little over-praised. Lipsius, however, seems to have fallen
into the same error of supposing that the whole history of the Roman
militia could be explained from Polybius.
[976] Primus Romanæ rei militaris præstantiam Polybium secutus detexit,
cui quantum debeant qui post illum in hoc argumento elaborarunt,
non nescient viri docti qui Josephi Scaligeri epistolas, aut Nicii
Erythræi Pinacothecam legerunt. Nonnulli quidem rectius et
explicatius sunt tradita de hac doctrina post Patricium a Justo
Lipsio et aliis, qui in hoc stadio cucurrerunt; ut non difficulter
inventis aliquid additur aut in iis emendatur, sed præclare tamen
fractæ glaciei laus Patricio est tribuenda. Grævius in præfat. ad
10mum volumen. This book has been confounded by Blount and Ginguéné
with a later work of Patrizzi entitled Paralleli Militari, Rome,
1594, in which he compared the military art of the ancients with
that of the moderns, exposing, according to Tiraboschi (viii. 494),
his own ignorance of the subject.
[977] All these writers err, in common, I believe, with every other
before General Roy, in his Military Antiquities of the Romans in
Britain (1793), in placing the prætorium, or tent of the general,
near the front gate of the camp, called Porta Prætoria, instead of
the opposite, Porta Decumana. Lipsius is so perplexed by the
assumption of this hypothesis, that he struggles to alter the text
of Polybius.
[978] Scalig. Secunda. In one of Casaubon’s epistles to Scaliger, he
says: Franciscus Patritius solus mihi videtur digitum ad fontes
intendisse, quem ad verbum alii, qui hoc studium tractarunt, cum
sequuntur tamen ejus nomen ne semel quidem memorarunt. Quod equidem
magis miratus sum in illis de quorum candore dubitare piaculum esse
putassem.
|Lipsius and other antiquaries.|
59. The works of Lipsius are full of accessions to our knowledge of
Roman antiquity, and he may be said to have stood as conspicuous on this
side of the Alps as Sigonius in Italy. His treatise on the amphitheatre,
1584, completed what Panvinius, De Ludis Circensibus, had begun. A later
work, by Peter Fabre, president in the parliament of Toulouse, entitled
“Agonisticon, sive de Re Athletica,” 1592, relates to the games of
Greece as well as Rome, and has been highly praised by Gronovius. It
will be found in the eighth volume of the Thesaurus Antiquitatum
Græcarum. Several antiquaries traced the history of Roman families and
names; such as Fulvius Ursinus, Sigonius, Panvinius, Pighius, Castalio,
Golzius.[979] A Spaniard of immense erudition, Petrus Ciaconius
(Chacon), besides many illustrations of ancient monuments of
antiquities, especially the rostral column of Duilius, has left a
valuable treatise, De Triclinio Romano, 1588.[980] He is not to be
confounded with Alfonsus Ciaconius, a native also of Spain, but not of
the same family, who wrote an account of the column of Trajan.
Pancirollus, in his Notitia Dignitatum, or rather his commentary on a
public document of the age of Constantine so entitled, threw light on
that later period of imperial Rome.
[979] Grævius, vol. vii.
[980] Blount, Niceron, vol. xxxvi.
|Saville on Roman militia.|
60. The first contribution that England made to ancient literature in
this line was the “View of Certain Military Matters, or Commentaries
concerning Roman Warfare,” by Sir Henry Saville, in 1598. This was
translated into Latin, and printed at Heidelberg, as early as 1601. It
contains much information in small compass, extending only to about 130
duodecimo pages. Nor is it borrowed, as far as I could perceive, from
Patrizzi or Lipsius, but displays an independent and extensive
erudition.
61. It would encumber the reader’s memory were these pages to become a
register of books. Both in this and the succeeding periods we can only
select such as appear, by the permanence, or, at least, the immediate
lustre of their reputation, to have deserved of the great republic of
letters better than the rest. And in such a selection it is to be
expected that the grounds of preference or of exclusion will
occasionally not be obvious to all readers, and possibly would not be
deemed, on reconsideration, conclusive to the author. In names of the
second or third class there is often but a shadow of distinction.
|Numismatics.|
62. The foundations were laid, soon after the middle of the century, of
an extensive and interesting science--that of ancient medals.
Collections of these had been made from the time of Cosmo de Medici, and
perhaps still earlier; but the rules of arranging, comparing, and
explaining them were as yet unknown, and could be derived only from
close observation, directed by a profound erudition. Eneas Vico of
Venice, in 1555, published “Discorsi sopra le Medaglie degl’Antichi;”
“in which he justly boasts,” says Tiraboschi, “that he was the first to
write in Italian on such a subject; but he might have added that no one
had yet written upon it in any language.”[981] The learning of Vico was
the more remarkable that he was by profession an engraver. He afterwards
published a series of imperial medals, and another of the empresses;
adding to each a life of the person and explanation of the reverse. But
in the latter he was excelled by Sebastian Erizzo, a noble Venetian, who
four years after Vico published a work with nearly the same title. This
is more fully comprehensive than that of Vico: medallic science was
reduced in it to fixed principles, and it is particularly esteemed for
the erudition shown by the author in explaining the reverses.[982] Both
Vico and Erizzo have been sometimes mistaken; but what science is
perfect in its commencement? It has been observed that the latter,
living at the same time in the same city, and engaged in the same
pursuit, makes no mention of his precursor; a consequence, no doubt, of
the jealous humour so apt to prevail with the professors of science,
especially when they do not agree in their opinions. This was the case
here; Vico having thought ancient coins and medals identical, while
Erizzo made a distinction between them, in which modern critics in
numismatic learning have generally thought him in the wrong. The
medallic collections, published by Hubert Golzius, a Flemish engraver,
who had examined most of the private cabinets in Europe, from 1557 to
1579, acquired great reputation, and were long reckoned the principal
repertory of that science. But it seems that suspicions entertained by
many of the learned have been confirmed, and that Golzius has published
a great number of spurious and even of imaginary medals; his own good
faith being also much implicated in these forgeries.[983]
[981] Tiraboschi, ix. 266. Ginguéné, vii. 292. Biogr. Univ.
[982] Idem.
[983] Biogr. Univ.
|Mythology.|
63. The ancient mythology is too closely connected with all classical
literature to have been neglected so long as numismatic antiquity. The
compilations of Rhodiginus and Ab Alexandro, besides several other
works, and indeed all annotations on Greek and Latin authors, had
illustrated it. But this was not done systematically; and no subject
more demands a comparison of authorities, which will not always be found
consistent or intelligible. Boccaccio had long before led the way, in
his Genealogiæ Deorum; but the erudition of the fourteenth century could
clear away but little of the cloud that still in some measure hangs over
the religion of the ancient world. In the first decade of the present
period we find a work of considerable merit for the times, by Lilio
Gregorio Giraldi, one of the most eminent scholars of that age,
entitled Historia de Diis Gentium. It had been preceded by one of
inferior reputation, the Mythologia of Natalis Comes. “Giraldi,” says
the Biographie Universelle, “is the first who has treated properly this
subject, so difficult on account of its extent and complexity. He made
use not only of all Greek and Latin authors, but of ancient
inscriptions, which he has explained with much sagacity. Sometimes the
multiplicity of his quotations renders him obscure, and sometimes he
fails in accuracy, through want of knowing what has since been brought
to light. But the Historia de Diis Gentium is still consulted.”
|Scaliger’s Chronology.|
64. We can place in no other chapter but the present a work, than which
none published within this century is superior, and perhaps none is
equal in originality, depth of erudition and vigorous encountering of
difficulty, that of Joseph Scaliger, De Emendatione Temporum. The first
edition of this appeared in 1583; the second, which is much enlarged and
amended, in 1598; and a third, still better, in 1609. Chronology, as a
science, was hitherto very much unknown; all ancient history, indeed,
had been written in a servile and uncritical spirit, copying dates, as
it did everything else, from the authorities immediately under the
compiler’s eye, with little or no endeavour to reconcile discrepancies,
or to point out any principles of computation. Scaliger perceived that
it would be necessary to investigate the astronomical schemes of ancient
calendars, not always very clearly explained by the Greek and Roman
writers, and requiring much attention and acuteness, besides a
multifarious erudition, oriental as well as classical, of which he alone
in Europe could be reckoned master. This work, De Emendatione Temporum,
is in the first edition divided into eight books. The first relates to
the lesser equal year, as he denominates it, or that of 360 days,
adopted by some eastern nations, and founded, as he supposes, on the
natural lunar year, before the exact period of a lunation was fully
understood; the second book is on the true lunar year and some other
divisions connected with it; the third on the greater equal year, or
that of 365 days; and the fourth on the more accurate schemes of the
solar period. In the fifth and sixth books he comes to particular
epochs, determining in both many important dates in profane and sacred
history. The seventh and eighth discuss the modes of computation, and
the terminal epochs used in different nations, with miscellaneous
remarks and critical emendations of his own. In later editions these two
books are thrown into one. The great intricacy of many of these
questions, which cannot be solved by testimonies, often imperfect and
inconsistent, without much felicity of conjecture, serves to display the
surprising vigour of Scaliger’s mind, who grapples like a giant with
every difficulty. Le Clerc has censured him for introducing so many
conjectures, and drawing so many inferences from them, that great part
of his chronology is rendered highly suspicious.[984] But, whatever may
be his merit in the determination of particular dates, he is certainly
the first who laid the foundations of the science. He justly calls it
“Materia intacta et a nobis nunc primum tentata.” Scaliger in all this
work is very clear, concise, and pertinent, and seems to manifest much
knowledge of physical astronomy, though he was not a good mathematician,
and did little credit to his impartiality, by absolutely rejecting the
Gregorian calendar.
[984] Parrhasiana, ii. 363.
|Julian period.|
65. The chronology of Scaliger has become more celebrated through his
invention of the Julian period; a name given, in honour of his father,
to a cycle of 7980 years, beginning 4713 before Christ, and consequently
before the usual date of the creation of the world. He was very proud of
this device; “it is impossible to describe,” he says, “its utility;
chronologers and astronomers cannot extol it too much.” And what is more
remarkable, it was adopted for many years afterwards, even by the
opponents of Scaliger’s chronology, and is almost as much in favour with
Petavius as with the inventor.[985] This Julian period is formed by
multiplying together the years of three cycles once much in use--the
solar of twenty-eight, according to the old calendar, the lunar or
Metonic of nineteen, and the indiction, an arbitrary and political
division, introduced about the time of Constantine, and common both in
the church and empire, consisting of fifteen years. Yet I confess myself
unable to perceive the great advantage of this scheme. It affords, of
course, a fixed terminus, from which all dates may be reckoned in
progressive numbers, better than the æra of the creation, on account of
the uncertainty attending that epoch; but the present method of
reckoning them in a retrograde series from the birth of Christ,
which seems never to have occurred to Scaliger or Petavius, is not found
to have much practical inconvenience. In other respects, the only real
use that the Julian period appears to possess is, that dividing any year
in it by the numbers 28, 19, or 15, the remainder above the quotient
will give us the place such year holds in the cycle, by the proper
number of which it has been divided. Thus, if we desire to know what
place in the Metonic cycle the year of the Julian period 6402, answering
to the year of our Lord 1689, held, or in other words, what was the
Golden Number, as it was called, of that year, we must divide 6402 by
19, and we shall find in the quotient a remainder 18; whence we perceive
that it was the eighteenth year of a lunar or Metonic cycle. The
adoption of the Gregorian calendar, which has greatly protracted the
solar cycle by the suppression of one bissextile year in a century, as
well as the virtual abandonment of the indiction, and even of the solar
and lunar cycles, as divisions of time, have greatly diminished whatever
utility this invention may have originally possessed.
[985] Usus illius opinione major est in chronicis, quæ ab orbe condito
vel alio quovis initio ante æram Christianam inchoantur. Petav.
Rationarium Temporum, part ii. lib. i. c. 14.
CHAPTER XI.
HISTORY OF THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE IN EUROPE, FROM 1550 TO 1600.
_Progress of Protestantism--Reaction of the Catholic Church--The
Jesuits--Causes of the Recovery of Catholicism--Bigotry of Lutherans--
Controversy on Free will--Trinitarian Controversy--Writings on
Toleration--Theology in England--Bellarmin--Controversy on Papal
Authority--Theological Writers--Ecclesiastical Histories--Translations
of Scripture._
|Diet of Augsburg in 1555.|
1. In the arduous struggle between prescriptive allegiance to the Church
of Rome and rebellion against its authority, the balance continued for
some time after the commencement of this period to be strongly swayed in
favour of the reformers. A decree of the diet of Augsburg in 1555,
confirming an agreement made by the emperor three years before, called
the Pacification of Passau, gave the followers of the Lutheran
confession for the first time an established condition, and their rights
became part of the public law in Germany. No one, by this decree, could
be molested for following either the old or the new form of religion;
but those who dissented from that established by their ruler were only
to have the liberty of quitting his territories, with time for the
disposal of their effects. No toleration was extended to the Helvetic or
Calvinistic, generally called the Reformed party; and by the
Ecclesiastical Reservation, a part of the decree to which the Lutheran
princes seem not to have assented, every Catholic prelate of the empire
quitting his religion was declared to forfeit his dignity.
|Progress of Protestantism.|
2. This treaty, though incapable of warding off the calamities of a
future generation, might justly pass, not only for a basis of religious
concord, but for a signal triumph of the Protestant cause; such as, a
few years before, it would have required all their stedfast faith in the
arm of Providence to anticipate. Immediately after its enactment, the
principles of the confession of Augsburg, which had been restrained by
fear of the imperial laws against heresy, spread rapidly to the shores
of the Danube, the Drave, and the Vistula. Those half-barbarous nations,
who might be expected, by a more general analogy, to remain longest in
their ancient prejudices, came more readily into the new religion than
the civilised people of the south. In Germany itself the progress of the
Reformation was still more rapid: most of the Franconian and Bavarian
nobility, and the citizens of every considerable town, though subjects
of Catholic princes, became Protestant; while in Austria it has been
said that not more than one thirtieth part of the people continued firm
in their original faith. This may probably be exaggerated; but a
Venetian ambassador in 1558 (and the reports of the envoys of that
republic are remarkable for their judiciousness and accuracy) estimated
the Catholics of the German empire at only one-tenth of the
population.[986] The universities produced no defenders of the ancient
religion. For twenty years no student of the university of Vienna had
become a priest. Even at Ingolstadt it was necessary to fill with laymen
offices hitherto reserved for the clergy. The prospect was not much more
encouraging in France. The Venetian ambassador in that country (Micheli,
whom we know by his reports of England under Mary), declares that in
1561 the common people still frequented the churches, but all others,
especially the nobility, had fallen off; and this defection was greatest
among the younger part.
[986] Ranke, vol. ii., p. 125, takes a general survey of the religious
state of the empire about 1563.
|Its causes.|
3. This second burst of a revolutionary spirit in religion was as rapid,
and perhaps more appalling to its opponents, than that under Luther and
Zuingle about 1520. It was certainly prepared by long working in the
minds of a part of the people; but most of its operation was due to that
generous sympathy which carries mankind along with any pretext of a
common interest in the redress of wrong. A very few years were
sufficient to make millions desert their altars, abjure their faith,
loath, spurn, and insult their gods; words hardly too strong, when we
remember how the saints and the Virgin had been honoured in their
images, and how they and those were now despised. It is to be observed,
that the Protestant doctrines had made no sensible progress in the south
of Germany before the Pacification of Passau in 1552, nor much in France
before the death of Henry II. in 1559. The spirit of reformation,
suppressed under his severe administration, burst forth when his weak
and youthful son ascended the throne, with an impetuosity that
threatened for a time the subversion of that profligate despotism by
which the house of Valois had replaced the feudal aristocracy. It is not
for us here to discriminate the influences of ambition and oligarchical
factiousness from those of high-minded and strenuous exertion in the
cause of conscience.
|Wavering of Catholic princes.|
4. It is not surprising that some Catholic governments wavered for a
time, and thought of yielding to a storm which might involve them in
ruin. Even as early as 1556, the duke of Bavaria was compelled to make
concessions which would have led to a full introduction of the
Reformation. The emperor Ferdinand I. was tolerant in disposition, and
anxious for some compromise that might extinguish the schism; his
successor, Maximilian II., displayed the same temper so much more
strongly, that he incurred the suspicion of a secret leaning towards the
reformed tenets. Sigismund Augustus, king of Poland, was probably at one
time wavering which course to adopt; and though he did not quit the
church of Rome, his court and the Polish nobility became extensively
Protestant; so that, according to some, there was a very considerable
majority at his death who professed that creed. Among the Austrian and
Hungarian nobility, as well as the burghers in the chief cities, it was
held by so preponderating a body that they obtained a full toleration
and equality of privileges. England, after two or three violent
convulsions, became firmly Protestant; the religion of the court being
soon followed with sincere good-will by the people. Scotland, more
unanimously and impetuously, threw off the yoke of Rome. The Low
Countries very early caught the flame, and sustained the full brunt of
persecution at the hands of Charles and Philip.
|Extinguished in Italy,|
|and Spain.|
5. Meantime the infant Protestantism of Italy had given some signs of
increasing strength, and began more and more to number men of
reputation; but, unsupported by popular affection, or the policy of
princes, it was soon wholly crushed by the arm of power. The reformed
church of Locarno was compelled in 1554 to emigrate in the midst of
winter, and took refuge at Zurich. That of Lucca was finally dispersed
about the same time. A fresh storm of persecution arose at Modena in
1556; many lost their lives for religion in the Venetian States before
1560; others were put to death at Rome. The Protestant countries were
filled with Italian exiles, many of them highly gifted men, who, by
their own eminence, and by the distinction which has in some instances
awaited their posterity, may be compared with those whom the revocation
of the edict of Nantes long afterwards dispersed over Europe. The
tendency towards Protestantism in Spain was of the same kind, but less
extensive, and certainly still less popular than in Italy. The
Inquisition took it up, and applied its usual remedies with success. But
this would lead us still further from literary history than we have
already wandered.
|Reaction of Catholicity;|
6. This prodigious increase of the Protestant party in Europe after the
middle of the century did not continue more than a few years. It was
checked and fell back, not quite so rapidly or so completely as it came
on, but so as to leave the antagonist church in perfect security. Though
we must not tread closely on the ground of political history,
nor discuss too minutely any revolutions of opinion which do not
distinctly manifest themselves in literature, it seems not quite foreign
from the general purpose of these volumes, or at least a pardonable
digression, to dwell a little on the leading causes of this retrograde
movement of Protestantism; a fact as deserving of explanation as the
previous excitement of the Reformation itself, though, from its more
negative nature, it has not drawn so much of the attention of mankind.
Those who behold the outbreaking of great revolutions in civil society
or in religion, will not easily believe that the rush of waters can be
stayed in its course, that a pause of indifference may come on, perhaps
very suddenly, or a reaction bring back nearly the same prejudices and
passions as those which men had renounced. Yet this has occurred not
very rarely in the annals of mankind, and never on a larger scale than
in the history of the Reformation.
|especially in Germany.|
7. The church of Rome, and the prince whom it most strongly influenced,
Philip II., acted on an unremitting uncompromising policy of subduing,
instead of making terms with its enemies. In Spain and Italy the
Inquisition soon extirpated the remains of heresy. The fluctuating
policy of the French court, destitute of any strong religious zeal, and
therefore prone to expedients, though always desirous of one end, is
well known. It was, in fact, impossible to conquer a party so prompt to
resort to arms and so skilful in their use as the Huguenots. But in
Bavaria Albert V., with whom, about 1564, the reaction began, in the
Austrian dominions Rodolph II., in Poland Sigismund III., by shutting up
churches, and by discountenancing in all respects their Protestant
subjects, contrived to change a party once exceedingly powerful into an
oppressed sect. The decrees of the council of Trent were received by the
spiritual princes of the empire in 1566; “and from this moment,” says
the excellent historian who has thrown most light on this subject,
“began a new life for the Catholic church in Germany.”[987] The
profession of faith was signed by all orders of men; no one could be
admitted to a degree in the universities, nor keep a school without it.
Protestants were in some places excluded from the court; a penalty which
tended much to bring about the reconversion of a poor and proud
nobility.
[987] Ranke, ii. 46.
|Disciplines of the clergy.|
8. The reaction could not, however, have been effected by any efforts of
the princes against so preponderating a majority as the Protestant
churches had obtained, if the principles that originally actuated them
had retained their animating influence, or had not been opposed by more
efficacious resistance. Every method was adopted to revive an attachment
to the ancient religion, insuperable by the love of novelty or the force
of argument. A stricter discipline and subordination was introduced
among the clergy; they were early trained in seminaries apart from the
sentiments and habits, the vices and virtues of the world. The monastic
orders resumed their rigid observances. The Capuchins, not introduced
into France before 1570, spread over the realm within a few years, and
were most active in getting up processions and all that we call foolery,
but which is not the less stimulating to the multitude for its folly. It
is observed by Davila, that these became more frequent after the
accession of Henry III. in 1574.
|Influence of Jesuits.|
9. But, far above all the rest, the Jesuits were the instruments of
regaining France and Germany to the church they served. And we are the
more closely concerned with them here, that they are in this age among
the links between religious opinion and literature. We have seen in the
last chapter with what spirit they took the lead in polite letters and
classical style, with what dexterity they made the brightest talents of
the rising generation, which the church had once dreaded and checked,
her most willing and effective instruments. The whole course of liberal
studies, however deeply grounded in erudition or embellished by
eloquence, took one direction, one perpetual aim--the propagation of the
Catholic faith. They availed themselves for this purpose of every
resource which either human nature or prevalent opinion supplied. Did
they find Latin versification highly prized? their pupils wrote sacred
poems. Did they observe the natural taste of mankind for dramatic
representations, and the repute which that species of literature had
obtained? their walls resounded with sacred tragedies. Did they perceive
an unjust prejudice against stipendiary instruction? they gave it
gratuitously. Their endowments left them in the decent poverty which
their vows required, without the offensive mendicancy of the friars.
|Their progress.|
10. In 1551 Ferdinand established a college of Jesuits at Vienna; in
1556 they obtained one, through the favour of the duke of
Bavaria, at Ingolstadt, and in 1559 at Munich. They spread rapidly into
other Catholic states of the empire, and some time later into Poland. In
France their success was far more equivocal; the Sorbonne declared
against them as early as 1554, and they had always to encounter the
opposition of the parliament of Paris. But they established themselves
at Lyons in 1569, and afterwards at Bordeaux, Toulouse, and other
cities. Their three duties were preaching, confession, and education;
the most powerful levers that religion could employ. Indefatigable and
unscrupulous, as well as polite and learned, accustomed to consider
veracity and candour, when they weakened an argument, in the light of
treason against the cause (language which might seem harsh, were it not
almost equally applicable to so many other partisans), they knew how to
clear their reasonings from scholastic pedantry and tedious quotation
for the simple and sincere understandings whom they addressed; yet, in
the proper field of controversial theology, they wanted nothing of
sophistical expertness or of erudition. The weak points of Protestantism
they attacked with embarrassing ingenuity; and the reformed churches did
not cease to give them abundant advantage by inconsistency,
extravagance, and passion.[988]
[988] Hospinian, Hist. Jesuitarum. Ranke, vol. ii. p. 32, et post.
Tiraboschi, viii. 116. The first of these works is entirely on one
side, and gives no credit to the Jesuits for their services to
literature. The second is of a very different class, philosophical
and profound, and yet with much more learning, that is, with a more
extensive range of knowledge than any writer of Hospinian’s age
could possess.
|Their colleges.|
11. At the death of Ignatius Loyola in 1556, the order he had founded
was divided into thirteen provinces, besides the Roman; most of which
were in the Spanish peninsula or its colonies. Ten colleges belonged to
Castile, eight to Aragon, five to Andalusia. Spain was for some time the
fruitful mother of the disciples, as she had been of the master. The
Jesuits who came to Germany were called “Spanish priests.” They took
possession of the universities: “they conquered us,” says Ranke, “on our
own ground, in our own homes, and stripped us of a part of our country.”
This, the acute historian proceeds to say, sprung certainly from the
want of understanding among the Protestant theologians, and of
sufficient enlargement of mind to tolerate unessential differences. The
violent opposition among each other left the way open to these cunning
strangers, who taught a doctrine not open to dispute.
|Jesuit seminary at Rome.|
12. But though Spain for a time supplied the most active spirits in the
order, its central point was always at Rome. It was there that the
general to whom they had sworn resided; and from thence issued to the
remotest lands the voice, which, whatever secret councils might guide
it, appeared that of a single, irresponsible, irresistible will. The
Jesuits had three colleges at Rome; one for their own novices, another
for German, and a third for English students. Possevin has given us an
account of the course of study in Jesuit seminaries, taking that of Rome
as a model. It contained nearly 2000 scholars, of various descriptions.
“No one,” he says, “is admitted without a foundation of grammatical
knowledge. The abilities, the dispositions, the intentions for future
life, are scrupulously investigated in each candidate; nor do we open
our doors to any who do not come up in these respects to what so eminent
a school of all virtue requires. They attend divine service daily; they
confess every month. The professors are numerous; some teaching the
exposition of Scripture, some scholastic theology, some the science of
controversy with heretics, some casuistry; many instruct in logic and
philosophy, in mathematics, or rhetoric, polite literature, and poetry;
the Hebrew and Greek, as well as Latin, tongues are taught. Three years
are given to the course of philosophy, four to that of theology. But if
any are found not so fit for deep studies, yet likely to be useful in
the Lord’s vineyard, they merely go through two years of practical, that
is, casuistical theology. These seminaries are for youths advanced
beyond the inferior classes or schools; but in the latter also religious
and grammatical learning go hand in hand.”[989]
[989] Possevin, Bibliotheca Selecta, lib. i. c. 39.
|Patronage of Gregory XIII.|
13. The popes were not neglectful of such faithful servants. Under
Gregory XIII., whose pontificate began in 1772, the Jesuit college at
Rome had twenty lecture-rooms and 360 chambers for students; a German
college was restored, after a temporary suspension; and an English one
founded by his care; perhaps there was not a Jesuit seminary in the
world which was not indebted to his liberality. Gregory also established
a Greek college (not of Jesuits), for the education of youths, who there
learned to propagate the Catholic faith in their country.[990] No
earlier pope had been more alert and strenuous in vindicating his claims
to universal allegiance; nor, as we may judge from the well-known
pictures of Vasari in the vestibule of the Sistine chapel, representing
the massacre of St. Bartholomew, more ready to sanction any crime that
might be serviceable to the church.
[990] Ranke, i. 419, et post. Ginguéné, vii. 12. Tiraboschi, viii. 34.
|Conversions in Germany and France.|
14. The resistance made to this aggressive warfare was for some time
considerable. Protestantism, so late as 1578, might be deemed
preponderant in all the Austrian dominions except the Tyrol.[991] In the
Polish diets the dissidents, as they were called, met their opponents
with vigour and success. The ecclesiastical principalities were full of
Protestants; and even in the chapters some of them might be found. But
the contention was unequal, from the different character of the parties:
religious zeal and devotion, which fifty years before had overthrown the
ancient rites in northern Germany, were now more invigorating sentiments
in those who rescued them from further innovation. In religious
struggles, where there is anything like an equality of forces, the
question soon comes to be which party will make the greater sacrifice
for its own faith. And while the Catholic self-devotion had grown far
stronger, there was much more of secular cupidity, lukewarmness, and
formality in the Lutheran church. In a very few years the effects of
this were distinctly visible. The Protestants of the Catholic
principalities went back into the bosom of Rome. In the bishopric of
Wurtzburg alone 62,000 converts are said to have been received in the
year 1586.[992] The emperor Rodolph and his brother archdukes, by a long
series of persecutions and banishment, finally, though not within this
century, almost outrooted Protestantism from the hereditary provinces of
Austria. It is true that these violent measures were the proximate cause
of so many conversions; but if the reformed had been ardent and united,
they were much too strong to have been thus subdued. In Bohemia,
accordingly, and Hungary, where there was a more steady spirit, they
kept their ground. The reaction was not less conspicuous in other
countries. It is asserted that the Huguenots had already lost more than
two-thirds of their number in 1580;[993] comparatively, I presume, with
twenty years before; and the change in their relative position is
manifest from all the histories of this period. In the Netherlands,
though the seven United Provinces were slowly winning their civil and
religious liberties at the sword’s point, yet West Flanders, once in
great measure Protestant, became Catholic before the end of the century;
while the Walloon Provinces were kept from swerving by some bishops of
great eloquence and excellent lives, as well as by the influence of the
Jesuits planted at St. Omar and Douay. At the close of this period of
fifty years the mischief done to the old church in its first decennium
was very nearly repaired; the proportions of the two religions in
Germany coincided with those which had existed at the Pacification of
Passau. The Jesuits, however, had begun to encroach a little on the
proper domain of the Lutheran church; besides private conversions,
which, on account of the rigour of the laws, not certainly less
intolerant than in their own communion, could not be very prominent,
they had sometimes hopes of the Protestant princes, and had once, in
1578, obtained the promise of John king of Sweden to embrace openly the
Romish faith, as he had already done in secret to Possevin, an emissary
dispatched by the Pope on this important errand. But the symptoms of an
opposition, very formidable in a country which has never allowed its
kings to trifle with it, made this wavering monarch retrace his steps.
His successor, Sigismund, went farther, and fell a victim to his zeal,
by being expelled from the kingdom.
[991] Ranke, ii. 78.
[992] Ranke, ii. 121. The number seems rather startling.
[993] Id. p. 147.
|Causes of this reaction.|
15. This great reaction of the papal religion after the shock it had
sustained in the first part of the sixteenth century, ought for ever to
restrain that temerity of prediction so frequent in our ears. As women
sometimes believe the fashion of last year in dress to be wholly
ridiculous, and incapable of being ever again adopted by any one
solicitous about her beauty, so those who affect to pronounce on future
events are equally confident against the possibility of a resurrection
of opinions which the majority have for the time ceased to maintain. In
the year 1560, every Protestant in Europe doubtless anticipated the
overthrow of popery; the Catholics could have found little else
to warrant hope than their trust in Heaven. The late rush of many
nations towards democratical opinions has not been so rapid and so
general as the change of religion about that period. It is important and
interesting to inquire what stemmed this current. We readily acknowledge
the prudence, firmness, and unity of purpose, that for the most part
distinguished the court of Rome, the obedience of its hierarchy, the
severity of intolerant laws, and the searching rigour of the
Inquisition, the resolute adherence of great princes to the Catholic
faith, the influence of the Jesuits over education; but these either
existed before, or would at least not have been sufficient to withstand
an overwhelming force of opinion. It must be acknowledged that there was
a principle of vitality in that religion, independent of its external
strength. By the side of its secular pomp, its relaxation of morality,
there had always been an intense flame of zeal and devotion.
Superstition it might be in the many, fanaticism in a few; but both of
these imply the qualities which, while they subsist, render a religion
indestructible. That revival of an ardent zeal, though which the
Franciscans had, in the thirteenth century, with some good and much more
evil effect, spread a popular enthusiasm over Europe, was once more
displayed in counteraction of those new doctrines, that themselves had
drawn their life from a similar development of moral emotion.
|A rigid party in the church.|
16. Even in the court of Leo X., soon after the bursting forth of the
Reformation in Saxony, a small body was formed by men of rigid piety,
and strenuous for a different species of reform. Sadolet, Caraffa
(afterwards Paul IV.), Cajetan, and Contareni, both the latter eminent
in the annals of the church, were at the head of this party.[994]
Without dwelling on what belongs strictly to ecclesiastical history, it
is sufficient to say that they acquired much weight; and while adhering
generally to the doctrine of the church (though Contareni, held the
Lutheran tenets on justification), aimed steadily at a restoration of
moral discipline, and the abolition of every notorious abuse. Several of
the regular orders were reformed, while others were instituted, more
active in sacerdotal duties than the rest. The Jesuits must be
considered as the most perfect type of the rigid party. Whatever may be
objected, perhaps not quite so early, to their system of casuistry,
whatever want of scrupulousness may have been shown in their conduct,
they were men who never swerved from the path of labour, and, it might
be, suffering in the cause which they deemed that of God. All
self-sacrifice in such circumstances, especially of the highly gifted
and accomplished, though the bigot steels his heart and closes his eyes
against it, excites the admiration of the unsophisticated part of
mankind.
[994] Ranke, i. 133.
|Its efforts at Trent.|
17. The council of Trent, especially in its later sessions, displayed
the antagonist parties in the Roman church, one struggling for lucrative
abuses, one anxious to overthrow them. They may be called the Italian
and Spanish parties; the first headed by the Pope’s legates, dreading
above all things both the reforming spirit of Constance and Basle, and
the independence either of princes or of national churches; the other
actuated by much of the spirit of those councils, and tending to confirm
that independence. The French and German prelates usually sided with the
Spanish; and they were together strong enough to establish as a rule,
that in every session, a decree for reformation should accompany the
declaration of doctrine. The Council, interrupted in 1547 by the measure
that Paul III. found it necessary for his own defence against these
reformers to adopt, the translation of its sittings to Bologna, with
which the Imperial prelates refused to comply, was opened again by
Julius III. in 1552; and having been once more suspended in the same
year, resumed its labour for the last time under Pius IV. in 1562. It
terminated in 1564, when the court of Rome, which, with the Italian
prelates, had struggled hard to obstruct the redress of every grievance,
compelled the more upright members of the council to let it close, after
having effected such a reformation of discipline as they could obtain.
That court was certainly successful in the contest, so far as it might
be called one, of prerogative against liberty; and partially successful
in the preservation of its lesser interests and means of influence. Yet
it seems impossible to deny that the effects of the council of Trent
were on the whole highly favourable to the church, for whose benefit it
was summoned. The Reformation would never have roused the whole north of
Europe, had the people seen nothing in it but the technical problems of
theology. It was against ambition and cupidity, sluggish ignorance and
haughty pomp, that they took up arms. Hence the abolition of many long
established abuses by the honest zeal of the Spanish and Cisalpine
fathers in that council took away much of the ground on which the
prevalent disaffection rested.
|No compromise in doctrine.|
18. We should be inclined to infer from the language of some
contemporaries, that the council might have proceeded farther with more
advantage than danger to their church, by complying with the earnest and
repeated solicitations of the Emperor, the Duke of Bavaria, and even the
court of France, that the sacramental cup should be restored to the
laity, and that the clergy should not be restrained from marriage. Upon
this, however, it is not here for us to dilate. The policy of both
concessions, but especially of the latter, was always questionable, and
has not been demonstrated by the event. In its determinations of
doctrine, the council was generally cautious to avoid extremes, and
left, in many momentous questions of the controversy, such as the
invocation of saints, no small latitude for private opinion. It has been
thought by some that they lost sight of this prudence in defining
transubstantiation so rigidly as they did in 1551, and thus opposed an
obstacle to the conversion of those who would have acquiesced in a more
equivocal form of words. But, in truth, no alternative was left upon
this point. Transubstantiation had been asserted by a prior council, the
Fourth Lateran in 1215, so positively, that to recede would have
surrendered the main principle of the Catholic church. And it is also to
be remembered, when we judge of what might have been done, as we fancy,
with more prudence, that, if there was a good deal of policy in the
decisions of the council of Trent, there was no want also of
conscientious sincerity; and that whatever we may think of this
doctrine, it was one which seemed of fundamental importance to the
serious and obedient sons of the church.[995]
[995] A strange notion has been started of late years in England, that
the council of Trent made important innovations in the previously
established doctrines of the Western Church; an hypothesis so
paradoxical in respect to public opinion, and, it must be added, so
prodigiously at variance with the known facts of ecclesiastical
history, that we cannot but admire the facility with which it has
been taken up. It will appear, by reading the accounts of the
sessions of the council either in Father Paul, or in any more
favourable historian, that even in certain points, such as
justification, which had not been clearly laid down before, the
Tridentine decrees were mostly conformable with the sense of the
majority of those doctors who had obtained the highest reputation;
and that upon what are more usually reckoned the distinctive
characteristics of the Church of Rome, namely, transubstantiation,
purgatory, and invocation of the saints and the Virgin, they assert
nothing but what had been so ingrafted into the faith of this part
of Europe, as to have been rejected by no one without suspicion or
imputation of heresy. Perhaps Erasmus would not have acquiesced
with good-will in all the decrees of the council; but was Erasmus
deemed orthodox? It is not impossible that the great hurry with
which some controversies of considerable importance were dispatched
in the last sessions, may have had as much to do with the short and
vague phrases employed in respect to them, as the prudence I have
attributed to the fathers; but the facts will remain the same on
either supposition.
No general council ever contained so many persons of eminent
learning and ability as that of Trent; nor is there ground for
believing that any other ever investigated the questions before it
with so much patience, acuteness, temper, and desire of truth. The
early councils, unless they are greatly belied, would not bear
comparison in these characteristics. Impartiality and freedom from
prejudice no Protestant will attribute to the fathers of Trent; but
where will he produce these qualities in an ecclesiastical synod?
But it may be said that they had only one leading prejudice, that
of determining theological faith according to the tradition of the
Catholic church, as handed down to their own age. This one point of
authority conceded, I am not aware that they can be proved to have
decided wrong, or at least against all reasonable evidence. Let
those who have imbibed a different opinion ask themselves whether
they have read Sarpi through with any attention, especially as to
those sessions of the Tridentine council which preceded its
suspension in 1547.
|Consultation of Cassander.|
19. There is some difficulty in proving for the council of Trent that
universality to which its adherents attach an infallible authority. And
this was not held to be a matter of course by the great European powers.
Even in France the Tridentine decrees, in matters of faith, have not
been formally received, though the Gallican church has never called any
of them in question; those relating to matters of discipline are
distinctly held not obligatory. The Emperor Ferdinand seems to have
hesitated about acknowledging the decisions of a council, which had at
least failed in the object for which it was professedly summoned--the
conciliation of all parties to the church. For we find that even after
its close, he referred the chief points in controversy to George
Cassander, a German theologian of very moderate sentiments and temper.
Cassander wrote, at the emperor’s request, his famous Consultation,
wherein he passes in review every article in the Confession of Augsburg,
so as to give, if possible, an interpretation consonant to that of the
Catholic church. Certain it is that, between Melanchthon’s desire of
concord in drawing up the Confession, and that of Cassander in judging
of it, no great number of points seem to be left for dispute. In another
treatise of Cassander, De Officio Pii Viri in hoc Dissidio Religionis
(1561), he holds the same course that Erasmus had done before, blaming
those who, on account of the stains in the church, would wholly subvert
it, as well as those who erect the pope into a sort of deity, by setting
up his authority as an infallible rule of faith. The rule of controversy
laid down by Cassander is, Scripture explained by the tradition of the
ancient church, which is best to be learned from the writings of those
who lived from the age of Constantine to that of Gregory I., because,
during that period, the principal articles of faith were most discussed.
Dupin observes that the zeal of Cassander for the reunion and peace of
the church made him yield too much to the Protestants, and advance some
propositions that were too bold. But they were by no means satisfied
with his concessions. This treatise was virulently attacked by Calvin,
to whom Cassander replied. No one should hesitate to prefer the spirit
of Cassander to that of Calvin; but it must be owned that the practical
consequence of his advice would have been to check the profession of the
reformed religion, leaving amendment to those who had little disposition
to amend anything. Nor is it by any means unlikely that this
conciliatory scheme, by extenuating disagreements, had a considerable
influence in that cessation of the advance of Protestantism, or rather
that reaction to which we have lately adverted, and of which more proofs
were long afterwards given.
|Bigotry of Protestant churches.|
20. We ought to reckon also among the principal causes of this change
those perpetual disputes, those irreconcileable animosities, that
bigotry, above all, and persecuting spirit, which were exhibited in the
Lutheran and Calvinistic churches. Each began with a common
principle--the necessity of an orthodox faith. But this orthodoxy meant
evidently nothing more than their own belief, as opposed to that of
their adversaries; a belief acknowledged to be fallible, yet maintained
as certain, rejecting authority in one breath, and appealing to it in
the next, and claiming to rest on sure proofs of reason and Scripture,
which their opponents were ready with just as much confidence to
invalidate.
|Tenets of Melanchthon.|
21. The principle of several controversies which agitated the two great
divisions of the Protestant name was still that of the real presence.
The Calvinists, as far as their meaning could be divined through a dense
mist of nonsense which they purposely collected,[996] were little, if at
all, less removed from the Romish and Lutheran parties than the
disciples of Zuingle himself, who spoke out more perspicuously. Nor did
the orthodox Lutherans fail to perceive this essential discrepancy.
Melanchthon, incontestably the most eminent man of their church after
the death of Luther, had obtained a great influence over the younger
students of theology. But his opinions, half concealed as they were, and
perhaps unsettled, had long been tending to a very different line from
those of Luther. The deference exacted by the latter, and never
withheld, kept them from any open dissension. But some, whose admiration
for the founder of their church was not checked by any scruples at his
doctrine, soon began to inveigh against the sacrifice of his favourite
tenets which Melanchthon seemed ready to make through timidity, as they
believed, or false judgment. To the Romanists he was willing to concede
the primacy of the Pope and the jurisdiction of bishops; to the
Helvetians he was suspected of leaning on the great controversy of the
real presence; while, on the still more important questions of faith and
works, he not only rejected the Antinomian exaggerations of the high
Lutherans, but introduced a doctrine, said to be nearly similar to that
called Semi-Pelagian; according to which the grace communicated to adult
persons so as to draw them to God required a correspondent action of
their own free will in order to become effectual. Those who held this
tenet were called Synergists.[997] It appears to be the same, or nearly
so, as that adopted by the Arminians in the next century, but was not
perhaps maintained by any of the schoolmen; nor does it seem consonant
to the decisions of the council of Trent, nor probably to the intention
of those who compiled the Articles of the English Church. It is easy,
however, to be mistaken as to these theological subtleties, which those
who write of them with most confidence do not really discriminate by any
consistent or intelligible language.
[996] See some of this in Bossuet, Variations des Eglises Protestantes,
l. ix. I do not much trust to Bossuet; but it would be too easy to
find similar evidence from our own writers.
[997] Mosheim. Bayle, art. Synergistes.
|A party hostile to him.|
22. There seems good reason to suspect that the bitterness manifested by
the rigid Lutherans against the new school was aggravated by some
political events of this period; the university of Wittenberg, in which
Melanchthon long resided, being subject to the elector Maurice, whose
desertion of the Protestant confederacy and unjust acquisition of the
electorate at the expense of the best friends of the Reformation, though
partly expiated by his subsequent conduct, could never be forgiven by
the adherents and subjects of the Ernestine line. Those first protectors
of the reformed faith, now become the victims of his ambition, were
reduced to the duchies of Weimar and Gotha, within the former of which the
university of Jena, founded in 1559, was soon filled with the sternest
zealots of Luther’s school. Flacius Illyricus, most advantageously known
as the chief compiler of the Centuriæ Magdeburgenses, was at the head of
this university, and distinguished by his animosity against Melanchthon,
whose gentle spirit was released by death from the contentions he
abhorred in 1560. Bossuet exaggerates the indecision of Melanchthon on
many disputable questions, which, as far as it existed, is rather
perhaps a matter of praise; but his want of firmness makes it not always
easy to determine his real sentiments, especially in his letters, and
somewhat impaired the dignity and sincerity of his mind.
|Form of Concord, 1576.|
23. After the death of Melanchthon, a controversy, began by one Bentius,
relating to the ubiquity, as it was called, of Christ’s body, proceeded
with much heat. It is sufficient to mention that it led to what is
denominated the Formula Concordiæ, a declaration of faith on several
matters of controversy, drawn up at Torgau in 1576, and subscribed by
the Saxon and most other Lutheran churches of Germany, though not by
those of Brunswick, or of the northern kingdoms. It was justly
considered as a complete victory of the rigid over the moderate party.
The strict enforcement of subscription to this creed gave rise to a good
deal of persecution against those who were called Crypto-Calvinists, or
suspected of a secret bias towards the proscribed doctrine. Peucer,
son-in-law of Melanchthon and editor of his works, was kept for eleven
years in prison. And a very narrow spirit of orthodoxy prevailed for a
century and a half afterwards in Lutheran theology. But in consequence
of this spirit, that theology has been almost entirely neglected and
contemned in the rest of Europe, and scarce any of its books are
remembered by name.[998]
[998] Hospinian, Concordia Discors, is my chief authority. He was a
Swiss Calvinist, and of course very hostile to the Lutheran party.
But Mosheim does not vindicate very strongly his own church. See
also several articles in Bayle; and Eichhorn, vi. part i. 234.
|Controversy raised by Baius.|
24. Though it may be reckoned doubtful whether the council of Trent did
not repel some wavering Protestants by its unqualified re-enactment of
the doctrine of transubstantiation, it prevented, at least, those
controversies on the real presence which agitated the Protestant
communions. But in another more extensive and important province of
theology, the decisions of the council, though cautiously drawn up, were
far from precluding such differences of opinion as ultimately gave rise
to a schism in the church of Rome, and have had no small share in the
decline of its power. It is said that some of the Dominican order, who
could not but find in their most revered authority, Thomas Aquinas, a
strong assertion of Augustin’s scheme of divinity, were hardly content
with some of the decrees at Trent, as leaving a door open to
Semi-Pelagianism.[999] The controversy, however, was first raised by
Baius, professor of divinity at Louvain, now chiefly remarkable as the
precursor of Jansenius. Many propositions attributed to Baius were
censured by the Sorbonne in 1560, and by a bull of Pius V. in 1567.
He submitted to the latter; but his tenets, which are hardly
distinguishable from those of Calvin, struck root, especially in the Low
Countries, and seem to have passed from the disciples of Baius to the
famous bishop of Ypres in the next century. The bull of Pius apparently
goes much farther from the Calvinistic hypothesis than the council of
Trent had done. The Jansenist party, in later times, maintained that it
was not binding upon the church.[1000]
[999] Du Chesne, Histoire du Baianisme, vol. i. p. 8. This opinion is
ascribed to Peter Soto, confessor to Charles V., who took a part in
the reconversion of England under Mary. He is not to be confounded
with the more celebrated Dominic Soto. Both these divines were
distinguished ornaments of the Council of Trent.
[1000] Some of the tenets asserted in the Articles of the Church of
England are condemned in this bull, especially the 13th. Du Chesne,
p. 78, et post. See Biogr. Univ. art. Baius and Bayle. Du Chesne is
reckoned an unfair historian by those who favour Baius.
|Treatise of Molina on Free will.|
25. These disputes, after a few years, were revived and inflamed by the
treatise of Molina, a Spanish Jesuit, in 1588, on free will. In this he
was charged with swerving as much from the right line on one side as
Baius had been supposed to do on the other. His tenets, indeed, as
usually represented, do not appear to differ from those maintained
afterwards by the Arminians in Holland and England. But it has not been
deemed orthodox in the Church of Rome to deviate ostensibly from the
doctrine of Augustin in this controversy; and Thomas Aquinas, though not
quite of equal authority in the church at large, was held almost
infallible by the Dominicans, a powerful order, well stored with
learning and logic, and already jealous of the rising influence of the
Jesuits. Some of the latter did not adhere to the Semi-Pelagian theories
of Molina; but the spirit of the order was roused, and they all exerted
themselves successfully to screen his book from the condemnation which
Clement VIII. was much inclined to pronounce upon it. They had before
this time been accused of Pelagianism by the Thomists, and especially by
the partisans of Baius, who procured from the universities of Louvain
and Douay a censure of the tenets that some Jesuits had promulgated.[1001]
[1001] Du Chesne, Biogr. Univ., art. Molina. The controversy had begun
before the publication of Molina’s treatise; and the faculty of
Louvain censured thirty-one propositions of the Jesuits in 1587.
Paris, however, refused to confirm the censure. Bellarmin, in 1588,
drew up an abstract of the dispute by command of Sixtus V. In this
he does not decide in favour of either side, but the Pope declared
the Jesuit propositions to be sanæ doctrinæ articuli, p. 258. The
appearance of Molina’s book, which was thought to go much farther
towards Pelagianism, renewed the flame. Clement VIII. was very
desirous to condemn Molina; but Henry IV., who now favoured the
Jesuits, interfered for their honour. Cardinal Perron took the same
side, and told the Pope that a Protestant might subscribe the
Dominican doctrine. Ranke. ii. 295, et post. Paul V. was also
rather inclined against the Jesuits; but it would have been hard to
mortify such good friends, and in 1607 he issued a declaration
postponing the decision _sine die_. The Jesuits deemed themselves
victorious, as in fact they were. Id. p. 358.
|Protestant tenets.|
26. The Protestant theologians did not fail to entangle themselves in
this intricate wilderness. Melanchthon drew a large portion of the
Lutherans into what was afterwards called Arminianism; but the reformed
churches, including the Helvetian, which, after the middle of the
century, gave up many at least of those points of difference which had
distinguished them from that of Geneva, held the doctrine of Augustin on
absolute predestination, on total depravity, and arbitrary irresistible
grace.
|Trinitarian controversy.|
27. A third source of intestine disunion lay deep in recesses beyond the
soundings of human reason. The doctrine of the Trinity, which
theologians agree to call inscrutable, but which they do not fail to
define and analyse with the most confident dogmatism, had already, as we
have seen in a former passage, been investigated by some bold spirits
with little regard to the established faith. They had soon however a
terrible proof of the danger that still was to wait on such momentous
aberrations from the proscribed line. Servetus having, in 1553,
published at Vienne in Dauphiné, a new treatise, called Christianismi
Restitutio, and escaping from thence, as he vainly hoped, to the
protestant city of Geneva, became a victim to the bigotry of the
magistrates, instigated by Calvin, who had acquired an immense
ascendancy over that republic.[1002] He did not leave, as far as
we know, any peculiar disciples. Many, however, among the German
Anabaptists held tenets not unlike those of the ancient Arians. Several
persons, chiefly foreigners, were burned for such heresies in England,
under Edward VI., Elizabeth, and James. These Anabaptists were not very
learned or conspicuous advocates of their opinions; but some of the
Italian confessors of Protestantism were of more importance. Several of
these were reputed to be Arians. None however became so celebrated as
Lælius Socinus, a young man of considerable ability, who is reckoned the
proper founder of that sect which takes its name from his family.
Prudently shunning the fate of Servetus, he neither published anything,
nor permitted his tenets to be openly known. He was however in Poland
not long after the commencement of this period; and there seems reason
to believe that he left writings, which, coming into the hands of some
persons in that country who had already adopted the Arian hypothesis,
induced them to diverge still farther from the orthodox line. The
Anti-Trinitarians became numerous among the Polish Protestants; and in
1565, having separated from the rest, they began to appear as a distinct
society. Faustus, nephew of Lælius Socinus, joined them about 1578; and
acquiring a great ascendancy by his talents, gave a name to the sect,
though their creed was already conformable to his own. An university, or
rather academy, for it never obtained a legal foundation, established at
Racow, a small town belonging to a Polish nobleman of their persuasion,
about 1570, sent forth men of considerable eminence and great zeal in
the propagation of their tenets. These, indeed, chiefly belong to the
ensuing century; but, before the termination of the present, they had
begun to circulate books in Holland.[1003]
[1002] This book is among the scarcest in the world, ipsa raritate
rarior, as it is called by Schelhorn. Il est reconnu, says De Bure,
pour le plus rare de tous les livres. It was long supposed that no
copy existed except that belonging to Dr. Mead, afterwards to the
Duke de la Valiere, and now in the royal library at Paris. But a
second is said to be in the Imperial library at Vienna; and Brunet
observes, on connoit à peine trois exemplaires, which seems to hint
that there may be a third. Allwoerden, in his Life of Servetus,
published in 1727, did not know where any printed copy could be
found, several libraries having been named by mistake. But there
were at that time several manuscript copies, one of which he used
himself. It had belonged to Samuel Crellius, and afterwards to La
Croze, from whom he had borrowed it, and was transcribed from a
printed copy, belonging to an Unitarian minister in Transylvania,
who had obtained it in England between 1660 and 1670.
This celebrated book is a collection of several treatises, with the
general title, Christianismi Restitutio. But that of the first and
most remarkable part has been differently given. According to a
letter from the Abbé Rive, librarian to the Duke de la Valiere, to
Dutens, which the latter has published in the second edition of his
Origines des Decouvertes attribuées aux Modernes, vol. ii. p. 359,
all former writers on the subject have been incorrect. The
difference, however, is but in one word. In Sandius, Niceron,
Allwoerden, and, I suppose, others, the title runs: De Trinitate
Divina, quod in ea non sit _indivisibilium_ trium rerum
illusio, sed vera substantiæ Dei manifestatio in verbo, et
communicatio in spiritu, libri vii. The Abbè Rive gives the word
_invisibilium_, and this I find also in the additions of
Simler to the Bibliotheca Universalis of Gesner, to which M. Rive
did not advert. In Allwoerden, however, a distinct heading is given
to the 6th and 7th dialogues, wherein the same title is repeated,
with the word _invisibilium_ instead of _indivisibilium_.
It is remarked in a note, by Rive or Dutens, that it was a gross
error to put _indivisiblium_, as it makes Servetus say the
contrary of what his system requires. I am not entirely of this
opinion; and if I understand the system of Servetus at all, the
word _indivisibilium_ is very intelligible. De Bure, who seems
to write from personal inspection of the same copy, which he
supposed to be unique, gives the title with _indivisibilium_.
The Christianismi Restitutio was reprinted at Nuremburg, about
1790, in the same form as the original edition, but I am not aware
which word is used in the title-page; nor would the evidence of a
modern reprint, possibly not taken immediately from a printed copy,
be conclusive.
The life of Servetus by Allwoerden, Helmstadt, 1727, is partly
founded on materials collected by Mosheim, who put them into the
author’s hands. Barbier is much mistaken in placing it among
pseudonymous works, as if Allwoerden had been a fictitious
denomination of Mosheim. Dictionnaire des Anonymes (1824) iii. 555.
The book contains, even in the title-page, all possible vouchers
for its authenticity. Mosheim himself says in a letter to
Allwoerden, non dubitavi negotium hoc tibi committere, atque
Historiam Serveti concinnandam et apte construendem tradere. But it
appears that Allwoerden added much from other sources, so that it
cannot reasonably be called the work of any one else. The
Biographie Universelle ascribes to Mosheim a Latin history of
Servetus, Helmstadt, 1737; but, as I believe, by confusion with the
former. They also mention a German work by Mosheim on the same
subject in 1748. See Biogr. Univ., arts. Mosheim and Servetus.
The analysis of the Christianismi Restitutio given by Allwoerden is
very meagre, but he promises a fuller account which never appeared.
It is a far more extensive scheme of theology than was promulgated
in his first treatises; the most interesting of Servetus’s opinions
being, of course, those which brought him to the stake. Servetus
distinctly held the divinity of Christ. Dialogus secundus modum
generationes Christi docet, quod ipse non sit creatus nec finitæ
potentiæ, sed vere adorandus, verusque Deus. Allwoerden, p. 214. He
probably ascribed this divinity to the presence of the Logos, as a
manifestation of God by that name, but denied its distinct
personality in the sense of an intelligent being different from the
Father. Many others may have said something of the same kind, but
in more cautious language, and respecting more the conventional
phraseology of theologians. Ille crucem, hic diadema. Servetus in
fact was burned, not so much for his heresies, as for some personal
offence he had several years before given to Calvin. The latter
wrote to Bolsec in 1546, Servetus cupit huc venire, sed a me
accersitus. Ego autem nunquam committam, ut fidem meam eatenus
obstrictam habeat. Jam enim constitutum habeo, si veniat, nunquam
pati ut salvus exeat. Allwoerden, p. 43. A similar letter to Farel
differs in some phrases, and especially by the word _vivus_
for _salvus_. The latter was published by Witenbogart, in an
ecclesiastical history written in Dutch. Servetus had, in some
printed letters, charged Calvin with many errors, which seems to
have exasperated the great reformer’s temper, so as to make him
resolve on what he afterwards executed.
The death of Servetus has perhaps as many circumstances of
aggravation as any execution for heresy that ever took place. One
of these, and among the most striking is, that he was not the
subject of Geneva, nor domiciled in the city, nor had the
Christianismi Restitutio been published there, but at Vienne.
According to our laws, and those, I believe, of most civilised
nations, he was not amenable to the tribunals of the republic.
The tenets of Servetus are not easily ascertained in all respects,
nor very interesting to the reader. Some of them were considered
infidel and even pantheistical; but there can be little ground for
such imputations, when we consider the tenor of his writings, and
the fate which he might have escaped by a retractation. It should
be said in justice to Calvin, that he declares himself to have
endeavoured to obtain a commutation of the sentence for a milder
kind of death. Genus mortis conati sumus mutare, sed frustra.
Allwoerden, p. 106. But he has never recovered, in the eyes of
posterity, the blow this gave to his moral reputation, which the
Arminians, as well as Socinians, were always anxious to depreciate.
De Serveto, says Grotius, ideo certi aliquid pronuntiare ausus non
sum, quia causam ejus non bene didici; neque Calvino ejus hosti
capitali credere audeo, cum sciam quam inique et virulente idem
ille Calvinus tractaverit viros multo se meliores, Cassandrum,
Balduinum, Castellionem. Grot. Op. Theolog. iv. 639. Of Servetus
and his opinions he says in another place very fairly, Est in illo
negotio difficillimo facilis error, p. 655.
[1003] Lubienecius, Hist. Beformat Polonicæ. Rees, History of Racovian
Catechism. Bayle, art. Socinus. Mosheim. Dupin. Eichhorn.
28. As this is a literary, rather than an ecclesiastical history, we
shall neither advert to the less learned sectaries, nor speak of
controversies which had chiefly a local importance, such as those of the
English Puritans with the established church. Hooker’s Ecclesiastical
Polity will claim attention in a subsequent chapter.
|Religious intolerance.|
|Castalio.|
29. Thus, in the second period of the Reformation, those ominous
symptoms which had appeared in its earlier stage, disunion, virulence,
bigotry, intolerance, far from yielding to any benignant influence, grew
more inveterate and incurable. Yet some there were, even in this
century, who laid the foundations of a more charitable and rational
indulgence to diversities of judgment, which the principle of the
Reformation itself had in some measure sanctioned. It may be said that
this tolerant spirit rose out of the ashes of Servetus. The right of
civil magistrates to punish heresy with death had been already impugned
by some Protestant theologians, as well as by Erasmus. Luther had
declared against it; and though Zuingle, who had maintained the same
principle as Luther, has been charged with having afterwards approved
the drowning of some Anabaptists in the lake of Zurich, it does not
appear that his language requires such an interpretation. The early
Anabaptists, indeed, having been seditious and unmanageable to the
greatest degree, it is not easy to show that they were put to death
simply on account of their religion. But the execution of Servetus, with
circumstances of so much cruelty, and with no possible pretext but the
error of his opinions, brought home to the minds of serious men the
importance of considering, whether a mere persuasion of the truth of our
own doctrines can justify the infliction of capital punishment on those
who dissent from them; and how far we can consistently reprobate the
persecutions of the church of Rome, while acting so closely after her
example. But it was dangerous to withstand openly the rancour of the
ecclesiastics domineering in the Protestant churches, or the usual
bigotry of the multitude. Melanchthon himself, tolerant by nature, and
knowing enough of the spirit of persecution which disturbed his peace,
was yet unfortunately led by timidity to express, in a letter to Beza,
his approbation of the death of Servetus, though he admits that some saw
it in a different light. Calvin, early in 1554, published a dissertation
to vindicate the magistrates of Geneva in their dealings with this
heretic. But Sebastian Castalio, under the name of Martin Bellius,
ventured to reply in a little tract, entitled “De Hereticis quomodo cum
iis agendum sit variorum sententiæ.” This is a collation of different
passages from the fathers and modern authors in favour of toleration, to
which he prefixed a letter of his own to the Duke of Wirtemburg, more
valuable than the rest of the work, and, though written in the cautious
style required by the times, containing the pith of those arguments
which have ultimately triumphed in almost every part of Europe. The
impossibility of forcing belief, the obscurity and insignificance of
many disputed questions, the sympathy which the fortitude of heretics
produced, and other leading topics are well touched in this very short
tract, for the preface does not exceed twenty-eight pages in 16mo.[1004]
[1004] This little book has been attributed by some to Lælius Socinus;
I think Castalio more probable. Castalio entertained very different
sentiments from those of Beza on some theological points, as
appears by his dialogues on predestination and free will, which are
opposed to the Augustinian system then generally prevalent. He
seems also to have approximated to the Sabellian theories of
Servetus on the Trinity. See p. 144, edit. 1613.
|Answered by Beza.|
30. Beza answered Castalio, whom he perfectly knew under the mask of
Bellius, in a much longer treatise, “De Hæreticis a Civili Magistratu
Puniendis.” It is unnecessary to say, that his tone is that of a man who
is sure of having the civil power on his side. As to capital punishments
for heresy, he acknowledges that he has to contend, not only with such
sceptics as Castalio, but with some pious and learned men.[1005] He
justifies their infliction, however, by the magnitude of the crime, and
by the Mosaic law, as well as by precedents in Jewish and Christian
history. Calvin, he positively asserts, used his influence that the
death of Servetus might not be by fire, for the truth of which he
appeals to the Senate; but though most lenient in general, they had
deemed no less expiation sufficient for such impiety.[1006]
[1005] Non modo cum nostris academicis, sed etiam cum piis alioqui et
eruditis hominibus mihi negotium fore prospicio, p. 208. Bayle has
an excellent remark (Beza, note F.) on this controversy.
[1006] Sed tanta erat ejus hominis rabies, tam execranda tamque
horrenda impietas, ut Senatus alioqui clementissimus solis
flammis expiari posse existimarit, p. 91.
|Aconcio.|
31. A treatise written in a similar spirit to that of Castalio, by
Aconcio, one of the numerous exiles from Italy, “De Stratagematibus
Satanæ, Basle, 1565,” deserves some notice in the history of opinions,
because it is, perhaps, the first wherein the limitation of fundamental
articles of Christianity to a small number is laid down at considerable
length. He instances, among doctrines which he does not reckon
fundamental, those of the real presence and of the Trinity; and, in
general, such as are not either expressed in Scripture, or deducible
from it by unequivocal reasoning.[1007] Aconcio inveighs against capital
punishments for heresy; but his argument, like that of Castalio, is good
against every minor penalty. “If the clergy,” he says, “once get the
upper hand, and carry this point, that, as soon as one opens his mouth,
the executioner shall be called in to cut all knots with his knife, what
will become of the study of Scripture? They will think it very little
worth while to trouble their heads with it; and, if I may presume to say
so, will set up every fancy of their own for truth. O unhappy times! O
wretched posterity! if we abandon the arms, by which alone we can subdue
our adversary.” Aconcio was not improbably an Arian; this may be
surmised, not only because he was an Italian Protestant, and because he
seems to intimate it in some passages of his treatise, but on the
authority of Strype, who mentions him as reputed to be such, while
belonging to a small congregation of refugees in London.[1008] This book
attracted a good deal of notice; it was translated both into French and
English; and, in one language or another, went through several editions.
In the next century it became of much authority with the Arminians of
Holland.
[1007] The account given of this book in the Biographie Universelle is
not accurate; a better will be found in Bayle.
[1008] Strype’s Life of Grindal, p. 42; see also Bayle. Elizabeth gave
him a pension for a book on fortification.
|Minus Celsus Koornhert.|
32. Mino Celso, of Siena, and another of the same class of refugees, in
a long and elaborate argument against persecution, De Hereticis Capitali
Supplicio non Afficiendis, quotes several authorities from writers of
the sixteenth century in his favour.[1009] We should add to these
advocates of toleration the name of Theodore Koornhert, who courageously
stood up in Holland against one of the most encroaching and bigoted
hierarchies of that age. Koornhert, averse in other points to the
authority of Calvin and Beza, seems to have been a precursor of
Arminius; but he is chiefly known by a treatise against capital
punishment for heresy, published in Latin after his death. It is
extremely scarce, and I have met with no author, except Bayle and
Brandt, who speaks of it from direct knowledge.[1010] Thus, at
the end of the sixteenth century, the simple proposition, that men for
holding or declaring heterodox opinions in religion ought not to be
burned alive, or otherwise put to death, was itself little else than a
sort of heterodoxy; and, though many privately must have been persuaded
of its truth, the Protestant churches were as far from acknowledging it
as that of Rome. No one had yet pretended to assert the general right of
religious worship, which, in fact, was rarely or never conceded to the
Romanists in a Protestant country, though the Huguenots shed oceans of
blood to secure the same privilege for themselves.
[1009] Celso was formerly supposed to be a fictitious person, but the
contrary has been established. The book was published in 1584, but
without date of place. He quotes Aconcio frequently. The following
passage seems to refer to Servetus. Superioribus annis, ad hæretici
cujusdam in flammis constantiam, ut ex fide dignis accepi, plures
ex astantibus sanæ doctrinæ viri, non posse id sine Dei spiritu
fieri persuasum habentes, ac propterea hæreticum martyrem esse
plane credentes, ejus hæresin pro veritate complexi, in fide
naufragium fecerunt, fol. 109.
[1010] Bayle, Biogr. Univ. Brandt, Hist. de la Reformation des
Provinces Unies, i. 435. Lipsius had, in his Politica, inveighed
against the toleration of more religions than one in a
commonwealth. Ure, seca, ut membrum potius aliquod, quam totum
corpus intereat. Koornhert answered this, dedicating his answer to
the magistrates of Leyden, who, however, thought fit to publish
that they did not accept the dedication, and requested that those
who read Koornhert would read also the reply of Lipsius, ibid. This
was in 1590, and Koornhert died the same year.
|Decline of Protestantism.|
33. In the concluding part of the century, the Protestant cause, though
not politically unprosperous, but rather manifesting some additional
strength through the great energies put forth by England and Holland,
was less and less victorious in the conflict of opinion. It might,
perhaps, seem to a spectator, that it gained more in France by the
dissolution of the League, and the establishment of a perfect
toleration, sustained by extraordinary securities in the edict of
Nantes, than it lost by the conformity of Henry IV. to the Catholic
religion. But, if this is considered more deeply, the advantage will
appear far greater on the other side; for this precedent, in the case of
a man so conspicuous, would easily serve all who might fancy they had
any public interest to excuse them, from which the transition would not
be long to the care of their own. After this time, accordingly, we find
more numerous conversions of the Huguenots, especially the nobler
classes, than before. They were furnished with a pretext by an unlucky
circumstance. In a public conference, held at Fontainebleau, in 1600,
before Henry IV., from which great expectation had been raised, Du
Plessis Mornay, a man of the noblest character, but, though very learned
as a gentleman, more fitted to maintain his religion in the field than
in the schools, was signally worsted, having been supplied with forged
or impertinent quotations from the fathers, which his antagonist,
Perron, easily exposed. Casaubon, who was present, speaks with shame,
but without reserve, of his defeat; and it was an additional
mortification, that the king pretended ever afterwards to have been more
thoroughly persuaded by this conference, that he had embraced the truth,
as well as gained a crown, by abandoning the Protestant side.[1011]
[1011] Scaliger, it must be observed, praises very highly the book of
Du Plessis Mornay on the mass, and says, that no one after Calvin
and Beza had written so well; though he owns that he would have
done better not to dispute about religion before the king.
Scaligerana Secunda, p. 461. Du Plessis himself, in a publication
after the conference of Fontainebleau, retaliated the charge of
falsified quotations on Perron. I shall quote what Casaubon has
said on the subject in another chapter. See the article Mornay, in
the Biographie Universelle, in which, though the signature seems to
indicate a descendant or relation, the inaccuracy of the quotations
is acknowledged.
|Desertion of Lipsius.|
34. The men of letters had another example, about the same time, in one
of the most distinguished of their fraternity, Justus Lipsius. He left
Leyden on some pretence in 1591 for the Spanish Low Countries, and soon
afterwards embraced the Romish faith. Lest his conversion should be
suspected, Lipsius disgraced a name, great at least in literature, by
writing in favour of the local superstitions of those bigoted provinces.
It is true, however, that some, though the lesser, portion of his
critical works were published after his change of religion.
|Jewell’s Apology.|
35. The controversial divinity poured forth during this period is now
little remembered. In England it may be thought necessary to mention
Jewell’s celebrated apology. This short book is written with spirit; the
style is terse, the arguments pointed, the authorities much to the
purpose; so that its effects are not surprising. This treatise is
written in Latin; his Defence of the Apology, a much more diffuse work,
in English. Upon the merits of the controversy of Jewell with the Jesuit
Harding, which this defence embraces, I am not competent to give any
opinion; in length and learning it far surpasses our earlier polemical
literature.
|English theologians.|
36. Notwithstanding the high reputation which Jewell obtained by his
surprising memory and indefatigable reading, it cannot be said that many
English theologians of the reign of Elizabeth were eminent for that
learning which was required for ecclesiastical controversy. Their
writings are neither numerous nor profound. Some exceptions ought to be
made. Hooker was sufficiently versed in the fathers, and he possessed
also a far more extensive knowledge of the philosophical writers of
antiquity than any others could pretend. The science of morals,
according to Mosheim, or rather of casuistry, which Calvin had left in a
rude and imperfect state, is confessed to have been first reduced into
some kind of form, and explained with some accuracy and precision by
Perkins, whose works, however, were not published before the next
century.[1012] Hugh Broughton was deep in Jewish erudition. Whitaker and
Nowell ought also to be mentioned. It would not be difficult to extract
a few more names from biographical collections, but names so obscure
that we could not easily bring their merit as scholars to any sufficient
test. Sandys’s sermons may be called perhaps good, but certainly not
very distinguished. The most eminently learned man of the queen’s reign
seems to have been Dr. John Rainolds; and a foreign author of the last
century, Colomies, places him among the first six in copiousness of
erudition whom the Protestant churches had produced.[1013] Yet his works
are, I presume, read by nobody, nor am I aware that they are ever
quoted; and Rainolds himself is chiefly known by the anecdote, that
having been educated in the church of Rome, as his brother was in the
Protestant communion, they mutually converted each other in the course
of disputation. Rainolds was on the Puritan side, and took a part in the
Hampton Court conference.
[1012] Mosheim, Chalmers.
[1013] Colomesiana. The other five are Usher, Gataker, Blondel, Petit,
and Bochart. See also Blount, Baillet, and Chalmers, for
testimonies to Rainolds, who died in 1607. Scaliger regrets his
death as a loss to all Protestant churches, as well as that of
England. Wood admits that Rainolds was “a man of infinite reading,
and of a vast memory:” but laments that, after he was chosen
divinity lecturer at Oxford in 1586, the face of the university was
much changed towards Puritanism. Hist. and Antiq. In the Athenæ,
ii. 14, he gives a very high character of Rainolds, on the
authority of Bishop Hall and others, and a long list of his works.
But, as he wanted a biographer, he has become obscure in comparison
with Jewell, who probably was not at all his superior.
|Bellarmin.|
37. As the century drew near its close, the church of Rome brought
forward her most renowned and formidable champion, Bellarmin, a Jesuit,
and afterwards a cardinal. No one had entered the field on that side
with more acuteness, no one had displayed more skill in marshalling the
various arguments of controversial theology, so as to support each other
and serve the grand purpose of church authority. “He does not often,”
says Dupin, “employ reasoning, but relies on the textual authority of
Scripture, of the councils, the fathers, and the consent of the
theologians; seldom quitting his subject, or omitting any passage useful
to his argument; giving the objections fairly, and answering them in few
words. His style is not so elegant as that of writers who have made it
their object, but clear, neat, and brief, without dryness or barbarism.
He knew well the tenets of Protestants, and states them faithfully,
avoiding the invective so common with controversial writers.” It is
nevertheless alleged by his opponents, and will not seem incredible to
those who know what polemical theology has always been, that he attempts
to deceive the reader, and argues only in the interests of his cause.
38. Bellarmin, if we may believe Du Perron, was not unlearned in
Greek;[1014] but it is positively asserted on the other side that he
could hardly read it, and he quotes the writers in that language only
from translations. Nor has his critical judgment been much esteemed. But
his abilities are best testified by Protestant theologians, not only in
their terms of eulogy, but indirectly in the peculiar zeal with which
they chose him as their worthiest adversary. More than half a dozen
books in the next fifty years bear the title of Anti-Bellarminus: it
seemed as if the victory must remain with those who should bear away the
_spolia opima_ of this hostile general. The Catholic writers, on
the other hand, borrow everything, it has been said, from Bellarmin, as
the poets do from Homer.[1015]
[1014] Perroniana.
[1015] Dupin. Bayle. Blount. Eichhorn, vi. part ii. p. 30. Andrès,
xviii. 243. Niceron, vol. xxxi.
|Topics of controversy changed.|
39. In the hands of Bellarmin, and other strenuous advocates of the
church, no point of controversy was neglected. But in a general view we
may justly say that the heat of battle was not in the same part of the
field as before. Luther and his immediate disciples held nothing so
vital as the tenet of justification by faith alone; while the arguments
of Eckius and Cajetan were chiefly designed to maintain the modification
of doctrine on that subject, which had been handed down to them by the
fathers and schoolmen. The differences of the two parties, as to the
mode of corporeal presence in the eucharist, though quite sufficient to
keep them asunder, could hardly bear much controversy, inasmuch as the
primitive writers, to whom it was usual to appeal, have not, as is
universally agreed, drawn these metaphysical distinctions with much
preciseness. But when the Helvetic churches, and those bearing the
general name of Reformed, became, after the middle of the century, as
prominent, to say the least, in theological literature as the Lutheran,
this controversy acquired much greater importance; the persecutions in
England and the Netherlands were principally directed against this
single heresy of denying the real presence, and the disputes of the
press turned so generally upon no other topic.
|It turns on Papal power.|
40. In the last part of the century, through the influence of some
political circumstances, we find a new theme of polemical discussion,
more peculiarly characteristic of the age. Before the appearance of the
early reformers, a republican or aristocratic spirit in ecclesiastical
polity strengthened by the decrees of the councils of Constance and
Basle, by the co-operation, in some instances, of the national church
with the state in redressing, or demanding the redress of abuses, and
certainly also both by the vices of the court of Rome, and its diversion
to local politics, had fully counter-balanced, or even in a great
measure silenced, the bold pretensions of the school of Hildebrand. In
such a lax notion of papal authority, prevalent in Cisalpine Europe, the
Protestant Reformation had found one source of its success. But for this
cause the theory itself lost ground in the Catholic church. At the
council of Trent the aristocratic or episcopal party, though it seemed
to display itself in great strength, comprising the representatives of
the Spanish and Gallican churches, was for the most part foiled in
questions that touched the limitations of papal supremacy. From this
time the latter power became lord of the ascendant. “No Catholic,” says
Schmidt, “dared after the Reformation to say one hundredth part of what
Gerson, Peter d’Ailly, and many others had openly preached.” The same
instinct of which we may observe the workings in the present day, then
also taught the subjects of the church that it was no time to betray
jealousy of their own government when the public enemy was at their
gates.
|This upheld by the Jesuits.|
41. In this resuscitation of the court of Rome, that is, of the papal
authority, in contradistinction to the general doctrine and discipline
of the Catholic church, much, or rather most, was due to the Jesuits.
Obedience, not to that abstraction of theologians, the Catholic church,
a shadow eluding the touch and vanishing into emptiness before the
enquiring eye, but to its living acting centre, the one man, was their
vow, their duty, their function. They maintained, therefore, if not
quite for the first time, yet with little countenance from the great
authorities of the schools, his personal infallibility in matters of
faith. They asserted his superiority to general councils, his
prerogative of dispensing with all the canons of the church, on grounds
of spiritual expediency, whereof he alone could judge. As they grew
bolder, some went on to pronounce even the divine laws subject to this
control; but it cannot be said that a principle which seemed so
paradoxical, though perhaps only a consequence from their assumptions,
was generally received.
|Claim to depose princes.|
|Bull against Elizabeth.|
42. But the most striking consequence of this novel position of the
papacy was the renewal of its claims to temporal power, or, in stricter
language, to pronounce the forfeiture of it by lawful sovereigns for
offences against religion. This pretension of the Holy See, though
certainly not abandoned, had in a considerable degree lain dormant in
that period of comparative weakness which followed the great schism.
Paul III. deprived Henry VIII. of his dominions, as far as a bull could
have that effect; but the deposing power was not generally asserted with
much spirit against the first princes who embraced the Reformation. In
this second part of the century, however, the see of Rome was filled by
men of stern zeal and intrepid ambition, aided by the Jesuits and other
regulars with an energy unknown before, and favoured also by the
political interests of the greatest monarch in Christendom. Two
circumstances of the utmost importance gave them occasion to scour the
rust away from their ancient weapons--the final prostration of the
Romish faith in England by Elizabeth, and the devolution of the French
crown on a Protestant heir. Incensed by the former event, Pius V., the
representative of the most rigid party in the church, issued in 1570 his
famous bull, releasing English Catholics from their allegiance to the
queen, and depriving her of all right and title to the throne. Elizabeth
and her parliament retaliated, by augmented severities of law against
these unfortunate subjects, who had little reason to thank the Jesuits
for announcing maxims of rebellion it was not easy to carry into effect.
Allen and Persons, secure at St. Omer and Douay, proclaimed the sacred
duty of resisting a prince who should break his faith with God and the
people, especially when the supreme governor of the church, whose
function it is to watch over its welfare, and separate the leprous from
the clean, has adjudged the cause.
|And Henry IV.|
|Deposing power owned in Spain.|
43. In the war of the League men became more familiar with this tenet.
Those who fought under that banner did not all acknowledge, or at least
would not in other circumstances have admitted, the pope’s deposing
power; but no faction will reject a false principle that adds strength
to its side. Philip II., though ready enough to treat the See of Rome as
sharply and rudely as the Italians do their saints when refractory,
found it his interest to encourage a doctrine so dangerous to monarchy
when it was directed against Elizabeth and Henry. For this reason we may
read with less surprise in Balthazar Ayala, a layman, a lawyer, and
judge-advocate in the armies of Spain, the most unambiguous and
unlimited assertion of the deposing theory:--“Kings abusing their power
may be variously compelled,” he says, “by the sovereign pontiff to act
justly; for he is the earthly vicegerent of God, from whom he has
received both swords, temporal as well as spiritual, for the peace and
preservation of the Christian commonwealth. Nor can he only control, if
it is for the good of this commonwealth, but even depose kings, as God,
whose delegate he is, deprived Saul of his kingdom, and as pope Zachary
released the Franks from their allegiance to Childeric.”[1016]
[1016] Ayala, De Jure et Officiis Bellicis (Antwerp 1597), p. 32.
|Asserted by Bellarmin.|
44. Bellarmin, the brilliant advocate of whom we have already spoken,
amidst the other disputes of the protestant quarrel, did not hesitate to
sustain the papal authority in its amplest extension. His treatise “De
Summo Pontifice, Capite Totius Militantis Ecclesiæ,” forms a portion,
and by no means the least important, of those entitled “The
Controversies of Bellarmin,” and first appeared separately in 1586. The
pope, he asserts, has no direct temporal authority in the dominions of
Christian princes; he cannot interfere with their merely civil affairs,
unless they are his feudal vassals, but indirectly, that is, for the
sake of some spiritual advantage, all things are submitted to his
disposal. He cannot depose these princes, even for a just cause, as
their immediate superior, unless they are feudally his vassals; but he
can take away and give to others their kingdoms, if the salvation of
souls require it.[1017] We shall observe hereafter how artfully this
papal scheme was combined with the more captivating tenets of popular
sovereignty; each designed for the special case, that of Henry IV.,
whose legitimate rights, established by the constitution of France, it
was expected by this joint effort to overthrow.
[1017] Ranke, ii. 182.
|Methods of theological doctrine.|
45. Two methods of delivering theological doctrine had prevailed in the
Catholic church for many ages. The one, called positive, was dogmatic
rather than argumentative, deducing its tenets from immediate
authorities of scripture or of the fathers, which it interpreted and
explained for its own purpose. It was a received principle, conveniently
for this system of interpretation, that most parts of scripture had a
plurality of meaning; and that the allegorical, or analogical senses
were as much to be sought as the primary and literal. The scholastic
theology, on the other hand, which acquired its name, because it was
frequently heard in the schools of divinity and employed the weapons of
dialectics, was a scheme of inferences drawn, with all the subtlety of
reasoning, from the same fundamental principles of authority, the
scriptures, the fathers, the councils of the church. It must be evident
upon reflection, that where many thousand propositions, or sentences
easily convertible into them, had acquired the rank of indisputable
truths, it was not difficult, with a little ingenuity in the invention
of middle terms, to raise a specious structure of connected syllogisms;
and hence the theology of the schools was a series of inferences from
the acknowledged standards of orthodoxy, as their physics were from
Aristotle, and their metaphysics from a mixture of the two.
|Loci Communes.|
46. The scholastic method, affecting a complete and scientific form, led
to the compilation of theological systems, generally called Loci
Communes. These were very common in the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, both in the church of Rome, and, after some time, in the two
protestant communions. But Luther, though at first he bestowed immense
praise upon the Loci Communes of Melanchthon, grew unfavourable to all
systematic theology. His own writings belong to that class we call
positive. They deal with the interpretation of scripture, and the
expansion of its literal meaning. Luther rejected, except in a very
sparing application, the search after allegorical senses. Melanchthon
also, and in general the divines of the Augsburg confession, adhered
chiefly to the principle of single interpretation.[1018]
|In the Protestant,|
The Institutes of Calvin, which belong to the preceding part of the
century, though not entitled Loci Communes, may be reckoned a full
system of deductive theology. Wolfgang Musculus published a treatise
with the usual title. It should be observed that, in the Lutheran
church, the ancient method of scholastic theology revived after the
middle of this century, especially in the divines of Melanchthon’s
party, one of whose characteristics was a greater deference to
ecclesiastical usage and opinion, than the more rigid Lutherans would
endure to pay. The Loci Theologici of Chemnitz and those of Strigelius
were, in their age, of great reputation; the former, by one of the
compilers of the Formula Concordiæ, might be read without risk of
finding those heterodoxies of Melanchthon, which the latter was supposed
to exhibit.[1019]
[1018] Eichhorn, Gesch. der Cultur. vi. part i. p. 175. Mosheim, cent.
16, sect. 3, part ii.
[1019] Eichhorn, 236. Mosheim.
|and Catholic Church.|
47. In the church of Rome the scholastic theology retained an undisputed
respect; it was for the heretical protestants to dread a method of keen
logic, by which their sophistry was cut through. The most remarkable
book of this kind, which falls within the sixteenth century, is the Loci
Theologici of Melchior Canus, published at Salamanca in 1563, three
years after the death of the author, a Dominican, and professor in that
university. It is of course the theology of the reign and country of
Philip II.; but Canus was a man acquainted with history, philosophy, and
ancient literature. Eichhorn, after giving several pages to an abstract
of this volume, pronounces it worthy to be still read. It may be seen by
his analysis how Canus, after the manner of the schoolmen, incorporated
philosophical with theological science. Dupin, whose abstract is rather
different in substance, calls this an excellent work, and written with
all the elegance we could desire.[1020]
[1020] Eichhorn, p. 216-227. Dupin, cent. 16, book 5.
|Catharin.|
48. Catharin, one of the theologians most prominent in the council of
Trent, though he seems not to have incurred the charge of heresy, went
farther from the doctrine of Augustin and Aquinas than was deemed
strictly orthodox in the Catholic church. He framed a theory to
reconcile predestination with the universality of grace, which has since
been known in this country by the name of Baxterianism, and is, I
believe, adopted by many divines at this day. Dupin, however, calls it a
new invention, unknown to the ancient fathers, and never received in the
schools. It has been followed, he adds, by nobody.
|Critical and expository writings.|
49. In the critical and expository department of theological literature,
much was written during this period, forming no small proportion of the
great collection called Critici Sacri. In the Romish church, we may
distinguish the Jesuit Maldonat, whose commentaries on the evangelists
have been highly praised by theologians of the Protestant side; and
among these, we may name Calvin and Beza, who occupy the highest
place,[1021] while below them are ranked Bullinger, Zanchius, Musculus,
Chemnitz, and several more. But I believe that, even in the reviving
appetite for obsolete theology, few of these writers have yet attracted
much attention. A polemical spirit, it is observed by Eichhorn,
penetrated all theological science, not only in dogmatical writings, but
in those of mere interpretation; in catechisms, in sermons, in
ecclesiastical history, we find the author armed for combat, and always
standing in imagination before an enemy.
[1021] Literas sacras, says Scaliger of Calvin, tractavit ut tractandæ
sunt, vere inquam et pure ac simpliciter sine ullis argutationibus
scholasticis, et divino vir præditus ingenio multa divinavit quæ
non nisi a linguæ Hebraicæ peritissimis (cujusmodi tamen ipse non
erat), divinari possunt. Scaligerana Prima. A more detailed, and
apparently a not uncandid statement of Calvin’s character as a
commentator on Scripture, will be found in Simon, Hist. Critique du
Vieux Testament. He sets him, in this respect, much above Luther.
See also Blount, art. Calvin. Scaliger does not esteem much the
learning of Beza, and blames him for affecting to despise Erasmus
as a commentator. I have named Beza in the text as superior to
Zanchius and others, in deference to common reputation, for I am
wholly ignorant of the writings of all.
|Ecclesiastical historians.|
50. A regular and copious history of the church, from the primitive ages
to the Reformation itself, was first given by the Lutherans under the
title, Centuriæ Magdeburgenses, from the name of the city where it was
compiled. The principal among several authors concerned, usually called
Centuriators, was Flacius Illyricus, a most inveterate enemy of
Melanchthon. This work has been more than once reprinted, and is still,
in point of truth and original research, the most considerable
ecclesiastical history on the Protestant side. Mosheim, or his
translator, calls this an immortal work;[1022] and Eichhorn speaks of it
in strong terms of admiration for the boldness of the enterprise, the
laboriousness of the execution, the spirit with which it cleared away a
mass of fable, and placed ecclesiastical history on an authentic basis.
The faults, both those springing from the imperfect knowledge, and from
the prejudices of the compilers, are equally conspicuous.[1023] Nearly
forty years afterwards, between the years 1588 and 1609, the celebrated
Annals of Cardinal Baronius, in twelve volumes, appeared. These were
brought down by him only to the end of the twelfth century; their
continuation by Rainaldus, published from 1646 to 1663, goes down to
1566. It was the object of protestant learning in the seventeenth
century, to repel the authority and impugn the allegations of Baronius.
Those of his own communion, in a more advanced stage of criticism, have
confessed his mistakes; many of them arising from a want of acquaintance
with the Greek language, indispensable, as we should now justly think,
for one who undertook a general history of the church, but not
sufficiently universal in Italy, at the end of the sixteenth century, to
deprive those who did not possess it of a high character for erudition.
Eichhorn speaks far less favourably of Baronius than of the
Centuriators.[1024] But of these two voluminous histories, written with
equal prejudice on opposite sides, an impartial and judicious scholar
has thus given his opinion.
[1022] Cent. 16, sect. 3, part ii. c. 9. This expression is probably in
the original; but it is difficult to quote Maclaine’s translation
with confidence, on account of the liberties which he took with the
text.
[1023] Vol. vi. part ii. p. 149.
[1024] Id. p. 180.
|Le Clerc’s character of them.|
51. “An ecclesiastical historian,” Le Clerc satirically observes, “ought
to adhere inviolably to this maxim, that whatever can be favourable to
heretics is false, and whatever can be said against them is true;
while, on the other hand, all that does honour to the orthodox is
unquestionable, and everything that can do them discredit is surely a
lie. He must suppress too with care, or at least extenuate, as far as
possible, the errors and vices of those whom the orthodox are accustomed
to respect, whether they know anything about them or no; and must
exaggerate, on the contrary, the mistakes and faults of the heterodox to
the utmost of his power. He must remember that any orthodox writer is a
competent witness against a heretic, and is to be trusted implicitly on
his word; while a heretic is never to be believed against the orthodox,
and has honour enough done him, in allowing him to speak against his own
side, or in favour of our own. It is thus that the Centuriators of
Magdeburg, and thus that Cardinal Baronius have written; each of their
works having by this means acquired an immortal glory with its own
party. But it must be owned that they are not the earliest, and that
they have only imitated most of their predecessors in this plan of
writing. For many ages, men had only sought in ecclesiastical antiquity,
not what was really to be found there, but what they conceived ought to
be there for the good of their own party.”[1025]
[1025] Parrhasiana, vol. i. p. 168.
|Deistical writers.|
52. But in the midst of so many dissentients from each other, some
resting on the tranquil bosom of the church, some fighting the long
battle of argument, some catching at gleams of supernatural light, the
very truths of natural and revealed religion were called in question by
a different party. The proofs of this before the middle of the sixteenth
century are chiefly to be derived from Italy. Pomponatius has already
been mentioned, and some other Aristotelian philosophers might be added.
But these, whose scepticism extended to natural theology, belong to the
class of metaphysical writers, whose place is in the next chapter. If we
limit ourselves to those who directed their attacks against
Christianity, it must be presumed that, in an age when the tribunals of
justice visited, even with the punishment of death, the denial of any
fundamental doctrine, few books of an openly irreligious tendency could
appear.[1026] A short pamphlet by one Vallée, cost him his life
in 1574. Some others were clandestinely circulated in France before the
end of the century; and the list of men suspected of infidelity, if we
could trust all private anecdotes of the time, would be by no means
short. Bodin, Montaigne, Charron, have been reckoned among the rejecters
of Christianity. The first I conceive to have acknowledged no revelation
but the Jewish; the second is free, in my opinion, from all reasonable
suspicion of infidelity; the principal work of the third was not
published till 1601. His former treatise, “Des Trois Vérités,” is an
elaborate vindication of the Christian and Catholic religion.[1027]
[1026] The famous Cymbalum Mundi, by Bonaventure des Periers, published
in 1538, which, while it continued extremely scarce, had the
character of an irreligious work, has proved, since it was
reprinted, in 1711, perfectly innocuous, though there are a few
malicious glances at priests and nuns. It has always been the habit
of the literary world, as much as at present, to speak of books by
hearsay. The Cymbalum Mundi is written in Dialogue, somewhat in the
manner of Lucian, and is rather more lively than books of that age
generally were.
[1027] Des Trois Vérités contre les Athées, Idolatres, Juifs,
Mahumetans, Hérétiques, et Schismatiques. Bourdeaux, 1593. Charron
has not put his name to this book; and it does not appear that he
has taken anything from himself in his subsequent work, De la
Sagesse.
|Wierus, De Præstigiis.|
53. I hardly know how to insert, in any other chapter than the present,
the books that relate to sorcery and demoniacal possessions, though they
can only in a very lax sense be ranked with theological literature. The
greater part are contemptible in any other light than as evidences of
the state of human opinion. Those designed to rescue the innocent from
sanguinary prejudices, and chase the real demon of superstition from the
mind of man, deserve to be commemorated. Two such works belong to this
period. Wierus, a physician of the Netherlands, in a treatise, “De
Præstigiis,” Basle, 1564, combats the horrible prejudice by which those
accused of witchcraft were thrown into the flames. He shows a good deal
of credulity as to diabolical illusions, but takes these unfortunate
persons for the devil’s victims rather than his accomplices. Upon the
whole, Wierus destroys more superstition than he seriously intended to
leave behind.
|Scot on Witchcraft.|
54. A far superior writer is our countryman, Reginald Scot, whose object
is the same, but whose views are incomparably more extensive and
enlightened. He denies altogether to the devil any power of controlling
the course of nature. It may be easily supposed that this solid and
learned person, for such he was beyond almost all the English of that
age, did not escape in his own time, or long afterwards, the censure of
those who adhered to superstition. Scot’s Discovery of Witchcraft was
published in 1584.[1028] Bodin, on the other hand, endeavoured to
sustain the vulgar notions of Witchcraft in his Demonomanie des
Sorciers. It is not easy to conceive a more wretched production; besides
his superstitious absurdities, he is guilty of exciting the magistrate
against Wierus, by representing him as a real confederate of Satan.
[1028] It appears by Scot’s book that not only the common, but the more
difficult tricks of conjurers were practised in his time; he shows
how to perform some of them.
|Authenticity of Vulgate.|
55. We may conclude this chapter, by mentioning the principal versions
and editions of Scripture. No edition of the Greek Testament, worthy to
be specified, appeared after that of Robert Stephens, whose text was
invariably followed. The council of Trent declared the Vulgate
translation of Scripture to be authentic, condemning all that should
deny its authority. It has been a commonplace with Protestants to
inveigh against this decree, even while they have virtually maintained
the principle upon which it is founded--one by no means peculiar to the
church of Rome--being no other than that it is dangerous to unsettle the
mind of the ignorant, or partially learned in religion; a proposition
not easily disputable by any man of sense, but, when acted upon, as
incompatible as any two contraries can be, with the free and general
investigation of truth.
|Latin versions and editions by Catholics.|
56. Notwithstanding this decision in favour of the Vulgate, there was
room left for partial uncertainty. The council of Trent, declaring the
translation itself to be authentic, pronounced nothing in favour of any
manuscript or edition; and as it would be easier to put down learning
altogether than absolutely to restrain the searching spirit of
criticism, it was soon held that the council’s decree went but to the
general fidelity of the version, without warranting every passage. Many
Catholic writers, accordingly, have put a very liberal interpretation on
this decree, suggesting such emendations of particular texts as the
original seemed to demand. They have even given new translations; one by
Arias Montanus is chiefly founded on that of Pagninus, and an edition of
the Vulgate, by Isidore Clarius, is said to resemble a new translation,
by his numerous corrections of the text from the Hebrew.[1029] Sixtus V.
determined to put a stop to a license which rendered the Tridentine
provisions almost nugatory. He fulfilled the intentions of the council
by causing to be published in 1590 the Sistine Bible; an authoritative
edition to be used in all churches. This was, however, superseded by
another, set forth only two years afterwards by Clement VIII., which is
said to differ more than any other from that which his predecessor had
published as authentic; a circumstance not forgotten by Protestant
polemics. The Sistine edition is now very scarce. The same pope had
published a standard edition of the Septuagint in 1587.[1030]
[1029] Andrès, xix. 40. Simon, 358.
[1030] Andrès, xix, 44. Schelhorn, Amœnit. Literar, vol. ii. 359,
and vol. iv. 439.
|By Protestants.|
57. The Latin translations made by Protestants in this period were that
by Sebastian Castalio, which, in search of more elegance of style,
deviates from the simplicity, as well as sense, of the original, and
fails therefore of obtaining that praise at the hands of men of taste
for which more essential requisites have been sacrificed;[1031] and that
by Tremellius and Junius, published at Frankfort in 1575, and subsequent
years. It was retouched some time afterwards by Junius, after the death
of his coadjutor. This translation was better esteemed in Protestant
countries, especially at first, than by the Catholic critics. Simon
speaks of it with little respect. It professedly adheres closely to the
Hebrew idiom. Beza gave a Latin version of the New Testament. It is
doubtful whether any of these translations have much improved upon the
Vulgate.
[1031] Andrès, xix. 166. Castalio, according to Simon (Hist. Critique
du V. T., p. 363), affects politeness to an inconceivable degree of
bad taste, especially in such phrases as these in his translation
of the Canticles:--Mea columbula, ostende mihi tuum vulticulum; fac
ut audiam tuam voculam, &c. He was, however, Simon says, tolerably
acquainted with Hebrew, and spoke modestly of his own translation.
|Versions into modern languages.|
58. The new translations of the Scriptures into modern languages were
naturally not so numerous as at an earlier period. Two in English are
well known; the Geneva Bible of 1560, published in that city by
Coverdale, Whittingham, and other refugees, and the Bishop’s Bible of
1568. Both of these, or at least the latter, were professedly founded
upon the prior versions, but certainly not without a close comparison
with the original text. The English Catholics published a translation of
the New Testament from the Vulgate at Rheims in 1582. The Polish
translation, commonly ascribed to the Socinians, was printed under the
patronage of Prince Radzivil in 1563, before that sect could be said to
exist, though Lismanin and Blandrata, both of heterodox tenets, were
concerned in it.[1032] This edition is of the greatest rarity. The
Spanish bible of Ferrara, 1553, and the Sclavonian of 1581, are also
very scarce. The curious in bibliography are conversant with other
versions and editions of the sixteenth century, chiefly of rare
occurrence.[1033]
[1032] Bayle, art. Radzivil.
[1033] Brunet, &c.
CHAPTER XII.
HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY FROM 1550 TO 1600.
_Aristotelian Philosophers--Cesalpin--Opposite Schools of Philosophy--
Telesio--Jordano Bruno--Sanchez--Aconcio--Nizolius--Logic of Ramus._
|Predominance of Aristotelian philosophy.|
1. The authority of Aristotle, as the great master of dogmatic
philosophy, continued generally predominant through the sixteenth
century. It has been already observed that, besides the strenuous
support of the Catholic clergy, and especially of the Sorbonne, who
regarded all innovations with abhorrence, the Aristotelian philosophy
had been received, through the influence of Melanchthon, in the Lutheran
universities. The reader must be reminded that, under the name of
speculative philosophy we comprehend not only the logic and what was
called ontology of the schools, but those physical theories of ancient
or modern date, which, appealing less to experience than to assumed
hypotheses, cannot be mingled, in a literary classification, with the
researches of true science, such as we shall hereafter have to place
under the head of natural philosophy.
|Scholastic and genuine Aristotelians.|
2. Brucker has made a distinction between the scholastic and the genuine
Aristotelians; the former being chiefly conversant with the doctors of
the middle ages, adopting their terminology, their distinctions, their
dogmas, and relying with implicit deference on Scotus or Aquinas,
though, in the progress of learning, they might make some use of the
original master; while the latter, throwing off the yoke of the
schoolmen, prided themselves on an equally complete submission to
Aristotle himself. These were chiefly philosophers and physicians, as
the former were theologians; and the difference of their objects
suffices to account for the different lines in which they pursued them,
and the lights by which they were guided.[1034]
[1034] Brucker, Hist. Philos. iv. 117, et post.
|The former class little remembered.|
3. Of the former class, or successors and adherents of the old
schoolmen, it might be far from easy, were it worth while, to furnish
any distinct account. Their works are mostly of extreme scarcity; and
none of the historians of philosophy, except perhaps Morhof, profess
much acquaintance with them. It is sufficient to repeat that, among the
Dominicans, Franciscans, and Jesuits, especially in Spain and Italy, the
scholastic mode of argumentation was retained in their seminaries, and
employed in prolix volumes, both upon theology and upon such parts of
metaphysics and natural law as are allied to it. The reader may find
some more information in Brucker, whom Buhle, saying the same things in
the same order, may be presumed to have silently copied.[1035]
[1035] Brucker, ibid. Buhle, ii. 448.
|The others not much better known.|
4. The second class of Aristotelian philosophers, devoting themselves to
physical science, though investigating it with a very unhappy deference
to mistaken dogmas, might seem to offer a better hope of materials for
history; and in fact we meet here with a very few names of men once
celebrated and of some influence over the opinions of their age. But
even here their writings prove to be not only forgotten, but incapable
as we may say, on account of their rare occurrence, and the
improbability of their republication, of being ever again known.
|Schools of Pisa and Padua.|
|Cesalpini.|
5. The Italian schools, and especially those of Pisa and Padua, had long
been celebrated for their adherence to Aristotelian principles, not
always such as could justly be deduced from the writings of the
Stagyrite himself, but opposing a bulwark against novel speculation, as
well as against the revival of the Platonic, or any other ancient
philosophy. Simon Porta of the former university, and Cæsar Cremonini of
the latter, stood at the head of the rigid Aristotelians; the one near
the commencement of this period, the other about its close. Both these
philosophers have been reproached with the tendency to atheism, so
common in the Italians of this period. A similar imputation has fallen
on another professor of the university of Pisa, Cesalpini, who is said
to have deviated from the strict system of Aristotle towards that of
Averroes, though he did not altogether coincide even with the latter.
The real merits of Cesalpin, in very different pursuits, it was reserved
for a later age to admire. His “Quæstiones Peripateticæ,” published in
1575, is a treatise on metaphysics, or the first philosophy, founded
professedly upon Aristotelian principles, but with considerable
deviation. This work is so scarce that Brucker had never seen it, but
Buhle has taken much pains to analyse its very obscure contents.
Paradoxical and unintelligible as they now appear, Cesalpin obtained a
high reputation in his own age, and was denominated by excellence, the
philosopher. Nicolas Taurellus, a professor at Altdorf, denounced the
“Quæstiones Peripateticæ” in a book to which, in allusion to his
adversary’s name, he gave the puerile title of Alpes Cæsæ.
|Sketch of his system.|
6. The system of Cesalpin is one modification of that ancient hypothesis
which, losing sight of all truth and experience in the love of
abstraction, substitutes the barren unity of pantheism for religion, and
a few incomprehensible paradoxes for the variety of science. Nothing,
according to him, was substance which was not animated; but the
particular souls which animate bodies are themselves only substances,
because they are parts of the first substance, a simple, speculative,
but not active intelligence, perfect and immovable, which is God. The
reasonable soul, however, in mankind is not numerically one; for matter
being the sole principle of plurality, and human intelligences being
combined with matter, they are plural in number. He differed also from
Averroes in maintaining the separate immortality of human souls; and
while the philosopher of Cordova distinguished the one soul he ascribed
to mankind from the Deity, Cesalpin considered the individual soul as a
portion, not of this common human intelligence, which he did not admit,
but of the first substance, or Deity. His system was therefore more
incompatible with theism, in any proper sense, than that of Averroes
himself, and anticipated in some measure that of Spinoza, who gave a
greater extension to his one substance, by comprehending all matter as
well as spirit within it. Cesalpin also denied, and in this he went far
from his Aristotelian creed, any other than a logical difference between
substances and accidents. I have no knowledge of the writings of
Cesalpin except through Buhle; for though I confess that the “Quæstiones
Peripateticæ” may be found in the British Museum,[1036] it would scarce
repay the labour to examine what is both erroneous and obscure.
[1036] Buhle, ii. 525. Brucker (iv. 222), laments that he had never
seen this book. It seems that there were few good libraries in
Germany in Brucker’s age, or at least that he had no access to
them, for it is surprising how often he makes the same complaint.
He had, however, seen a copy of the Alpes Cæsæ of Taurellus, and
gives rather a long account both of the man and of the book. Ibid.
and p. 300.
|Cremonini.|
7. The name of Cremonini, professor of philosophy for above forty years
at Padua, is better known than his writings. These have become of the
greatest scarcity. Brucker tells us he had not been able to see any of
them, and Buhle had met with but two or three.[1037] Those at which I
have looked are treatises on the Aristotelian physics; they contain
little of any interest; nor did I perceive that they countenance, though
they may not repel, the charge of atheism sometimes brought against
Cremonini, but which, if at all well-founded, seems rather to rest on
external evidence. Cremonini, according to Buhle, refutes the Averoistic
notion of an universal human intelligence. Gabriel Naudé, both in his
letters, and in the records of his conversation called Naudæana, speaks
with great admiration of Cremonini.[1038] He had himself passed some
years at Padua, and was at that time a disciple of the Aristotelian
school in physics, which he abandoned after his intimacy with Gassendi.
[1037] Buhle, ii. 519.
[1038] Some passages in the Naudæana tend to confirm the suspicion of
irreligion, both with respect to Cremonini and Naudé himself.
|Opponents of Aristotle.|
|Patrizzi.|
8. Meantime the authority of Aristotle, great in name and respected in
the schools, began to lose more and more of its influence over
speculative minds. Cesalpin, an Aristotelian by profession, had gone
wide in some points from his master. But others waged an open war as
philosophical reformers. Francis Patrizzi, in his “Discussiones
Peripateticæ” (1571 and 1581), appealed to prejudice with the arms of
calumny, raking up the most unwarranted aspersions against the private
life of Aristotle, to prepare the way for assailing his philosophy; a
warfare not the less unworthy, that it is often successful. In the case
of Patrizzi it was otherwise; his book was little read; and his own
notions of philosophy, borrowed from the later Platonists, and that
rabble of spurious writers who had misled Ficinus and Picus of
Mirandola, dressed up by Patrizzi with a fantastic terminology, had
little chance of subverting so well-established and acute a system as
that of Aristotle.[1039]
[1039] Buhle, ii. 548. Brucker, iv. 422.
|System of Telesio.|
9. Bernard Telesio, a native of Cosenza, had greater success, and
attained a more celebrated name. The first two books of his treatise,
“De Natura Rerum juxta Propria Principia,” appeared at Rome in 1565; the
rest was published in 1586. These contain an hypothesis more
intelligible than that of Patrizzi, and less destitute of a certain
apparent correspondence with the phenomena of nature. Two active
incorporeal principles, heat and cold, contend with perpetual opposition
for the dominion over a third, which is passive matter. Of these three
all nature consists. The region of pure heat is in the heavens, in the
sun and stars, where it is united with the most subtle matter; that of
cold in the centre of the earth, where matter is most condensed; all
between is their battle-field, in which they continually struggle, and
alternately conquer. These principles are not only active, but
intelligent, so far at least as to perceive their own acts and mutual
impressions. Heat is the cause of motion; cold is by nature immovable,
and tends to keep all things in repose.[1040]
[1040] Brucker, iv. 449. Buhle, ii. 563. Ginguéné, vii. 501.
10. Telesio has been generally supposed to have borrowed this theory
from that of Parmenides, in which the antagonist principles of heat and
cold had been employed in a similar manner. Buhle denies the identity of
the two systems, and considers that of Telesio as more nearly allied to
the Aristotelian, except in substituting heat and cold for the more
abstract notions of form and privation. Heat and cold, it might rather
perhaps be said, seem to be merely ill-chosen names for the hypothetical
causes of motion and rest; and the real laws of nature, with respect to
both of these, are as little discoverable in the Telesian as in the more
established theory. Yet its author perceived that the one possessed an
expansive, the other a condensing power; and his principles of heat and
cold bear a partial analogy to repulsion and attraction, the antagonist
forces which modern philosophy employs. Lord Bacon was sufficiently
struck with the system of Telesio to illustrate it in a separate
fragment of the Instauratio Magna, though sensible of its inadequacy to
solve the mysteries of nature; and a man of eccentric genius,
Campanella, to whom we shall come hereafter, adopted it as the basis of
his own wilder speculations. Telesio seems to have ascribed a sort of
intelligence to plants, which his last-mentioned disciple carried to a
strange excess of paradox.
|Jordano Bruno.|
|His Italian works. Cena de li Ceneri.|
11. The name of Telesio is perhaps hardly so well-known at present as
that of Jordano Bruno. It was far otherwise formerly; and we do not find
that the philosophy of this singular and unfortunate man attracted much
further notice than to cost him his life. It may be doubted, indeed,
whether the Inquisition at Rome did not rather attend to his former
profession of protestantism and invectives against the church, than to
the latent atheism it pretended to detect in his writings, which are at
least as innocent as those of Cesalpin. The self-conceit of Bruno, his
contemptuous language about Aristotle and his followers, the paradoxical
strain, the obscurity and confusion, in many places, of his writings, we
may add, his poverty and frequent change of place, had rendered him of
little estimation in the eyes of the world. But in the last century the
fate of Bruno excited some degree of interest about his opinions.
Whether his hypotheses were truly atheistical became the subject of
controversy; his works, by which it should have been decided, were so
scarce that few could speak with knowledge of their contents; and
Brucker, who inclines to think there was no sufficient ground for the
imputation, admits that he had only seen one of Bruno’s minor treatises.
The later German philosophers, however, have paid more attention to
these obscure books, from a similarity they sometimes found in Bruno’s
theories to their own. Buhle has devoted above a hundred pages to this
subject.[1041] The Italian treatises have within a few years been
reprinted in Germany, and it is not uncommon in modern books to find an
eulogy on the philosopher of Nola. I have not made myself acquainted
with his Latin writings, except through the means of Buhle, who has
taken a great deal of pains with the subject. The principal Italian
treatises are entitled, La Cena de li Ceneri, Della Causa, Principia ed
Uno, and Dell’Infinito Universo. Each of these is in five dialogues. The
Cena de li Ceneri contains a physical theory of the world, in which the
author makes some show of geometrical diagrams, but deviates so often
into rhapsodies of vanity and nonsense, that it is difficult to
pronounce whether he had much knowledge of the science. Copernicus, to
whose theory of the terrestrial motion Bruno entirely adheres, he
praises as superior to any former astronomer; but intimates that he did
not go far beyond vulgar prejudices, being more of a mathematician than
a philosopher. The gravity of bodies he treats as a most absurd
hypothesis, all natural motion, as he fancies, being circular. Yet he
seems to have had some dim glimpse of what is meant by the composition
of motions, asserting that the earth has four simple motions, out of
which one is compounded.[1042]
[1041] Vol. ii. p. 604-730.
[1042] Dial. v. p. 120 (1830). These dialogues were written, or purport
to have been written, in England. He extols Leicester, Walsingham,
and especially Sidney.
|Della Causa, Principio ed Uno.|
12. The second, and much more important treatise, Delia Causa, Principio
ed Uno, professes to reveal the metaphysical philosophy of Bruno, a
system which, at least in pretext, brought him to the stake at Rome, and
the purport of which has been the theme of much controversy. The extreme
scarcity of his writings has, no doubt, contributed to this variety of
judgment; but though his style, strictly speaking, is not obscure, and
he seems by no means inclined to conceal his meaning, I am not able to
resolve with certainty the problem that Brucker and those whom he quotes
have discussed.[1043] But the system of Bruno, so far as I understand it
from what I have read of his writings, and from Buhle’s analysis of
them, may be said to contain a sort of double pantheism. The world is
animated by an omnipresent intelligent soul, the first cause of every
form that matter can assume, but not of matter itself. The soul of the
universe is the only physical agent, the interior artist that works in
the vast whole, that calls out the plant from the seed and matures the
fruit, that lives in all things, though they may not seem to live, and
in fact do not, when unorganised, live separately considered, though
they all partake of the universal life, and in their component parts may
he rendered living. A table as a table, a coat as a coat, are not alive,
but inasmuch as they derive their substance from nature, they are
composed of living particles.[1044] There is nothing so small or so
unimportant, but that a portion of spirit dwells in it, and this
spiritual substance requires but a proper subject to become a plant or
an animal. Forms particular are in constant change; but the first form,
being the source of all others, as well as the first matter, are
eternal. The soul of the world is the constituent principle of the
universe and of all its parts. And thus we have an intrinsic, eternal,
self-subsistent principle of form, far better than that which the
sophists feigned, whose substances are compounded and corruptible, and,
therefore, nothing else than accidents.[1045] Forms in particular are
the accidents of matter, and we should make a divinity of matter like
some Arabian peripatetics, if we did not recur to the living fountain of
form--the eternal soul of the world. The first matter is neither
corporeal nor sensible, it is eternal and unchangeable, the fruitful
mother of forms and their grave. Form and matter, says Bruno, pursuing
this fanciful analogy, may be compared to male and female. Form never
errs, is never imperfect, but through its conjunction with matter; it
might adopt the words of the father of the human race: Mulier quam mihi
dedisti (la materia, la quale mi hai dato consorte), me decepit (lei è
cagione d’ogni mio peccato). The speculations of Bruno now become more
and more subtle, and he admits, that our understandings cannot grasp
what he pretends to demonstrate--the identity of a simply active and
simply passive principle: but the question really is, whether we can see
any meaning in his propositions.
[1043] Brucker, vol. v. 52.
[1044] Thus Buhle, or at least his French translator; but the original
words are different. Dico dunque che la tavola come tavola non è
animata, nè la veste, nè il cuojo come cuojo, nè il vetro come
vetro, ma _come cose naturali e composte hanno in se la materia e
la forma_. Sia pur cosa quanto piccola e minima si voglia, ha in se
parte di sustanza spirituale, la quale, se trova il soggetto
disposto, si stende ad esser pianta, ad esser animale, e riceve
membri de qual si voglia corpo, che comunemente si dice animato;
per chè spirto si trova in tutte le cose, e non è minimo
corpusculo, che non contegna cotal porzione in se, che non inanimi,
p. 241. Buhle seems not to have understood the words in italics,
which certainly are not remarkably plain, and to have substituted
what he thought might pass for meaning.
The recent theories of equivocal generation, held by some
philosophers, more on the continent than in England, according to
which all matter, or at least all matter susceptible of
organisation by its elements, may become organised and living under
peculiar circumstances, seem not very dissimilar to this system of
Bruno.
[1045] Or, quanto a la causa effectrice, dico l’efficiente fisico
universale esser l’intelletto universale, ch’è la prima e
principial facultà dell’anima del mondo, la qual è forma
universale di quello..... L’intelletto universale è l’intima più
reale e propria facultà, e parte potenziale dell’anima del mondo.
Questo è uno medesimo ch’empie il tutto, illumina l’universo, e
indrizza la natura à produrre le sue specie, come si conviene, e
cosi ha rispetto à la produzione di cose naturali, come il nostro
intelletto è la congrua produzione di specie razionali.... Questo è
nominato da Platonici fabbro del mondo, p. 235.
Dunque abbiamo un principio intrinseco formale eterno e sussistente
incomparabilmente migliore di quello, che han finto li sophisti,
che versano circa gl’accidenti, ignoranti de la sustanza de le
cose, e che vengono a ponere le sustanze corrottibili, per chè
quello chiamano massimamente, primamente e principalmente sustanza,
che risulta da la composizione; il che non è altro, ch’uno
accidente, che non contiene in se nulla stabilità e verità, e si
risolve in nulla, p. 242.
|Pantheism of Bruno.|
13. We have said that the system of Bruno seems to involve a double
pantheism. The first is of a simple kind, the hylozoism, which has been
exhibited in the preceding paragraph; it excludes a creative deity, in
the strict sense of creation, but leaving an active provident
intelligence, does not seem by any means chargeable with positive
atheism. But to this soul of the world Bruno appears not to have
ascribed the name of divinity.[1046] The first form, and the first
matter, and all the forms generated by the two, make, in his theory, but
one being, the infinite unchangeable universe, in which is everything,
both in power and in act, and which, being all things collectively, is
no one thing separately; it is form and not form, matter and not matter,
soul and not soul. He expands this mysterious language much further,
resolving the whole nature of the deity into an abstract, barren, all
embracing unity.[1047]
[1046] Son tre sorti d’intelletto; il divino, ch’è tutto; questo
mondano, che fà tutto; gli altri particulari, che si fanno
tutte.... È vera causa efficiente (l’intelletto mondano) non tanto
estrinseca, come anco intrinseca di tutte cose naturali.... Mi par,
che detrahano à la divina bontà e à l’eccellenza di questo grande
animale e simulacro del primo principio quelli, che non vogliano
intendere, nè affirmare, il mondo con li suoi membri essere
animato, p. 239.
[1047] È dunque l’universo uno, infinito, immobile. Uno dico è la
possibilità assoluta, uno l’atto, una la forma o anima, una la
materia o corpo, una la cosa, uno lo ente, uno il massimo e ottimo,
il quale non deve posser essere compreso, e però infinibile e
interminabile, e per tanto infinito e interminato, e per
conseguenza immobile. Questo non si muove localmente; per chè non
ha cosa fuor di sè, ove si trasporte, atteso chè sia il tutto. Non
si genera; per ché non è altro essere, che lui possa desiderare o
aspettare, atteso che abbia tutto lo essere. Non si corrompe; per
chè non è altra cosa, in cui si cangi, atteso che lui sia ogni
cosa. Non può sminuire o crescere, otteso ch’è infinito, a cui come
non si può aggiungere, cosi è da cui non si può sottrarre, per ciò
che lo infinito non ha parti proporzionali. Non è alterabile in
altra disposizione, per chè non ha esterno, da cui patisca, e per
cui venga in qualche affezione. Oltre chè per comprender tutte
contrarietadi nell’esser suo, in unità e convenienza, e nessuna
inclinazione posser avere ad altro e novo essere, o pur ad altro e
altro modo d’essere, non può esser soggetto di mutazione secundo
qualità alcuna, nè può aver contrario o diverso, che l’alteri, per
chè in lui è ogni cosa concorde. Non è materia, per chè non è
figurato, ne figurabile, non è terminato, ne terminabile. Non è
forma, per chè non informa, ne figura altro, atteso che è tutto, è
massimo, è uno, è universo. Non è misurabile, ne misura. Non si
comprende; per chè non è maggior di sè. Non si è compreso; per chè
non è minor di se. Non si agguaglia; per chè non è altro e altro,
ma uno e medesimo. Essendo medesimo ed uno, non ha essere ed
essere; et per chè non ha essere ed essere, non ha parti e parti; e
per ciò che non ha parte e parte, non è composto. Questo è termine
di sorte, chè non è termine; è talmente forma, chè non è forma; è
talmente materia, chè non è materia; è talmente anima, chè non è
anima; per chè è il tutto indifferentemente, e però è uno,
l’universo è uno, p. 280.
Ecco, come non è possibile, ma necessario, che l’ottimo, massimo
incomprensibile è tutto, è par tutto, è in tutto, per chè come
simplice ed indivisibile può esser tutto, esser per tutto, essere
in tutto. E così non è stato vanamente detto, che Giove empie tutte
le cose, inabita tutte le parti dell’universo, è centro di ciò, che
ha l’essere uno in tutto, e per cui uno è tutto. Il quale, essendo
tutte le cose, e comprendendo tutto l’essere in se, viene a far,
che ogni cosa sia in ogni cosa. Ma mi direste, per chè dunque le
cose si cangiano, la materia particolare si forza ad altre forme?
vi rispondo, che non è mutazione, che cerca altro essere, ma altro
modo di essere. E questa è la differenza tra l’universo e le cose
dell’universo; per chè nullo comprende tutto l’essere e tutti modi
di essere; di queste ciascuna ha tutto l’essere, ma non tutti i
modi di essere, p. 282.
The following sonnet by Bruno is characteristic of his mystical
imagination; but we must not confound the personification of an
abstract idea with theism:--
Causa, Principio, ed Uno sempiterno,
Onde l’esser, la vita, il moto pende,
E a lungo, a largo, e profondo si stende
Quanto si dice in ciel, terra ed inferno;
Con senso, con ragion, con mente scerno
Ch’atto, misura e conto non comprende,
Quel vigor, mole e numero, che tende
Oltre ogni inferior, mezzo e superno.
Cieco error, tempo avaro, ria fortuna,
Sorda invidia, vil rabbia, iniquo zelo,
Crudo cor, empio ingegno, strano ardire,
Non basteranno a farmi l’aria bruna,
Non mi porrann’avanti gl’occhi il velo,
Non faran mai, ch’il mio bel Sol non mire.
If I have quoted too much from Jordano Bruno it may be excused by
the great rarity of his works, which has been the cause that some
late writers have not fully seen the character of his
speculations.
|Bruno’s other writings.|
14. These bold theories of Jordano Bruno are chiefly contained in the
treatise Della Causa, Principio ed Uno. In another entitled
Dell’Infinito Universo e Mondi, which, like the former, is written in
dialogue, he asserts the infinity of the universe, and the plurality of
worlds. That the stars are suns, shining by their own light, that each
has its revolving planets, now become the familiar creed of children,
were then among the enormous paradoxes and capital offences of Bruno.
His strong assertion of the Copernican theory was, doubtless, not quite
so singular, yet this had but few proselytes in the sixteenth century.
His other writings, of all which Buhle has furnished us with an account,
are numerous; some of them relate to the art of Raymond Lully, which
Bruno professed to esteem very highly; and in these mnemonical treatises
he introduced much of his own theoretical philosophy. Others are more
exclusively metaphysical, and designed to make his leading principles,
as to unity, number, and form, more intelligible to the common reader.
They are full, according to what we find in Brucker and Buhle, of
strange and nonsensical propositions, such as men, unable to master
their own crude fancies on subjects above their reach, are wont to put
forth. None, however, of his productions, has been more often mentioned
than the Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, alleged by some to be full of
his atheistical impieties, while others have taken it for a mere satire
on the Roman church. This diversity was very natural in those who wrote
of a book they had never seen. It now appears that this famous work is a
general moral satire in an allegorical form, with little that could
excite attention, and less that could give such offence as to
provoke the author’s death.[1048]
[1048] Ginguéné, vol. vii., has given an analysis of the Spaccio della
Bestia.
|General character of his philosophy.|
15. Upon the whole, we may probably place Bruno in this province of
speculative philosophy, though not high, yet above Cesalpin, or any of
the school of Averroes. He has fallen into great errors, but they seem
to have perceived no truth. His doctrine was not original; it came from
the Eleatic philosophers, from Plotinus and the Neo-Platonists,[1049]
and in some measure from Plato himself; and it is ultimately, beyond
doubt, of oriental origin. What seems most his own, and I must speak
very doubtfully as to this, is the syncretism of the tenet of a
pervading spirit, an Anima Mundi, which in itself is an imperfect
theism, with the more pernicious hypothesis of an universal Monad, to
which every distinct attribute, except unity, was to be denied. Yet it
is just to observe that, in one passage already quoted in a note, Bruno
expressly says, “there are three kinds of intelligence, the divine,
which is everything; the mundane, which does everything; and the
particular intelligences which are all made by the second.” The
inconceivableness of ascribing intelligence to Bruno’s universe, and yet
thus distinguishing it as he does from the mundane intelligence, may not
perhaps be a sufficient reason for denying him a place among theistic
philosophers. But it must be confessed, that the general tone of these
dialogues conveys no other impression than that of a pantheism, in which
every vestige of a supreme intelligence, beyond his soul of the world,
is effaced.[1050]
[1049] See a valuable analysis of the philosophy of Plotinus in
Degerando’s Histoire Comparée des Systèmes, iii. 357 (edit. 1823).
It will be found that his language with respect to the mystic
supremacy of unity, is that of Bruno himself. Plotin, however, was
not only theistic, but intensely religious, and if he had come a
century later would, instead of a heathen philosopher, have been
one of the first names among the saints of the church. It is
probable that his influence, as it is, has not been small in
modelling the mystic theology. Scotus Erigena was of the same
school, and his language about the first Monad is similar to that
of Bruno. Degerando, vol. iv. p. 372.
[1050] I can hardly agree with Mr. Whewell in supposing that Jordano
Bruno “probably had a considerable share in introducing the new
opinions (of Copernicus) into England.” Hist. of Inductive
Sciences, i. 385. Very few in England seem to have embraced these
opinions; and those who did so, like Wright and Gilbert, were men
who had somewhat better reasons than the ipse dixit of a wandering
Italian.
|Sceptical theory of Sanchez.|
16. The system, if so it may be called, of Bruno, was essentially
dogmatic, reducing the most subtle and incomprehensible mysteries into
positive aphorisms of science. Sanchez, a Portuguese physician, settled
as a public instructor at Toulouse, took a different course; the preface
of his treatise, Quod Nihil Scitur, is dated from that city in 1576; but
no edition is known to have existed before 1581.[1051] This work is a
mere tissue of sceptical fallacies, propounded, however, with a
confident tone not unusual in that class of sophists. He begins abruptly
with these words: Nec unum hoc scio, me nihil scire, conjector tamen nec
me nec alios. Hæc mihi vexillum propositio sit, hæc sequenda venit,
Nihil Scitur. Hanc si probare scivero, merito concludam nihil sciri; si
nescivero, hoc ipso melius; id enim asserebam. A good deal more follows
in the same sophistical style of cavillation. Hoc unum semper maxime ab
aliquo expetivi, quod modo facio, ut vere diceret an aliquid perfecte
sciret; nusquam tamen inveni, præterquam in sapiente illo proboque viro
Socrate (licet et Pyrrhonii, Academici et Sceptici vocati, cum Favorino
id etiam assererent) quod hoc unum sciebat quod nihil sciret. Quo solo
dicto mihi doctissimus indicatur; quanquam nec adhuc omnino mihi
explêrit mentem; cum et illud unum, sicut alia, ignoraret.[1052]
[1051] Brucker, iv. 541, with this fact before his eyes, strangely
asserts Sanchez to have been born in 1562. Buhle and Cousin copy
him without hesitation. Antonio is ignorant of any edition of “Quod
Nihil Scitur,” except that of Rotterdam in 1649; and ignorant also
that the book contains anything remarkable.
[1052] P. 10.
17. Sanchez puts a few things well; but his scepticism, as we perceive,
is extravagant. After descanting on Montaigne’s favourite topic, the
various manners and opinions of mankind, he says, Non finem faceremus si
omnes omnium mores recensere vellemus. An tu his eandem rationem, quam
nobis, omnino putes? Mihi non verisimile videtur. Nihil tamen ambo
scimus. Negabis forsan tales aliquos esse homines. Non contendam; sic ab
aliis accepi.[1053] Yet, notwithstanding his sweeping denunciation of
all science in the boldest tone of Pyrrhonism, Sanchez comes at length
to admit the possibility of a limited or probable knowledge of truth;
and, as might perhaps be expected, conceives that he had himself
attained it. “There are two modes,” he observes, “of discovering truth,
by neither of which do men learn the real nature of things, but yet
obtain some kind of insight into them. These are experiment and reason,
neither being sufficient alone; but experiments, however well conducted,
do not show us the nature of things, and reason can only conjecture
them. Hence there can be no such thing as perfect science; and books
have been employed to eke out the deficiencies of our own experience;
but their confusion, prolixity, multitude, and want of trust-worthiness
prevents this resource from being of much value, nor is life long enough
for so much study. Besides, this perfect knowledge requires a perfect
recipient of it, and a right disposition of the subject of knowledge,
which two I have never seen. Reader, if you have met with them, write me
word.” He concludes this treatise by promising another, “in which we
shall explain the method of knowing truth, as far as human weakness will
permit;” and, as his self-complacency rises above his affected
scepticism, adds, mihi in animo est firmam et facilem quantum possim
scientiam fundare.
[1053] P. 39.
18. This treatise of Sanchez bears witness to a deep sense of the
imperfections of the received systems in science and reasoning, and to a
restless longing for truth, which strikes us in other writers of this
latter period of the sixteenth century. Lord Bacon, I believe, has never
alluded to Sanchez, and such paradoxical scepticism was likely to
disgust his strong mind; yet we may sometimes discern signs of a
Baconian spirit in the attacks of our Spanish philosopher on the
syllogistic logic, as being built on abstract, and not significant
terms, and in his clear perception of the difference between a knowledge
of words and one of things.
|Logic of Aconcio.|
19. What Sanchez promised and Bacon gave, a new method of reasoning, by
which truth might be better determined than through the common
dialectics, had been partially attempted already by Aconcio, mentioned
in the last chapter as one of those highly-gifted Italians who fled for
religion to a Protestant country. Without openly assailing the authority
of Aristotle, he endeavoured to frame a new discipline of the faculties
for the discovery of truth. His treatise, De Methodo, sive Recta
Investigandarum Tradendarumque Scientiarum Ratione, was published at
Basle in 1558, and was several times reprinted, till later works, those
especially of Bacon and Des Cartes, caused it to be forgotten. Aconcio
defines logic, the right method of thinking and teaching, recta
contemplandi docendique ratio. Of the importance of method, or right
order in prosecuting our inquiries, he thinks so highly, that if thirty
years were to be destined to intellectual labour, he would allot
two-thirds of the time to acquiring dexterity in this art, which seems
to imply that he did not consider it very easy. To know anything, he
tells us, is to know what it is, or what are its causes and effects. All
men have the germs of knowledge latent in them, as to matters cognizable
by human faculties; it is the business of logic to excite and develop
them: Notiones illas seu scintillas sub cinere latentes detegere aptèque
ad res obscuras illustrandas applicare.[1054]
[1054] P. 30.
20. Aconcio next gives rules at length for constructing definitions, by
attending to the genus and differentia. These rules are good, and might
very properly find a place in a book of logic; but whether they contain
much that would vainly be sought in other writers, we do not determine.
He comes afterwards to the methods of distributing a subject. The
analytic method is by all means to be preferred for the investigation of
truth, and, contrary to what Galen and others have advised, even for
communicating it to others; since a man can learn that of which he is
ignorant, only by means of what is better known, whether he does this
himself, or with help of a teacher; the only process being, a notioribus
ad minus nota. In this little treatise of Aconcio, there seem to be the
elements of a sounder philosophy, and a more steady direction of the
mind to discover the reality of things than belonged to the logic of the
age, whether as taught by the Aristotelians or by Ramus. It has not
however been quoted by Lord Bacon, nor are we sure that he has profited
by it.
|Nizolius on the principles of philosophy.|
21. A more celebrated work than this by Aconcio is one by the
distinguished scholar, Marius Nizolius, “De Veris Principiis et Vera
Ratione Philosophandi contra Pseudo-Philosophos.” (Parma, 1553.) It
owes, however, what reputation it possesses to Leibnitz, who reprinted
it in 1670, with a very able preface, one of his first contributions to
philosophy. The treatise itself, he says, was almost strangled in the
birth; and certainly the invectives of Nizolius against the logic and
metaphysics of Aristotle could have had little chance of success
in a country like Italy, where that authority was more undoubted and
durable than in any other. The aim of Nizolius was to set up the best
authors of Greece and Rome and the study of philology against the
scholastic terminology. But certainly this polite literature was not
sufficient for the discovery of truth: nor does the book keep up to the
promise of its title, though, by endeavouring to eradicate barbarous
sophistry, he may be said to have laboured in the interests of real
philosophy. The preface of Leibnitz animadverts on what appeared to him
some metaphysical errors of Nizolius, especially an excess of
nominalism, which tended to undermine the foundations of certainty, and
his presumptuous scorn of Aristotle.[1055] His own object was rather to
recommend the treatise as a model of philosophical language without
barbarism, than to bestow much praise on its philosophy. Brucker has
spoken of it rather slightingly, and Buhle with much contempt. I am not
prepared by a sufficient study of its contents to pass any judgment; but
Buhle’s censure has appeared to me somewhat unfair. Dugald Stewart, who
was not acquainted with what the latter has said, thinks Nizolius
deserving of more commendation than Brucker has assigned to him.[1056]
He argues against all dialectics, and therefore differs from Ramus;
concluding with two propositions as the result of his whole book:--That
as many logicians and metaphysicians as are anywhere found, so many
capital enemies of truth will then and there exist; and that so long as
Aristotle shall be supreme in the logic and metaphysics of the schools,
so long will error and barbarism reign over the mind. There is nothing
very deep or pointed in this summary of his reasoning.
[1055] Nizolius maintained that universal terms were only
particulars--collectivè sumpta. Leibnitz replies, that they are
particulars--distributive sumpta; as, omnis homo est animal means,
that every one man is an animal; not that the genus man, taken
collectively, is an animal. Nec vero Nizolii error his levis est;
habet enim magnum aliquid in recessu. Nam si universalia nihil
aliud sunt quam singularium collectiones, sequitur, scientiam
nullam haberi per demonstrationem, quod et infra colligit Nizolius,
sed collectionem singularium seu inductionem. Sed ea ratione
prorsus evertuntur scientiæ, ac Sceptici vicere. Nam nunquam
constitui possunt ea ratione propositiones perfecte universales,
quia inductione nunquam certus es, omnia individue a te tentata
esse; sed semper intra hanc propositionem subsistes; omnia illa quæ
expertus sum sunt talia; cum vero non possit esse ulla ratio
universalis, semper manebit possibile innumera quæ tu non sis
expertus esse diversa. Hinc jam patet inductionem per se nihil
producere, ne certitudinem quidem moralem, sine adminiculo
propositionum non ab inductione, sed ratione universali prudentium;
nam si essent et adminicula ab inductione, indigerent novis
adminiculis, nec haberetur certitudo moralis in infinitum. Sed
certitudo moralis ab inductione sperari plane non potest, additis
quibuscunque adminiculis, et propositionem hanc, totum magis esse
sua parte, sola inductione nunquam perfectè sciemus. Mox enim
prodibit, qui negabit ob peculiarem quondam rationem in aliis
nondum tentatis veram esse, quemadmodum ex facto scimus Gregorium a
Sancto Vincentio negasse totum esse majus sua parte, in angulis
saltem contactûs, alios in infinito; et Thomam Hobbes (at quem
virum!) cœpisse dubitare de propositione illa geometrica a
Pythagora demonstrata, et hecatombæ sacrificio digna habita; quod
ego non sine stupore legi. This extract is not very much to the
purpose of the text, but it may please some of those who take an
interest in such speculations.
[1056] Dissertation on Progress of Philosophy, p. 38.
|Margarita Antoniana of Pereira.|
22. The Margarita Antoniana, by Gomez Pereira, published at Medina del
Campo in 1554, has been chiefly remembered as the ground of one of the
many charges against Des Cartes, for appropriating unacknowledged
opinions of his predecessors. The book is exceedingly scarce, which has
been strangely ascribed to the efforts of Des Cartes to suppress
it.[1057] There is however a copy of the original edition in the British
Museum, and it has been reprinted in Spain. It was an unhappy theft, if
theft it were; for what Pereira maintained was precisely the most
untenable proposition of the great French philosopher--the absence of
sensation in brutes. Pereira argues against this with an extraordinary
disregard of common phenomena, on the assumption of certain maxims which
cannot be true, if they contradict inferences from our observation far
more convincing than themselves. We find him give a curious reason for
denying that we can infer the sensibility of brutes from their outward
actions; namely, that this would prove too much, and lead us to believe
them rational beings; instancing among other stories, true or false, of
apparent sagacity, the dog in pursuit of a hare, who, coming where two
roads meet, if he traces no scent on the first, takes the other without
trial.[1058] Pereira is a rejecter of Aristotelian despotism; and
observes that in matters of speculation and not of faith, no authority
is to be respected.[1059] Notwithstanding this assertion of freedom, he
seems to be wholly enchained by the metaphysics of the schools; nor
should I have thought the book worthy of notice, but for its scarcity
and the circumstance above-mentioned about Des Cartes.
[1057] Biogr. Univ. Brunet, Manuel du Libraire. Bayle has a long
article on Pereira, but though he says the book had been shown to
him, he wanted probably the opportunity to read much of it.
According to Brunet, several copies have been sold in France, some
of them at no great price. The later edition, of 1749, is of course
cheaper.
[1058] Fol. 18. This is continually told of dogs; but does any sensible
sportsman confirm it by his own experience? I ask for information
only.
[1059] Fol. 4.
23. These are, as far as I know, the only works deserving of
commemoration in the history of speculative philosophy. A few might
easily be inserted from the catalogues of libraries, or from
biographical collections, as well as from the learned labours of Morhof,
Brucker, Tennemann, and Buhle. It is also not to be doubted, that in
treatises of a different character, theological, moral, or medical, very
many passages, worthy of remembrance for their truth, their ingenuity,
or originality, might be discovered, that bear upon the best methods of
reasoning, the philosophy of the human mind, the theory of natural
religion, or the general system of the material world.
|Logic of Ramus; its success.|
24. We should not however conclude this chapter without adverting to the
dialectical method of Ramus, whom we left at the middle of the century,
struggling against all the arms of orthodox logic in the university of
Paris. The reign of Henry II. was more propitious to him than that of
Francis. In 1551, through the patronage of the Cardinal of Lorraine,
Ramus became royal professor of rhetoric and philosophy; and his new
system which, as has been mentioned, comprehended much that was
important in the art of rhetoric, began to make numerous proselytes.
Omer Talon, known for a treatise on eloquence, was among the most ardent
of these; and to him we owe our most authentic account of the contest of
Ramus with the Sorbonne. The latter were not conciliated, of course, by
the success of their adversary; and Ramus having adhered to the Huguenot
party in the civil feuds of France, it has been ascribed to the
malignity of one of his philosophical opponents, that he perished in the
massacre of St. Bartholomew. He had however already, by personally
travelling and teaching in Germany, spread the knowledge of his system
over that country. It was received in some of the German universities
with great favour, notwithstanding the influence which Melanchthon’s
name retained, and which had been entirely thrown into the scale of
Aristotle. The Ramists and Anti-Ramists battled it in books of logic
through the rest of this century, as well as afterwards; but this was
the principal period of Ramus’s glory. In Italy he had few disciples;
but France, England, and still more Scotland and Germany were full of
them. Andrew Melville introduced the logic of Ramus at Glasgow. It was
resisted for some time at St. Andrew’s, but ultimately became popular in
all the Scottish universities.[1060] Scarce any eminent public school,
says Brucker, can be named, in which the Ramists were not teachers. They
encountered an equally zealous militia under the Aristotelian standard;
while some, with the spirit of compromise, which always takes possession
of a few minds, though it is rarely very successful, endeavoured to
unite the two methods, which in fact do not seem essentially exclusive
of each other. It cannot be required of me to give an account of books
so totally forgotten, and so uninteresting in their subjects as these
dialectical treatises on either side. The importance of Ramus in
philosophical history is not so much founded on his own deserts, as on
the effect he produced in loosening the fetters of inveterate prejudice,
and thus preparing the way, like many others of his generation, for
those who were to be the restorers of genuine philosophy.[1061]
[1060] M’Crie’s Life of Melville, ii. 306.
[1061] Brucker, v. 576. Buhle, ii. 601.
CHAPTER XIII.
HISTORY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND OF JURISPRUDENCE, FROM
1550 TO 1600.
SECT. I.--ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY.
_Soto--Hooker--Essays of Montaigne--Their Influence on the
Public--Italian and English Moralists._
1. It must naturally be supposed that by far the greater part of what
was written on moral obligations in the sixteenth century will be found
in the theological quarter of ancient libraries. The practice of
auricular confession brought with it an entire science of casuistry,
which had gradually been wrought into a complicated system. Many, once
conspicuous writers in this province, belong to the present period; but
we shall defer the subject till we arrive at the next, when it had
acquired a more prominent importance.
|Soto, De Justitia.|
2. The first original work of any reputation in ethical philosophy since
the revival of letters, and which, being apparently designed in great
measure for the chair of the confessional, serves as a sort of link
between the class of mere casuistry and the philosophical systems of
morals which were to follow, is by Dominic Soto, a Spanish Dominican,
who played an eminent part in the deliberations of the council of Trent,
in opposition both to the papal court and to the theologians of the
Scotist, or, as it was then reckoned by its adversaries, the
Semi-Pelagian school. This folio volume, entitled De Justitia et Jure,
was first published, according to the Biographie Universelle at Antwerp,
in 1568. It appears to be founded on the writings of Thomas Aquinas, the
polar star of every true Dominican. Every question is discussed with
that remarkable observation of distinctions, and that unremitting
desire, both to comprehend and to distribute a subject, which is
displayed in many of these forgotten folios, and ought to inspire us
with reverence for the zealous energy of their authors, even when we
find it impossible, as must generally be the case, to read so much as a
few pages consecutively, or when we light upon trifling and insufficient
arguments in the course of our casual glances over the volume.
|Hooker.|
3. Hooker’s Ecclesiastical Polity might seem more properly to fall under
the head of theology; but the first book of this work being by much the
best, Hooker ought rather to be reckoned among those who have weighed
the principles, and delineated the boundaries of moral and political
science. I have on another occasion,[1062] done full justice to the
wisdom and eloquence of this earliest among the great writers of
England, who, having drunk at the streams of ancient philosophy, has
acquired from Plato and Tully somewhat of their redundancy and want of
precision, with their comprehensiveness of observation and their dignity
of soul. The reasonings of Hooker, though he bore in the ensuing century
the surname of judicious, are not always safe or satisfactory, nor,
perhaps, can they be reckoned wholly clear or consistent; his learning,
though beyond that of most English writers in that age, is necessarily
uncritical; and his fundamental theory, the mutability of ecclesiastical
government, has as little pleased those for whom he wrote as those whom
he repelled by its means. But he stood out at a vast height above his
predecessors and contemporaries in the English church, and was, perhaps,
the first of our writers who had any considerable acquaintance with the
philosophers of Greece, not merely displayed in quotation, of which
others may have sometimes set an example, but in a spirit of reflection
and comprehensiveness which the study of antiquity alone could have
infused. The absence of minute ramifications of argument, in which the
schoolmen loved to spread out, distinguishes Hooker from the writers who
had been trained in those arid dialectics, such as Soto or Suarez: but,
as I have hinted, considering the depth and difficulty of several
questions that he deals with in the first book of the Polity, we might
wish for a little less of the expanded palm of rhetoric, and somewhat of
more dialectical precision in the reasoning.[1063]
[1062] Constitut. Hist. Engl. chap. iv.
[1063] It has been shown with irresistible proof by the last editor of
Hooker, that the sixth book of the Ecclesiastical Polity has been
lost; that which we read as such being, with the exception of a few
paragraphs at the beginning, altogether a different production,
though bearing marks of the same author. This is proved, not only
by its want of relation to the general object of the work, and to
the subject announced in the title of this very book, but by the
remarkable fact, that a series of remarks by two friends of Hooker
on the sixth book are extant, and published in the last edition,
which were obviously designed for a totally different treatise from
that which has always passed for the sixth book of the
Ecclesiastical Polity. This can only be explained by the confusion
in which Hooker’s manuscripts were left at his death, and upon
which suspicions of interpolation have been founded. Such
suspicions are not reasonable; and notwithstanding the exaggerated
language which has sometimes been used, I think it very
questionable whether any more perfect manuscript was ever in
existence. The reasoning in the seventh and eighth books appears as
elaborate, the proofs as full, the grammatical structure as perfect
as in the earlier books; and the absence of those passages of
eloquence, which we occasionally find in the former, cannot afford
even a presumption that the latter were designed to be written over
again. The eighth book is manifestly incomplete, wanting some
discussions which the author had announced; but this seems rather
adverse to the hypothesis of a more elaborate copy. The more
probable inference is, that Hooker was interrupted by death before
he had completed his plan. It is possible also that the conclusion
of the eighth book has been lost like the sixth. All the stories on
this subject in Walton’s Life of Hooker, who seems to have been a
man always too credulous of anecdote, are unsatisfactory to any one
who exacts real proof.
|His theory of natural law.|
4. Hooker, like most great moral writers both of antiquity and of modern
ages, rests his positions on one solid basis, the eternal obligation of
natural law. A small number had been inclined to maintain an arbitrary
power of the Deity, even over the fundamental principles of right and
wrong; but the sounder theologians seem to have held that, however the
will of God may be the proper source of moral obligation in mankind,
concerning which they were not more agreed then than they have been
since, it was impossible for him to deviate from his immutable rectitude
and holiness. They were unanimous also in asserting the capacity of the
human faculties to discern right from wrong, little regarding what they
deemed the prejudices or errors that had misled many nations, and more
or less influenced the majority of mankind.
|Doubts felt by others.|
5. But there had never been wanting those who, struck by the diversity
of moral judgments and behaviour among men, and especially under
circumstances of climate, manners, or religion, different from our own,
had found it hard to perceive how reason could be an unerring arbiter,
when there was so much discrepancy in what she professed to have
determined. The relations of travellers, continually pressing upon the
notice of Europe in the sixteenth century, and perhaps rather more
exaggerated than at present, in describing barbarous tribes, afforded
continual aliment to the suspicion. It was at least evident, without
anything that could be called unreasonable scepticism, that these
diversities ought to be well explained and sifted before we acquiesced
in the pleasant conviction that we alone could be in the right.
|Essays of Montaigne.|
6. The Essays of Montaigne, the first edition of which appeared at
Bordeaux in 1580,[1064] make in several respects an epoch in literature,
less on account of their real importance, or the novel truths they
contain, than of their influence upon the taste and the opinions of
Europe. They are the first _provocatio ad populum_, the first
appeal from the porch and the academy to the haunts of busy and of idle
men, the first book that taught the unlearned reader to observe and
reflect for himself on questions of moral philosophy. In an age when
every topic of this nature was treated systematically and in a didactic
form, he broke out without connection of chapters, with all the
digressions that levity and garrulous egotism could suggest, with a very
delightful, but at that time, most unusual rapidity of transition from
seriousness to gaiety. It would be to anticipate much of what will
demand attention in the ensuing century, were we to mention here the
conspicuous writers who, more or less directly, and with more or less of
close imitation, may be classed in the school of Montaigne; it embraces,
in fact, a large proportion of French and English literature, and
especially of that which has borrowed his title of Essays. No prose
writer of the sixteenth century has been so generally read, nor probably
given so much delight. Whatever may be our estimate of Montaigne as a
philosopher, a name which he was far from arrogating, there will be but
one opinion of the felicity and brightness of his genius.
[1064] This edition contains only the first and second books of the
Essays; the third was published in that of Paris, 1588.
|Their characteristics.|
7. It is a striking proof of these qualities, that we cannot help
believing him to have struck out all his thoughts by a spontaneous
effort of his mind, and to have fallen afterwards upon his quotations
and examples by happy accident. I have little doubt but that the process
was different; and that, either by dint of memory, though he absolutely
disclaims the possessing a good one, or by the usual method of
common-placing, he had made his reading instrumental to excite
his own ingenious and fearless understanding. His extent of learning was
by no means great for that age, but the whole of it was brought to bear
on his object; and it is a proof of Montaigne’s independence of mind
that, while a vast mass of erudition was the only regular passport to
fame, he read no authors but such as were most fitted to his own habits
of thinking. Hence he displays an unity, a self-existence, which we
seldom find so complete in other writers. His quotations, though they
perhaps make more than one half of his Essays, seem parts of himself,
and are like limbs of his own mind, which could not be separated without
laceration. But over all is spread a charm of a fascinating simplicity,
and an apparent abandonment of the whole man to the easy inspiration of
genius, combined with a good-nature, though rather too epicurean and
destitute of moral energy, which, for that very reason, made him a
favourite with men of similar dispositions, for whom courts, and camps,
and country mansions were the proper soil.
8. Montaigne is superior to any of the ancients in liveliness, in that
careless and rapid style, where one thought springs naturally, but not
consecutively, from another, by analogical rather than deductive
connection; so that, while the reader seems to be following a train of
arguments, he is imperceptibly hurried to a distance by some contingent
association. This may be observed in half his essays, the titles of
which often give us little insight into their general scope. Thus the
apology for Raimond de Sebonde is soon forgotten in the long defence of
moral Pyrrhonism, which occupies the twelfth chapter of the second book.
He sometimes makes a show of coming back from his excursions; but he has
generally exhausted himself before he does so. This is what men love to
practise (not advantageously for their severer studies) in their own
thoughts; they love to follow the casual associations that lead them
through pleasant labyrinths--as one riding along the high road is glad
to deviate a little into the woods, though it may sometimes happen that
he will lose his way, and find himself far remote from his inn. And such
is the conversational style of lively and eloquent old men. We converse
with Montaigne, or rather hear him talk; it is almost impossible to read
his essays without thinking that he speaks to us; we see his cheerful
brow, his sparkling eye, his negligent, but gentlemanly demeanour; we
picture him in his armchair, with his few books round the room, and
Plutarch on the table.
9. The independence of his mind produces great part of the charm of his
writing; it redeems his vanity, without which it could not have been so
fully displayed, or perhaps, so powerfully felt. In an age of literary
servitude, when every province into which reflection could wander was
occupied by some despot; when, to say nothing of theology, men found
Aristotle, or Ulpian, or Hippocrates, at every turning to dictate their
road, it was gratifying to fall in company with a simple gentleman who,
with much more reading than generally belonged to his class, had the
spirit to ask a reason for every rule.
10. Montaigne has borrowed much, besides his quotations, from the few
ancient authors he loved to study. In one passage he even says that his
book is wholly compiled from Plutarch and Seneca; but this is evidently
intended to throw the critics off their scent. “I purposely conceal the
authors from whom I borrow,” he says in another place, “to check the
presumption of those who are apt to censure what they find in a modern.
I am content that they should lash Seneca and Plutarch through my
sides.”[1065] These were his two favourite authors; and in order to
judge of the originality of Montaigne in any passage, it may often be
necessary to have a considerable acquaintance with their works. “When I
write,” he says, “I care not to have books about me; but I can hardly be
without a Plutarch.”[1066] He knew little Greek, but most editions at
that time had a Latin translation: he needed not for Plutarch to go
beyond his own language. Cicero he did not much admire, except the
epistles to Atticus. He esteemed the moderns very slightly in comparison
with antiquity, though praising Guicciardini and Philip de Comines.
Dugald Stewart observes, that Montaigne cannot be suspected of
affectation, and therefore must himself have believed what he says of
the badness of his memory, forgetting, as he tells us, the names of the
commonest things, and even of those he constantly saw. But his vanity
led him to talk perpetually of himself; and, as often happens to vain
men, he would rather talk of his own failings than of any foreign
subject. He could not have had a very defective memory so far as it had
been exercised, though he might fall into the common mistake of
confounding his inattention to ordinary objects with weakness of
the faculty.
[1065] l. ii. c. 32.
[1066] l. ii. c. 10.
11. Montaigne seldom defines or discriminates; his mind had great
quickness, but little subtlety; his carelessness and impatience of
labour rendered his views practically one-sided; for though he was
sufficiently free from prejudice to place the objects of consideration
in different lights, he wanted the power, or did not use the diligence,
to make that comparative appreciation of facts which is necessary to
distinguish the truth. He appears to most advantage in matters requiring
good sense and calm observation, as in the education of children. The
twenty-fourth and twenty-eighth chapters of the first book, which relate
to this subject, are among the best in the collection. His excellent
temper made him an enemy to the harshness and tyranny so frequent at
that time in the management of children, as his clear understanding did
to the pedantic methods of overloading and misdirecting their faculties.
It required some courage to argue against the grammarians who had almost
monopolised the admiration of the world. Of these men Montaigne
observes, that though they have strong memories, their judgment is
usually very shallow, making only an exception for Turnebus, who, though
in his opinion, the greatest scholar that had existed for a thousand
years, had nothing of the pedant about him but his dress. In all the
remarks of Montaigne on human character and manners, we find a
liveliness, simplicity, and truth. They are such as his ordinary
opportunities of observation, or his reading suggested; and though
several writers have given proofs of deeper reflection or more watchful
discernment, few are so well calculated to fall in with the apprehension
of the general reader.
12. The scepticism of Montaigne, concerning which so much has been said,
is not displayed in religion, for he was a steady Catholic, though his
faith seems to have been rather that of acquiescence than conviction,
nor in such subtleties of metaphysical Pyrrhonism as we find in Sanchez,
which had no attraction for his careless nature. But he had read much of
Sextus Empiricus, and might perhaps have derived something from his
favourite Plutarch. He had also been forcibly struck by the recent
narratives of travellers, which he sometimes received with a credulity
as to evidence, not rarely combined with theoretical scepticism, and
which is too much the fault of his age to bring censure on an
individual. It was then assumed that all travellers were trustworthy,
and still more that none of the Greek and Roman authors have recorded
falsehoods. Hence he was at a loss to discover a general rule of moral
law, as an implanted instinct, or necessary deduction of common reason,
in the varying usages and opinions of mankind. But his scepticism was
less extravagant and unreasonable at that time than it would be now.
Things then really doubtful have been proved, and positions, entrenched
by authority which he dared not to scruple, have been overthrown;[1067]
truth, in retiring from her outposts, has become more unassailable in
her citadel.
[1067] Montaigne’s scepticism was rightly exercised on witchcraft and
other supernatural stories; and he had probably some weight in
discrediting those superstitions. See l. iii. c. 11.
13. It may be deemed a symptom of wanting a thorough love of truth when
a man overrates, as much as when he overlooks, the difficulties he deals
with. Montaigne is perhaps not exempt from this failing. Though sincere
and candid in his general temper, he is sometimes more ambitious of
setting forth his own ingenuity than desirous to come to the bottom of
his subject. Hence he is apt to run into the fallacy common to this
class of writers, and which La Mothe le Vayer employed much more--that
of confounding the variations of the customs of mankind in things
morally indifferent with those which affect the principles of duty; and
hence the serious writers on philosophy in the next age, Pascal,
Arnauld, Malebranche, animadvert with much severity on Montaigne. They
considered him, not perhaps unjustly, as an enemy to the candid and
honest investigation of truth, both by his bias towards Pyrrhonism, and
by the great indifference of his temperament; scarcely acknowledging so
much as was due the service he had done by chasing the servile pedantry
of the schools, and preparing the way for closer reasoners than himself.
But the very tone of their censures is sufficient to prove the vast
influence he had exerted over the world.
14. Montaigne is the earliest classical writer in the French language,
the first whom a gentleman is ashamed not to have read. So long as an
unaffected style and an appearance of the utmost simplicity and good
nature shall charm, so long as the lovers of desultory and cheerful
conversation shall be more numerous than those who prefer a lecture or a
sermon, so long as reading is sought by the many as an amusement
in idleness, or a resource in pain, so long will Montaigne be among the
favourite authors of mankind. I know not whether the greatest blemish of
his Essays has much impeded their popularity; they led the way to the
indecency so characteristic of French literature, but in no writer on
serious topics, except Bayle, more habitual than in Montaigne. It may be
observed, that a larger portion of this quality distinguishes the third
book, published after he had attained a reputation, than the two former.
It is also more overspread by egotism; and it is not agreeable to
perceive that the two leading faults of his disposition became more
unrestrained and absorbing as he advanced in life.
|Writers on Morals in Italy.|
15. The Italians have a few moral treatises of this period, but chiefly
scarce and little read. The Instituzioni Morali of Alexander
Piccolomini, the Instituzioni di Tutta la Vita dell’Uomo Nato Nobile e
in città Libera, by the same author, the Latin treatise of Mazzoni de
Triplici Vita, which, though we mention it here as partly ethical, seems
to be rather an attempt to give a general survey of all science, are
among the least obscure, though they have never been of much reputation
in Europe.[1068] But a more celebrated work, relating indeed to a minor
department of ethics, the rules of polite and decorous behaviour, is the
Galateo of Casa, bishop of Benevento, and an elegant writer of
considerable reputation. This little treatise is not only accounted
superior in style to most Italian prose, but serves to illustrate the
manners of society in the middle of the sixteenth century. Some of the
improprieties which he censures are such as we should hardly have
expected to find in Italy, and almost remind us of a strange but graphic
poem of one Dedekind, on the manners of Germany in the sixteenth
century, called Grobianus. But his own precepts in other places, though
hardly striking us as novel, are more refined, and relate to the
essential principles of social intercourse, rather than to its
conventional forms.[1069] Casa wrote also a little book on the duties to
be observed between friends of equal ranks. The inferior, he advises,
should never permit himself to jest upon his patron; but, if he is
himself stung by any unpleasing wit or sharp word, ought to receive it
with a smiling countenance, and to answer so as to conceal his
resentment. It is probable that this art was understood in an Italian
palace without the help of books.
[1068] For these books see Tiraboschi, Corniani, and Ginguéné. Niceron,
vol. xxiii., observes of Piccolomini, that he was the first who
employed the Italian language in moral philosophy. This must,
however, be taken very strictly, for in a general sense of the
word, we have seen earlier instances than his Instituzioni Morali
in 1575.
[1069] Casa inveighs against the punctilious and troublesome ceremonies,
introduced, as he supposes, from Spain, making distinctions in the
mode of addressing different ranks of nobility. One of these
innovations was the use of the third person for the second in
letters.
|In England.|
16. There was never a generation in England which, for worldly prudence
and wise observation of mankind, stood higher than the subjects of
Elizabeth. Rich in men of strong mind, that age had given them a
discipline unknown to ourselves; the strictness of the Tudor government,
the suspicious temper of the queen, the spirit not only of intolerance,
but of inquisitiveness as to religious dissent, the uncertainties of the
future, produced a caution rather foreign to the English character,
accompanied by a closer attention to the workings of other men’s minds,
and their exterior signs. This, for similar reasons, had long
distinguished the Italians; but it is chiefly displayed, perhaps, in
their political writings. We find it, in a larger and more philosophical
sense, near the end of Elizabeth’s reign, when our literature made its
first strong shoot, prompting the short condensed reflections of
Burleigh and Raleigh, or saturating with moral observation the mighty
soul of Shakspeare.
|Bacon’s Essays.|
17. The first in time, and we may justly say, the first in excellence of
English writings on moral prudence are the Essays of Bacon. But these,
as we now read them, though not very bulky, are greatly enlarged since
their first publication in 1597. They then were but ten in
number:--entitled, 1. Of Studies; 2. Of Discourse; 3. Of Ceremonies and
Respects; 4. Of Followers and Friends; 5. Of Suitors; 6. Of Expense; 7.
Of Regimen of Health; 8. Of Honour and Reputation; 9. Of Faction; 10. Of
Negotiating. And even these few have been expanded in later editions to
nearly double their extent. The rest were added chiefly in 1612, and the
whole were enlarged in 1625. The pith indeed of these ten essays will be
found in the edition of 1597; the editions being merely to explain,
correct, or illustrate. But, as a much greater number were incorporated
with them in the next century, we shall say no more of Bacon’s Essays
for the present.
SECT. II.--ON POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY.
_Freedom of Writing on Government at this Time--Its Causes--Hottoman--
Languet--La Boetie--Buchanan--Rose--Mariana--The Jesuits--Botero and
Paruta--Bodin--Analysis of his Republic._
|Number of political writers.|
18. The present period, especially after 1570, is far more fruitful than
the preceding in the annals of political science. It produced several
works both of temporary and permanent importance. Before we come to
Bodin, who is its most conspicuous ornament, it may be fit to mention
some less considerable books, which, though belonging partly to the
temporary class, have in several instances survived the occasion which
drew them forth, and indicate a state of public opinion not unworthy of
notice.
|Oppression of Governments.|
|And spirit generated by it.|
19. A constant progress towards absolute monarchy, sometimes silent, at
other times attended with violence, had been observable in the principal
kingdoms of Europe for the last hundred years. This had been brought
about by various circumstances which belong to civil history; but among
others, by a more skilful management, and a more systematic attention to
the maxims of state-craft, which had sometimes assumed a sort of
scientific form, as in the Prince of Machiavel, but were more frequently
inculcated in current rules familiar to the counsellors of kings. The
consequence had been, not only many flagrant instances of violated
public right, but in some countries, especially France, an habitual
contempt for every moral as well as political restraint on the ruler’s
will. But oppression is always felt to be such, and the breach of known
laws cannot be borne without resentment, though it may without
resistance; and there were several causes that tended to generate a
spirit of indignation against the predominant despotism. Independent of
those of a political nature, which varied according to the circumstances
of kingdoms, there were three that belonged to the sixteenth century as
a learned and reflecting age, which, if they did not all exercise a
great influence over the multitude, were sufficient to affect the
complexion of literature, and to indicate a somewhat novel state of
opinion in the public mind.
|Derived from classic history.|
20. I. From the Greek and Roman poets, orators, or historians, the
scholar derived the principles, not only of equal justice, but of equal
privileges; he learned to reverence free republics, to abhor tyranny, to
sympathise with a Timoleon or a Brutus. A late English historian, who
carried to a morbid excess his jealousy of democratic prejudices,
fancied that these are perceptible in the versions of Greek authors by
the learned of the sixteenth century, and that Xylander or Rhodomann
gratified their spite against the sovereigns of their own time, by
mistranslating their text in order to throw odium on Philip or
Alexander. This is probably unfounded; but it may still be true that
men, who had imbibed notions, perhaps as indefinite as exaggerated, of
the blessings of freedom in ancient Rome and Greece, would draw no
advantageous contrast with the palpable outrages of arbitrary power
before their eyes. We have seen, fifty years before, a striking proof of
almost mutinous indignation in the Adages of Erasmus; and I have little
doubt that further evidence of it might be gleaned from the letters and
writings of the learned.
|From their own and the Jewish.|
21. II. In proportion as the antiquities of the existing European
monarchies came to be studied, it could not but appear that the royal
authority had outgrown many limitations that primitive usage or
established law had imposed upon it; and the farther back these
researches extended, the more they seemed, according to some inquirers,
to favour a popular theory of constitutional polity. III. Neither of
these considerations, which affected only the patient scholar, struck so
powerfully on the public mind as the free spirit engendered by the
Reformation, and especially the Judaizing turn of the early Protestants,
those at least of the Calvinistic school, which sought for precedents
and models in the Old Testament, and delighted to recount how the tribes
of Israel had fallen away from Rehoboam, how the Maccabees had repelled
the Syrian, how Eglon had been smitten by the dagger of Ehud. For many
years the Protestants of France had made choice of the sword, when their
alternative was the stake; and amidst, defeat, treachery, and massacre,
sustained an unequal combat with extraordinary heroism, and a constancy
that only a persuasion of acting according to conscience could impart.
That persuasion it was the business of their ministers and scholars to
encourage by argument. Each of these three principles of liberty was
asserted by means of the press in the short period between 1570 and
1580.
|Franco-Gallia of Hottoman.|
22. First in order of publication is the Franco-Gallia of Francis
Hottoman, one of the most eminent lawyers of that age. This is chiefly a
collection of passages from the early French historians, to prove the
share of the people in government, and especially their right of
electing the kings of the first two races. No one, in such inquiries,
would now have recourse to the Franco-Gallia, which has certainly the
defect of great partiality, and an unwarrantable extension of the
author’s hypothesis. But it is also true that Hottoman revealed some
facts as to the ancient monarchy of France, which neither the later
historians, flatterers of the court, nor the lawyers of the parliament
of Paris, against whom he is prone to inveigh, had suffered to
transpire.
|Vindiciæ of Languet.|
23. An anonymous treatise, Vindiciæ contra Tyrannos, Auctore Stephano
Junio Bruto Celta, 1579, commonly ascribed to Hubert Languet, the friend
of Sir Philip Sydney, breathes the stern spirit of Judaical Huguenotism.
Kings, that lay waste the church of God, and support idolatry, kings,
that trample upon their subjects’ privileges, may be deposed by the
states of their kingdom, who indeed are bound in duty to do so, though
it is not lawful for private men to take up arms without authority. As
kings derive their pre-eminence from the will of the people, they may be
considered as feudally vassals of their subjects, so far that they may
forfeit their crown by felony against them. Though Languet speaks
honourably of ancient tyrannicides, it seems as if he could not mean to
justify assassination, since he refuses the right of resistance to
private men.
|Contr’Un of Boetie.|
24. Hottoman and Languet were both Protestants; and the latter
especially may have been greatly influenced by the perilous fortunes of
their religion. A short treatise, however, came out in 1578, written
probably near thirty years before, by Stephen de la Boetie, best known
to posterity by the ardent praises of his friend Montaigne, and an
adherent to the church. This is called Le Contr’Un, ou Discours de la
Servitude Volontaire. It well deserves its title. Roused by the
flagitious tyranny of many contemporary rulers, and none were worse than
Henry II., under whose reign it was probably written, La Boetie pours
forth the vehement indignation of a youthful heart, full of the love of
virtue and of the brilliant illusions which a superficial knowledge of
ancient history creates, against the voluntary abjectness of mankind,
who submit as slaves to one no wiser, no braver, no stronger than any of
themselves. “He who so plays the master over you has but two eyes, has
but two hands, has but one body, has nothing more than the least among
the vast number who dwell in our cities; nothing has he better than you,
save the advantage that you give him, that he may ruin you. Whence has
he so many eyes to watch you, but that you give them to him? How has he
so many hands to strike you, but that he employs your own? How does he
come by the feet which trample on your cities, but by your means? How
can he have any power over you, but what you give him? How could he
venture to persecute you, if he had not an understanding with
yourselves? What harm could he do you, if you were not receivers of the
robber that plunders you, accomplices of the murderer who kills you, and
traitors to your own selves? You, you sow the fruits of the earth, that
he may waste them; you furnish your houses, that he may pillage them;
you rear your daughters, that they may glut his wantonness, and your
sons, that he may lead them at the best to his wars, or that he may send
them to execution, or make them the instruments of his concupiscence,
the ministers of his revenge. You exhaust your bodies with labour, that
he may revel in luxury, or wallow in base and vile pleasures; you weaken
yourselves, that he may become more strong, and better able to hold you
in check. And yet from so many indignities, that the beasts themselves,
could they be conscious of them, would not endure, you may deliver
yourselves, if you but make an effort, not to deliver yourselves, but to
show the will to do it. Once resolve to be no longer slaves, and you are
already free. I do not say that you should assail him, or shake his
seat; merely support him no longer, and you will see that, like a great
Colossus, whose basis has been removed from beneath him, he will fall by
his own weight, and break to pieces.”[1070]
[1070] Le Contr’Un of La Boetie is published at the end of some
editions of Montaigne.
25. These bursts of a noble patriotism, which no one who is in the least
familiar with the history of that period will think inexcusable, are
much unlike what we generally expect from the French writers. La Boetie,
in fact, is almost a single instance of a thoroughly republican
character till nearly the period of the Revolution. Montaigne, the
staunchest supporter of church and state, excuses his friend, “le plus
grand homme, a mon avis, de notre siècle,” assuring us that he was
always a loyal subject, though if he had been permitted his own choice,
“he would rather have been born at Venice than at Sarlat.” La Boetie
died young in 1561; and his Discourse was written some years before; he
might have lived to perceive how much more easy it is to inveigh against
the abuses of government, than to bring about anything better by
rebellion.
|Buchanan, De Jure Regni.|
26. The three great sources of a free spirit in politics, admiration of
antiquity, zeal for religion, and persuasion of positive right, which
separately had animated La Boetie, Languet, and Hottoman, united their
streams to produce, in another country, the treatise of George Buchanan
(De Jure Regni apud Scotos), a scholar, a protestant, and the subject of
a very limited monarchy. This is a dialogue elegantly written, and
designed first, to show the origin of royal government from popular
election; then, the right of putting tyrannical kings to death,
according to Scripture, and the conditional allegiance due to the crown
of Scotland, as proved by the coronation oath, which implies, that it is
received in trust from the people. The following is a specimen of
Buchanan’s reasoning, which goes very materially farther than Languet
had presumed to do:--“Is there then,” says one of the interlocutors, “a
mutual compact between the king and the people? M. Thus it seems.--B.
Does not he, who first violates the compact, and does anything against
his own stipulations, break his agreement? M. He does.--B. If then, the
bond which attached the king to the people is broken, all rights he
derived from the agreement are forfeited. M. They are forfeited.--B. And
he who was mutually bound becomes as free as before the agreement? M. He
has the same rights and the same freedom as he had before.--B. But if a
king should do things tending to the dissolution of human society, for
the preservation of which he has been made, what name should we give
him? M. We should call him a tyrant.--B. But a tyrant not only possesses
no just authority over his people, but is their enemy? M. He is surely
their enemy.--B. Is there not a just cause of war against an enemy who
has inflicted heavy and intolerable injuries upon us? M. There is.--B.
What is the nature of a war against the enemy of all mankind, that is,
against a tyrant? M. None can be more just.--B. Is it not lawful in a
war justly commenced, not only for the whole people, but for any single
person to kill an enemy? M. It must be confessed.--B. What, then, shall
we say of a tyrant, a public enemy, with whom all good men are in
eternal warfare? may not any one of all mankind inflict on him every
penalty of war? M. I observe that all nations have been of that opinion,
for Theba is extolled for having killed her husband, and Timoleon for
his brother’s, and Cassius for his son’s, death.”[1071]
[1071] P. 96.
|Poynet, on Politique Power.|
27. We may include among political treatises of this class some
published by the English and Scottish exiles during the persecution of
their religion by the two Maries. They are, indeed, prompted by
circumstances, and in some instances have too much of a temporary
character to deserve a place in literary history. I will, however, give
an account of one, more theoretical than the rest, and characteristic of
the bold spirit of these early Protestants, especially as it is almost
wholly unknown except by name. This is in the title-page, “A Short
Treatise of Politique Power, and of the true obedience which subjects
owe to kings and other civil governors, being an answer to seven
questions:--‘1. Whereof politique power groweth, wherefore it was
ordained, and the right use and duty of the same? 3. Whether kings,
princes, and other governors have an absolute power and authority over
their subjects? 3. Whether kings, princes, and other politique governors
be subject to God’s laws, or the positive laws of their countries? 4. In
what things and how far subjects are bound to obey their princes and
governors? 5. Whether all the subject’s goods be the emperor’s or king’s
own, and that they may lawfully take them for their own? 6. Whether it
be lawful to depose an evil governor and kill a tyrant? 7. What
confidence is to be given to princes and potentates?’”
|Its liberal theory.|
28. The author of this treatise was John Poynet, or Ponnet, as it is
spelled in the last edition, bishop of Winchester under Edward VI., and
who is said to have had a considerable share in the reformation.[1072]
It was first published in 1558, and reprinted in 1642, “to serve,” says
Strype, “the turn of those times.” “This book,” observes truly the same
industrious person, “was not over favourable to princes.” Poynet died
very soon afterwards, so that we cannot determine whether he would have
thought it expedient to speak as fiercely under the reign that was to
come. The place of publication of the first edition I do not know, but I
presume it was at Geneva or Frankfort. It is closely and vigorously
written, deserving, in many parts, a high place among the English prose
of that age, though not entirely free from the usual fault--vulgar and
ribaldrous invective. He determines all the questions stated in the
title-page on principles adverse to royal power, contending, in the
sixth chapter, that “the manifold and continual examples that have been,
from time to time, of the deposing of kings and killing of tyrants, do
most certainly confirm it to be most true, just, and consonant to God’s
judgment. The history of kings in the Old Testament is full of it; and,
as Cardinal Pole truly citeth, England lacketh not the practice and
experience of the same; for they deprived King Edward II., because,
without law, he killed the subjects, spoiled them of their goods, and
wasted the treasures of the realm. And upon what just causes Richard II.
was thrust out, and Henry IV. put in his place, I refer it to their own
judgment. Denmark also now, in our days, did nobly the like act, when
they deprived Christiern the tyrant, and committed him to perpetual
prison.
[1072] Chalmers. Strype’s Memorials.
|Argues for tyrannicide.|
29. “The reasons, arguments, and laws, that serve for the deposing and
displacing of an evil governor will do as much for the proof that it is
lawful to kill a tyrant, if they may be indifferently heard. As God hath
ordained magistrates to hear and determine private men’s matters, and to
punish their vices, so also willeth he that the magistrates’ doings be
called to account and reckoning, and their vices corrected and punished
by the body of the whole congregation or commonwealth; as it is manifest
by the memory of the ancient office of the High Constable of England,
unto whose authority it pertained, not only to summon the king
personally before the parliament, or other courts of judgment, to answer
and receive according to justice, but also upon just occasion to commit
him unto ward.[1073] Kings, princes, and governors have their authority
of the people, as all laws, usages, and policies, do declare and
testify. For in some places and countries they have more and greater
authority; in some places, less; and in some the people have not given
this authority to any other, but retain and exercise it themselves. And
is any man so unreasonable to deny that the whole may do as much as they
have permitted one member to do, or those that have appointed an office
upon trust have not authority upon just occasion (as the abuse of it) to
take away what they gave? All laws do agree, that men may revoke their
proxies and letters of attorney when it pleaseth them, much more when
they see their proctors and attorneys abuse it.
[1073] It is scarcely necessary to observe that this is an impudent
falsehood.
30. “But now, to prove the latter part of this question affirmatively,
that it is lawful to kill a tyrant, there is no man can deny, but that
the Ethnics, albeit they had not the right and perfect true knowledge of
God, were endued with the knowledge of the law of nature--for it is no
private law to a few or certain people, but common to all--not written
in books, but grafted in the hearts of men, not made by men, but
ordained of God, which we have not learned, received, or read, but have
taken, sucked, and drawn it out of nature, whereunto we are not taught,
but made, not instructed, but seasoned;[1074] and, as St. Paul saith,
‘Man’s conscience bearing witness of it,’” &c. He proceeds in a strain of
some eloquence (and this last passage is not ill-translated from
Cicero), to extol the ancient tyrannicides, accounting the first
nobility to have been “those who had revenged, and delivered the
oppressed people out of the hands of their governors. Of this land of
nobility was Hercules, Theseus, and such like.”[1075] It must be owned,
the worthy bishop is a bold man in assertions of fact. Instances from
the Old Testament, of course, follow, wherein Jezebel and Athalia are
not forgotten, for the sake of our bloody queen.
[1074] Sic. The Latin in Cic. pro Mil. is _imbuti_.
[1075] P. 49.
|The tenets of parties swayed by circumstances.|
31. If too much space has been allowed to so obscure a production, it
must be excused on account of the illustration it gives to our civil and
ecclesiastical history, though of little importance in literature. It is
also well to exhibit an additional proof that the tenets of all parties,
however general and speculative they may appear, are espoused on account
of the position of those who hold them, and the momentary consequences
that they may produce. In a few years time the Church of England, strong
in the protection of that royalty which Poynet thus assailed in his own
exile, enacted the celebrated homily against rebellion, which denounces
every pretext of resistance to governors. Churches, even the best, are
but factions in the strife to retain or recover their ascendency; and,
like other factions, will never weaken themselves by a scrupulous
examination of the reasoning or the testimony which is to serve their
purpose. Those have lived and read to little advantage who have not
discovered this.
|Similar tenets among the Leaguers.|
32. It might appear that there was some peculiar association between
these popular theories of resistance and the Protestant faith. Perhaps,
in truth, they had a degree of natural connection; but circumstances,
more than general principles, affect the opinions of mankind. The
rebellion of the League against Henry III., their determination not to
acknowledge Henry IV., reversed the state of parties, and displayed, in
an opposite quarter, the republican notions of Languet and Buchanan as
fierce and as unlimited as any Protestants had maintained them. Henry of
Bourbon could only rely upon his legitimate descent, upon the
indefeasible rights of inheritance. If France was to choose for herself,
France demanded a Catholic king; all the topics of democracy were thrown
into that scale; and, in fact, it is well known that Henry had no
prospect whatever of success but by means of a conversion, which, though
not bearing much semblance of sincerity, the nation thought fit to
accept. But during that struggle of a few years we find, among other
writings of less moment, one ascribed by some to Rose, bishop of Senlis,
a strenuous partisan of the League, which may perhaps deserve to arrest
our attention.[1076]
[1076] The author calls himself Rossæus, and not, as has been asserted,
bishop of Senlis. But Pitts attributes this book to Rainolds
(brother of the more celebrated Dr. John Rainolds), who is said to
have called himself Rossæus. The Biographie Universelle (art. Rose)
says this opinion has not gained ground; but it is certainly
favoured by M. Barbier in the Dictionnaire des Anonymes, and some
grounds for it are alleged. From internal evidence it seems rather
the work of a Frenchman than a foreigner; but I have not paid much
attention to so unimportant a question. Jugler, in his Historia
Literaria, c. 9, does not even name Rose. By a passage in
Schelhorn, viii. 465, the book seems to have been sometimes
ascribed to Genebrard.
|Rose, on the Authority of Christian States over Kings.|
33. This book, De Justa Reipublicæ Christianæ in Reges Potestate,
published in 1590, must have been partly written before the death of
Henry III. in the preceding year. He begins with the origin of human
society, which he treats with some eloquence, and on the principle of an
election of magistrates by the community, that they might live
peaceably, and in enjoyment of their possessions. The different forms
and limitations of government have sprung from the choice of the people,
except where they have been imposed by conquest. He exhibits many
instances of this variety: but there are two dangers, one of limiting
too much the power of kings, and letting the populace change the dynasty
at their pleasure; the other, that of ascribing a sort of divinity to
kings, and taking from the nation all the power of restraining them in
whatever crimes they may commit. The Scottish Calvinists are an instance
of the first error; the modern advocates of the house of Valois of the
other. The servile language of those who preach passive obedience has
encouraged not only the worst Roman emperors, but such tyrants as
Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth of England.
34. The author goes, in the second chapter, more fully into a refutation
of this doctrine, as contrary to the practice of ancient nations, who
always deposed tyrants, to the principles of Christianity, and to the
constitution of European communities, whose kings are admitted under an
oath to keep the laws and to reign justly. The subject’s oath of
allegiance does not bind him, unless the king observe what is stipulated
from him; and this right of withdrawing obedience from wicked kings is
at the bottom of all the public law of Europe. It is also sanctioned by
the church. Still more has the nation a right to impose laws and
limitations on kings, who have certainly no superiority to the law, so
that they can transgress it at pleasure.
35. In the third chapter he inquires who is a tyrant; and, after a long
discussion comes to this result, that a tyrant is one who despoils his
subjects of their possessions, or offends public decency by immoral
life, but above all, who assails the Christian faith, and uses his
authority to render his subjects heretical. All these characters are
found in Henry of Valois. He then urges, in the two following chapters,
that all Protestantism is worse than Paganism, inasmuch as it holds out
less inducement to a virtuous life, but that Calvinism is much the worst
form of the Protestant heresy. The Huguenots, he proceeds to prove, are
neither parts of the French church nor commonwealth. He infers, in the
seventh chapter, that the king of Navarre, being a heretic of this
description, is not fit to rule over Christians. The remainder of the
book is designed to show that every king, being schismatic or heretical,
may be deposed by the pope, of which he brings many examples; nor has
any one deserved this sentence more than Henry of Navarre. It has always
been held lawful that an heretical king should be warred upon by his own
subjects and by all Christian sovereigns; and he maintains that a real
tyrant, who, after being deposed by the wiser part of his subjects,
attempts to preserve his power by force, may be put to death by any
private person. He adds that Julian was probably killed by a Christian
soldier, and quotes several fathers and ecclesiastical historians who
justify and commend the act. He concludes by exhorting the nobility and
other orders of France, since Henry is a relapsed heretic, who is not to
be believed for any oaths he may make, to rally round their Catholic
king, Charles of Bourbon.
|Treatise of Boucher in the same spirit.|
|Answered by Barclay.|
36. The principles of Rose, if he were truly the author, both as to
rebellion and tyrannicide, belonged naturally to those who took up arms
against Henry III., and who applauded his assassin. They were adopted,
and perhaps extended, by Boucher, a leaguer still more furious, if
possible, than Rose himself, in a book published in 1589, De Justa
Henrici III. Abdicatione a Francorum Regno. This book is written in the
spirit of Languet, asserting the general right of the people to depose
tyrants, rather than confining it to the case of heresy. The deposing
power of the pope, consequently, does not come much into question. He
was answered, as well as other writers of the same tenets, by a Scottish
Catholic residing at Paris, William Barclay, father of the more
celebrated author of the Argenis, in a treatise “De Regno et Regali
Potestate adversus Buchananum, Brutum, Boucherum et Reliquos
Monarchomachos,” 1600. Barclay argues on the principles current in
France, that the king has no superior in temporals; that the people are
bound in all cases to obey him; that the laws owe their validity to his
will. The settlement of France by the submission of the League on the
one hand, and by the edict of Nantes on the other, naturally put a stop
to the discussion of questions which, theoretical and universal as they
might seem, would never have been brought forward but through the
stimulating influence of immediate circumstances.
|The Jesuits adopt these tenets.|
|Mariana, De Rege.|
37. But while the war was yet raging, and the fate of the Catholic
religion seemed to hang upon its success, many of the Jesuits had been
strenuous advocates of the tyrannicidal doctrine; and the strong spirit
of party attachment in that order renders it hardly uncandid to reckon
among its general tenets whatever was taught by its most conspicuous
members. The boldest and most celebrated assertion of these maxims was
by Mariana, in a book, De Rege et Regis Institutione. The first edition
of this remarkable book, and which is of considerable scarcity, was
published at Toledo in 1599, dedicated to Philip III., and sanctioned
with more than an approbation, with a warm eulogy by the censor (one of
the same order, it may be observed), who by the king’s authority had
perused the manuscript. It is, however, not such as in an absolute
monarchy we should expect to find countenance. Mariana, after inquiring
what is the best form of government, and deciding for hereditary
monarchy, but only on condition that the prince shall call the best
citizens to his councils, and administer all affairs according to the
advice of a senate, comes to show the difference between a king and a
tyrant. His invectives against the latter prepare us for the sixth
chapter, which is entitled, Whether it be lawful to overthrow a tyrant?
He begins by a short sketch of the oppression of France under Henry
III., which had provoked his assassination. Whether the act of James
Clement, “the eternal glory of France, as most reckon him,”[1077] were
in itself warrantable, he admits to be a controverted question, stating
the arguments on both sides, but placing last those in favour of the
murder, to which he evidently leans. All philosophers and theologians,
he says, agree that an usurper may be put to death by any one. But in
the case of a lawful king, governing to the great injury of the
commonwealth or of religion (for we ought to endure his vices so long as
they do not reach an intolerable height), he thinks that the states of
the realm should admonish him, and on his neglect to reform his life,
may take up arms, and put to death a prince whom they have declared to
be a public enemy; and any private man may do the same. He concludes,
therefore, that it is only a question of fact who is a tyrant, but not
one of right, whether a tyrant may be killed. Nor does this maxim give a
license to attempts on the lives of good princes; since it can never be
applied till wise and experienced men have conspired with the public
voice in declaring the prince’s tyranny. “It is a wholesome thing,” he
proceeds, “that sovereigns should be convinced that, if they oppress the
state, and become intolerable by their wickedness, their assassination
will not only be lawful but glorious to the perpetrator.”[1078] This
language, whatever indignation it might excite against Mariana and his
order, is merely what we have seen in Buchanan.
[1077] These words, æternum Gallilæ decus, are omitted in the subsequent
editions, but as far as I have compared them there is very little
other alteration; yet the first alone is in request.
[1078] Est salutaris cognitio, ut sit principibus persuasum, si
rempublicam oppresserint, si vitiis et fœditate intolerandi erunt,
ea conditione vivere, ut non jure tantum sed cum laude et gloria
perire possint, p. 77.
38. Mariana discusses afterwards the question, whether the power of the
king or of the commonwealth be the greater; and after intimating the
danger of giving offence, and the difficulty of removing the blemishes
which have become inveterate by time (with allusion, doubtless, to the
change of the Spanish constitution under Charles and Philip), declares
in strong terms for limiting the royal power by laws. In Spain, he
asserts, the king cannot impose taxes against the will of the people.
“He may use his influence, he may offer rewards, sometimes he may
threaten, he may solicit with promises and bribes (we will not say
whether he may do this rightly), but if they refuse he must give way;
and it is the same with new laws, which require the sanction of the
people. Nor could they preserve their right of deposing and putting to
death a tyrant, if they had not retained the superior power to
themselves when they delegated a part to the king. It may be the case in
some nations, who have no public assemblies of the states, that of
necessity the royal prerogative must compel obedience--a power too
great, and approaching to tyranny--but we speak (says Mariana) not of
barbarians, but of the monarchy which exists, and ought to exist among
us, and of that form of polity which of itself is the best.” Whether any
nation has a right to surrender its liberties to a king, he declines to
inquire, observing only that it would act rashly in making such a
surrender, and the king almost as much so in accepting it.
39. In the second book Mariana treats of the proper education of a
prince; and in the third on the due administration of his government,
inveighing vehemently against excessive taxation, and against debasement
of the coin, which he thinks ought to be the last remedy in a public
crisis. The whole work, even in its reprehensible exaggerations,
breathes a spirit of liberty and regard to the common good. Nor does
Mariana, though a Jesuit, lay any stress on the papal power to depose
princes, which, I believe, he has never once intimated through the whole
volume. It is absolutely on political principles that he reasons, unless
we except that he considers impiety as one of the vices which constitute
a tyrant.[1079]
[1079] Bayle, art. Mariana, notes G, H, and I, has expatiated upon this
notable treatise, which did the Jesuits infinite mischief, though
they took pains to disclaim any participation in the doctrine.
|Popular theories in England.|
|Hooker.|
40. Neither of the conflicting parties in Great Britain had neglected
the weapons of their contemporaries; the English Protestants under Mary,
the Scots under her unfortunate namesake, the Jesuits and Catholic
priests under Elizabeth, appealed to the natural rights of men, or to
those of British citizens. Poynet, Goodman, Knox are of the first
description; Allen and Persons of the second. Yet this was not done, by
the latter at least, so boldly and so much on broad principles as it was
on the continent; and Persons in his celebrated Conference, under the
name of Doleman, tried the different and rather inconsistent path of
hereditary right. The throne of Elizabeth seemed to stand in need of a
strongly monarchical sentiment in the nation. Yet we find that the
popular origin of government, and the necessity of popular consent to
its due exercise, are laid down by Hooker in the first and eighth books
of the Ecclesiastical Polity, with a boldness not very usual in her
reign, and, it must be owned, with a latitude of expression that leads
us forward to the most unalloyed democracy. This theory of Hooker, which
he endeavoured in some places to qualify with little success or
consistency, though it excited not much attention at the time, became
the basis of Locke’s more celebrated Essay on Government, and, through
other stages, of the political creed which actuates at present, as a
possessing spirit, the great mass of the civilised world.[1080]
[1080] Bilson, afterwards bishop of Winchester, in his “Difference
between Christian Subjection and Unchristian Rebellion,” published
in 1585, argues against the Jesuits, that Christian subjects may
not bear arms against their princes for any religious quarrel, but
admits, “if a prince should go about to subject his kingdom to a
foreign realm, or change the form of the commonwealth from impery
to tyranny, or neglect the laws established by common consent of
prince and people to execute his own pleasure, in these and other
cases which might be named, if the nobles and commons join together
to defend their ancient and accustomed liberty, regiment, and laws,
they may not well be counted rebels,” p. 520.
|Political memoirs.|
|La Noue.|
41. The bold and sometimes passionate writers, who perhaps will be
thought to have detained us too long, may be contrasted with another
class more cool and prudent, who sought rather to make the most of what
they found established in civil polity, than to amend or subvert it. The
condition of France was such as to force men into thinking, where nature
had given them the capacity of it. In some of the memoirs of the age,
such as those of Castelnau or Tavannes, we find an habitual tendency to
reflect, to observe the chain of causes, and to bring history to bear on
the passing time. De Comines had set a precedent; and the fashion of
studying his writings and those of Machiavel conspired with the force of
circumstances to make a thoughtful generation. The political and
military discourses of La Noue, being thrown into the form of
dissertation, come more closely to our purpose than merely historical
works. They are full of good sense, in a high moral tone, without
pedantry or pretension, and throw much light on the first period of the
civil wars. The earliest edition is referred by the Biographie
Universelle to 1587, which I believe should be 1588; but the book seems
to have been finished long before.
|Lipsius.|
|Botero.|
42. It would carry us beyond the due proportions of this chapter were I
to seek out every book belonging to the class of political philosophy,
and we are yet far from its termination. The Politica of Justus Lipsius
deserve little regard; they are chiefly a digest of Aristotle, Tacitus,
and other ancient writers. Charron has incorporated or abridged the
greater part of this work in his own. In one passage Lipsius gave great
and just offence to the best of the Protestant party, whom he was about
to desert, by recommending the extirpation of heresy by fire and sword.
A political writer of the Jesuit school was Giovanni Botero, whose long
treatise, Ragione di Stato, 1589, while deserving of considerable praise
for acuteness, has been extolled by Ginguéné, who had never read it, for
some merits it is far from possessing.[1081] The tolerant spirit, the
maxims of good faith, the enlarged philosophy, which on the credit of a
Piedmontese panegyrist, he ascribes to Botero will be sought in vain.
This Jesuit justifies the massacre of St. Bartholomew, and all other
atrocities of that age; observing that the duke of Alba made a mistake
in the public execution of Horn and Egmont, instead of getting rid of
them privately.[1082] Conservation is with him, as with Machiavel, the
great end of government, which is to act so as neither to deserve nor
permit opposition. The immediate punishment of the leaders of sedition,
with as much silence and secrecy as possible, is the best remedy where
the sovereign is sufficiently powerful. In cases of danger, it is
necessary to conquer by giving way, and to wait for the cooling of men’s
tempers, and the disunion that will infallibly impair their force; least
of all should he absent himself, like Henry III., from the scene of
tumult, and thus give courage to the seditious, while he diminishes
their respect for himself.
[1081] Vol. viii. p. 210.
[1082] Poteva contentarsi di sbrigarsene con dar morte quanto si può
segretamente fosse possibile. This is in another treatise by
Botero, Relazioni Universali dè Capitani Illustri.
|His remarks on population.|
43. Botero had thought and observed much; he is, in extent of reading,
second only to Bodin, and his views are sometimes luminous. The most
remarkable passage that has occurred to me is on the subject of
population. No encouragement to matrimony, he observes, will increase
the numbers of the people without providing also the means of
subsistence, and without due care for breeding children up. If this be
wanting, they either die prematurely, or grow up of little service to
their country.[1083] Why else, he asks, did the human race reach, three
thousand years ago, as great a population as exists at present? Cities
begin with a few inhabitants, increase to a certain point, but do not
pass it, as we see at Rome, at Naples, and in other places. Even if all
the monks and nuns were to marry, there would not, he thinks, be
more people in the world than there are; two things being requisite for
their increase--generation and education (or what we should perhaps
rather call rearing), and if the multiplication of marriages may promote
the one, it certainly hinders the other.[1084] Botero must here have
meant, though he does not fully express it, that the poverty attending
upon improvident marriages is the great impediment to rearing their
progeny.
[1083] Concio sia cosa chè se bene senza il congiungimento dell’uomo
e della donna non si può il genere umano moltiplicarsi, non dimeno
la moltitudine di congiungimenti non è sola causa della
moltiplicazione; si ricerca oltre di ciò, la cura d’Allevarli, e la
commodità di sustentarli; senza la quale o muojono innanzi tempo, o
riescono inutili, e di poco giovimento alla patria lib. viii. p.
284.
[1084] Ibid. Ricercandosi due cose per la propagazione de popoli, la
generazione et l’educazione, se bene la moltitudine de matrimonj
ajuta forte l’una, impedisce però del sicuro l’altro.
|Paruta.|
44. Paolo Paruta, in his Discorsi Politici, Venice, 1599, is perhaps
less vigorous and acute than Botero; yet he may be reckoned among
judicious writers on general politics. The first book of these
discourses relates to Roman, the second chiefly to modern history. His
turn of thinking is independent and unprejudiced by the current tide of
opinion, as when he declares against the conduct of Hannibal in invading
Italy. Paruta generally states both sides of a political problem very
fairly, as in one of the most remarkable of his discourses, where he
puts the famous question on the usefulness of fortified towns. His final
conclusion is favourable to them. He was a subject of Venice, and after
holding considerable offices, was one of those historians employed by
the Senate, whose writings form the series entitled Istorici Veneziani.
|Bodin.|
45. John Bodin, author of several other less valuable works, acquired so
distinguished a reputation by his Republic, published in French in 1577,
and by himself in Latin, with many additions in 1586,[1085] and has in
fact so far outstripped the political writers of his own period, that I
shall endeavour to do justice to his memory by something like an
analysis of this treatise, which is far more known by name than
generally read. Many have borne testimony to his extraordinary reach of
learning and reflection. “I know of no political writer of the same
period,” says Stewart, “whose extensive, and various, and discriminating
reading appear to me to have contributed more to facilitate and
guide the researches of his successors, or whose references to
ancient learning have been more frequently transcribed without
acknowledgment.”[1086]
[1085] This treatise, in its first edition, made so great an impression,
that when Bodin came to England in the service of the Duke of
Alençon, he found it explained by lecturers both in London and
Cambridge, but not, as has sometimes been said, in the public
schools of the university. This put him upon translating it into
Latin himself, to render its fame more European. See Bayle, who has
a good article on Bodin. I am much inclined to believe that the
perusal of Bodin had a great effect in England. He is not perhaps
very often quoted, and yet he is named with honour by the chief
writers of the next age; but he furnished a store, both of
arguments and of examples, which were not lost on the thoughtful
minds of our countrymen.
Grotius, who is not very favourable to Bodin, though of necessity
he often quotes the Republic, imputes to him incorrectness as to
facts, which in some cases raises a suspicion of ill-faith. Epist.
cccliii. It would require a more close study of Bodin than I have
made, to judge of the weight of this charge.
[1086] Dissertation on the Progress of Philosophy, p. 40. Stewart,
however, thinks Bodin became so obscure that he makes an apology
for the space he has allotted to the Republic, though not exceeding
four pages. He was better known in the seventeenth century than at
present.
|Analysis of his treatise called The Republic.|
|Authority of heads of families.|
46. What is the object of political society? Bodin begins by inquiring.
The greatest good, he answers, of every citizen, which is that of the
whole state. And this he places in the exercise of the virtues proper to
man, and in the knowledge of things natural, human, and divine. But as
all have not agreed as to the chief good of a single man, nor whether
the good of individuals be also that of the state, this has caused a
variety of laws and customs according to the humours and passions of
rulers. This first chapter is in a more metaphysical tone than we
usually find in Bodin. He proceeds in the next to the rights of families
(jus familiare), and to the distinction between a family and a
commonwealth. A family is the right government of many persons under one
head, as a commonwealth is that of many families.[1087] Patriarchal
authority he raises high, both marital and paternal, on each subject
pouring out a vast stream of knowledge: nothing that sacred and profane
history, the accounts of travellers, or the Roman lawyers could supply,
ever escapes the comprehensive researches of Bodin.[1088] He intimates
his opinion in favour of the right of repudiation, one of the many
proofs that he paid more regard to the Jewish than the Christian
law,[1089] and vindicates the full extent of the paternal power in the
Roman republic, deducing the decline of the empire from its relaxation.
[1087] Familia est plurium sub unius ac ejusdem patris familias
imperium subditorum, earumque rerum quæ ipsius propria sunt, recta
moderatio. He has an odd theory, that a family must consist of five
persons, in which he seems to have been influenced by some notions
of the jurists, that three families may constitute a republic, and
that fifteen persons are also the minimum of a community.
[1088] Cap. iii. 34. Bodin here protests against the stipulation
sometimes made before marriage, that the wife shall not be in the
power of the husband; “agreements so contrary to divine and human
laws, that they cannot be endured, nor are they to be observed even
when ratified by oath, since no oath in such circumstances can be
binding.”
[1089] It has always been surmised that Bodin, though not a Jew by
nativity, was such by conviction. This is strongly confirmed by his
Republic, wherein he quotes the Old Testament continually, and with
great deference, but seldom or never the New. Several passages
might be alleged in proof, but I have not noted them all down. In
one place, lib. i. c. 6, he says, Paulus, Christianorum sæculi sui
facile princeps, which is at least a singular mode of expression.
In another he mentions the test of true religion so as to exclude
all but the Mosaic. An unpublished work of Bodin, called the
Heptaplomeres, is said to exist in many manuscripts, both in France
and Germany; in which, after debating different religions in a
series of dialogues, he gives the advantage to Deism or Judaism,
for those who have seen it seem not to have determined which. No
one has thought it worth while to print this production. Jugler,
Hist. Literaria, p. 1740. Biogr. Univ. Niceron, xvii. 264.
|Domestic servitude.|
47. The patriarchal government includes the relation of master to
servant, and leads to the question whether slavery should be admitted
into a well-constituted commonwealth. Bodin, discussing this with many
arguments on both sides, seems to think that the Jewish law, with its
limitations as to time of servitude, ought to prevail, since the divine
rules were not laid down for the boundaries of Palestine, but being so
wise, so salutary, and of such authority, ought to be preferred above
the constitutions of men. Slavery, therefore, is not to be permanently
established; but where it already exists, it will be expedient that
emancipations should be gradual.[1090]
[1090] A posthumous work of Bodin, published in 1596, Universæ Naturæ
Theatrum, has been called by some a disguised Pantheism. This did
not appear, from what I have read of it, to be the case.
|Origin of commonwealths.|
48. These last are the rights of persons in a state of nature, to be
regulated, but not created by the law. “Before there was either city or
citizen, or any form of a commonwealth amongst men (I make use in this
place of Knolles’s very good translation), every master of a family was
master in his own house, having power of life and death over his wife
and children; but, after that force, violence, ambition, covetousness,
and desire of revenge had armed one against another, the issues of wars
and combats giving victory unto the one side, made the other to become
unto them slaves; and amongst them that overcame he that was chosen
chief and captain, under whose conduct and leading they had obtained the
victory, kept them also in his power and command as his faithful and
obedient servants, and the other as his slaves. Then that full and
entire liberty by nature, given to every man to live as himself best
pleased, was altogether taken from the vanquished, and in the
vanquishers themselves in some measure also diminished in regard of the
conqueror; for that now it concerned every man in private to yield his
obedience unto his chief sovereign; and he that would not abate anything
of his liberty, to live under the laws and commandments of another, lost
all. So the words of lord and servant, of prince and subject, before
unknown to the world, were first brought into use. Yea reason, and the
very light of nature leadeth us to believe very force and violence to
have given cause and beginning unto commonwealths.”[1091]
[1091] c. 6.
|Privileges of citizens.|
49. Thus, then, the patriarchal simplicity of government was overthrown
by conquest, of which Nimrod seems to have been the earliest instance;
and now fathers of families, once sovereign, are become citizens. A
citizen is a free man under the supreme government of another.[1092]
Those who enjoy more privileges than others are not citizens more than
they. “It is the acknowledgment of the sovereign by his free subject,
and the protection of the sovereign towards him that makes the citizen.”
This is one of the fundamental principles, it may be observed by us in
passing, which distinguish a monarchical from a republican spirit in
constitutional jurisprudence. Wherever mere subjection, or even mere
nativity, are held to give a claim to citizenship, there is an
abandonment of the republican principle. This, always reposing on a real
or imaginary contract, distinguishes the nation, the successors of the
first community, from alien settlers, and, above all, from those who are
evidently of a different race. Length of time must, of course, ingraft
many of foreign origin upon the native tree; but to throw open civil
privileges at random to new-comers is to convert a people into a casual
aggregation of men. In a monarchy the hereditary principle maintains an
unity of the commonwealth; which, though not entirely without danger,
may better permit an equality of privileges among all its subjects. Thus
under Caracalla, but in a period in which we should not look for good
precedents, the great name, as once it had been, of Roman citizen was
extended, east and west, to all the provinces of the empire.
[1092] Est civis nihil aliud quam liber homo, qui summa alterius
potestate obligatur.
|Nature of sovereign power.|
50. Bodin comes next to the relation between patron and client, and to
those alliances among states which bear an analogy to it. But he is
careful to distinguish patronage or protection from vassalage. Even in
unequal alliances, the inferior is still sovereign; and, if this be not
reserved, the alliance must become subjection.[1093] Sovereignty, of
which he treats in the following chapter, he defines a supreme and
perpetual power, absolute and subject to no law.[1094] A limited prince,
except so far as the limitation is confined to the laws of nature, is
not sovereign. A sovereign cannot bind his successor, nor can he be
bound by his own laws, unless confirmed by oath; for we must not
confound the laws and contracts of princes, the former depend upon his
will, but the latter oblige his conscience. It is convenient to call
parliaments or meetings of states-general for advice and consent, but
the king is not bound by them; the contrary notion has done much harm.
Even in England, where laws made in parliament cannot be repealed
without its consent, the king, as he conceives, does not hesitate to
dispose of them at his pleasure.[1095] And though no taxes are imposed
in England without consent of parliament, this is the case also in other
countries, if necessity does not prevent the meeting of the states. He
concludes, that the English parliament may have a certain authority, but
that the sovereignty and legislative power is solely in the king.
Whoever legislates is sovereign, for this power includes all other.
Whether a vassal or tributary prince is to be called sovereign, is a
question that leads Bodin into a great quantity of feudal law and
history; he determines it according to his own theory.[1096]
[1093] c. 7.
[1094] Majestas est summa in cives ac subditos legibusque soluta
postestas.
[1095] Hoc tamen singulare videri possit, quod, quæ leges populi
rogatione ac principis jussu feruntur, non aliter quam populi
comitiis abrogari possunt. Id enim Dellus Anglorum in Gallia
legatus mihi confirmavit; idem tamen confitetur legem probari aut
respui consuevisse contra populi voluntatem utcunque principi
placuerit. He is evidently perplexed by the case of England; and
having been in this country before the publication of his Latin
edition, he might have satisfied himself on the subject.
[1096] c. 9 and 10.
|Forms of government.|
|Despotism and monarchy.|
51. The second book of the Republic treats of the different species of
civil government. These, according to Bodin, are but three, no mixed
form being possible, since sovereignty or the legislative power is
indivisible. A democracy he defines to be a government where the
majority of the citizens possess the sovereignty. Rome he holds to have
been a democratic republic, in which, however, he is not exactly right;
and he is certainly mistaken in his general theory, by arguing as if the
separate definition of each of the three forms must be applicable after
their combination.[1097] In this chapter on despotic monarchy, he again
denies that governments were founded on original contract. The power of
one man, in the origin of political society, was absolute; and Aristotle
was wrong in supposing a fabulous golden age, in which kings were chosen
by suffrage.[1098] Despotism is distinguished from monarchy by the
subjects being truly slaves, without a right over their properties; but
as the despot may use them well, even this is not necessarily a
tyranny.[1099] Monarchy, on the other hand, is the rule of one man
according to the law of nature, who maintains the liberties and
properties of others as much as his own.[1100] As this definition does
not imply any other restraint than the will of the prince imposes on
himself, Bodin labours under the same difficulty as Montesquieu. Every
English reader of the Esprit des Loix has been struck by the want of a
precise distinction between despotism and monarchy. Tyranny differs,
Bodin says, from despotism, merely by the personal character of the
prince; but severity towards a seditious populace is not tyranny; and
here he censures the lax government of Henry II. Tyrannicide he
justifies in respect of an usurper who has no title except force, but
not as to lawful princes, or such as have become so by prescription.[1101]
[1097] lib. ii. c. 1.
[1098] In the beginning of states, quo societas hominum coalescere
cœpit, ac reipublicæ forma quædam constitui, unius imperio ac
dominatu omnia tenebantur. Fallit enim Aristoteles, qui aureum
illud genus hominum fabulis poeticis quam reipsa illustrius, reges
heroas suffragio creasse prodidit; cum omnibus persuasum sit ac
perspicuum monarchiam omnium primam in Assyria fuisse constitutam
Nimrodo principe, &c.
[1099] c. 2.
[1100] c. 3.
[1101] c. 4.
|Aristocracy.|
52. An aristocracy he conceives always to exist where a smaller body of
the citizens governs the greater.[1102] This definition, which has been
adopted by some late writers, appears to lead to consequences hardly
compatible with the common use of language. The electors of the House of
Commons in England are not a majority of the people. Are they,
therefore, an aristocratical body? The same is still more strongly the
case in France, and in most representative governments of Europe. We
might better say, that the distinguishing characteristic of an
aristocracy is the enjoyment of privileges, which are not communicable
to other citizens simply by anything they can themselves do to obtain
them. Thus no government would be properly aristocratical where a
pecuniary qualification is alone sufficient to confer political power;
nor did the ancients ever use the word in such a sense. Yet the question
might be asked, under what category we would place the _timocracy_,
or government of the rich.
|Senates and councils of state.|
53. Sovereignty resides in the supreme legislative authority; but this
requires the aid of other inferior and delegated ministers, to the
consideration of which the third book of Bodin is directed. A senate he
defines, “a lawful assembly of counsellors of state, to give advice to
them who have the sovereignty in every commonwealth; we say, to give
advice, that we may not ascribe any power of command to such a senate.”
A council is necessary in a monarchy; for much knowledge is generally
mischievous in a king. It is rarely united with a good disposition, and
with a moral discipline of mind. None of the emperors were so illiterate
as Trajan, none more learned than Nero. The counsellors should not be
too numerous, and he advises that they should retain their offices for
life. It would be dangerous as well as ridiculous, to choose young men
for such a post, even if they could have wisdom and experience, since
neither older persons, nor those of their own age, would place
confidence in them. He then expatiates, in his usual manner, upon all
the councils that have existed in ancient or modern states.[1103]
[1102] Ego statum semper aristocraticum esse, judico, si minor pars
civium cæteris imperat. c. 1.
[1103] c. 1.
|Duties of magistrates.|
54. A magistrate is an officer of the sovereign, possessing public
authority.[1104] Bodin censures the usual definitions of magistracy,
distinguishing from magistrates both those officers who possess no right
of command, and such commissioners as have only a temporary delegation.
In treating of the duty of magistrates towards the sovereign, he praises
the rule of the law of France, that the judge is not to regard private
letters of the king against the justice of a civil suit.[1105] But after
stating the doubt, whether this applies to matters affecting the public,
he concludes that the judge must obey any direction he receives, unless
contrary to the law of nature, in which case he is bound not to forfeit
his integrity. It is however better, as far as we can, to obey all the
commands of the sovereign, than to set a bad example of resistance to
the people. This has probably a regard to the frequent opposition of the
Parliament of Paris, to what it deemed the unjust or illegal ordinances
of the court. Several questions, discussed in these chapters on
magistracy, are rather subtle and verbal; and, in general, the
argumentative part of Bodin is almost drowned in his erudition.
[1104] c. 3.
[1105] c. 4.
|Corporations.|
55. A state cannot subsist without colleges and corporations, for mutual
affection and friendship is the necessary bond of human life. It is true
that mischiefs have sprung from these institutions, and they are to be
regulated by good laws; but as a family is a community natural, so a
college is a community civil, and a commonwealth is but a community
governed by a sovereign power; and thus the word community is common
unto all three.[1106] In this chapter we have a full discussion of the
subject; and, adverting to the Spanish Cortes and English Commons as a
sort of colleges in the state, he praises them as useful institutions,
observing, with somewhat more boldness than is ordinary to him, that in
several provinces in France there had been assemblies of the states,
which had been abolished by those who feared to see their own crimes and
peculations brought to light.
[1106] c. 7.
|Slaves, part of the state.|
56. In the last chapter of the third book, on the degrees and orders of
citizens, Bodin seems to think that slaves, being subjects, ought to be
reckoned parts of the state.[1107] This is, as has been
intimated, in conformity with his monarchical notions. He then enters
upon the different modes of acquiring nobility, and inveighs against
making wealth a passport to it; discussing also the derogation to
nobility by plebeian occupation. The division into three orders is
useful in every form of government.
[1107] Si mihi tabellæ ac jura suffragiorum in hac disputatione
tribuantur, servos æque ac liberos homines civitate donari cupiam.
By this he may only mean that he would desire to emancipate them.
|Rise and fall of states.|
57. Perhaps the best chapter in the Republic of Bodin is the first in
the fourth book, on the rise, progress, stationary condition,
revolutions, decline, and fall of states. A commonwealth is said to be
changed when its form of polity is altered; for its identity is not to
be determined by the long standing of the city walls; but when popular
government becomes monarchy, or aristocracy is turned to democracy, the
commonwealth is at an end. He thus uses the word _respublica_ in
the sense of polity or constitution, which is not, I think, correct,
though sanctioned by some degree of usage, and leaves his proposition a
tautological truism. The extinction of states may be natural or violent,
but in one way or the other it must happen, since there is a determinate
period to all things, and a natural season in which it seems desirable
that they should come to an end. The best revolution is that which takes
place by a voluntary cession of power.
|Causes of revolutions.|
58. As the forms of government are three, it follows that the possible
revolutions from one to another are six. For anarchy is the extinction
of a government, not a revolution in it. He proceeds to develop the
causes of revolutions with great extent of historical learning and with
judgment, if not with so much acuteness or so much vigour of style as
Machiavel. Great misfortunes in war, he observes, have a tendency to
change popular rule to aristocracy, and success has an opposite effect;
the same seems applicable to all public adversity and prosperity.
Democracy, however, more commonly ends in monarchy, as monarchy does in
democracy, especially when it has become tyrannical; and such changes
are usually accompanied by civil war or tumult. Nor can aristocracy, he
thinks, be changed into democracy without violence, though the converse
revolution sometimes happens quietly, as when the labouring classes and
traders give up public affairs to look after their own; in this manner
Venice, Lucca, Ragusa, and other cities have become aristocracies. The
great danger for an aristocracy is, that some ambitious person, either
of their own body or of the people, may arm the latter against them: and
this is most likely to occur, when honours and magistracy are conferred
on unworthy men, which affords the best topic to demagogues, especially
where the plebeians are wholly excluded: which, though always grievous
to them, is yet tolerable so long as power is intrusted to deserving
persons; but when bad men are promoted, it becomes easy to excite the
minds of the people against the nobility, above all, if there are
already factions among the latter, a condition dangerous to all states,
but mostly to an aristocracy. Revolutions are more frequent in small
states, because a small number of citizens is easily split into parties;
hence we shall find in one age more revolutions among the cities of
Greece or Italy than have taken place during many in the kingdoms of
France or Spain. He thinks the ostracism of dangerous citizens itself
dangerous, and recommends rather to put them to death, or to render them
friends. Monarchy, he observes, has this peculiar to it, that if the
king be a prisoner, the constitution is not lost; whereas, if the seat
of government in a republic be taken, it is at an end, the subordinate
cities never making resistance. It is evident that this can only be
applicable to the case, hitherto the more common one, of a republic, in
which the capital city entirely predominates. “There is no kingdom which
shall not, in continuance of time, be changed, and at length also be
overthrown. But it is best for them who least feel their changes by
little and little made, whether from evil to good, or from good to
evil.”
|Astrological fancies of Bodin.|
59. If this is the best, the next is the worst chapter in Bodin. It
professes to inquire, whether the revolutions of states can be foreseen.
Here he considers, whether the stars have such an influence on human
affairs, that political changes can be foretold by their means, and
declares entirely against it, with such expressions as would seem to
indicate his disbelief in astrology. If it were true, he says, that the
conditions of commonwealths depended on the heavenly bodies, there could
be yet no certain prediction of them; since the astrologers lay down
their observations with such inconsistency, that one will place the same
star in direct course at the moment that another makes it retrograde. It
is obvious that any one who could employ this argument, must have
perceived that it destroys the whole science of astrology. But, after
giving instances of the blunders and contradictions of these pretended
philosophers, he so far gives way as to admit that, if all the events
from the beginning of the world could be duly compared with the
planetary motions, some inferences might be deduced from them; and thus
giving up his better reason to the prejudices of his age, he
acknowledges astrology as a theoretical truth. The hypothesis of
Copernicus he mentions as too absurd to deserve refutation; since, being
contrary to the tenets of all theologians and philosophers and to common
sense, it subverts the foundations of every science. We now plunge
deeper into nonsense; Bodin proceeding to a long arithmetical
disquisition, founded on a passage in Plato, ascribing the fall of
states to want of proportion.[1108]
[1108] c. 2.
|Danger of sudden changes.|
60. The next chapter, on the danger of sudden revolutions in the entire
government, asserts that even the most determined astrologers agree in
denying that a wise man is subjugated by the starry influences, though
they may govern those who are led by passion like wild beasts. Therefore
a wise ruler may foresee revolutions and provide remedies. It is
doubtful whether an established law ought to be changed, though not good
in itself, lest it should bring others into contempt, especially such as
affect the form of polity. These, if possible, should be held immutable;
yet it is to be remembered, that laws are only made for the sake of the
community, and public safety is the supreme law of laws. There is
therefore no law so sacred that it may not be changed through necessity.
But, as a general rule, whatever change is to be made should be effected
gradually.[1109]
[1109] c. 3.
|Judicial power of the sovereign.|
61. It is a disputed question whether magistrates should be temporary or
perpetual. Bodin thinks it essential that the council of state should be
permanent, but high civil commands ought to be temporary.[1110] It is in
general important that magistrates shall accord in their opinions; yet
there are circumstances in which their emulation or jealousy may be
beneficial to a state.[1111] Whether the sovereign ought to exercise
judicial functions may seem, he says, no difficult question to those who
are agreed that kings were established for the sake of doing justice.
This, however, is not his theory of the origin of government; and after
giving all the reasons that can be urged in favour of a monarch-judge,
including as usual all historical precedents, he decides that it is
inexpedient for the ruler to pronounce the law himself. His reasons are
sufficiently bold, and grounded on an intimate knowledge of the vices of
courts, which he does not hesitate to pour out.[1112]
[1110] c. 4.
[1111] c. 5.
[1112] c. 6.
|Toleration of religions.|
62. In treating of the part to be taken by the prince, or by a good
citizen, in civil factions, after a long detail from history of
conspiracies and seditions, he comes to disputes about religion, and
contends against the permission of reasonings on matters of faith. What
can be more impious, he says, than to suffer the eternal laws of God,
which ought to be implanted in men’s minds with the utmost certainty, to
be called in question by probable reasonings? For there is nothing so
demonstrable, which men will not undermine by argument. But the
principles of religion do not depend on demonstrations and arguments,
but on faith alone; and whoever attempts to prove them by a train of
reasoning, tends to subvert the foundations of the whole fabric. Bodin
in this sophistry was undoubtedly insincere. He goes on, however, having
purposely sacrificed this cock to Æsculapius, to contend that, if
several religions exist in a state, the prince should avoid violence and
persecution; the natural tendency of man being to give his assent
voluntarily, but never by force.[1113]
[1113] c. 7.
|Influence of climate on government.|
63. The first chapter of the fifth book, on the adaptation of government
to the varieties of race and climate, has excited more attention than
most others, from its being supposed to have given rise to a theory of
Montesquieu. In fact, however, the general principle is more ancient;
but no one had developed it so fully as Bodin. Of this he seems to be
aware. No one, he says, has hitherto treated on this important subject,
which should always be kept in mind, lest we establish institutions not
suitable to the people, forgetting that the laws of nature will not bend
to the fancy of man. He then investigates the peculiar characteristics
of the northern, middle, and southern nations, as to physical and moral
qualities. Some positions he has laid down erroneously; but, on the
whole, he shows a penetrating judgment and comprehensive generalisation
of views. He concludes that bodily strength prevails towards the poles,
mental power towards the tropics; and that the nations lying between
partake in a mixed ratio of both. This is not very just; but he argues
from the great armies that have come from the north, while arts and
sciences have been derived from the south. There is certainly a
considerable resemblance to Montesquieu in this chapter; and like him,
with better excuse, Bodin accumulates inaccurate stories. Force prevails
most with the northerns, reason with the inhabitants of a temperate or
middle climate, superstition with the southerns; thus astrology, magic,
and all mysterious sciences have come from the Chaldeans and Egyptians.
Mechanical arts and inventions, on the other hand, flourish best in
northern countries, and the southerns hardly know how to imitate them,
their genius being wholly speculative, nor have they so much industry,
quickness in perceiving what is to be done, or worldly prudence. The
stars appear to exert some influence over national peculiarities; but
even in the same latitudes great variety of character is found, which
arises from a mountainous or level soil, and from other physical
circumstances. We learn by experience, that the inhabitants of hilly
countries and the northern nations generally love freedom, but having
less intellect than strength, submit readily to the wisest among them.
Even winds are not without some effect on national character. But the
barrenness or fertility of the soil is more important; the latter
producing indolence and effeminacy, while one effect of a barren soil is
to drive the people into cities, and to the exercise of handicrafts for
the sake of commerce, as we see at Athens and Nuremburg, the former of
which may be contrasted with Bœotia.
64. Bodin concludes, after a profusion of evidence drawn from the whole
world, that it is necessary not only to consider the general character
of the climate as affecting an entire region, but even the peculiarities
of single districts, and to inquire what effects may be wrought on the
dispositions of the inhabitants by the air, the water, the mountains and
valleys, or prevalent winds, as well as those which depend on their
religion, their customs, their education, their form of government; for
whoever should conclude alike as to all who live in the same climate
would be frequently deceived; since, in the same parallel of latitude,
we may find remarkable differences even of countenance and complexion.
This chapter abounds with proofs of the comprehension as well as patient
research which distinguishes Bodin from every political writer who had
preceded him.
|Means of obviating inequality.|
65. In the second chapter, which inquires how we may avoid the
revolutions which an excessive inequality of possessions tends to
produce, he inveighs against a partition of property, as inconsistent
with civil society, and against an abolition of debts, because there can
be no justice where contracts are not held inviolable; and observes,
that it is absurd to expect a division of all possessions to bring about
tranquillity. He objects also to any endeavour to limit the number of
the citizens, except by colonisation. In deference to the authority of
the Mosaic law, he is friendly to a limited right of primogeniture, but
disapproves the power of testamentary dispositions, as tending to
inequality, and the admission of women to equal shares in the
inheritance, lest the same consequence should come through marriage.
Usury he would absolutely abolish, to save the poorer classes from ruin.
|Confiscations--rewards.|
66. Whether the property of condemned persons shall be confiscated is a
problem, as to which, having given the arguments on both sides, he
inclines to a middle course, that the criminal’s own acquisitions should
be forfeited, but what has descended from his ancestors should pass to
his posterity. He speaks with great freedom against unjust prosecutions,
and points out the dangers of the law of forfeiture.[1114] In the next,
being the fourth chapter of this book, he treats of rewards and
punishments. All states depend on the due distribution of these; but,
while many books are full of the latter, few have discussed the former,
to which he here confines himself. Triumphs, statues, public thanks,
offices of trust and command, are the most honourable; exemptions from
service or tribute, privileges, and the like, the most beneficial. In a
popular government, the former are more readily conceded than the
latter; in a monarchy, the reverse. The Roman triumph gave a splendour
to the republic itself. In modern times the sale of nobility, and of
public offices, renders them no longer so honourable as they should be.
He is here again very free-spoken as to the conduct of the French, and
of other governments.[1115]
[1114] c. 3.
[1115] c. 4.
|Fortresses.|
67. The advantage of warlike habits to a nation, and the utility of
fortresses, are then investigated. Some have objected to the latter, as
injurious to the courage of the people, and of little service against an
invader; and also, as furnishing opportunities to tyrants and usurpers,
or occasionally to rebels. Bodin, however, inclines in their favour,
especially as to those on the frontier, which may be granted as feudal
benefices, but not in inheritance. The question of cultivating a
military spirit in the people depends on the form of polity: in popular
states it is necessary; in an aristocracy, unsafe. In monarchies, the
position of the state with respect to its neighbours is to be
considered. The capital city ought to be strong in a republic, because
its occupation is apt to carry with it an entire change in the
commonwealth. But a citadel is dangerous in such a state. It is better
not to suffer castles, or strongholds of private men, as is the policy
of England; unless when the custom is so established, that they cannot
be dismantled without danger to the state.[1116]
[1116] c. 5.
|Necessity of good faith.|
68. Treaties of peace and alliance come next under review. He points out
with his usual prolixity the difference between equal and unequal
compacts of this kind. Bodin contends strongly for the rigorous
maintenance of good faith, and reprobates the civilians and canonists
who induced the council of Constance to break their promise towards John
Huss. No one yet, he exclaims, has been so consummately impudent, as to
assert the right of violating a fair promise; but one alleges the deceit
of the enemy; another, his own mistake; a third, the change of
circumstances, which has rendered it impossible to keep his word; a
fourth, the ruin of the state which it would entail. But no excuse,
according to Bodin, can be sufficient, save the unlawfulness of the
promise, or the impossibility of fulfilling it. The most difficult terms
to keep are between princes and their subjects, which generally require
the guarantee of other states. Faith, however, ought to be kept in such
cases; and he censures, though under an erroneous impression of the
fact, as a breach of engagement, the execution of the Duke of York in
the reign of Henry VI.; adding, that he prefers to select foreign
instances, rather than those at home, which he would wish to be buried
in everlasting oblivion. In this he probably alludes to the day of St.
Bartholomew.[1117]
[117] c. 6. Externa libentius quam domestica recordor, quæ utinam
sempiterna oblivione sepulta jacerent.
|Census of property.|
|Public revenues.|
69. The first chapter of the sixth book relates to a periodical census
of property, which he recommends as too much neglected. The Roman
censorship of manners he extols, and thinks it peculiarly required, when
all domestic coercion is come to an end. But he would give no coercive
jurisdiction to his censors, and plainly intimates his dislike to a
similar authority in the church.[1118] A more important disquisition
follows on public revenues. These may be derived from seven sources:
namely, national domains; confiscation of enemies’ property; gifts of
friendly powers; tributes from dependent allies; foreign trade carried
on by the state; tolls and customs on exports and imports; or, lastly,
taxes directly levied on the people. The first of these is the most
secure and honourable; and here we have abundance of ancient and modern
learning, while of course the French principle of inalienability is
brought forward. The second source of revenue is justified by the rights
of war and practice of nations; the third has sometimes occurred; and
the fourth is very frequent. It is dishonourable for a prince to be a
merchant, and thus gain a revenue in the fifth mode, yet the kings of
Portugal do not disdain this; and the mischievous usage of selling
offices in some other countries seems to fall under this head. The
different taxes on merchandise, or, in our language, of customs and
excise, come in the sixth place. Here Bodin advises to lower the import
duties on articles with which the people cannot well dispense, but to
lay them heavily on manufactured goods, that they may learn to practise
these arts themselves.
[1118] lib. vi. c. 1.
|Taxation.|
70. The last species of revenue, obtained from direct taxation, is never
to be chosen but from necessity; and as taxes are apt to be kept up when
the necessity is passed, it is better that the king should borrow money
of subjects than impose taxes upon them. He then enters on the history
of taxation in different countries, remarking it as peculiar to France,
that the burthen is thrown on the people to the ease of the nobles and
clergy, which is the case nowhere except with the French, among whom, as
Cæsar truly wrote, nothing is more despised than the common people.
Taxes on luxuries, which serve only to corrupt men, are the best of all;
those also are good which are imposed on proceedings at law, so as to
restrain unnecessary litigation. Borrowing at interest, or by way of
annuity, as they do at Venice, is ruinous. It seems, therefore, that
Bodin recommends loans without interest, which must be compulsory. In
the remainder of this chapter he treats of the best mode of expending
the public revenue, and advises that royal grants should be closely
examined, and, if excessive, be rescinded, at least after the death of
the reigning king.[1119]
[1119] c. 2.
|Adulteration of coin.|
71. Every adulteration of coin, to which Bodin proceeds, and every
change in its value is dangerous, as it affects the certainty of
contracts, and renders every man’s property insecure. The different
modes of alloying coin are then explained according to practical
metallurgy, and, assuming the constant ratio of gold to silver as twelve
to one, he advises that coins of both metals should be of the same
weight. The alloy should not be above one in twenty-four; and the same
standard should be used for plate. Many curious facts in monetary
history will be found collected in this chapter.[1120]
[1120] c. 3.
|Superiority of monarchy.|
72. Bodin next states fully and with apparent fairness, the advantages
and disadvantages both of democracy and aristocracy, and, admitting that
some evils belong to monarchy, contends that they are all much less than
in the two other forms. It must be remembered, that he does not
acknowledge the possibility of a mixed government; a singular error,
which, of course, vitiates his reasonings in this chapter. But it
contains many excellent observations on democratical violence and
ignorance, which history had led him duly to appreciate.[1121] The best
form of polity, he holds to be a monarchy by agnatic succession, such
as, in contradiction to Hottoman, he maintained to have been always
established in France, pointing out also the mischiefs that have ensued
in other countries for want of a Salic law.[1122]
[1121] c. 4.
[1122] c. 5.
|Conclusion of the work.|
73. In the concluding chapter of the work, Bodin, with too much parade
of mathematical language, descants on what he calls arithmetical,
geometrical, and harmonic proportions, as applied to political regimen.
As the substance of all this appears only to be, that laws ought
sometimes to be made according to the circumstances and conditions of
different ranks in society, sometimes to be absolutely equal, it will
probably be thought by most rather incumbered by this philosophy, which,
however, he borrowed from the ancients, and found conformable to the
spirit of learned men in his own time. Several interesting questions in
the theory of jurisprudence are incidentally discussed in this chapter,
such as that of the due limits of judicial discretion.
|Bodin compared with Aristotle and Machiavel.|
74. It must appear, even from this imperfect analysis, in which much has
been curtailed of its fair proportion, and many both curious and
judicious observations omitted, that Bodin possessed a highly
philosophical mind, united with the most ample stores of history and
jurisprudence. No former writer on political philosophy had been either
so comprehensive in his scheme, or so copious in his knowledge; none,
perhaps, more original, more independent and fearless in his inquiries.
Two names alone, indeed, could be compared with his: Aristotle and
Machiavel. Without, however, pretending that Bodin was equal to the
former in acuteness and sagacity, we may say that the experience of two
thousand years, and the maxims of reason and justice, suggested or
corrected by the gospel and its ministers, by the philosophers of Greece
and Rome, and by the civil law, gave him advantages, of which his
judgment and industry fully enabled him to avail himself. Machiavel,
again, has discussed so few, comparatively, of the important questions
in political theory, and has seen many things so partially, according to
the narrow experience of Italian republics, that, with all his
superiority in genius, and still more in effective eloquence, we can
hardly say that his Discourses on Livy are a more useful study than the
Republic of Bodin.
|And with Montesquieu.|
75. It has been often alleged, as we have mentioned above, that
Montesquieu owed something, and especially his theory of the influence
of climate, to Bodin. But, though he had unquestionably read the
Republic with that advantage which the most fertile minds derive from
others, this ought not to detract in our eyes from his real originality.
The Republic, and the Spirit of Laws bear, however, a more close
comparison than any other political systems of celebrity. Bodin and
Montesquieu are, in this province of political theory, the most
philosophical of those who have read so deeply, the most learned of
those who have thought so much. Both acute, ingenious, little respecting
authority in matters of opinion, but deferring to it in established
power, and hence apt to praise the fountain of waters whose bitterness
they exposed; both in advance of their age, but one so much that
his genius neither kindled a fire in the public mind, nor gained its own
due praise, the other more fortunate in being the immediate herald of a
generation which he stimulated, and which repaid him by its admiration;
both conversant with ancient and mediæval history, and with the Roman as
well as national law; both just, benevolent, and sensible of the great
object of civil society, but displaying this with some variation
according to their times; both sometimes seduced by false analogies, but
the one rather through respect to an erroneous philosophy, the other
through personal thirst of praise and affectation of originality; both
aware that the basis of the philosophy of man is to be laid in the
records of his past existence; but the one prone to accumulate
historical examples without sufficient discrimination, and to overwhelm,
instead of convincing the reader by their redundancy, the other aiming
at an induction from select experience, but hence appearing sometimes to
reason generally from particular premises, or dazzling the student by a
proof that does not satisfy his reason.[1123]
[1123] This account of Bodin’s Republic will be found too long by many
readers; and I ought, perhaps, to apologise for it on the score
that M. Lerminier, in his brilliant and agreeable Introduction à
l’Histoire Generale du Droit (Paris, 1829), has pre-occupied the
same ground. This, however, had escaped my recollection (though I
was acquainted with the work of M. L.) when I made my own analysis,
which has not been borrowed in a single line from his. The labours
of M. Lerminier are not so commonly known in England as to render
it unnecessary to do justice to a great French writer of the
sixteenth century.
As I have mentioned M. Lerminier, I would ask whether the following
is a fair translation of the Latin of Bodin:--Eo nos ipsa ratio
deducit, imperia scilicet ac respublicas vi primum coaluisse,
_etiam si ab historia deseramur_; quamquam pleni sunt libri,
plenæ leges, plena antiquitas. En établissant la théorie de
l’origine des sociétés, il declare qu’il y persiste, _quand même
les faits iraient à l’encontre_. Hist. du Droit. p. 62 and 67.
SECT. III.--ON JURISPRUDENCE.
_Golden Age of Jurisprudence--Cujacius--Other Civilians--Anti-Tribonianus
of Hottoman--Law of Nations--Franciscus a Victoria--Balthazar
Ayala--Albericus Gentilis._
|Golden age of jurisprudence.|
|Cujacius.|
76. The latter part of the sixteenth century, denominated by Andrès the
golden age of jurisprudence, produced the men who completed what Alciat
and Augustinus had begun in the preceding generation, by elucidating and
reducing to order the dark chaos which the Roman law, enveloped in its
own obscurities and those of its earlier commentators, had presented to
the student. The most distinguished of these, Cujacius, became professor
at Bourges, the chief scene of his renown, and the principal seminary of
the Roman law in France, about the year 1555. His works, of which many
had been separately published, were collected in 1577, and they make an
epoch in the annals of jurisprudence. This greatest of all civil lawyers
pursued the track that Alciat had so successfully opened, avoiding all
scholastic subtleties of interpretation, for which he substituted a
general erudition that rendered the science at once more intelligible
and more attractive. Though his works are voluminous, Cujacius has not
the reputation of diffuseness; on the contrary, the art of lucid
explanation with brevity is said to have been one of his great
characteristics. Thus, in the Paratitla on the Digest, a little book
which Hottoman, his rival and enemy, advised his own son to carry
constantly about with him, we find a brief exposition, in very good
Latin, of every title in order, but with little additional matter. And
it is said that he thought nothing requisite for the Institutes but
short clear notes, which his thorough admirers afterwards contrasted
with the celebrated but rather verbose commentaries of Vinnius.
|Eulogies bestowed upon him.|
77. Notwithstanding this conciseness, his works extend to a formidable
length. For the civil law itself is, for the most part, very concisely
written, and stretches to such an extent, that his indefatigable
diligence in illustrating every portion of it could not be satisfied
within narrow bounds. “Had Cujacius been born sooner,” in the words of
the most elegant of his successors, “he would have sufficed instead of
every other interpreter. For neither does he permit us to remain
ignorant of anything, nor to know anything which he has not taught. He
alone instructs us on every subject, and what he teaches is always his
own. Hence, though the learned style of jurisprudence began with Alciat,
we shall call it Cujacian.”[1124] “Though the writings of Cujacius are
so voluminous,” says Heineccius, “that scarce any one seems likely to
read them all, it is almost peculiar to him, that the longer any of his
books is, the more it is esteemed. Nothing in them is trivial, nothing
such as might be found in any other; everything so well chosen that the
reader can feel no satiety; and the truth is seen of what he answered to
his disciples, when they asked for more diffuse commentaries, that his
lectures were for the ignorant, his writings for the learned.”[1125] A
later writer, Gennari, has given a more fully elaborate character of
this illustrious lawyer, who might seem to have united every excellence
without a failing.[1126] But without listening to the enemies whom his
own eminence, or the polemical fierceness of some disputes in which he
was engaged, created among the jurists of that age, it has since been
observed, that in his writings may be detected some inconsistencies, of
which whole books have been invidiously compiled, and that he was too
prone to abuse his acuteness by conjectural emendations of the text; a
dangerous practice, as Bynkershoek truly remarks, when it may depend
upon a single particle whether the claim of Titius or of Marius shall
prevail.[1127]
[1124] Gravina, Origines, Juris Civilis, p. 219.
[1125] Heineccii Opera xiv. 203. He prefers the Observationes atque
Emendationes of Cujacius to all his other works. These contain
twenty-eight books, published, at intervals, from the year 1556.
They were designed to extend to forty books.
[1126] Respublica Jurisconsultorum, p. 237. Intactum in jurisprudentia
reliquit nihil, et quæ scribit, non tam ex aliis excerpta, quam a
se inventa, sane fatentur omnes; ita omnia suo loco posita, non
nimis protracta, quæ nauseam creant, non arcte ac jejune tractata,
quæ explicationis paullo diffusioris pariunt desiderium. Candida
perspicuitate brevis, elegans sub amabili simplicitate, caute
eruditus, quantum patitur occasio, ubique docens, ne aliqua parte
arguatur otiosus, tam nihil habet inane, nihil inconditum,
nihil curtum, nihil claudicans, nihil redundans, amœnus in
Observationibus, subtilis in Tractatibus, uber ac planus in
Commentariis, generosus in refellendis objectis, accuratus in
confingendis notis, in Paratitlis brevis ac succi plenus, rectus
prudensque in Consultationibus.
[1127] Heinecc. xiv. 209. Gennari, p. 199.
|Cujacius, an interpreter of law rather than a lawyer.|
78. Such was the renown of Cujacius that, in the public schools of
Germany, when his name was mentioned, every one took off his hat.[1128]
The continual bickerings of his contemporaries, not only of the old
Accursian school, among whom Albericus Gentilis was prominent in
disparaging him, but of those who had been trained in the steps of
Alciat like himself, did not affect this honest admiration of the
general student.[1129] But we must not consider Cujacius exactly in the
light of what we now call a great lawyer. He rejected all modern
forensic experience with scorn, declaring that he had misspent his youth
in such studies. We have, indeed, fifty of his consultations which
appear to be actual cases. But, in general, it is observed by Gravina
that both he and the greatest of his disciples “are but ministers of
ancient jurisprudence, hardly deigning to notice the emergent questions
of modern practice. Hence, while the elder jurists of the school of
Bartolus, deficient as they are in expounding the Roman laws, yet apply
them judiciously to new cases, these excellent interpreters hardly
regard anything modern, and leave to the others the whole honour of
advising and deciding rightly.” Therefore he recommends that the student
who has imbibed the elements of Roman jurisprudence in all their purity
from the school of Cujacius, should not neglect the interpretations of
Accursius in obscure passages; and, above all, should have recourse to
Bartolus and his disciples for the arguments, authorities, and
illustrations which ordinary forensic questions will require.[1130]
[1128] Gennari, p. 246. Biogr. Univ.
[1129] Heineccius, ibid. Gennari, p. 242.
[1130] Gravina, p. 222, 230.
|French lawyers below Cujacius; Govea and others.|
79. At some distance below Cujacius, but in places of honour, we find
among the great French interpreters of the civil law in this age,
Duaren, as devoted to ancient learning as Cujacius, but differing from
him by inculcating the necessity of forensic practice to form a perfect
lawyer;[1131] Govea, who, though a Portuguese, was always resident in
France, whom some have set even above Cujacius for ability, and of whom
it has been said that he is the only jurist who ought to have written
more;[1132] Brisson, a man of various learning, who became in the
seditions of Paris an unfortunate victim of his own weak ambition;
Balduin, a strenuous advocate for uniting the study of ancient history
with that of law; Godefroi, whose Corpus Juris Civilis makes an
epoch in jurisprudence, being the text-book universally received; and
Connan, who is at least much quoted by the principal writers on the law
of nature and nations. The boast of Germany was Gifanius.
[1131] Duarenus ... sine forensis exercitationis præsidio nec satis
percipi, nec recte commodeque doceri jus civile existimate.
Gennari, p. 179.
[1132] Goveanus ... vir, de quo uno desideretur, plura scripsisse, de
cæteris vero, pauciora.... quia felix ingenio, naturæ viribus
tantum confideret, ut diligentiæ laudem sibi non necessariam, minus
etiam honorificam putare videatur. Gennari, p. 281.
|Opponents of the Roman law.|
80. These “ministers of ancient jurisprudence” seemed to have no other
office than to display the excellences of the old masters in their
original purity. Ulpian and Papinian were to them what Aristotle and
Aquinas were to another class of worshippers. But the jurists of the age
of Severus have come down to us through a compilation in that of
Justinian; and Alciat himself had begun to discover the interpolations
of Tribonian, and the corruption which, through ignorance or design, had
penetrated the vast reservoir of the Pandects. Augustinus, Cujacius, and
other French lawyers of the school of Bourges followed in this track,
and endeavoured not only to restore the text from errors introduced by
the carelessness of transcribers, a necessary and arduous labour, but
from those springing out of the presumptuousness of the lawgiver
himself, or of those whom he had employed. This excited a vehement
opposition, led by some of the chief lawyers of France, jealous of the
fame of Cujacius. But while they pretended to rescue the orthodox
vulgate from the innovations of its great interpreter, another sect rose
up, far bolder than either, which assailed the law itself. Of these the
most determined were Faber and Hottoman.
|Faber of Savoy.|
81. Antony Faber, or Fabre, a lawyer of Savoy, who became president of
the court of Chamberi in 1610, acquired his reputation in the sixteenth
century. He waged war against the whole body of commentators, and even
treated the civil law itself as so mutilated and corrupt, so
inapplicable to modern times, that it would be better to lay it
altogether aside. Gennari says, that he would have been the greatest of
lawyers, if he had not been too desirous to appear such;[1133] his
temerity and self-confidence diminished the effect of his ability. His
mind was ardent and unappalled by difficulties; no one had more enlarged
views of jurisprudence, but in his interpretations he was prone to make
the laws rather what they ought to have been than what they were. His
love of paradox is hardly a greater fault than the perpetual carping at
his own master Cujacius, as if he thought the reform of jurisprudence
should have been reserved for himself.[1134]
[1133] P. 97.
[1134] Heineccius, p. 236. Fabre, says Ferriere, as quoted by
Terrasson, Hist. de la Jurisprudence, est celui des jurisconsultes
modernes qui a porté le plus loin les idées sur le droit. C’etoit
un esprit vaste que ne se rebutoit par de plus grandes difficultés.
Mais on l’accuse avec raison d’Avoir decidé un peu trop hardiment
contre les opinions communes, et de s’être donné souvent trop de
liberté de retrancher ou d’Ajouter dans les loix. See too the
article Favre, in Biographie Universelle.
|Anti-Tribonianus of Hottoman.|
82. But the most celebrated production of this party is the
Anti-Tribonianus of Hottoman. This was written in 1567, and though not
published in French till 1609, nor in the original till 1647, seems
properly to belong to the sixteenth century. He begins by acknowledging
the merit of the Romans in jurisprudence, but denies that the
compilation of Justinian is to be confounded with the Roman law. He
divides his inquiry into two questions: first, whether the study of
these laws is useful in France; and secondly, what are their
deficiencies. These laws, he observes by the way, contain very little
instruction about Roman history or antiquities, so that in books on
those subjects we rarely find them cited. He then adverts to particular
branches of the civil law, and shows that numberless doctrines are now
obsolete, such as the state of servitude, the right of arrogation, the
ceremonies of marriage, the peculiar law of guardianship, while for
matters of daily occurrence they give us no assistance. He points out
the useless distinctions between things _mancipi_ and _non
mancipi_, between the _dominium quiritarium_ and _bonitarium_; the modes
of acquiring property by mancipation, _cessio in jure_, _usucapio_, and
the like, the unprofitable doctrines about _fidei commissa_ and the _jus
accrescendi_. He dwells on the folly of keeping up the old forms of
stipulation in contracts, and those of legal process, from which no one
can depart a syllable without losing his suit. And on the whole he
concludes, that not a twentieth part of the Roman law survives, and of
that not one tenth can be of any utility. In the second part, Hottoman
attacks Tribonian himself, for suppressing the genuine works of great
lawyers, for barbarous language, for perpetually mutilating, transposing
and interpolating the passages which he inserts, so that no cohesion or
consistency is to be found in these fragments of materials, nor is it
possible to restore them. The evil has been increased by the herd of
commentators and interpreters since the twelfth century; those who have
lately appeared and applied more erudition rarely agreeing in their
conjectural emendations of the text, which yet frequently varies in
different manuscripts, so as to give rise to endless disputes. He ends
by recommending that some jurisconsults and advocates should be called
together, in order to compile a good code of laws; taking whatever is
valuable in the Roman system, and adding whatever from other sources may
seem worthy of reception, drawing them up in plain language, without too
much subtlety, and attending chiefly to the principles of equity. He
thinks that a year or two would suffice for the instruction of students
in such a code of laws, which would be completed afterwards, as was the
case at Rome, by forensic practice.
|Civil law not countenanced in France.|
83. These opinions of Hottoman, so reasonable in themselves, as to the
inapplicability of much of the Roman law to the actual state of society,
were congenial to the prejudices of many lawyers in France. That law had
in fact to struggle against a system already received, the feudal
customs which had governed the greater part of the kingdom. And this
party so much prevailed, that by the ordinance of Blois, in 1579, the
university of Paris was forbidden to give lectures or degrees in civil
law. This was not wholly regarded; but it was not till a century
afterwards, that public lectures in that science were re-established in
the university, on account of the uncertainty, which the neglect of the
civil law was alleged to have produced.
|Turamini.|
84. France now stood far pre-eminent in her lawyers. But Italy was not
wanting in men once conspicuous, whom we cannot afford time to mention.
One of them, Turamini, professor at Ferrara, though his name is not
found in Tiraboschi, or even in Gravina, seems to have had a more
luminous conception of the relation which should subsist between
positive laws and those of nature, as well as of their distinctive
provinces, than was common in the great jurists of that generation. His
commentary on the title De Legibus, in the first book of the Pandects,
gave him an opportunity for philosophical illustration. An account of
his writings will be found in Corniani.[1135]
[1135] Vol. vi. p. 197.
|Canon law.|
85. The canon law, though by no means a province sterile in the quantity
of its produce, has not deserved to arrest our attention. It was studied
conjointly with that of Rome, from which it borrows many of its
principles and rules of proceeding, though not servilely, nor without
such variations as the independence of its tribunals and the different
nature of its authorities might be expected to produce. Covarruvias and
other Spaniards were the most eminent canonists; Spain was distinguished
in this line of jurisprudence.
|Law of nations. Its early state.|
86. But it is of more importance to observe, that in this period we find
a foundation laid for the great science of international law, the
determining authority in questions of right between independent states.
Whatever had been delivered in books on this subject, had rested too
much on theological casuistry, or on the analogies of positive and local
law, or on the loose practice of nations, and precedents rather of arms
than of reason. The fecial law, or rights of ambassadors, was that which
had been most respected. The customary code of Europe, in military and
maritime questions, as well as in some others, to which no state could
apply its particular jurisprudence with any hope of reciprocity, grew up
by degrees to be administered, if not upon solid principles, yet with
some uniformity. The civil jurists, as being conversant with a system
more widely diffused, and of which the equity was more generally
recognised than any other, took into their hands the adjudication of all
these cases. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the progress of
international relations, and, we may add, the frequency of wars, though
it did not at once create a common standard, showed how much it was
required. War itself, it was perceived, even for the advantage of the
belligerents, had its rules; an enemy had his rights; the study of
ancient history furnished precedents of magnanimity and justice, which
put the more recent examples of Christendom to shame; the spirit of the
gospel could not be wholly suppressed, at least in theory; the
strictness of casuistry was applied to the duties of sovereigns; and
perhaps the scandal given by the writings of Machiavel was not without
its influence in dictating a nobler tone to the morality of
international law.
|Francis a Victoria.|
87. Before we come to works strictly belonging to this land of
jurisprudence, one may be mentioned which connects it with theological
casuistry. The Relectiones Theologicæ of Francis a Victoria, a
professor in Salamanca, and one on whom Nicolas Antonio and many other
Spanish writers bestow the highest eulogy, as the restorer of
theological studies in their country, is a book of remarkable scarcity,
though it has been published at least in four editions. Grotius has been
supposed to have made use of it in his own great work; but some of those
who since his time have mentioned Victoria’s writings on this subject,
lament that they are not to be met with. Dupin, however, has given a
short account of the Relectiones; and there are at least two copies in
England--one in the Bodleian Library, and another in that of Dr.
Williams in Redcross Street. The edition I have used is of Venice, 1626,
being probably the latest; it was published first at Lyons in 1557, at
Salamanca in 1565, and again at Lyons in 1587; but had become scarce
before its republication at Venice.[1136] It consists of thirteen
relections, as Victoria calls them, or dissertations on different
subjects, related in some measure to theology, at least by the mode in
which he treats them. The fifth, entitled De Indis, and the sixth, De
Jure Belli, are the most important.
[1136] This is said on the authority of the Venetian edition. But
Nicolas Antonio mentions an edition at Ingoldstadt in 1580, and
another at Antwerp in 1604. He is silent about those of 1587 and
1626. He also says that the Relectiones are twelve in number.
Perhaps he had never seen the book, but he does not advert to its
scarcity. Morhof, who calls it _Prælectiones_ names the two
editions of Lyons, and those of Ingoldstadt and Antwerp. Brunet,
Watts, and the Biographie Universelle do not mention Victoria at
all.
|His opinions on public law.|
88. The third is entitled, De Potestate Civili. In this he derives
government and monarchy from divine institution, and holds that, as the
majority of a state may choose a king whom the minority are bound to
obey, so the majority of Christians may bind the minority by the choice
of an universal monarch. In the chapter concerning the Indians, he
strongly asserts the natural right of those nations to dominion over
their own property and to sovereignty, denying the allegations founded
on their infidelity or vices. He treats this question methodically, in a
scholastic manner, giving the arguments on both sides. He denies that
the emperor, or the pope, is lord of the whole world, or that the pope
has any power over the barbarian Indians or other infidels. The right of
sovereignty in the king of Spain over these people he rests on such
grounds as he can find; namely, the refusal of permission to trade,
which he holds to be a just cause of war, and the cessions made to him
by allies among the native powers. In the sixth relection, on the right
of war, he goes over most of the leading questions, discussed afterwards
by Albericus Gentilis and Grotius. His dissertation is exceedingly
condensed, comprising sixty sections in twenty-eight pages; wherein he
treats of the general right of war, the difference between public war
and reprisal, the just and unjust causes of war, its proper ends, the
right of subjects to examine its grounds, and many more of a similar
kind. He determines that a war cannot be just on both sides, except
through ignorance; and also that subjects ought not to serve their
prince in a war which they reckon unjust. Grotius has adopted both these
tenets. The whole relection, as well as that on the Indians, displays an
intrepid spirit of justice and humanity, which seems to have been rather
a general characteristic of the Spanish theologians. Dominic Soto,
always inflexibly on the side of right, had already sustained by his
authority the noble enthusiasm of Las Casas.
|Ayala, on the rights of war.|
89. But the first book, so far as I am aware, that systematically
reduced the practice of nations in the conduct of war to legitimate
rules, is a treatise by Balthazar Ayala, judge-advocate (as we use the
word), to the Spanish army in the Netherlands, under the Prince of
Parma, to whom it is dedicated. The dedication bears date 1581, and the
first edition is said to have appeared the next year. I have only seen
that of 1597, and I apprehend every edition to be very scarce. For this
reason, and because it is the opening of a great subject, I shall give
the titles of his chapters in a note.[1137] It will appear, that
the second book of Ayala relates more to politics and to strategy than
to international jurisprudence; and that in the third he treats entirely
of what we call martial law. But in the first he aspires to lay down
great principles of public ethics; and Grotius, who refers to Ayala with
commendation, is surely mistaken in saying that he has not touched the
grounds of justice and injustice in war.[1138] His second chapter is on
this subject, in thirty-four pages; and though he neither sifts the
matter so exactly, nor limits the right of hostility so much as Grotius,
he deserves the praise of laying down the general principle without
subtlety or chicanery. Ayala positively denies, with Victoria, the right
of levying war against infidels, even by authority of the pope, on the
mere ground of their religion; for their infidelity does not deprive
them of right of dominion; nor was that sovereignty over the earth given
originally to the faithful alone, but to every reasonable creature. And
this, he says, has been shown by Covarruvias to be the sentiment of the
majority of doctors.[1139] Ayala deals abundantly in examples from
ancient history, and in authorities from the jurists.
[1137] Balth. Ayalæ, J. C. et exercitus regii apud Belgas supremi
juridici, de jure et officiis bellicis et disciplina militari,
libri tres. Antw. 1597. 12mo. pp. 405.
Lib. i.
c. 1. De Ratione Belli Indicendi, Aliisque Cæremoniis Bellicis.
2. De Bello Justo.
3. De Duello, sive Singulari Certamine.
4. De Pignerationibus, quas vulgo Represalias vocant.
5. De Bello Captis et Jure Postliminii.
6. De Fide Hosti Servanda.
7. De Fœderibus et Induciis.
8. De Insidiis et Fraude Hostili.
9. De Jure Legatorum.
Lib. ii.
c. 1. De Officiis Bellicis.
2. De Imperatore vel Duce Exercitus.
3. Unum non Plures Exercitui Præfici debere.
4. Utrum Lenitate et Benevolentia, an Severitate et Sævitia plus
proficiet Imperator.
5. Temporum Rationem præcipue in Bello Habendam.
6. Contentiosas et Lentas de Rebus Bellicis Deliberationes
admodum Noxias esse.
7. Dum Res sunt Integræ ne minimum quidem Regi vel Reipublicæ
de Majestate sua Concedendum esse; et errare eos qui
Arrogantiam Hostium Modestia et Patientia vinci posse
existimant.
8. An præstet Bellum Domi excipere, an vero in Hostilem Agrum
inferre.
9. An præstet Initio Prœlii Magno Clamore et Concitato Cursu in
Hostes pergere, an vero Loco manere.
10. Non esse Consilii invicem Infensos Civilibus Dissensionibus
Hostes Sola Discordia Fretum invadere.
11. Necessitatem Pugnandi Magno Studio Imponendam esse Militibus
et Hostibus Remittendam.
12. In Victoria potissimum de Pace Cogitandum.
13. Devictis Hostibus qua potissimum Ratione Perpetua Pace Quieti
obtineri possint [sic].
Lib. iii.
c. 1. De Disciplina Militari.
2. De Officio Legati et Aliorum qui Militibus præsunt.
3. De Metatoribus sive Mensoribus.
4. De Militibus, et qui Militare possunt.
5. De Sacramento Militari.
6. De Missione.
7. De Privilegiis Militum.
8. De Judiciis Militaribus.
9. De Pœnis Militum.
10. De Contumacibus et Ducum Dicto non Parentibus.
11. De Emansoribus.
12. De Desertoribus.
13. De Transfugis et Proditoribus.
14. De Seditiosis.
15. De Iis qui in Acie Loco cedunt aut Victi Se dedunt.
16. De Iis qui Arma alienant vel amittunt.
17. De Iis qui Excubias deserunt vel minus recte agunt.
18. De Eo qui Arcem vel Oppidum cujus Præsidio impositus est,
amittit vel Hostibus dedit.
19. De Furtis et Aliis Delictis Militaribus.
20. De Præmiis Militum.
[1138] Causas unde bellum justum aut injustum dicitur Ayala non
tetigit. De Jure B. and P. Prolegom. § 38.
[1139] Bellum adversus infideles ex eo solum quod infideles sunt, ne
quidem auctoritate imperatoris vel summi pontificis indici potest;
infidelitas enim non privat infideles dominio quod habent jure
gentium; nam non fidelibus tantum rerum dominia, sed omni
rationabili creaturæ data sunt.... Et hæc sententia plerisque
probatur, ut ostendit Covarruvias.
|Albericus Gentilis, on Embassies.|
90. We find next in order of chronology a treatise by Albericus Gentilis
De Legationibus, published in 1583. Gentilis was an Italian Protestant
who, through the Earl of Leicester, obtained the chair of civil law at
Oxford in 1582. His writings on Roman jurisprudence are numerous, but
not very highly esteemed. This work, on the law of Embassy, is dedicated
to Sir Philip Sydney, the patron of so many distinguished strangers. The
first book contains an explanation of the different kinds of embassies,
and of the ceremonies anciently connected with them. His aim, as he
professes, is to elevate the importance and sanctity of ambassadors, by
showing the practice of former times. In the second book he enters more
on their peculiar rights. The envoys of rebels and pirates are not
protected. But difference of religion does not take away the right of
sending ambassadors. He thinks that civil suits against public ministers
may be brought before the ordinary tribunals. On the delicate problem as
to the criminal jurisdiction of these tribunals over ambassadors
conspiring against the life of the sovereign, Gentilis holds, that they
can only be sent out of the country, as the Spanish ambassador was by
Elizabeth. The civil law, he maintains, is no conclusive authority in
the case of ambassadors, who depend on that of nations, which in many
respects is different from the other. This second book is the most
interesting, for the third chiefly relates to the qualifications
required in a good ambassador. His instances are more frequently taken
from ancient than modern history.
|His treatise on the Rights of War.|
91. A more remarkable work by Albericus Gentilis is his treatise, De
Jure Belli, first published at Lyons, 1589. Grotius acknowledges his
obligations to Gentilis, as well as to Ayala, but in a greater degree to
the former. And that this comparatively obscure writer was of some use
to the eminent founder, as he has been deemed, of international
jurisprudence, were it only for mapping his subject, will be evident
from the titles of his chapters, which run almost parallel to those of
the first and third books of Grotius.[1140] They embrace, as the reader
will perceive, the whole field of public faith, and of the rights both
of war and victory. But I doubt whether the obligation has been so
extensive as has sometimes been insinuated. Grotius does not, as far as
I have compared them, borrow many quotations from Gentilis, though he
cannot but sometimes allege the same historical examples. It will also
be found in almost every chapter, that he goes deeper into the subject,
reasons much more from ethical principles, relies less on the authority
of precedent, and is in fact a philosopher where the other is a compiler.
[1140]
Lib. i.
c. 1. De Jure Gentium Bellico.
2. Belli Definitio.
3. Principes Bellum gerunt.
4. Latrones Bellum non gerunt.
5. Bella juste geruntur.
6. Bellum juste geri utrinque.
7. De Caussis Bellorum.
8. De Caussis Divinis Belli Faciendi.
9. An Bellum Justum sit pro Religione.
10. Si Princeps Religionem Bello apud suos juste tuetur.
11. An Subditi bellent contra Principem ex Caussa Religionis.
12. Utrum sint Caussæ Naturales Belli Faciendi.
13. De Necessaria Defensione.
14. De Utili Defensione.
15. De Honesta Defensione.
16. De Subditis Alienis contra Dominum Defendendis.
17. Qui Bellum necessarie inferunt.
18. Qui utiliter Bellum inferunt.
19. De Naturalibus Caussis Belli inferendi.
20. De Humanis Caussis Belli inferendi.
21. De Malefactis Privatorum.
22. De Vetustis Caussis non Excitandis.
23. De Regnorum Eversionibus.
24. Si in Posteros movetur Bellum.
25. De Honesta Caussa Belli inferendi.
Lib. ii.
c. 1. De Bello Indicendo.
2. Si quando Bellum non indicitur.
3. De Dolo et Stratagematis.
4. De Dolo Verborum.
5. De Mendaciis.
6. De Veneficiis.
7. De Armis et Mentitis Armis.
8. De Scævola, Juditha, et Similibus.
9. De Zopiro et Aliis Transfugis.
10. De Pactis Ducum.
11. De Pactis Militum.
12. De Induciis.
13. Quando contra Inducias fiat.
14. De Salvo Conductu.
15. De Permutationibus et Liberationibus.
16. De Captivis, et non necandis.
17. De His qui se Hosti tradunt.
18. In Deditos, et Captos sæviri.
19. De Obsidibus.
20. De Supplicibus.
21. De Pueris et Fœminis.
22. De Agricolis, Mercatoribus, Peregrinis, Aliis Similibus.
23. De Vastitate et Incendiis.
24. De Cæsis sepeliendis.
Lib. iii.
c. 1. De Belli Fine et Pace.
2. De Ultione Victoris.
3. De Sumptibus et Damnis Belli.
4. Tributis et Agris multari Victos.
5. Victoris Acquisitio Universalis.
6. Victos Ornamentis Spoliari.
7. Urbes diripi, dirui.
8. De Ducibus Hostium Captis.
9. De Servis.
10. De Statu Mutando.
11. De Religionis Aliarumque Rerum Mutatione.
12. Si Utile cum Honesto Pugnet.
13. De Pace Futura Constituenda.
14. De Jure Conveniendi.
15. De Quibus cavetur in Fœderibus et in Duello.
16. De Legibus et Libertate.
17. De Agris et Postliminio.
18. De Amicitia et Societate.
19. Si Fœdus recte contrahitur cum Diversæ Religionis Hominibus.
20. De Armis et Classibus.
21. De Arcibus et Præsidiis.
22. Si Successores Fœderatorum tenentur.
23. De Ratihabitione, Privatis, Piratis, Exulibus, Adhærentibus.
24. Quando Fœdus violatur.
92. Much that bears on the subject of international law may probably be
latent in the writings of the jurists, Baldus, Covarruvias, Vasquez,
especially the two latter, who seem to have combined the science of
casuistry with that of the civil law. Gentilis, and even Grotius, refer
much to them; and the former, who is no great philosopher, appears to
have borrowed from that source some of his general principles. It is
honourable to these men, as we have already seen in Soto, Victoria, and
Ayala, that they strenuously defended the maxims of political justice.
CHAPTER XIV.
HISTORY OF POETRY FROM 1550 TO 1600.
SECT. I.--ON ITALIAN POETRY.
_Character of the Italian Poets of this Age--Some of the best
enumerated--Bernardino Rota--Gaspara Stampa--Bernardo Tasso--
Gierusalemme Liberata of Torquato Tasso._
|General character of Italian poets in this age.|
|Their usual faults.|
1. The school of Petrarch, restored by Bembo, was prevalent in Italy at
the beginning of this period. It would demand the use of a library,
formed peculiarly for this purpose, as well as a great expenditure of
time, to read the original volumes which this immensely numerous class
of poets, the Italians of the sixteenth century, filled with their
sonnets. In the lists of Crescimbeni, they reach the number of 661. We
must, therefore, judge of them chiefly through selections, which, though
they may not always have done justice to every poet, cannot but present
to us an adequate picture of the general style of poetry. The majority
are feeble copyists of Petrarch. Even in most of those who have been
preferred to the rest, an affected intensity of passion, a monotonous
repetition of customary metaphors, of hyperboles reduced to commonplaces
by familiarity, of mythological allusions, pedantic without novelty,
cannot be denied incessantly to recur. But, in observing how much they
generally want of that which is essentially the best, we might be in
danger of forgetting that there is a praise due to selection of words,
to harmony of sound, and to skill in overcoming metrical impediments,
which it is for natives alone to award. The authority of Italian critics
should, therefore, be respected, though not without keeping in mind both
their national prejudice, and that which the habit of admiring a very
artificial style must always generate.
|Their beauties.|
2. It is perhaps hardly fair to read a number of these compositions in
succession. Every sonnet has its own unity, and is not, it might be
pleaded, to be charged with tediousness or monotony, because the same
structure of verse, or even the same general sentiment, may recur in an
equally independent production. Even collectively taken, the minor
Italian poetry of the sixteenth century may be deemed a great repertory
of beautiful language, of sentiments and images, that none but minds
finely tuned by nature produce, and that will ever be dear to congenial
readers, presented to us with exquisite felicity and grace, and
sometimes with an original and impressive vigour. The sweetness of the
Italian versification goes far towards their charm; but are poets
forbidden to avail themselves of this felicity of their native tongue,
or do we invidiously detract, as we might on the same ground, from the
praise of Theocritus and Bion?
|Character given by Muratori.|
3. “The poets of this age,” says one of their best critics, “had, in
general, a just taste, wrote with elegance, employed deep, noble, and
natural sentiments, and filled their compositions with well-chosen
ornaments. There may be observed, however, some difference between the
authors who lived before the middle of the century and those who
followed them. The former were more attentive to imitate Petrarch, and
unequal to reach the fertility and imagination of this great master,
seemed rather dry, with the exception, always, of Casa and Costanzo,
whom, in their style of composition, I greatly admire. The later
writers, in order to gain more applause, deviated in some measure from
the spirit of Petrarch, seeking ingenious thoughts, florid conceits,
splendid ornaments, of which they became so fond, that they fell
sometimes into the vicious extreme of saying too much.”[1141]
[1141] Muratori, della Perfetta Poesia, i. 22.
|Poetry of Casa.|
4. Casa and Costanzo, whom Muratori seems to place in the earlier part
of the century, belong, by the date of publication at least, to this
latter period. The former was the first to quit the style of Petrarch,
which Bembo had rendered so popular. Its smoothness evidently wanted
vigour, and it was the aim of Casa to inspire a more masculine tone into
the sonnet, at the expense of a harsher versification. He occasionally
ventured to carry on the sense without pause from the first to the
second tercet; an innovation praised by many, but which, at that time,
few attempted to imitate, though, in later ages, it has become common,
not much perhaps to the advantage of the sonnet. The poetry of Casa
speaks less to the imagination, the heart, or the ear, than to the
understanding.[1142]
[1142] Casa ... per poco deviando dalla dolcezza del Petrarca, a un
novello stile diede principio, col quale le sue rime compose,
intendendo sopra il tutto alla gravitâ; per conseguir la quale, si
valse spezialmente del carattere aspro, e de’ raggirati periodi e
rotondi, insino a condurre uno stesso sentimento d’uno in altro
quadernario, e d’uno in altro terzetto; cosa in prima da alcuno non
più tentata; perlochè somma lode ritrasse de chiunque coltivò in
questi tempi la toscana poesia. Ma perche si fatto stile era
proprio, e adattato all’ingengo del suo inventore, molto difficile
riuscì il seguitarlo. Crescimbeni della volgar poesia, ii. 410. See
also Ginguéné, ix. 329. Tiraboschi, x. 22. Casa is generally, to my
apprehension, very harsh and prosaic.
|Of Costanzo.|
|Baldi.|
|Caro.|
5. Angelo di Costanzo, a Neapolitan, and author of a well-known history
of his country, is highly extolled by Crescimbeni and Muratori; perhaps
no one of these lyric poets of the sixteenth century is so much in
favour with the critics. Costanzo is so regular in his versification,
and so strict in adhering to the unity of subject, that the Society of
Arcadians, when, towards the close of the seventeenth century, they
endeavoured to rescue Italian poetry from the school of Marini, selected
him as the best model of imitation. He is ingenious, but perhaps a
little too refined; and by no means free from that coldly hyperbolical
tone in addressing his mistress, which most of these sonnetteers assume.
Costanzo is not to me, in general, a pleasing writer; though sometimes
he is very beautiful, as in the sonnet on Virgil, Quella cetra gentil,
justly praised by Muratori, and which will be found in most collections;
remarkable, among higher merits, for being contained in a single
sentence. Another, on the same subject, Cigni felici, is still better.
The poetry of Camillo Pellegrini much resembles that of Costanzo.[1143]
The sonnets of Baldi, especially a series on the ruins and antiquities
of Rome, appear to me deserving of a high place among those of the age.
They may be read among his poems; but few have found their way into the
collections by Gobbi and Rubbi, which are not made with the best taste.
Caro, says Crescimbeni, is less rough than Casa, and more original than
Bembo. Salfi extols the felicity of his style, and the harmony of his
versification; while he owns that his thoughts are often forced and
obscure.[1144]
[1143] Crescimbeni, vol. iv. p. 23.
[1144] Crescimbeni, ii. 429. Ginguéné (continuation par Salfi), ix. 12.
Caro’s sonnets on Castelvetro, written during their quarrel, are
full of furious abuse with no wit. They have the ridiculous
particularity that the last line of each is repeated so as to begin
the next.
|Odes of Celio Magno.|
6. Among the canzoni of this period, one by Celio Magno on the Deity
stands in the eyes of foreigners, and I believe of many Italians,
prominent above the rest. It is certainly a noble ode.[1145] Rubbi,
editor of the Parnaso Italiano, says that he would call Celio the
greatest lyric poet of his age, if he did not dread the clamour of the
Petrarchists. The poetry of Celio Magno, more than one hundred pages
extracted from which will be found in the thirty-second volume of that
collection, is not in general amatory, and displays much of that
sonorous rhythm and copious expression which afterwards made Chiabrera
and Guidi famous. Some of his odes, like those of Pindar, seem to have
been written for pay, and have somewhat of that frigid exaggeration
which such conditions produce. Crescimbeni thinks that Tansillo, in the
ode, has no rival but Petrarch.[1146] The poetry in general of Tansillo,
especially La Balia, which contains good advice to mothers about nursing
their infants very prosaically delivered, seems deficient in
spirit.[1147]
[1145] This will be found in the Componimenti Lirici of Mathias; a
collection good on the whole, yet not perhaps the best that might
have been made; nor had the editor at that time so extensive an
acquaintance with Italian poetry as he afterwards acquired.
Crescimbeni reckons Celio the last of the good age in poetry; he
died in 1612. He praises also Scipio Gaetano (not the painter of
that name) whose poems were published, but posthumously, in the
same year.
[1146] Della Volgar Poesia, ii. 436.
[1147] Roscoe republished La Balia, which was very little worth while;
the following is an average specimen:--
Questo degenerar, ch’ognor si vede,
Sendo voi caste, donne mie, vi dico,
Che d’Altro che dal latte non precede.
L’altrui latte oscurar fa’l pregio antico
Degli avi illustri e adulterar le razze,
E s’infetta talor sangue pudico.
|Coldness of the amatory sonnets.|
7. The amatory sonnets of this age, forming the greater number,
are very frequently cold and affected. This might possibly be ascribed
in some measure to the state of manners in Italy, where, with abundant
licentiousness, there was still much of jealousy, and public sentiment
applauded alike the successful lover and the vindictive husband. A
respect for the honour of families, if not for virtue, would impose on
the poet who felt or assumed a passion for any distinguished lady, the
conditions of Tasso’s Olindo, to desire much, to hope for little, and to
ask nothing. It is also at least very doubtful, whether much of the
amorous sorrow of the sonnetteers were not purely ideal.
|Studied imitation of Petrarch.|
8. Lines and phrases from Petrarch are as studiously introduced as we
find those of classical writers in modern Latin poetry. It cannot be
said that this is unpleasing; and to the Italians, who knew every
passage of their favourite poet, it must have seemed at once a grateful
homage of respect, and an ingenious artifice to bespeak attention. They
might well look up to him as their master, but could not hope that even
a foreigner would ever mistake the hand through a single sonnet. He is
to his disciples, especially those towards the latter part of the
century, as Guido is to Franceschini or Elisabetta Serena; an effeminate
and mannered touch enfeebles the beauty which still lingers round the
pencil of the imitator. If they produce any effect upon us beyond
sweetness of sound and delicacy of expression, it is from some natural
feeling, some real sorrow, or from some occasional originality of
thought, in which they cease for a moment to pace the banks of their
favourite Sorga. It would be easy to point out not a few sonnets of this
higher character, among those especially of Francesco Coppetta, of
Claudio Tolomei, of Ludovico Paterno, or of Bernardo Tasso.
|Their fondness for description.|
9. A school of poets, that has little vigour of sentiment, falls readily
into description, as painters of history or portrait that want
expression of character endeavour to please by their landscape. The
Italians, especially in this part of the sixteenth century, are profuse
in the song of birds, the murmur of waters, the shade of woods; and, as
these images are always delightful, they shed a charm over much of their
poetry, which only the critical reader, who knows its secret, is apt to
resist, and that to his own loss of gratification. The pastoral
character, which it became customary to assume, gives much opportunity
for these secondary, yet very seducing beauties of style. They belong to
the decline of the art, and have something of the voluptuous charm of
evening. Unfortunately they generally presage a dull twilight, or a
thick darkness of creative poetry. The Greeks had much of this in the
Ptolemaic age, and again in that of the first Byzantine emperors. It is
conspicuous in Tansillo, Paterno, and both the Tassos.
|Judgment of Italian critics.|
10. The Italian critics, Crescimbeni, Muratori, and Quadrio, have given
minute attention to the beauties of particular sonnets culled from the
vast stores of the sixteenth century. But as the development of the
thought, the management of the four constituent clauses of the sonnet,
especially the last, the propriety of every line, for nothing digressive
or merely ornamental should be admitted, constitute in their eyes the
chief merit of these short compositions, they extol some which in our
eyes are not so pleasing, as what a less regular taste might select.
Without presuming to rely on my own judgment, defective both as that of
a foreigner, and of one not so extensively acquainted with the minor
poetry of this age, I will mention two writers, well-known indeed, but
less prominent in the critical treatises than some others, as possessing
a more natural sensibility and a greater truth of sorrow than most of
their contemporaries, Bernardino Rota and Gaspara Stampa.
|Bernardino Rota.|
11. Bernardino Rota, a Neapolitan of ancient lineage and considerable
wealth, left poems in Latin as well as Italian; and among the latter his
eclogues are highly praised by his editor. But he is chiefly known by a
series of sonnets intermixed with canzoni, upon a single subject, Portia
Capece, his wife, whom, “what is unusual among our Tuscan poets (says
his editor), he loved with an exclusive affection.” But be it
understood, lest the reader should be discouraged, that the poetry
addressed to Portia Capece is all written before their marriage, or
after her death. The earlier division of the series, “Rime in Vita”
seems not to rise much above the level of amorous poetry. He wooed, was
delayed; complained, and won--the natural history of an equal and
reasonable love. Sixteen years intervened of that tranquil bliss which
contents the heart without moving it, and seldom affords much to the
poet in which the reader can find interest. Her death in 1559 gave rise
to poetical sorrows, as real and certainly full as rational as
those of Petrarch, to whom some of his contemporaries gave him the
second place; rather probably from the similarity of their subject, than
from the graces of his language. Rota is by no means free from conceits,
and uses sometimes affected and unpleasing expressions, as _mia dolce
guerra_, speaking of his wife, even after her death; but his images
are often striking;[1148] and, above all, he resembles Petrarch, with
whatever inferiority, in combining the ideality of a poetical mind with
the naturalness of real grief. It has never again been given to man, nor
will it probably be given, to dip his pen in those streams of ethereal
purity which have made the name of Laura immortal; but a sonnet of Rota
may be not disadvantageously compared with one of Milton, which we
justly admire for its general feeling, though it begins in pedantry and
ends in conceit.[1149] For my own part, I would much rather read again
the collection of Rota’s sonnets than those of Costanzo.
[1148] Muratori blames a line of Rota as too bold, and containing a
false thought.
Feano i begl’occhi a se medesmi giorno.
It seems to me not beyond the limits of poetry, nor more
hyperbolical than many others which have been much admired. It is,
at least, _Petrarchesque_ in a high degree.
[1149] This sonnet is in Mathias, iii. 256. That of Milton will be
remembered by most readers.
In lieto e pien di riverenza aspetto,
Con veste di color bianco e vermiglio,
Di doppia luce serenato il ciglio,
Mi viene in sonno il mio dolce diletto.
Io me l’inchino, e con cortese affetto
Seco ragiono e seco mi consiglio,
Com’abbia a governarmi in quest’esigilo,
E piango intanto, e la risposta aspetto.
Ella m’ascolta fiso, e dice cose
Veramente celesti, ed io l’apprendo,
E serbo ancor nella memoria ascose.
Mi lascia alfine e parte, e va spargendo
Per l’aria nel partir viole e rose;
Io le porgo la man; poi mi reprendo.
In one of Rota’s sonnets we have the thought of Pope’s epitaph on
Gay.
Questo cor, questa mente e questo petto
Sia ’l tuo sepolcro, e non la tomba o ’l sasso,
Ch’io t’apparecchio qui doglioso e lasso;
Non si deve a te, donna, altro ricetto.
He proceeds very beautifully:--
Ricca sia la memoria e l’intelletto,
Del ben per cui tutt’altro a dietro io lasso;
E mentre questo mar di pianto passo,
Vadami sempre innanzi il caro objetto.
Alma gentil, dove bitar solei
Donna e reina, in terren fascio avvolta,
Ivi regnar celeste immortal dei.
Vantisi pur la morte averti tolta
Al mondo, a me non già; ch’a pensier miei
Una sempre sarai viva e sepolta.
The poems of Rota are separately published in two volumes. Naples,
1726. They contain a mixture of Latin. Whether Milton intentionally
borrowed the sonnet on his wife’s death,
“Methought I saw my last espoused saint,”
from that above quoted, I cannot pretend to say; certainly his
resemblances to the Italian poets often seem more than accidental.
Thus two lines in an indifferent writer, Girolamo Preti (Mathias,
iii. 329) are exactly like one of the sublimest flights in the
Paradise Lost.
Tu per soffrir della cui luce i rai
Si fan con l’ale i serafini un velo.
Dark with excessive light thy skirts appear:
Yet dazzle Heaven, that brightest seraphim
Approach not, but with both wings veil their eyes.
|Gaspara Stampa. Her love for Collalto.|
|Is ill-requited.|
|Her second love.|
12. The sorrows of Gaspara Stampa were of a different kind, but not less
genuine than those of Rota. She was a lady of the Paduan territory,
living near the small river Anaso, from which she adopted the poetical
name of Anasilla. This stream bathes the foot of certain lofty hills,
from which a distinguished family, the Counts of Collalto, took their
appellation. The representative of this house, himself a poet as well as
a soldier, and, if we believe his fond admirer, endowed with every
virtue except constancy, was loved by Gaspara with enthusiastic passion.
Unhappily she learned only by sad experience the want of generosity too
common to man, and sacrificing, not the honour, but the pride of her
sex, by submissive affection, and finally by querulous importunity, she
estranged a heart never so susceptible as her own. Her sonnets, which
seem arranged nearly in order, begin with the delirium of sanguine love;
they are extravagant effusions of admiration, mingled with joy and hope;
but soon the sense of Collalto’s coldness glides in and overpowers her
bliss.[1150] After three years’ expectation of seeing his promise of
marriage fulfilled, and when he had already caused alarm by his
indifference, she was compelled to endure the pangs of absence by his
entering the service of France. This does not seem to have been of long
continuance; but his letters were infrequent, and her complaints, always
vented in a sonnet, become more fretful. He returned, and Anasilla
exults with tenderness, yet still timid in the midst of her joy.
Oserò io, con queste fide braccia,
Cingerli il caro collo, ed accostare
La mia tremante alla sua viva faccia?
But jealousy, not groundless, soon intruded, and we find her doubly
miserable. Collalto became more harsh, avowed his indifference, forbade
her to importune him with her complaints; and in a few months espoused
another woman. It is said by the historians of Italian literature, that
the broken heart of Gaspara sunk very soon under these accumulated
sorrows into the grave.[1151] And such, no doubt, is what my readers
expect, and (at least the gentler of them), wish to find. But inexorable
truth, to whom I am the sworn vassal, compels me to say that the poems
of the lady herself contain unequivocal proof that she avenged herself
better on Collalto,--by falling in love again. We find the
acknowledgment of another incipient passion, which speedily comes to
maturity; and, while declaring that her present flame is much stronger
than the last, she dismisses her faithless lover with the handsome
compliment, that it was her destiny always to fix her affections on a
noble object. The name of her second choice does not appear in her
poems; nor has any one hitherto, it would seem, made the very easy
discovery of his existence. It is true that she died young; “but not of
love.”[1152]
[1150] In an early sonnet she already calls Collalto, “il Signor,
_ch’io amo, e ch’io pavento_;” an expression descriptive enough of
the state in which poor Gaspara seems to have lived several years.
[1151] She anticipated her epitaph, on this hypothesis of a broken
heart, which did not occur.
Per amar molto, ed esser poco amata
Visse e mori infelice; ed or quì giace
La più fedel amante che sia stata.
Pregale, viator, riposo e pace,
Ed impara de lei si mal trattata
A non seguire un cor crudo e fugace.
[1152] It is impossible to dispute the evidence of Gaspara herself in
several sonnets, so that Corniani, and all the rest, must have read
her very inattentively. What can we say to these lines?
Perchè mi par vedere a certi segni
Ch’ordisci (Amor) nuovi lacci e nuove faci,
E di ritrarme al giogo tuo t’ingegni.
And afterwards more fully:
Qual darai fine, Amor, alle mie pene,
Se dal cinere estinto d’uno ardore
Rinasce l’altro, tua mercè, maggiore,
E si vivace a consumar mi viene?
Qual nelle più felici e calde arene
Nel nido acceso sol di vario odore
D’una fenice estinta esce poi fuore
Un verme, che fenice altra diviene.
In questo io debbo à tuoi cortesi strali
Che sempre è degno, ed onorato oggetto
Quello, onde mi ferisci, onde m’assali.
Ed ora è tale, e tanto, e sì perfetto,
Ha tante doti alla bellezza eguali,
Ch’ardor per lui m’è sommo alto diletto.
|Style of Gaspara Stampa.|
13. The style of Gaspara Stampa is clear, simple, graceful; the Italian
critics find something to censure in the versification. In purity of
taste, I should incline to set her above Bernardino Rota, though she has
less vigour of imagination. Corniani has applied to her the well-known
lines of Horace upon Sappho.[1153] But the fires of guilt and shame,
that glow along the strings of the Æolian lyre, ill resemble the pure
sorrows of the tender Anasilla. Her passion for Collalto, ardent and
undisguised, was ever virtuous; the sense of gentle birth, though so
inferior to his, as perhaps to make a proud man fear disparagement,
sustained her against dishonourable submission.
E ben ver, che ’l desio, con che amo voi,
E tutto d’onestà pieno, e d’Amore;[1154]
Perchè altrimente non convien tra noi.[1155]
But not less in elevation of genius than in dignity of character, she is
very far inferior to Vittoria Colonna, or even to Veronica Gambara, a
poetess, who, without equalling Vittoria, had much of her nobleness and
purity. We pity the Gasparas; we should worship, if we could find them,
the Vittorias.
[1153]
... spirat adhuc amor,
Vivuntque commissi calores
Æoliæ fidibus puellæ.
Corniani, v. 212, and Salfi in Ginguéné, ix. 406, have done some
justice to the poetry of Gaspara Stampa, though by no means more
than it deserves. Bouterwek, ii. 150, observes only, viel Poesie
zeigt sich nicht in diesen Sonetten; which, I humbly conceive,
shows, that either he had not read them, or was an indifferent
judge; and from his general taste I prefer the former hypothesis.
[1154] _Sic._ leg. onore?
[1155] I quote these lines on the authority of Corniani, v. 215. But
I must own that they do not appear in the two editions of the Rime
della Gaspara Stampa which I have searched. I must also add that,
willing as I am to believe all things in favour of a lady’s honour,
there is one very awkward sonnet among those of poor Gaspara, upon
which it is by no means easy to put such a construction as we
should wish.
|La Nautica, of Baldi.|
14. Among the longer poems which Italy produced in this period two may
be selected. The Art of Navigation, La Nautica, published by Bernardino
Baldi in 1590, is a didactic poem in blank verse, too minute sometimes
and prosaic in its details, like most of that class, but neither low,
nor turgid, nor obscure, as many others have been. The descriptions,
though never very animated, are sometimes poetical and pleasing.
Baldi is diffuse; and this conspires with the triteness of his matter to
render the poem somewhat uninteresting. He by no means wants the power
to adorn his subject, but does not always trouble himself to exert it,
and is tame where he might be spirited. Few poems bear more evident
marks that their substance had been previously written down in prose.
|Amadigi of Bernardo Tasso.|
15. Bernardo Tasso, whose memory has almost been effaced with the
majority of mankind by the splendour of his son, was not only the most
conspicuous poet of the age wherein he lived, but was placed by its
critics, in some points of view, above Ariosto himself. His minor poetry
is of considerable merit.[1156] But that to which he owed most of his
reputation is an heroic romance on the story of Amadis, written about
1540, and first published in 1560. L’Amadigi is of prodigious length,
containing 100 cantos, and about 57,000 lines. The praise of facility,
in the best sense, is fully due to Bernardo. His narration is fluent,
rapid, and clear; his style not in general feeble or low, though I am
not aware that many brilliant passages will be found. He followed
Ariosto in his tone of relating the story: his lines perpetually remind
us of the Orlando; and I believe it would appear on close examination
that much has been borrowed with slight change. My own acquaintance,
however, with the Amadigi is not sufficient to warrant more than a
general judgment. Ginguéné, who rates this poem very highly, praises the
skill with which the disposition of the original romance has been
altered and its canvas enriched by new insertions, the beauty of the
images and sentiments, the variety of the descriptions, the sweetness,
though not always free from languor, of the style, and finally
recommends its perusal to all lovers of romantic poetry, and to all who
would appreciate that of Italy.[1157] It is evident, however, that the
choice of a subject become frivolous in the eyes of mankind, not less
than the extreme length of Bernardo Tasso’s poem, must render it almost
impossible to follow this advice.
[1156] “The character of his lyric poetry is a sweetness and abundance
of expressions and images, by which he becomes more flowing and
full (più morbido e più pastoso, metaphors not translatable by
single English words) than his contemporaries of the school of
Petrarch.” Corniani, v. 127.
A sonnet of Bernardo Tasso, so much admired at the time, that
almost every one, it is said, of a refined taste had it by heart,
will be found in Panizzi’s edition of the Orlando Innamorato, vol.
i. p. 376, with a translation by a lady well known for the skill
with which she has transferred the grace and feeling of Petrarch
into our language. The sonnet, which begins, Poichè la parte men
perfetta e bella, is not found in Gobbi or Mathias. It is
distinguished from the common crowd of Italian sonnets in the
sixteenth century by a novelty, truth, and delicacy of sentiment,
which is comparatively rare in them.
[1157] Vol. v. p. 61-108. Bouterwek (vol. ii. 159), speaks much less
favourably of the Amadigi, and, as far as I can judge, in too
disparaging a tone. Corniani, a great admirer of Bernardo, owns
that his _morbidezza_ and fertility have rendered him too
frequently diffuse and flowery. See also Panizzi, p. 393, who
observes that the Amadigi wants interest, but praises its
imaginative descriptions as well as its delicacy and softness.
|Satirical and burlesque poetry; Aretin.|
16. The satires of Bentivoglio, it is agreed, fall short of those by
Ariosto, though some have placed them above those of Alamanni.[1158] But
all these are satires on the regular model, assuming at least a
half-serious tone. A style more congenial to the Italians was that of
burlesque poetry, sometimes poignantly satirical, but as destitute of
any grave aim, as it was light and familiar, even to popular vulgarity,
in its expression, though capable of grace in the midst of its gaiety,
and worthy to employ the best master of Tuscan language.[1159] But it
was disgraced by some of its cultivators, and by none more than Peter
Aretin. The character of this profligate and impudent person is well
known; it appears extraordinary that, in an age so little scrupulous as
to political or private revenge, some great princes, who had never
spared a worthy adversary, thought it not unbecoming to purchase the
silence of an odious libeller, who called himself their scourge. In a
literary sense, the writings of Aretin are unequal; the serious are for
the most part reckoned wearisome and prosaic; in his satires a poignancy
and spirit, it is said, frequently breaks out; and though his
popularity, like that of most satirists, was chiefly founded on the
ill-nature of mankind, he gratified this with a neatness and point of
expression, which those who cared nothing for the satire might
admire.[1160]
[1158] Ginguéné, ix. 198. Biogr. Univ. Tiraboschi, x. 66.
[1159] A canzon by Coppetta on his cat, in the twenty-seventh volume
of the Parnaso Italiano, is rather amusing.
[1160] Bouterwek, ii. 207. His authority does not seem sufficient; and
Ginguéné, ix. 212, gives a worse character of the style of Aretin.
But Muratori (della Perfetta Poesia, ii. 284), extols one of his
sonnets, as deserving a very high place in Italian poetry.
|Other burlesque writers.|
|Attempts at Latin metres.|
17. Among the writers of satirical, burlesque, or licentious poetry,
after Aretin, the most remarkable are Firenzuola, Casa (one of whose
compositions passed so much all bounds as to have excluded him from the
purple, and has become the subject of a sort of literary controversy, to
which I can only allude),[1161] Franco, and Grazzini, surnamed Il Lasco.
I must refer to the regular historians of Italian literature for
accounts of these, as well as for the styles of poetry called
_macaronica_ and _pedantesca_, which appear wholly contemptible, and the
attempts to introduce Latin metres, a folly with which every nation has
been inoculated in its turn.[1162] Claudio Tolomei, and Angelo Costanzo
himself, by writing sapphics and hexameters, did more honour to so
strange a pedantry than it deserved.
[1161] A more innocent and diverting capitolo of Casa turns on the ill
luck of being named John.
S’io avessi manco quindici o vent’anni,
Messer Gandolfo, io mi sbattezzerei,
Per non aver mai più nome Giovanni.
Perch’io non posso andar pe’ fatti miei,
Nè partirmi di qui per ir si presso
Ch’io nol senta chiamar da cinque e sei.
He ends by lamenting that no alteration mends the name.
Mutalo, o sminuiscil, se tu sai,
O Nanni, o Gianni, o Giannino, o Giannozzo,
Come più tu lo tocchi, peggio fai,
Che gli è cattivo intero, e peggior mozzo.
[1162] Macaronic verse was invented by one Folengo, in the first part
of the century. This worthy had written an epic poem, which he
thought superior to the Æneid. A friend, to whom he showed the
manuscript, paid him the compliment, as he thought, of saying that
he had _equalled_ Virgil. Folengo, in a rage, threw his poem into
the fire, and sat down for the rest of his life to write
Macaronics. Journal des Savans, Dec. 1831.
|Poetical translations.|
18. The translation of the Metamorphoses of Ovid by Anguillara, seems to
have acquired the highest name with the critics;[1163] but that of the
Æneid by Caro is certainly the best known in Europe. It is not, however,
very faithful, though written in blank verse, which leaves a translator
no good excuse for deviating from his original; the style is diffuse,
and, upon the whole, it is better that those who read it should not
remember Virgil. Many more Italian poets ought, possibly, to be
commemorated; but we must hasten forward to the greatest of them all.
[1163] Salfi (continuation de Ginguéné), x. 180. Corniani, vi. 113.
|Torquato Tasso.|
19. The life of Tasso is excluded from these pages by the rule I have
adopted; but I cannot suppose any reader to be ignorant of one of the
most interesting and affecting stories that literary biography presents.
It was in the first stages of a morbid melancholy, almost of
intellectual derangement, that the Gierusalemme Liberata was finished;
it was during a confinement, harsh in all its circumstances, though
perhaps necessary, that it was given to the world. Several portions had
been clandestinely published, in consequence of the author’s inability
to protect his rights; and even the first complete edition in 1581 seems
to have been without his previous consent. In the later editions of the
same year he is said to have been consulted; but his disorder was then
at a height, from which it afterwards receded, leaving his genius
undiminished, and his reason somewhat more sound, though always
unsteady. Tasso died at Rome in 1595, already the object of the world’s
enthusiastic admiration, rather than of its kindness and sympathy.
|The Jerusalem excellent in choice of subject.|
20. The Jerusalem is the great epic poem, in the strict sense, of modern
times. It was justly observed by Voltaire, that in the choice of his
subject Tasso is superior to Homer. Whatever interest tradition might
have attached among the Greeks to the wrath of Achilles and the death of
Hector, was slight to those genuine recollections which were associated
with the first crusade. It was not the theme of a single people, but of
Europe; not a fluctuating tradition, but certain history; yet history so
far remote from the poet’s time, as to adapt itself to his purpose with
almost the flexibility of fable. Nor could the subject have been chosen
so well in another age or country; it was still the holy war, and the
sympathies of his readers were easily excited for religious chivalry;
but, in Italy, this was no longer an absorbing sentiment; and the stern
tone of bigotry, which perhaps might still have been required from a
Castilian poet, would have been dissonant amidst the soft notes that
charmed the court of Ferrara.
|Superior to Homer and Virgil in some points.|
21. In the variety of occurrences, the change of scenes and images, and
of the trains of sentiment connected with them in the reader’s mind, we
cannot place the Iliad on a level with the Jerusalem. And again, by the
manifest unity of subject, and by the continuance of the crusading army
before the walls of Jerusalem, the poem of Tasso has a coherence
and singleness, which is wanting to that of Virgil. Every circumstance
is in its place; we expect the victory of the Christians, but
acknowledge the probability and adequacy of the events that delay it.
The episodes, properly so to be called, are few and short; for the
expedition of those who recall Rinaldo from the arms of Armida, though
occupying too large a portion of the poem, unlike the fifth and sixth,
or even the second and third books of the Æneid, is an indispensable
link in the chain of its narrative.
|Its characters.|
22. In the delineation of character, at once natural, distinct, and
original, Tasso must give way to Homer, perhaps to some other epic and
romantic poets. There are some indications of the age in which he wrote,
some want of that truth to nature, by which the poet, like the painter,
must give reality to the conceptions of his fancy. Yet here also the
sweetness and nobleness of his mind, and his fine sense of moral beauty
are displayed. The female warrior had been an old invention, and few,
except Homer, had missed the opportunity of diversifying their battles
with such a character. But it is of difficult management; we know not
how to draw the line between the savage virago, from whom the
imagination revolts, and the gentler fair one, whose feats in arms are
ridiculously incongruous to her person and disposition. Virgil first
threw a romantic charm over his Camilla; but he did not render her the
object of love. In modern poetry, this seemed the necessary compliment
to every lady; but we hardly envy Rogero the possession of Bradamante,
or Arthegal that of Britomart. Tasso alone, with little sacrifice of
poetical probability, has made his readers sympathise with the
enthusiastic devotion of Tancred for Clorinda. She is so bright an
ideality, so heroic, and yet, by the enchantment of verse, so lovely,
that no one follows her through the combat without delight, or reads her
death without sorrow. And how beautiful is the contrast of this
character with the tender and modest Erminia! The heroes, as has been
hinted, are drawn with less power. Godfrey is a noble example of calm
and faultless virtue, but we find little distinctive character in
Rinaldo. Tancred has seemed to some rather too much enfeebled by his
passion, but this may be justly considered as part of the moral of the
poem.
|Excellence of its style.|
23. The Jerusalem is read with pleasure in almost every canto. No poem,
perhaps, if we except the Æneid, has so few weak or tedious pages; the
worst passages are the speeches, which are too diffuse. The native
melancholy of Tasso tinges all his poem; we meet with no lighter strain,
no comic sally, no effort to relieve for an instant the tone of
seriousness that pervades every stanza. But it is probable, that some
become wearied by this uniformity which his metre serves to augment. The
_ottava rima_ has its inconveniences; even its intricacy, when once
mastered, renders it more monotonous, and the recurrence of marked
rhymes, the breaking of the sense into equal divisions, while they
communicate to it a regularity that secures the humblest verse from
sinking to the level of prose, deprive it of that variety which the
hexameter most eminently possesses. Ariosto lessened this effect by the
rapid flow of his language, and perhaps by its negligence and
inequality; in Tasso, who is more sustained at a high pitch of elaborate
expression than any great poet except Virgil, and in whom a prosaic or
feeble stanza will rarely be found, the uniformity of cadence may
conspire with the lusciousness of style to produce a sense of satiety in
the reader. This is said rather to account for the injustice, as it
seems to me, with which some speak of Tasso, than to express my own
sentiments; for there are few poems of great length which I so little
wish to lay aside as the Jerusalem.
24. The diction of Tasso excites perpetual admiration; it is rarely
turgid or harsh; and though more figurative than that of Ariosto, it is
so much less than that of most of our own or the ancient poets, that it
appears simple in our eyes. Virgil to whom we most readily compare him,
is far superior in energy, but not in grace. Yet his grace is often too
artificial, and the marks of the file are too evident in the
exquisiteness of his language. Lines of superior beauty occur in almost
every stanza; pages after pages may be found, in which, not pretending
to weigh the style in the scales of the Florentine academy, I do not
perceive one feeble verse or improper expression.
|Some faults in it.|
25. The conceits so often censured in Tasso, though they bespeak the
false taste that had begun to prevail, do not seem quite so numerous as
his critics have been apt to insinuate; but we find sometimes a trivial
or affected phrase, or, according to the usage of the times, an idle
allusion to mythology, when the verse or stanza requires to be filled
up. A striking instance may be given from the admirable passage
where Tancred discovers Clorinda in the warrior on whom he has just
inflicted a mortal blow--
La vide, e la conobbe; e restò senza
E moto e senso----
The effect is here complete, and here he would have desired to stop. But
the necessity of the verse induced him to finish it with feebleness and
affectation. _Ahi vista! Ahi conoscenza!_ Such difficult metres as
the ottava rima demand these sacrifices too frequently. Ariosto has
innumerable lines of necessity.
|Defects of the poem.|
26. It is easy to censure the faults of this admirable poem. The
supernatural machinery is perhaps somewhat in excess; yet this had been
characteristic of the romantic school of poetry, which had moulded the
taste of Europe, and is seldom displeasing to the reader. A still more
unequivocal blemish is the disproportionate influence of love upon the
heroic crusaders, giving a tinge of effeminacy to the whole poem, and
exciting something like contempt in the austere critics, who have no
standard of excellence in epic song but what the ancients have erected
for us. But while we must acknowledge that Tasso has indulged too far
the inspirations of his own temperament, it may be candid to ask
ourselves, whether a subject so grave, and by necessity so full of
carnage, did not require many of the softer touches which he has given
it. His battles are as spirited and picturesque as those of Ariosto, and
perhaps more so than those of Virgil; but to the taste of our times he
has a little too much of promiscuous slaughter. The Iliad had here set
an unfortunate precedent, which epic poets thought themselves bound to
copy. If Erminia and Armida had not been introduced, the classical
critic might have censured less in the Jerusalem; but it would have been
far less also the delight of mankind.
|It indicates the peculiar genius of Tasso.|
27. Whatever may be the laws of criticism, every poet will best obey the
dictates of his own genius. The skill and imagination of Tasso made him
equal to descriptions of war; but his heart was formed for that sort of
pensive voluptuousness which most distinguishes his poetry, and which is
very unlike the coarser sensuality of Ariosto. He lingers around the
gardens of Armida, as though he had been himself her thrall. The
Florentine critics vehemently attacked her final reconciliation with
Rinaldo in the twentieth canto, and the renewal of their loves; for the
reader is left with no other expectation. Nor was their censure unjust;
since it is a sacrifice of what should be the predominant sentiment in
the conclusion of the poem. But Tasso seems to have become fond of
Armida, and could not endure to leave in sorrow and despair the creature
of his ethereal fancy, whom he had made so fair and so winning. It is
probable that the majority of readers are pleased with this passage, but
it can never escape the condemnation of severe judges.
|Tasso compared to Virgil;|
28. Tasso, doubtless, bears a considerable resemblance to Virgil. But,
independently of the vast advantages which the Latin language possesses
in majesty and vigour, and which render exact comparison difficult as
well as unfair, it may be said that Virgil displays more justness of
taste, a more extensive observation, and, if we may speak thus in the
absence of so much poetry which he might have imitated, a more genuine
originality. Tasso did not possess much of the self-springing invention
which we find in a few great poets, and which, in this higher sense, I
cannot concede to Ariosto; he not only borrows freely, and perhaps
studiously, from the ancients, but introduces frequent lines from
earlier Italian poets, and especially from Petrarch. He has also some
favourite turns of phrase, which serve to give a certain mannerism to
his stanzas.
|to Ariosto;|
29. The Jerusalem was no sooner published, than it was weighed against
the Orlando Furioso, and neither Italy nor Europe have yet agreed which
scale inclines. It is indeed one of those critical problems, that admit
of no certain solution, whether we look to the suffrage of those who
feel acutely and justly, or to the general sense of mankind. We cannot
determine one poet to be superior to the other, without assuming
premises which no one is bound to grant. Those who read for a
stimulating variety of circumstances, and the enlivening of a leisure
hour, must prefer Ariosto; and he is probably, on this account, a poet
of more universal popularity. It might be said perhaps by some, that he
is more a favourite of men, and Tasso of women. And yet, in Italy, the
sympathy with tender and graceful poetry is so general, that the
Jerusalem has hardly been less in favour with the people than its
livelier rival; and its fine stanzas may still be heard by moonlight
from the lips of a gondolier, floating along the calm bosom of
the Giudecca.[1164]
[1164] The following passages may perhaps be naturally compared, both
as being celebrated, and as descriptive of sound. Ariosto has
however much the advantage, and I do not think the lines in the
Jerusalem, though very famous, are altogether what I should select
as a specimen of Tasso.
Aspri concenti, orribile armonia
d’Alte querele, d’ululi, e di strida
Della misera gente, che peria
Nel fondo per cagion della sua guida,
Istranamente concordat s’udia
Col fiero suon della flamma omicida.
Orland. Fur. c. 14.
Chiama gli abitator dell’ombre eterne
Il rauco suon della tartarea tromba;
Treman le spaziose atre caverne,
E l’aer cieco a quel rumor rimbomba.
Nè si stridendo mai dalle superne
Regioni del cielo il folgor piomba;
Nè si scossa giammai trema la terra
Quando i vapori in sen gravida serra.
Gierus. Lib. c. 4.
In the latter of these stanzas there is rather too studied an
effort at imitative sound; the lines are grand and nobly expressed,
but they do not hurry along the reader like those of Ariosto. In
his there is little attempt at vocal imitation, yet we seem to hear
the cries of the suffering, and the crackling of the flames.
30. Ariosto must be placed much more below Homer, than Tasso falls short
of Virgil. The Orlando has not the impetuosity of the Iliad; each is
prodigiously rapid, but Homer has more momentum by his weight; the one
is a hunter, the other a war-horse. The finest stanzas in Ariosto are
fully equal to any in Tasso, but the latter has by no means so many
feeble lines. Yet his language, though never affectedly obscure, is not
so pellucid, and has a certain refinement which makes us sometimes pause
to perceive the meaning. Whoever reads Ariosto slowly, will probably be
offended by his negligence; whoever reads Tasso quickly, will lose
something of the elaborate finish of his style.
|to the Bolognese painters.|
31. It is not easy to find a counterpart among painters for Ariosto. His
brilliancy and fertile invention might remind us of Tintoret; but he is
more natural, and less solicitous of effect. If indeed poetical diction
be the correlative of colouring in our comparison of the arts, none of
the Venetian school can represent the simplicity and averseness to
ornament of language which belong to the Orlando Furioso; and it would
be impossible, for other reasons, to look for a parallel in a Roman or
Tuscan pencil. But with Tasso the case is different: and though it would
be an affected expression to call him the founder of the Bolognese
school, it is evident that he had a great influence on its chief
painters, who came but a little after him. They imbued themselves with
the spirit of a poem so congenial to their age, and so much admired in
it. No one, I think, can consider their works without perceiving both
the analogy of the place each hold in their respective arts, and the
traces of a feeling, caught directly from Tasso as their prototype and
model. We recognise his spirit in the sylvan shades and voluptuous forms
of Albano and Domenichino, in the pure beauty that radiates from the
ideal heads of Guido, in the skilful composition, exact design, and
noble expression of the Caracci. Yet the school of Bologna seems to
furnish no parallel to the enchanting grace and diffused harmony of
Tasso; and we must, in this respect, look back to Correggio as his
representative.
SECT. II.--ON SPANISH POETRY.
_Luis de Leon--Herrera--Ercilla--Camoens--Spanish Ballads._
|Poetry cultivated under Charles and Philip.|
32. The reigns of Charles and his son have long been reckoned the golden
age of Spanish poetry; and if the art of verse was not cultivated in the
latter period by any quite so successful as Garcilasso and Mendoza, who
belonged to the earlier part of the century, the vast number of names
that have been collected by diligent inquiry show, at least, a national
taste which deserves some attention. The means of exhibiting a full
account of even the most select names in this crowd are not readily at
hand. In Spain itself, the poets of the age of Philip II., like those
who lived under his great enemy in England, were, with very few
exceptions, little regarded till after the middle of the eighteenth
century. The Parnaso Español of Sedano, the first volumes of which were
published in 1768, made them better known; but Bouterwek observes, that
it would have been easy to make a better collection, as we do not find
several poems of the chief writers, with which the editor seems to have
fancied the public to be sufficiently acquainted. An imperfect knowledge
of the language, and a cursory view of these volumes, must disable me
from speaking confidently of Castilian poetry; so far as I feel myself
competent to judge, the specimens chosen by Bouterwek do no injustice to
the compilation.[1165]
[1165] “The merit of Spanish poems,” says a critic equally candid and
well-informed, “independently of those intended for representation,
consists chiefly in smoothness of versification and purity of
language, and in facility rather than strength of imagination.”
Lord Holland’s Lope de Vega, vol. i. p. 107. He had previously
observed that these poets were generally voluminous: “it was not
uncommon even for the nobility of Philip IV.’s time (later of
course than the period we are considering) to converse for some
minutes in extemporaneous poetry; and in carelessness of metre, as
well as in commonplace images, the verses of that time often remind
us of the _improvisatori_ of Italy,” p. 106.
|Luis de Leon.|
33. The best lyric poet of Spain in the opinion of many, with whom I
venture to concur, was Fra Luis Ponce de Leon, born in 1527, and whose
poems were probably written not very long after the middle of the
century. The greater part are translations, but his original productions
are chiefly religious, and full of that soft mysticism which allies
itself so well to the emotions of a poetical mind. One of his odes, De
la Vida del Cielo, which will be found entire in Bouterwek, is an
exquisite pieces of lyric poetry, which, in its peculiar line of devout
aspiration, has perhaps never been excelled.[1166] But the warmth of his
piety was tempered by a classical taste, which he had matured by the
habitual imitation of Horace. “At an early age,” says Bouterwek, “he
became intimately acquainted with the odes of Horace, and the elegance
and purity of style which distinguish those compositions made a deep
impression on his imagination. Classical simplicity and dignity were the
models constantly present to his creative fancy. He, however,
appropriated to himself the character of Horace’s poetry too naturally
ever to incur the danger of servile imitation. He discarded the prolix
style of the canzone, and imitated the brevity of the strophes of Horace
in romantic measures of syllables and rhymes; more just feeling for the
imitation of the ancients was never evinced by any modern poet. His odes
have, however, a character totally different from those of Horace,
though the sententious air which marks the style of both authors imparts
to them a deceptive resemblance. The religious austerity of Luis de
Leon’s life was not to be reconciled with the epicurism of the Latin
poet; but notwithstanding this very different disposition of the mind,
it is not surprising that they should have adopted the same form of
poetic expression, for each possessed a fine imagination, subordinate to
the control of a sound understanding. Which of the two is the superior
poet, in the most extended sense of the word, it would be difficult to
determine, as each formed his style by free imitation, and neither
overstepped the boundaries of a certain sphere of practical observation.
Horace’s odes exhibit a superior style of art; and from the relationship
between the thoughts and images, possess a degree of attraction which is
wanting in those of Luis de Leon; but, on the other hand, the latter are
the more rich in that natural kind of poetry, which may be regarded as
the overflowing of a pure soul, elevated to the loftiest regions of
moral and religious idealism.”[1167] Among the fruits of these Horatian
studies of Luis de Leon, we must place an admirable ode suggested by the
prophecy of Nereus, wherein the genius of the Tagus, rising from its
waters to Rodrigo, the last of the Goths, as he lay encircled in the
arms of Cava, denounces the ruin which their guilty loves were to entail
upon Spain.[1168]
[1166] P. 248.
[1167] P. 243.
[1168] This ode I first knew many years since by a translation in the
poems of Russell, which are too little remembered, except by a few
good judges. It has been surmised by some Spanish critics to have
suggested the famous vision of the Spirit of the Cape to Camoens;
but the resemblance is not sufficient, and the dates rather
incompatible.
|Herrera.|
34. Next to Luis de Leon in merit, and perhaps above him in European
renown, we find Herrera surnamed the divine. He died in 1578; and his
poems seem to have been first collectively published in 1582. He was an
innovator in poetical language, whose boldness was sustained by
popularity, though it may have diminished his fame. “Herrera was a
poet,” says Bouterwek, “of powerful talent, and one who evinced
undaunted resolution in pursuing the new path which he had struck out
for himself. The noble style, however, which he wished to introduce into
Spanish poetry, was not the result of a spontaneous essay, flowing from
immediate inspiration, but was theoretically constructed on artificial
principles. Thus, amidst traits of real beauty, his poetry everywhere
presents marks of affectation. The great fault of his language is too
much singularity; and his expression, where it ought to be elevated, is
merely far fetched.”[1169] Velasquez observes that, notwithstanding the
genius and spirit of Herrera, his extreme care to polish his
versification has rendered it sometimes unpleasing to those who require
harmony and ease.[1170]
[1169] P. 229.
[1170] Geschichte der Spanischen Dichtkunst, p. 207.
35. Of these defects in the style of Herrera I cannot judge; his odes
appear to possess a lyric elevation and richness of phrase, derived in
some measure from the study of Pindar, or still more, perhaps, of the
Old Testament, and worthy of comparison with Chiabrera. Those on the
battle of Lepanto are most celebrated; they pour forth a torrent of
resounding song, in those rich tones which the Castilian language so
abundantly supplies. I cannot so thoroughly admire the ode addressed to
sleep, which Bouterwek as well as Sedano extol. The images are in
themselves pleasing and appropriate, the lines steal with a graceful
flow on the ear; but we should desire to find something more raised
above the commonplaces of poetry.
|General tone of Castilian poetry.|
36. The poets of this age belong generally, more or less, to the Italian
school. Many of them were also translators from Latin. In their odes,
epistles, and sonnets, the resemblance of style, as well as that of the
languages, make us sometimes almost believe that we are reading the
Italian instead of the Spanish Parnaso. There seem however to be some
shades of difference even in those who trod the same path. The Castilian
amatory verse is more hyperbolical, more full of extravagant metaphors,
but less subtle, less prone to ingenious trifling, less blemished by
verbal conceits than the Italian. Such at least is what has struck me in
the slight acquaintance I have with the former. The Spanish poets are
also more redundant in descriptions of nature, and more sensible to her
beauties. I dare not assert that they have less grace and less power of
exciting emotion; it may be my misfortune to have fallen rarely on such
passages.
|Castillejo.|
37. It is at least evident that the imitation of Italy, propagated by
Boscan and his followers, was not the indigenous style of Castile. And
of this some of her most distinguished poets were always sensible. In
the Diana of Montemayor, a romance which, as such, we shall have to
mention hereafter, the poetry, largely interspersed, bears partly the
character of the new, partly that of the old or native school. The
latter is esteemed superior. Castillejo endeavoured to restore the gay
rhythm of the redondilla, and turned into ridicule the imitators of
Petrarch. Bouterwek speaks rather slightingly of his generally poetic
powers; though some of his canciones have a considerable share of
elegance. His genius, playful and witty, rather than elegant, seemed not
ill-fitted to revive the popular poetry.[1171] But those who claimed the
praise of superior talents did not cease to cultivate the polished style
of Italy. The most conspicuous, perhaps, before the end of the century
were Gil Polo, Espinel, Lope de Vega, Barahona de Soto, and
Figueroa.[1172] Several other names, not without extracts, will be found
in Bouterwek.
[1171] P. 267.
[1172] Lord Holland has given a fuller account of the poetry of Lope
de Vega than either Bouterwek or Velasquez and Dieze; and the
extracts in his “Lives of Lope de Vega and Guillen de Castro,” will
not, I believe, be found in the Parnaso Español, which is contrived
on a happy plan of excluding what is best. Las Lagrimas de
Angelica, by Barahona de Soto, Lord H. says, “has always been
esteemed one of the best poems in the Spanish language,” vol. i. p.
33. Bouterwek says he has never met with the book. It is praised by
Cervantes in Don Quixote.
The translation of Tasso’s Aminta, by Jauregui, has been preferred
by Menage as well as Cervantes to the original. But there is no
extraordinary merit in turning Italian into Spanish, even with some
improvement of the diction.
|Araucana of Ercilla.|
38. Voltaire, in his early and very defective essay on epic poetry, made
known to Europe the Araucana of Ercilla, which has ever since enjoyed a
certain share of reputation, though condemned by many critics as tedious
and prosaic. Bouterwek depreciates it in rather more sweeping a manner
than seems consistent with the admissions he afterwards makes.[1173] A
talent for lively description and for painting situations, a natural and
correct diction, which he ascribes to Ercilla, if they do not constitute
a claim to a high rank among poets, are at least as much as many have
possessed. An English writer of good taste has placed him in a
triumvirate with Homer and Ariosto for power of narration.[1174]
Raynouard observes, that Ercilla has taken Ariosto as his model,
especially in the opening of his cantos. But the long digressions and
episodes of the Araucana, which the poet has not had the art to connect
with his subject, render it fatiguing. The first edition, in 1569,
contains but fifteen books; the second part was published in 1578, the
whole together in 1590.[1175]
[1173] P. 407.
[1174] Pursuits of Literature.
[1175] Journal des Savans, Sept. 1824.
|Many epic poems in Spain.|
39. The Araucana is so far from standing alone in this class of poetry,
that not less than twenty-five epic poems appeared in Spain within
little more than half a century. These will be found enumerated,
and, as far as possible, described and characterised, in Velasquez’s
History of Spanish Poetry, which I always quote in the German
translation with the valuable notes of Dieze.[1176] Bouterwek mentions
but a part of the number, and a few of them may be conjectured by the
titles not to be properly epic. It is denied by these writers, that
Ercilla excelled all his contemporaries in heroic song. I find, however,
a different sentence in a Spanish poet of that age, who names him as
superior to the rest.[1177]
[1176] P. 376-407. Bouterwek, p. 413.
[1177]
Oyle el estilo grave, el blando acento,
Y altos concentos del varon famoso
Que en el heroyco verso fue el primero
Que honro a su patria, y aun quiza el postrero.
Del fuerte Arauco el pecho altivo espanta
_Don Alonso de Ercilla_ con el mano,
Con ella lo derriba y lo levanta,
Vence y honra venciendo al Araucano;
Calla sus hechos, los agenos canta,
Con tal estilo que eclipsó al Toscano:
Virtud que el cielo para sí reserva
Que en el furor de Marte esté Minerva.
La Casa de la Memoria, por Vicente Espinel, in Parnaso Espanol,
viii. 352.
Antonio, near the end of the seventeenth century, extols Ercilla
very highly, but intimates that some did not relish his simple
perspicuity. Ad hunc usque diem ob iis omnibus avidissime legitur,
qui facile dicendi genus atque perspicuum admittere vim suam et
nervos, nativaque sublimitate quadam attolli posse, cothurnatumque
ire non ignorant.
|Camoens.|
|Defects of the Lusiad.|
40. But in Portugal there had arisen a poet, in comparison of whose
glory that of Ercilla is as nothing. The name of Camoens has truly an
European reputation, but the Lusiad is written in a language not
generally familiar. From Portuguese critics it would be unreasonable to
demand want of prejudice in favour of a poet so illustrious, and of a
poem so peculiarly national. The Æneid reflects the glory of Rome as
from a mirror; the Lusiad is directly and exclusively what its name “The
Portuguese” (Os Lusiadas) denotes, the praise of the Lusitanian people.
Their past history chimes in, by means of episodes, with the great event
of Gama’s voyage to India. The faults of Camoens, in the management of
his fable and the choice of machinery, are sufficiently obvious; it is,
nevertheless, the first successful attempt in modern Europe to construct
an epic poem on the ancient model; for the Gierusalemme Liberata, though
incomparably superior, was not written or published so soon. In
consequence, perhaps, of this epic form, which, even when imperfectly
delineated, long obtained, from the general veneration for antiquity, a
greater respect at the hands of critics than perhaps it deserved, the
celebrity of Camoens has always been considerable. In point of fame he
ranks among the poets of the south, immediately after the first names of
Italy; nor is the distinctive character that belongs to the poetry of
the southern languages anywhere more fully perceived than in the Lusiad.
In a general estimate of its merits it must appear rather feeble and
prosaic; the geographical and historical details are insipid and
tedious; a skilful use of poetical artifice is never exhibited; we are
little detained to admire an ornamented diction, or glowing thoughts, or
brilliant imagery; a certain negligence disappoints us in the most
beautiful passages; and it is not till a second perusal, that their
sweetness has time to glide into the heart. The celebrated stanzas on
Inez De Castro are a proof of this.
|Its excellencies.|
41. These deficiencies, as a taste formed in the English school, or in
that of classical antiquity, is apt to account them, are greatly
compensated, and doubtless far more to a native than they can be to us,
by a freedom from all that offends, for he is never turgid, nor
affected, nor obscure, by a perfect ease and transparency of narration,
by scenes and descriptions, possessing a certain charm of colouring, and
perhaps not less pleasing from the apparent negligence of the pencil, by
a style kept up at a level just above common language, by a mellifluous
versification, and, above all, by a kind of soft languor which tones, as
it were, the whole poem, and brings perpetually home to our minds the
poetical character and interesting fortunes of its author. As the mirror
of a heart so full of love, courage, generosity, and patriotism, as that
of Camoens, the Lusiad can never fail to please us, whatever place we
may assign to it in the records of poetical genius.[1178]
[1178] “In every language,” says Mr. Southey, probably, in the
Quarterly Review, xxvii. 38, “there is a magic of words as
untranslatable as the Sesame in the Arabian tale,--you may retain
the meaning, but if the words be changed the spell is lost. The
magic has its effect only upon those to whom the language is as
familiar as their mother tongue, hardly indeed upon any but those
to whom it is really such. Camoens possesses it in perfection, it
is his peculiar excellence.”
|Mickle’s translation.|
42. The Lusiad is best known in England by the translation of Mickle,
who has been thought to have done something more than justice to his
author, both by the unmeasured eulogies he bestows upon him, and by the
more substantial service of excelling the original in his unfaithful
delineation.[1179] The style of Mickle is certainly more poetical,
according to our standard, than that of Camoens, that is, more
figurative and emphatic; but it seems to me replenished with commonplace
phrases, and wanting in the facility and sweetness of the original; in
which it is well known that he has interpolated a great deal without a
pretence.
[1179] Several specimens of Mickle’s infidelity in translation, which
exceed all liberties ever taken in this way, are mentioned in the
Quarterly Review.
|Celebrated passage in the Lusiad.|
43. The most celebrated passage in the Lusiad is that wherein the Spirit
of the Cape, rising in the midst of his stormy seas, threatens the
daring adventurer that violates their unploughed waters. In order to
judge fairly of this conception, we should endeavour to forget all that
has been written in imitation of it. Nothing has become more commonplace
in poetry than one of its highest flights, supernatural personification;
and, as children draw notable monsters when they cannot come near the
human form, so every poetaster, who knows not how to describe one object
in nature, is quite at home with a goblin. Considered by itself, the
idea is impressive and even sublime. Nor am I aware of any evidence to
impeach its originality, in the only sense which originality of poetical
invention can bear; it is a combination which strikes us with the force
of novelty, and which we cannot instantly resolve into any constituent
elements. The prophecy of Nereus, to which we have lately alluded, is
much removed in grandeur and appropriateness of circumstance from this
passage of Camoens, though it may contain the germ of his conception. It
is, however, one that seems much above the genius of its author. Mild,
graceful, melancholy, he has never given in any other place signs of
such vigorous imagination. And when we read these lines on the Spirit of
the Cape, it is impossible not to perceive that, like Frankenstein, he
is unable to deal with the monster he has created. The formidable
Adamastor is rendered mean by particularity of description, descending
even to yellow teeth. The speech put into his mouth is feeble and
prolix; and it is a serious objection to the whole, that the awful
vision answers no purpose but that of ornament, and is impotent against
the success and glory of the navigators. A spirit of whatever
dimensions, that can neither overwhelm a ship, nor even raise a tempest,
is incomparably less terrible than a real hurricane.
|Minor poems of Camoens.|
44. Camoens is still, in his shorter poems, esteemed the chief of
Portuguese poets in this age, and possibly in every other; his
countrymen deem him their model, and judge of later verse by comparison
with his. In every kind of composition then used in Portugal, he has
left proofs of excellence. “Most of his sonnets,” says Bouterwek, “have
love for their theme, and they are of very unequal merit; some are full
of Petrarchic tenderness and grace, and moulded with classic
correctness, others are impetuous and romantic, or disfigured by false
learning, or full of tedious pictures of the conflicts of passion with
reason. Upon the whole, however, no Portuguese poet has so correctly
seized the character of the sonnet as Camoens. Without apparent effort,
merely by the ingenious contrast of the first eight with the last six
lines, he knew how to make these little effusions convey a poetic unity
of ideas and impressions, after the model of the best Italian sonnets,
in so natural a manner, that the first lines or quartets of the sonnet
excite a soft expectation, which is harmoniously fulfilled by the
tercets or last six lines.”[1180] The same writer praises several other
of the miscellaneous compositions of Camoens.
[1180] Hist. of Portuguese Literature, p. 187.
|Ferreira.|
45. But, though no Portuguese of the sixteenth century has come near to
this illustrious poet, Ferreira endeavoured with much good sense, if not
with great elevation, to emulate the didactic tone of Horace, both in
lyric poems and epistles, of which the latter have been most
esteemed.[1181] The classical school formed by Ferreira produced other
poets in the sixteenth century; but it seems to have been little in
unison with the national character. The reader will find as full an
account of these as, if he is unacquainted with the Portuguese language,
he is likely to desire, in the author on whom I have chiefly relied.
[1181] Id. p. 111.
|Spanish ballads.|
46. The Spanish ballads or romances are of very different ages. Some of
them, as has been observed in another place, belong to the fifteenth
century; and there seems sufficient ground for referring a small number
to even an earlier date. But by far the greater portion is of
the reign of Philip II., or even that of his successor. The Moorish
romances, in general, and all those on the Cid, are reckoned by Spanish
critics among the most modern. Those published by Depping and Duran have
rarely an air of the raciness and simplicity which usually distinguish
the poetry of the people, and seem to have been written by poets of
Valladolid or Madrid, the contemporaries of Cervantes, with a good deal
of elegance, though not much vigour. The Moors of romance, the
chivalrous gentlemen of Granada, were displayed by these Castilian poets
in attractive colours;[1182] and much more did the traditions of their
own heroes, especially of the Cid, the bravest and most noble-minded of
them all, furnish materials for their popular songs. Their character, it
is observed by the latest editor, is unlike that of the older romances
of chivalry, which had been preserved orally, as he conceives, down to
the middle of the sixteenth century, when they were inserted in the
Cancionero de Romances at Antwerp, 1555.[1183] I have been informed that
an earlier edition printed in Spain has lately been discovered. In these
there is a certain prolixity and hardness of style, a want of
connection, a habit of repeating verses or entire passages from others.
They have nothing of the marvellous, nor borrow anything from Arabian
sources. In some others of the more ancient poetry there are traces of
the oriental manner, and a peculiar tone of wild melancholy. The little
poems scattered through the prose romance, entitled, Las Guerras de
Granada, are rarely, as I should conceive, older than the reign of
Philip II. These Spanish ballads are known to our public, but generally
with inconceivable advantage, by the very fine and animated translations
of Mr. Lockhart.[1184]
[1182] Bouterwek, Sismondi, and others, have quoted a romance,
beginning Tanta Zayda y Adalifa, as the effusion of an orthodox
zeal, which had taken offence at these encomiums on infidels.
Whoever reads this little poem, which may be found in Depping’s
collection, will see that it is written more as a humorous ridicule
on contemporary poets, than a serious reproof. It is much more
lively than the answer, which these modern critics also quote. Both
these poems are of the end of the sixteenth century. Neither
Bouterwek nor Sismondi have kept in mind the recent date of the
Moorish ballads.
[1183] Duran in preface to his Romancero of 1832. These Spanish
collections of songs and ballads, called Cancioneros and
Romanceros, are very scarce, and there is some uncertainty among
bibliographers as to their editions. According to Duran, this of
Antwerp contains many romances unpublished before and far older
than those of the fifteenth century, collected in the Cancionero
General of 1516. It does not appear, perhaps, that the number which
can be referred with probability to a period anterior to 1400 is
considerable, but they are very interesting. Among these are Los
Fronterizos, or songs which the Castilians used in their incursions
on the Moorish frontier. These were preserved orally, like other
popular poetry. We find in these early pieces, he says, some traces
of the Arabian style, rather in the melancholy of its tone than in
any splendour of imagery, giving as an instance some lines quoted
by Sismondi, beginning, “Fonte frida, fonte frida, Fonte frida y
con amor,” which are evidently very ancient. Sismondi says
(Littérature du Midi, iii. 240) that it is difficult to explain the
charm of this little poem, but “by the tone of truth and the
absence of all object;” and Bouterwek calls it very nonsensical. It
seems to me that some real story is shadowed in it under images in
themselves of very little meaning, which may account for the tone
of truth and pathos it breathes.
The older romances are usually in alternate verses of eight and
seven syllables, and the rhymes are _consonant_, or real
rhymes. The _assonance_ is however older than Lord Holland
supposes, who says (Life of Lope de Vega, vol. ii. p. 12), that it
was not introduced till the end of the sixteenth century. It occurs
in several that Duran reckons ancient.
The romance of the Conde Alarcos is probably of the fifteenth
century. This is written in octosyllable consonant rhymes, without
division of strophes. The Moorish ballads, with a very few
exceptions, belong to the reigns of Philip II. and Philip III., and
those of the Cid, about which so much interest has been taken, are
the latest, and among the least valuable of all. All these are, I
believe, written on the principle of assonances.
[1184] An admirable romance on a bull-fight, in Mr. Lockhart’s volume,
is faintly to be traced in one introduced in Las Guerras de
Granada; but I have since found it much more at length in another
collection. It is still, however, far less poetical than the
English imitation.
SECT. III.--ON FRENCH AND GERMAN POETRY.
_French Poetry--Ronsard--His Followers--German Poets._
|French poets numerous.|
47. This was an age of verse in France; and perhaps in no subsequent
period do we find so long a catalogue of her poets. Goujet has recorded
not merely the names, but the lives, in some measure, of nearly two
hundred, whose works were published in this half century. Of this number
scarcely more than five or six are much remembered in their own country.
It is possible indeed that the fastidiousness of French criticism, or
their idolatry of the age of Louis XIV., and of that of Voltaire, may
have led to a little injustice in their estimate of these early
versifiers. Our own prejudices are apt of late to take an opposite
direction.
|Change in the tone of French poetry.|
48. A change in the character of French poetry, about the commencement
of this period, is referrible to the general revolution of literature.
The allegorical personifications which, from the æra of the Roman de la
Rose, had been the common field of verse, became far less usual, and
gave place to an inundation of mythology and classical allusion. The
_Désir_ and _Reine d’Amour_ of the older school became Cupid with his
arrows and Venus with her doves; the theological and cardinal virtues,
which had gained so many victories over _Sensualité_ and _Faux
Semblant_, vanished themselves from a poetry which had generally
enlisted itself under the enemy’s banner. This cutting off of an old
resource rendered it necessary to explore other mines. All antiquity was
ransacked for analogies; and, where the images were not wearisomely
commonplace, they were absurdly far-fetched. This revolution was
certainly not instantaneous; but it followed the rapid steps of
philological learning, which had been nothing at the accession of
Francis I., and was everything at his death. In his court, and in that
of his son, if business or gallantry rendered learning impracticable, it
was at least the mode to affect an esteem for it. Many names in the list
of French poets are conspicuous for high rank, and a greater number are
among the famous scholars of the age. These, accustomed to writing in
Latin, sometimes in verse, and yielding a superstitious homage to the
mighty dead of antiquity, thought they ennobled their native language by
destroying her idiomatic purity.
|Ronsard.|
49. The prevalence however of this pedantry, was chiefly owing to one
poet, of great though short-lived renown, Pierre Ronsard. He was the
first of seven contemporaries in song under Henry II., then denominated
the French Pleiad; the others were Jodelle, Bellay, Baif, Thyard, Dorat,
and Belleau. Ronsard, well acquainted with the ancient languages, and
full of the most presumptuous vanity, fancied that he was born to mould
the speech of his fathers into new forms more adequate to his genius.
Je fis des nouveaux mots,
J’en condamnai les vieux.[1185]
His style, therefore, is as barbarous, if the continual adoption of
Latin and Greek derivatives renders a modern language barbarous, as his
allusions are pedantic. They are more ridiculously such in his amatory
sonnets; in his odes these faults are rather less intolerable, and there
is a spirit and grandeur which show him to have possessed a poetical
mind.[1186] The popularity of Ronsard was extensive; and, though he
sometimes complained of the neglect of the great, he wanted not the
approbation of those whom poets are most ambitious to please. Charles
IX. addressed some lines to Ronsard, which are really elegant, and at
least do more honour to that prince than anything else recorded of him;
and the verses of this poet are said to have enlightened the weary hours
of Mary Stuart’s imprisonment. On his death in 1586 a funeral service
was performed in Paris with the best music that the king could command;
it was attended by the Cardinal de Bourbon and an immense concourse;
eulogies in prose and verse were recited in the university; and in those
anxious moments, when the crown of France was almost in its agony, there
was leisure to lament that Ronsard had been withdrawn. How differently
attended was the grave of Spenser![1187]
[1185] Goujet, Bibliothéque Française xii. 199.
[1186] Id. 216.
[1187] Id. 207.
50. Ronsard was capable of conceiving strongly, and bringing his
conceptions in clear and forcible, though seldom in pure or well-chosen
language before the mind. The poem, entitled Promesse, which will be
found in Auguis’s Recueil des Anciens Poëtes, is a proof of this, and
excels what little besides I have read of this poet.[1188] Bouterwek,
whose criticism on Ronsard appears fair and just, and who gives him, and
those who belonged to his school, credit for perceiving the necessity of
elevating the tone of French verse above the creeping manner of the
allegorical rhymers, observes that, even in his errors, we discover a
spirit striving upwards, disdaining what is trivial, and restless in the
pursuit of excellence.[1189] But such a spirit may produce very bad and
tasteless poetry. La Harpe, who admits Ronsard’s occasional beauties and
his poetic fire, is repelled by his scheme of versification, full of
_enjambemens_, as disgusting to a correct French ear as they are, in a
moderate use, pleasing to our own. After the appearance of Malherbe, the
poetry of Ronsard fell into contempt, and the pure correctness of Louis
XIV.’s age was not likely to endure his barbarous innovations and false
taste.[1190] Balzac not long afterwards turns his pedantry into
ridicule, and admitting the abundance of the stream, adds that it was
turbid.[1191] In later times more justice has been done to the spirit
and imagination of this poet, without repealing the sentence against his
style.[1192]
[1188] Vol. iv. p. 135.
[1189] Geschichte der Poësie, v. 214.
[1190] Goujet, 245. Malherbe scratched out about half from his copy of
Ronsard giving his reasons in the margin. Racan, one day looking
over this, asked whether he approved what he had not effaced. Not a
bit more, replied Malherbe, than the rest.
[1191] Encore aujourd’hui il est admiré par les trois quarts du
parlement de Paris, et géneralement par les autres parlemens de
France. L’université et les Jesuites tiennent encore son part
contre la cour, et contre l’académie.... Ce n’est pas un poëte bien
entier, c’est le commencement et la matière d’un poëte. On voit,
dans ses œuvres, des parties naissantes, et a demi animées, d’un
corps qui se forme, et qui se fait, mais qui n’a garde d’estre
achevé. C’est une grande source, il faut l’avouer; mais c’est une
source troublée et boueuse; une source, où non seulement il y a
moins d’eau que de limon, mais où l’ordure empêche de couler l’eau.
Œuvres de Balzac, i. 670, and Goujet ubi supra.
[1192] La Harpe, Biogr. Univ.
|Other French poets.|
51. The remaining stars of the Pleiad, except perhaps Bellay, sometimes
called the French Ovid, and whose “Regrets,” or lamentations for his
absence from France during a residence at Rome, are almost as querulous,
if not quite so reasonable, as those of his prototype on the
Ister,[1193] seem scarce worthy of particular notice; for Jodelle, the
founder of the stage in France, has deserved much less credit as a poet,
and fell into the fashionable absurdity of making French out of Greek.
Raynouard bestows some eulogy on Baif.[1194] Those who came afterwards
were sometimes imitators of Ronsard, and, like most imitators of a
faulty manner, far more pedantic and far-fetched than himself. An
unintelligible refinement, that every nation in Europe seems in
succession to have admitted into its poetry, has consigned much then
written in France to oblivion. As large a proportion of the French verse
in this period seems to be amatory as of the Italian; and the Italian
style is sometimes followed. But a simpler and more lively turn of
language, though without the naïveté of Marot, often distinguishes these
compositions. These pass the bounds of decency not seldom; a privilege
which seems in Italy to have been reserved for certain Fescennine
metres, and is not indulged to the solemnity of the sonnet or canzone.
The Italian language is ill-adapted to the epigram, in which the French
succeed so well.[1195]
[1193] Goujet, xii. 128. Augis.
[1194] “Baif is one of the poets who, in my opinion, have happily
contributed by their example to fix the rules of our
versification.” Journal des Savans, Feb. 1825.
[1195] Goujet devotes three volumes, the twelfth, thirteenth, and
fourteenth, of his Bibliothèque Française, to the poets of these
fifty years. Bouterwek and La Harpe have touched only on a very few
names. In the Recueil des Anciens Poëtes, the extracts from them
occupy about a volume and a half.
|Du Bartas.|
52. A few may be selected from the numerous versifiers under the sons of
Henry II. Amadis Jamyn, the pupil of Ronsard, was reckoned by his
contemporaries almost a rival, and is more natural, less inflated and
emphatic than his master.[1196] This praise is by no means due to a more
celebrated poet, Du Bartas. His productions, which are numerous, unlike
those of his contemporaries, turn mostly upon sacred history; but his
poem on the Creation, called La Semaine, is that which obtained most
reputation, and by which alone he is now known. The translation by
Silvester has rendered it in some measure familiar to the readers of our
old poetry; and attempts have been made, not without success, to show
that Milton had been diligent in picking jewels from this mass of bad
taste and bad writing. Du Bartas, in his style, was a disciple of
Ronsard; he affects words derived from the ancient languages, or, if
founded on analogy, yet without precedent, and has as little naturalness
or dignity in his images as purity in his idiom. But his imagination,
though extravagant, is vigorous and original.[1197]
[1196] Goujet, xiii. 229. Biogr. Univ.
[1197] Goujet, xiii. 304. The Semaine of Du Bartas was printed thirty
times within six years, and translated into Latin, Italian, German,
and Spanish, as well as English. Id. 312, on the authority of La
Croix du Maine.
Du Bartas, according to a French writer of the next century, used
methods of exciting his imagination which I recommend to the
attention of young poets. L’on dit en France, que Du Bartas
auparavant que de faire cette belle description de cheval ou il a
si bien rencontré, s’enfermoit quelquefois dans une chambre, et se
mettant à quatre pattes, souffloit, hennissoit, gambadoit, tirait
des ruades, alloit l’amble, le trot, le galop, â courbette, et
tachoit par toutes sortes de moyens à bien contrefaire le cheval.
Naudé’s Considérations sur les Coups d’Estat. p. 47.
|Pibrac; Desportes.|
53. Pibrac, a magistrate of great integrity, obtained an extraordinary
reputation by his quatrains; a series of moral tetrastichs in the style
of Theognis. These first appeared in 1574, fifty in number, and were
augmented to 126 in later editions. They were continually republished in
the seventeenth century, and translated into many European and even
oriental languages. It cannot be wonderful that, in the change of taste
and manners, they have ceased to be read.[1198] An imitation of the
sixth satire of Horace, by Nicolas Rapin, printed in the collection of
Auguis is good and in very pure style.[1199] Philippe Desportes somewhat
later chose a better school than that of Ronsard; he rejected its
pedantry and affectation, and by the study of Tibullus, as well as by
his natural genius, gave a tenderness and grace to the poetry of love
which those pompous versifiers had never sought. He has been esteemed
the precursor of a better æra; and his versification is rather less
lawless,[1200] according to La Harpe, than that of his predecessors.
[1198] Goujet, xii. 266. Biogr. Univ.
[1199] Recueil des Poëtes, v. 361.
[1200] Goujet, xiv. 63. La Harpe. Auguis, v. 343-377.
|French metre and versification.|
54. The rules of metre became gradually established. Few writers of this
period neglect the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes;[1201]
but the open vowel will be found in several of the earlier. Du Bartas
almost affects the _enjambement_, or continuation of the sense beyond
the couplet; and even Desportes does not avoid it. Their metres are
various; the Alexandrine, if so we may call it, or verse of twelve
syllables, was occasionally adopted by Ronsard, and in time displaced
the old verse of ten syllables, which became appropriated to the lighter
style. The sonnets, as far as I have observed, are regular; and this
form, which had been very little known in France, after being introduced
by Jodelle and Ronsard, became one of the most popular modes of
composition.[1202] Several attempts were made to naturalise the Latin
metres; but this pedantic innovation could not long have success.
Specimens of it may be found in Pasquier.[1203]
[1201] Grevin, about 1558, is an exception. Goujet, xii. 159.
[1202] Bouterwek, v. 212.
[1203] Recherches de la France, l. vii. c. 11. Baif has passed for the
inventor of this foolish art in France, which was more common there
than in England. But Prosper Marchand ascribes a translation of the
Iliad and Odyssey into regular French hexameters to one Moysset, of
whom nothing is known; on no better authority, however, than a
vague passage of d’Aubigné, who “remembered to have seen such a
book sixty years ago.” Though Mousset may be imaginary, he
furnishes an article to Marchand, who brings together a good deal
of learning as to the Latinized French metres of the sixteenth
century. Dictionnaire Historique.
Passerat, Ronsard, Nicolas Rapin, and Pasquier, tried their hands
in this style. Rapin improved upon it by rhyming in Sapphics. The
following stanzas are from his ode on the death of Ronsard:--
Vous que les ruisseaux d’Helicon frequentez,
Vous que les jardins solitaires hantez,
Et le fonds des bois, curieux de choisir
L’ombre et le loisir.
Qui vivant bien loin de la fange et du bruit,
Et de ces grandeurs que le peuple poursuit,
Estimez les vers que la muse apres vous
Trempe de miel doux.
Notre grand Ronsard, de ce monde sorti,
Les efforts derniers de la Parque a senti;
Ses faveurs n’ont pu le garantir enfin
Contre le destin, &c. &c.
Pasquier, ubi supra.
|General character of French poetry.|
55. It may be said, perhaps, of French poetry in general, but at least
in this period, that it deviates less from a certain standard than any
other. It is not often low, as may be imputed to the earlier writers,
because a peculiar style, removed from common speech, and supposed to be
classical, was a condition of satisfying the critics; it is not often
obscure, at least in syntax, as the Italian sonnet is apt to be, because
the genius of the language and the habits of society demanded
perspicuity. But it seldom delights us by a natural sentiment or
unaffected grace of diction, because both one and the other were
fettered by conventional rules. The monotony of amorous song is more
wearisome, if that be possible, than among the Italians.
|German poetry.|
56. The characteristics of German verse impressed upon it by the
meister-singers still remained, though the songs of those fraternities
seem to have ceased. It was chiefly didactic or religious, often
satirical, and employing the veil of apologue. Luther, Hans Sachs, and
other more obscure names are counted among the fabulists; but the most
successful was Burcard Waldis, whose fables, partly from Æsop, partly
original, were first published in 1548. The Froschmauseler of
Rollenhagen, in 1545, is in a similar style of political and moral
apologue with some liveliness of description. Fischart is another of the
moral satirists, but extravagant in style and humour, resembling
Rabelais, of whose romance he gave a free translation. One of his poems,
Die Gluckhafte Schiff, is praised by Bouterwek for beautiful
descriptions and happy inventions; but in general he seems to be the
Skelton of Germany. Many German ballads belong to this period, partly
taken from the old tales of chivalry: in these the style is humble, with
no poetry except that of invention, which is not their own; yet they are
true-hearted and unaffected, and better than what the next age
produced.[1204]
[1204] Bouterwek, vol. ix. Heinsius, vol. iv.
SECT. IV.--ON ENGLISH POETRY.
_Paradise of Dainty Devices--Sackville--Gascoyne--Spenser’s Shepherd’s
Kalendar--Improvement in Poetry--England’s Helicon--Sydney--Shakspeare’s
Poems--Poets near the Close of the Century--Translations--Scots and
English Ballads--Spenser’s Faery Queen._
|Paradise of Dainty Devices.|
57. The poems of Wyatt and Surrey with several more first appeared in
1557, and were published in a little book, entitled Tottel’s
Miscellanies. But as both of these belonged to the reign of Henry VIII.
their poetry has come already under our review. It is probable that Lord
Vaux’s short pieces, which are next to those of Surrey and Wyatt in
merit, were written before the middle of the century. Some of these are
published in Tottel, and others in a scarce collection, the first
edition of which was in 1576, quaintly named, The Paradise of Dainty
Devices. The poems in this volume, as in that of Tottel, are not coeval
with its publication; it has been supposed to represent the age of Mary,
full as much as that of Elizabeth, and one of the chief contributors, if
not framers of the collection, Richard Edwards, died in 1566. Thirteen
poems are by Lord Vaux, who certainly did not survive the reign of Mary.
|Character of this collection.|
58. We are indebted to Sir Egerton Brydges for the republication, in his
British Bibliographer, of the Paradise of Dainty Devices, of which,
though there had been eight editions, it is said that not above six
copies existed.[1205] The poems are almost all short, and by more nearly
thirty than twenty different authors. “They do not, it must be
admitted,” says their editor, “belong to the higher classes; they are of
the moral and didactic kind. In their subject there is too little
variety, as they deal very generally in the commonplaces of ethics, such
as the fickleness and caprices of love, the falsehood and instability of
friendship, and the vanity of all human pleasures. But many of these are
often expressed with a vigour which would do credit to any æra.... If my
partiality does not mislead me, there is in most of these short pieces
some of that indescribable attraction which springs from the colouring
of the heart. The charm of imagery is wanting, but the precepts
inculcated seem to flow from the feelings of an overloaded bosom.”
Edwards, he considers, probably with justice, as the best of the
contributors, and Lord Vaux the next. We should be inclined to give as
high a place to William Hunnis, were his productions all equal to one
little poem;[1206] but too often he falls into trivial morality and a
ridiculous excess of alliteration. The amorous poetry is the best in
this Paradise; it is not imaginative or very graceful, or exempt from
the false taste of antithetical conceits, but sometimes natural and
pleasing; the serious pieces are in general very heavy, yet there is a
dignity and strength in some of the devotional strains. They display the
religious earnestness of that age with a kind of austere philosophy in
their views of life. Whatever indeed be the subject, a tone of sadness
reigns through this misnamed Paradise of Daintiness, as it does through
all the English poetry of this particular age. It seems as if the
confluence of the poetic melancholy of the Petrarchists with the
reflective seriousness of the Reformation overpowered the lighter
sentiments of the soul; and some have imagined, I know not how justly,
that the persecutions of Mary’s reign contributed to this effect.
[1205] Beloe’s Anecdotes of Literature, vol. v.
[1206] This song is printed in Campbell’s Specimens of English Poets,
vol. i. p. 117. It begins,
“When first mine eyes did view and mark.”
The little poem of Edwards, called Amantium Iræ, has often been
reprinted in modern collections, and is reckoned by Brydges one of
the most beautiful in the language. But hardly any light poem of
this early period is superior to some lines addressed to Isabella
Markham by Sir John Harrington, of the date of 1564. If these are
genuine, and I know not how to dispute it, they are as polished as
any written at the close of the Queen’s reign. These are not in the
Paradise of Dainty Devices.
|Sackville’s induction.|
59. But at the close of that dark period, while bigotry might be
expected to render the human heart torpid, and the English nation seemed
too fully absorbed in religious and political discontent, to take much
relish in literary amusements, one man shone out for an instant in the
higher walks of poetry. This was Thomas Sackville, many years
afterwards Lord Buckhurst, and High Treasurer of England, thus withdrawn
from the haunts of the muses to a long and honourable career of active
life. The Mirrour of Magistrates, published in 1559, is a collection of
stories by different authors, on the plan of Boccaccio’s prose work, De
Casibus virorum illustrium, recounting the misfortunes and reverses of
men eminent in English history. It was designed to form a series of
dramatic soliloquies united in one interlude.[1207] Sackville, who seems
to have planned the scheme, wrote an Induction, or prologue, and also
one of the stories, that of the first Duke of Buckingham. The Induction
displays best his poetical genius; it is, like much earlier poetry, a
representation of allegorical personages, but with a fertility of
imagination, vividness of description, and strength of language, which
not only leave his predecessors far behind, but may fairly be compared
with some of the most poetical passages in Spenser. Sackville’s
Induction forms a link which unites the school of Chaucer and Lydgate to
the Faery Queen. It would certainly be vain to look in Chaucer, wherever
Chaucer is original, for the grand creations of Sackville’s fancy, yet
we should never find any one who would rate Sackville above Chaucer. The
strength of an eagle is not to be measured only by the height of his
place, but by the time that he continues on the wing. Sackville’s
Induction consists of a few hundred lines; and even in these there is a
monotony of gloom and sorrow, which prevents us from wishing it to be
longer. It is truly styled by Campbell a landscape on which the sun
never shines. Chaucer is various, flexible, and observant of all things
in outward nature, or in the heart of man. But Sackville is far above
the frigid elegance of Surrey; and, in the first days of the virgin
reign, is the herald of that splendour in which it was to close.
[1207] Warton, iv. 40. A copious account of the Mirrour for Magistrates
occupies the forty-eighth and three following sections of the
History of Poetry, p. 33-105. In this Warton has introduced rather
a long analysis of the Inferno of Dante, which he seems to have
thought little known to the English public, as in that age, I
believe, was the case.
|Inferiority of poets in early years of Elizabeth.|
|Gascoyne.|
60. English poetry was not speedily animated by the example of
Sackville. His genius stands absolutely alone in the age to which as a
poet he belongs. Not that there was any deficiency in the number of
versifiers; the muses were honoured by the frequency, if not by the
dignity, of their worshippers. A different sentence will be found in
some books; and it has become common to elevate the Elizabethan age in
one undiscriminating panegyric. For wise counsellors, indeed, and acute
politicians, we could not perhaps extol one part of that famous reign at
the expense of another. Cecil and Bacon, Walsingham, Smith, and Sadler,
belong to the earlier days of the queen. But in a literary point of
view, the contrast is great between the first and second moiety of her
four and forty years. We have seen this already in other subjects than
poetry; and in that we may appeal to such parts of the Mirrour of
Magistrates as are not written by Sackville, to the writings of
Churchyard, or to those of Gouge and Turberville. These writers scarcely
venture to leave the ground, or wander in the fields of fancy. They even
abstain from the ordinary commonplaces of verse, as if afraid that the
reader should distrust or misinterpret their images. The first who
deserves to be mentioned as an exception is George Gascoyne, whose Steel
Glass, published in 1576, is the earliest instance of English satire,
and has strength and sense enough to deserve respect. Chalmers has
praised it highly. “There is a vein of sly sarcasm in this piece which
appears to me to be original; and his intimate knowledge of mankind
enabled him to give a more curious picture of the dress, manners,
amusements, and follies of the times, than we meet with in almost any
other author. His Steel Glass is among the first specimens of blank
verse in our language.” This blank verse, however, is but indifferently
constructed. Gascoyne’s long poem, called The Fruits of War, is in the
doggrel style of his age; and the general commendations of Chalmers on
this poet seem rather hyperbolical. But his minor poems, especially one
called The Arraignment of a Lover, have much spirit and gaiety;[1208]
and we may leave him a respectable place among the Elizabethan
versifiers.
[1208] Ellis’s Specimens. Campbell’s Specimens, ii. 146.
|Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar.|
61. An epoch was made, if we may draw an inference from the language of
contemporaries, by the publication of Spenser’s Shepherd’s Kalendar in
1579.[1209] His primary idea, that of adapting a pastoral to every month
of the year, was pleasing and original, though he has frequently
neglected to observe the season, even when it was most abundant in
appropriate imagery. But his Kalendar is, in another respect, original,
at least when compared with the pastoral writings of that age. This
species of composition had become so much the favourite of courts, that
no language was thought to suit it but that of courtiers, which, with
all its false beauties of thought and expression, was transferred to the
mouths of shepherds. A striking instance of this had lately been shown
in the Aminta; and it was a proof of Spenser’s judgment, as well as
genius, that he struck out a new line of pastoral, far more natural, and
therefore more pleasing, so far as imitation of nature is the source of
poetical pleasure, instead of vieing, in our more harsh and uncultivated
language, with the consummate elegance of Tasso. It must be admitted,
however, that he fell too much into the opposite extreme, and gave a
Doric rudeness to his dialogue, which is a little repulsive to our
taste. The dialect of Theocritus is musical to our ears, and free from
vulgarity; praises which we cannot bestow on the uncouth provincial
rusticity of Spenser. He has been less justly censured on another
account, for intermingling allusions to the political history and
religious differences of his own times; and an ingenious critic has
asserted that the description of the grand and beautiful objects of
nature, with well-selected scenes of rural life, real but not coarse,
constitute the only proper materials of pastoral poetry. These
limitations, however, seem little conformable to the practice of poets
or the taste of mankind; and if Spenser has erred in the allegorical
part of his pastorals, he has done so in company with most of those who
have tuned the shepherd’s pipe. Several of Virgil’s Eclogues, and
certainly the best, have a meaning beyond the simple songs of the
hamlet; and it was notorious that the Portuguese and Spanish pastoral
romances, so popular in Spenser’s age, teemed with delineations of real
character, and sometimes were the mirrors of real story. In fact, mere
pastoral must soon become insipid, unless it borrows something from
active life or elevated philosophy. The most interesting parts of the
Shepherd’s Kalendar are of this description; for Spenser has not
displayed the powers of his own imagination so strongly as we might
expect in pictures of natural scenery. This poem has spirit and beauty
in many passages; but is not much read in the present day, nor does it
seem to be approved by modern critics. It was otherwise formerly. Webbe,
in his Discourse of English Poetry, 1586, calls Spenser “the rightest
English poet he ever read,” and thinks he would have surpassed
Theocritus and Virgil, “if the coarseness of our speech had been no
greater impediment to him, than their pure native tongues were to them.”
And Drayton says, “Master Edmund Spenser had done enough for the
immortality of his name, had he only given us his Shepherd’s Kalendar, a
masterpiece, if any.”[1210]
[1209] The Shepherd’s Kalendar was printed anonymously. It is ascribed
to Sydney by Whetstone in a monody on his death in 1586. But Webbe,
in his Discourse on English Poesie, published the same year,
mentions Spenser by name.
[1210] Preface to Drayton’s Pastorals.
|Sydney’s character of contemporary poets.|
62. Sir Philip Sydney, in his Defence of Poesie, which may have been
written at any time between 1581 and his death in 1586, laments that
“poesy thus embraced in all other places, should only find in our time a
bad welcome in England;” and, after praising Sackville, Surrey, and
Spenser for the Shepherd’s Kalendar, does not “remember to have seen
many more that have poetical sinews in them. For proof whereof, let but
most of the verses be put into prose, and then ask the meaning, and it
will be found that one verse did but beget another, without ordering at
the first what should be at the last; which becomes a confused mass of
words, with a tinkling sound of rhyme, barely accompanied with
reason.... Truly many of such writings as come under the banner of
irresistible love, if I were a mistress, would never persuade me they
were in love; so coldly they apply fiery speeches as men that had rather
read lovers’ writings, and so caught up certain swelling phrases, than
that in truth they feel those passions.”
|Improvement soon after this time.|
63. It cannot be denied that some of these blemishes are by no means
unusual in the writers of the Elizabethan age, as in truth they are
found also in much other poetry of many countries. But a change seems to
have come over the spirit of English poetry soon after 1580. Sydney,
Raleigh, Lodge, Breton, Marlowe, Greene, Watson, are the chief
contributors to a collection called England’s Helicon, published in
1600, and comprising many of the fugitive pieces of the last twenty
years. Davidson’s Poetical Rhapsody, in 1602, is a miscellany of the
same class. A few other collections are known to have existed,
but are still more scarce than these. England’s Helicon, by far the most
important, has been reprinted in the same volume of the British
Bibliographer as the Paradise of Dainty Devices. In this juxtaposition
the difference of their tone is very perceptible. Love occupies by far
the chief portion of the later miscellany; and love no longer pining and
melancholy, but sportive and boastful. Every one is familiar with the
beautiful song of Marlowe, “Come live with me and be my love;” and with
the hardly less beautiful answer ascribed to Raleigh. Lodge has ten
pieces in this collection, and Breton eight. These are generally full of
beauty, grace, and simplicity; and, while in reading the productions of
Edwards and his coadjutors every sort of allowance is to be made, and we
can only praise a little at intervals, these lyrics, twenty or thirty
years later, are among the best in our language. The conventional tone
is that of pastoral; and thus, if they have less of the depth sometimes
shown in serious poetry, they have less also of obscurity and false
refinement.[1211]
[1211] Ellis, in the second volume of his Specimens of English Poets,
has taken largely from this collection. It must be owned that his
good taste in selection gives a higher notion of the poetry of this
age than, on the whole, it would be found to deserve; yet there is
so much of excellence in England’s Helicon, that he has been
compelled to omit many pieces of great merit.
|Relaxation of moral austerity.|
64. We may easily perceive in the literature of the later period of the
queen, what our biographical knowledge confirms, that much of the
austerity characteristic of her earlier years had vanished away. The
course of time, the progress of vanity, the prevalent dislike, above
all, of the Puritans, avowed enemies of gaiety, concurred to this
change. The most distinguished courtiers, Raleigh, Essex, Blount, and we
must add Sydney, were men of brilliant virtues, but not without license
of morals; while many of the wits and poets, such as Nash, Greene,
Peele, Marlowe, were notoriously of very dissolute lives.
|Serious poetry.|
65. The graver strains, however, of religion and philosophy were still
heard in verse. The Soul’s Errand, printed anonymously in Davison’s
Rhapsody, and ascribed by Ellis, probably without reason, to Silvester,
is characterised by strength, condensation, and simplicity.[1212] And we
might rank in a respectable place among these English poets, though I
think he has been lately overrated, one whom the jealous law too
prematurely deprived of life, Robert Southwell, executed as a seminary
priest in 1591, under one of those persecuting statutes which even the
traitorous restlessness of the English Jesuits cannot excuse.
Southwell’s poetry wears a deep tinge of gloom, which seems to presage a
catastrophe too usual to have been unexpected. It is, as may be
supposed, almost wholly religious; the shorter pieces are the
best.[1213]
[1212] Campbell reckons this, and I think justly, among the best pieces
of the Elizabethan age. Brydges gives it to Raleigh without
evidence, and we may add, without probability. It is found in
manuscripts, according to Mr. Campbell, of the date of 1593. Such
poems as this could only be written by a man who had seen and
thought much; while the ordinary Latin and Italian verses of this
age might be written by any one who had a knack of imitation and a
good ear.
[1213] I am not aware that Southwell has gained anything by a
republication of his entire poems in 1817. Headley and Ellis
had culled the best specimens. St. Peter’s Complaint, the longest
of his poems, is wordy and tedious; and in reading the volume I
found scarce anything of merit which I had not seen before.
|Poetry of Sydney.|
66. Astrophel and Stella, a series of amatory poems by Sir Philip
Sydney, though written nearly ten years before, was published in 1591.
These songs and sonnets recount the loves of Sydney and Lady Rich,
sister of Lord Essex; and it is rather a singular circumstance that, in
her own and her husband’s lifetime, this ardent courtship of a married
woman should have been deemed fit for publication. Sydney’s passion
seems indeed to have been unsuccessful, but far enough from being
platonic.[1214] Astrophel and Stella is too much disfigured by conceits,
but is in some places very beautiful; and it is strange that Chalmers,
who reprinted Turberville and Warner, should have left Sydney out of his
collection of British poets. A poem by the writer just mentioned,
Warner, with the quaint title, Albion’s England, 1586, has at least the
equivocal merit of great length. It is rather legendary than historical;
some passages are pleasing, but it is not a work of genius, and
the style, though natural, seldom rises above that of prose.
[1214] Godwin having several years since made some observations on
Sydney’s amour with Lady Rich, a circumstance which such
biographers as Dr. Zouch take good care to suppress, a gentleman
who published an edition of Sydney’s Defence of Poetry thought fit
to indulge in recriminating attacks on Godwin himself. It is
singular that men of sense and education should persist in fancying
that such arguments are likely to convince any dispassionate reader.
|Epithalamium of Spenser.|
67. Spenser’s Epithalamium on his own marriage, written perhaps in 1594,
is of a far higher mood than anything we have named. It is a strain
redolent of a bridegroom’s joy, and of a poet’s fancy. The English
language seems to expand itself with a copiousness unknown before, while
he pours forth the varied imagery of this splendid little poem. I do not
know any other nuptial song, ancient or modern, of equal beauty. It is
an intoxication of ecstacy, ardent, noble, and pure. But it pleased not
heaven that these day dreams of genius and virtue should be undisturbed.
|Poems of Shakspeare.|
68. Shakspeare’s Venus and Adonis appears to have been published in
1593, and his Rape of Lucrece the following year. The redundance of
blossoms in these juvenile effusions of his unbounded fertility
obstructs the reader’s attention, and sometimes almost leads us to give
him credit for less reflection and sentiment than he will be found to
display. The style is flowing, and, in general, more perspicuous than
the Elizabethan poets are wont to be. But I am not sure that they would
betray themselves for the works of Shakspeare, had they been anonymously
published.
|Daniel and Drayton.|
69. In the last decade of this century several new poets came forward.
Samuel Daniel is one of these. His Complaint of Rosamond, and probably
many of his minor poems, belong to this period; and it was also that of
his greatest popularity. On the death of Spenser in 1598, he was thought
worthy to succeed him as poet laureate; and some of his contemporaries
ranked him in the second place; an eminence due rather to the purity of
his language than to its vigour.[1215] Michael Drayton, who first tried
his shepherd’s pipe with some success in the usual style, published his
Baron’s Wars in 1598. They relate to the last years of Edward II., and
conclude with the execution of Mortimer under his son. This poem,
therefore, seems to possess a sufficient unity, and, tried by rules of
criticism might be thought not far removed from the class of epic--a
dignity, however, to which it has never pretended. But in its conduct
Drayton follows history very closely, and we are kept too much in mind
of a common chronicle. Though not very pleasing, however, in its general
effect, this poem, The Barons’ Wars, contains several passages of
considerable beauty, which men of greater renown, especially Milton, who
availed himself largely of all the poetry of the preceding age, have
been willing to imitate.
[1215] British Bibliographer, vol. ii. Headley remarks that Daniel was
spoken of by contemporary critics as the polisher and purifier of
the English language.
|Nosce Teipsum, of Davies.|
70. A more remarkable poem is that of Sir John Davies, afterwards
chief-justice of Ireland, entitled Nosce Teipsum, published in 1600,
usually though rather inaccurately, called, his poem on the Immortality
of the Soul. Perhaps no language can produce a poem, extending to so
great a length, of more condensation of thought, or in which fewer
languid verses will be found. Yet, according to some definitions, the
Nosce Teipsum is wholly unpoetical, inasmuch as it shows no passion and
little fancy. If it reaches the heart at all, it is through the reason.
But since strong argument in terse and correct style fails not to give
us pleasure in prose, it seems strange that it should lose its effect
when it gains the aid of regular metre to gratify the ear and assist the
memory. Lines there are in Davies which far outweigh much of the
descriptive and imaginative poetry of the last two centuries, whether we
estimate them by the pleasure they impart to us, or by the intellectual
vigour they display. Experience has shown that the faculties peculiarly
deemed poetical are frequently exhibited in a considerable degree, but
very few have been able to preserve a perspicuous brevity without
stiffness or pedantry (allowance made for the subject and the times), in
metaphysical reasoning, so successfully as Sir John Davies.
|Satires of Hall, Marston, and Donne.|
71. Hall’s Satires are tolerably known, partly on account of the
subsequent celebrity of the author in a very different province, and
partly from a notion, to which he gave birth by announcing the claim,
that he was the first English satirist. In a general sense of satire, we
have seen that he had been anticipated by Gascoyne; but Hall has more of
the direct Juvenalian invective, which he may have reckoned essential to
that species of poetry. They are deserving of regard in themselves.
Warton has made many extracts from Hall’s Satires; he praises in them “a
classical precision, to which English poetry had yet rarely attained;”
and calls the versification “equally energetic and elegant.”[1216]
The former epithet may be admitted; but elegance is hardly compatible
with what Warton owns to be the chief fault of Hall, “his obscurity,
arising from a remote phraseology, constrained combinations, unfamiliar
allusions, elliptical apostrophes, and abruptness of expression.” Hall
is in fact not only so harsh and rugged, that he cannot be read with
much pleasure, but so obscure in very many places that he cannot be
understood at all, his lines frequently bearing no visible connection in
sense or grammar with their neighbours. The stream is powerful, but
turbid and often choked.[1217] Marston and Donne may be added to Hall in
this style of poetry, as belonging to the sixteenth century, though the
satires of the latter were not published till long afterwards. With as
much obscurity as Hall, he has a still more inharmonious versification,
and not nearly equal vigour.
[1216] Hist, of English Poetry, iv. 338.
[1217] Hall’s Satires are praised by Campbell, as well as Warton, full
as much, in my opinion, as they deserve. Warton has compared
Marston with Hall, and concludes that the latter is more “elegant,
exact, and elaborate.” More so than his rival he may by possibility
be esteemed; but these three epithets cannot be predicated of his
satires in any but a relative sense.
|Modulation of English verse.|
72. The roughness of these satirical poets was perhaps studiously
affected; for it was not much in unison with the general tone of the
age. It requires a good deal of care to avoid entirely the combinations
of consonants that clog our language; nor have Drayton or Spenser always
escaped this embarrassment. But in the lighter poetry of the queen’s
last years, a remarkable sweetness of modulation has always been
recognised. This has sometimes been attributed to the general fondness
for music. It is at least certain, that some of our old madrigals are as
beautiful in language as they are in melody. Several collections were
published in the reign of Elizabeth.[1218] And it is evident that the
regard to the capacity of his verse for marriage with music, that was
before the poet’s mind, would not only polish his metre, but give it
grace and sentiment, while it banished also the pedantry, the
antithesis, the prolixity, which had disfigured the earlier lyric poems.
Their measures became more various: though the quatrain, alternating by
eight and six syllables, was still very popular, we find the trochaic
verse of seven, sometimes ending with a double rhyme, usual towards the
end of the queen’s reign. Many of these occur in England’s Helicon, and
in the poems of Sydney.
[1218] Morley’s Musical Airs, 1594, and another collection in 1597,
contain some pretty songs. British Bibliographer, i. 342. A few of
these madrigals will also be found in Mr. Campbell’s Specimens.
|Translation of Homer by Chapman.|
73. The translations of ancient poets by Phaier, Golding, Stanyhurst,
and several more, do not challenge our attention; most of them, in fact,
being very wretched performances.[1219] Marlowe, a more celebrated name,
did not, as has commonly been said, translate the poem of Hero and
Leander ascribed to Musæus, but expanded it into what he calls six
Sestiads on the same subject; a paraphrase, in every sense of the
epithet, of the most licentious kind. This he left incomplete, and it
was finished by Chapman.[1220] But the most remarkable productions of
this kind are the Iliad of Chapman, and the Jerusalem of Fairfax, both
printed in 1600; the former, however, containing in that edition but
fifteen books, to which the rest was subsequently added. Pope, after
censuring the haste, negligence, and fustian language of Chapman,
observes “that which is to be allowed him, and which very much
contributed to cover his defects, is a free daring spirit that animates
his translation, which is something like what one might imagine Homer
himself would have written before he arrived at years of discretion.” He
might have added, that Chapman’s translation, with all its defects, is
often exceedingly Homeric; a praise which Pope himself seldom attained.
Chapman deals abundantly in compound epithets, some of which have
retained their place; his verse is rhymed, of fourteen syllables, which
corresponds to the hexameter better than the decasyllabic couplet; he is
often uncouth, often unmusical, and often low; but the spirited and
rapid flow of his metre makes him respectable to lovers of poetry.
Waller, it is said, could not read him without transport. It must be
added, that he is an unfaithful translator, and interpolated much,
besides the general redundancy of his style.[1221]
[1219] Warton, chap. liv., has gone very laboriously into this subject.
[1220] Marlowe’s poem is republished in the Restituta of Sir Egerton
Brydges. It is singular that Warton should have taken it for a
translation of Musæus.
[1221] Warton, iv. 269. Retrospective Review, vol. iii. See also a very
good comparison of the different translations of Homer, in
Blackwood’s Magazine for 1831 and 1832, where Chapman comes in for
his due.
|Tasso, Fairfax.|
74. Fairfax’s Tasso has been more praised, and is better known.
Campbell has called it, in rather strong terms, “one of the glories of
Elizabeth’s reign.” It is not the first version of the Jerusalem, one
very literal and prosaic having been made by Carew, in 1594.[1222] That
of Fairfax, if it does not represent the grace of its original, and
deviates also too much from its sense, is by no means deficient in
spirit and vigour. It has been considered as one of the earliest works,
in which the obsolete English, which had not been laid aside in the days
of Sackville, and which Spenser affected to preserve, gave way to a
style not much differing, at least in point of single words and phrases,
from that of the present age. But this praise is equally due to Daniel,
to Drayton, and to others of the later Elizabethan poets. The
translation of Ariosto by Sir John Harrington, in 1591, is much
inferior.
[1222] In the third volume of the Retrospective Review, these
translations are compared, and it is shown that Carew is far
more literal than Fairfax, who has taken great liberties with his
original. Extracts from Carew will also be found in the British
Bibliographer, i. 30. They are miserably bad.
|Employment of ancient measures.|
75. An injudicious endeavour to substitute the Latin metres for those
congenial to our language, met with no more success than it deserved;
unless it may be called success, that Sydney, and even Spenser, were for
a moment seduced into approbation of it. Gabriel Harvey, best now
remembered as the latter’s friend, recommended the adoption of
hexameters in some letters which passed between them, and Spenser
appears to have concurred. Webbe, a few years afterwards, a writer of
little taste or ear for poetry, supported the same scheme, but may be
said to have avenged the wrong of English verse upon our great poet, by
travestying the Shepherd’s Kalendar into Sapphics.[1223] Campion, in
1602, still harps upon this foolish pedantry; many instances of which
may be found during the Elizabethan period. It is well known that in
German the practice has been in some measure successful, through the
example of a distinguished poet, and through translations from the
ancients in measures closely corresponding with their own. In this there
is doubtless the advantage of presenting a truer mirror of the original.
But as most imitations of Latin measures, in German or English, begin by
violating their first principle, which assigns an invariable value in
time to the syllables of every word, and produce a chaos of false
quantities, it seems as if they could only disgust any one acquainted
with classical versification. In the early English hexameters of the
period before us, we sometimes perceive an intention to arrange long and
short syllables according to the analogies of the Latin tongue. But this
would soon be found impracticable in our own, which, abounding in harsh
terminations, cannot long observe the law of position.
[1223] Webbe’s success was not inviting to the Latinists. Thus in the
second Eclogue of Virgil, for the beautiful lines--
At mecum raucis, tua dum vestigia lustro,
Sole sub ardenti resonant arbusta cicadis,
we have this delectable hexametric version:--
But by the scorched bank-sides i’ thy footsteps still I go
plodding:
Hedge-rows hot do resound with grasshops mournfully squeaking.
|Number of poets in this age.|
76. It was said by Ellis, that nearly one hundred names of poets
belonging to the reign of Elizabeth might be enumerated, besides many
that have left no memorial except their songs. This however was but a
moderate computation. Drake has made a list of more than two hundred,
some few of whom, perhaps, do not strictly belong to the Elizabethan
period.[1224] But many of these are only known by short pieces in such
miscellaneous collections as have been mentioned. Yet in the entire bulk
of poetry, England could not, perhaps, bear comparison with Spain or
France, to say nothing of Italy. She had come in fact much later to
cultivate poetry as a general accomplishment. And, consequently, we find
much less of the mechanism of style, than in the contemporaneous verse
of other languages. The English sonnetteers deal less in customary
epithets and conventional modes of expression. Every thought was to be
worked out in new terms, since the scanty precedents of earlier
versifiers did not supply them. This was evidently the cause of many
blemishes in the Elizabethan poetry; of much that was false in taste,
much that was either too harsh and extravagant, or too humble, and of
more that was so obscure as to defy all interpretation. But it saved
also that monotonous equability that often wearies us in more polished
poetry. There is more pleasure, more sense of sympathy with another
mind, in the perusal even of Gascoyne or Edwards, than in that of many
French and Italian versifiers whom their contemporaries extolled. This
is all that we can justly say in their favour; for any comparison of the
Elizabethan poetry, save Spenser’s alone, with that of the nineteenth
century would show an extravagant predilection for the mere name or
dress of antiquity.
[1224] Shakspeare and his Times, i. 674. Even this catalogue is
probably incomplete; it includes, of course, translators.
|Scots and English ballads.|
77. It would be a great omission to neglect in any review of the
Elizabethan poetry, that extensive, though anonymous class, the Scots
and English ballads. The very earliest of these have been adverted to in
our account of the fifteenth century. They became much more numerous in
the present. The age of many may be determined by historical or other
allusions; and from these, availing ourselves of similarity of style, we
may fix, with some probability, the date of such as furnish no distinct
evidence. This however is precarious, because the language has often
been modernised, and passing for some time by oral tradition, they are
frequently not exempt from marks of interpolation. But, upon the whole,
the reigns of Mary and James VI., from the middle to the close of the
sixteenth century, must be reckoned the golden age of the Scottish
ballad; and there are many of the corresponding period in England.
78. There can be, I conceive, no question as to the superiority of
Scotland in her ballads. Those of an historic or legendary character,
especially the former, are ardently poetical; the nameless minstrel is
often inspired with an Homeric power of rapid narration, bold
description, lively or pathetic touches of sentiment. They are familiar
to us through several publications, and chiefly through the Minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border, by one whose genius these indigenous lays had
first excited, and whose own writings, when the whole civilised world
did homage to his name, never ceased to bear the indelible impress of
the associations that had thus been generated. The English ballads of
the northern border, or perhaps, of the northern counties, come near in
their general character and cast of manners to the Scottish, but, as far
as I have seen, with a manifest inferiority. Those again which belong to
the south, and bear no trace either of the rude manners, or of the wild
superstitions which the bards of Ettrick and Cheviot display, fall
generally into a creeping style, which has exposed the common ballad to
contempt. They are sometimes, nevertheless, not devoid of elegance, and
often pathetic. The best are known through Percy’s Reliques of Ancient
Poetry; a collection singularly heterogeneous, and very unequal in
merit, but from the publication of which in 1774, some of high name have
dated the revival of a genuine feeling for true poetry in the public
mind.
|The Faery Queen.|
79. We have reserved to the last the chief boast of this period, the
Faery Queen. Spenser, as is well known, composed the greater part of his
poem in Ireland, on the banks of his favourite Mulla. The first three
books were published in 1590; the last three did not appear till 1596.
It is a perfectly improbable supposition, that the remaining part, or
six books required for the completion of his design, have been lost. The
short interval before the death of this great poet was filled up by
calamities sufficient to wither the fertility of any mind.
|Superiority of the first book.|
80. The first book of the Faery Queen is a complete poem, and far from
requiring any continuation, is rather injured by the useless
reappearance of its hero in the second. It is generally admitted to be
the finest of the six. In no other is the allegory so clearly conceived
by the poet, or so steadily preserved, yet with a disguise so delicate,
that no one is offended by that servile setting forth of a moral meaning
we frequently meet with in allegorical poems; and the reader has the
gratification that good writing in works of fiction always produces,
that of exercising his own ingenuity without perplexing it. That the red
cross knight designates the militant Christian, whom Una, the true
church, loves, whom Duessa, the type of popery, seduces, who is reduced
almost to despair, but rescued by the intervention of Una, and the
assistance of Faith, Hope, and Charity, is what no one feels any
difficulty in acknowledging, but what every one may easily read the poem
without perceiving or remembering. In an allegory conducted with such
propriety, and concealed or revealed with so much art, there can surely
be nothing to repel our taste; and those who read the first book of the
Faery Queen without pleasure, must seek (what others perhaps will be at
no loss to discover for them), a different cause for their indifference,
than the tediousness or insipidity of allegorical poetry. Every canto of
this book teems with the choicest beauties of imagination; he came to it
in the freshness of his genius, which shines throughout with an
uniformity it does not always afterwards maintain, unsullied by
flattery, unobstructed by pedantry, and unquenched by languor.
|The succeeding books.|
81. In the following books, we have much less allegory; for the
personification of abstract qualities, though often confounded with it,
does not properly belong to that class of composition: it requires a
covert sense beneath an apparent fable, such as the first book contains.
But of this I do not discover many proofs in the second or third, the
legends of Temperance and Chastity; they are contrived to exhibit these
virtues and their opposite vices, but with little that is not obvious
upon the surface. In the fourth and sixth books, there is still less;
but a different species of allegory, the historical, which the
commentators have, with more or less success, endeavoured to trace in
other portions of the poem, breaks out unequivocally in the legend of
Justice, which occupies the fifth. The friend and patron of Spenser, Sir
Arthur Grey, Lord Deputy of Ireland, is evidently portrayed in Arthegal;
and the latter cantos of this book represent, not always with great
felicity, much of the foreign and domestic history of the times. It is
sufficiently intimated by the poet himself, that his Gloriana, or Faery
Queen, is the type of Elizabeth; and he has given her another
representative in the fair huntress Belphœbe. Spenser’s adulation of
her beauty (at some fifty or sixty years of age), may be extenuated, we
can say no more, by the practice of wise and great men, and by his
natural tendency to clothe the objects of his admiration in the hues of
fancy; but its exaggeration leaves the servility of the Italians far
behind.
|Spenser’s sense of beauty.|
82. It has been justly observed by a living writer of the most ardent
and enthusiastic genius, whose eloquence is as the rush of mighty
waters, and has left it for others almost as invidious to praise in
terms of less rapture, as to censure what he has borne along in the
stream of unhesitating eulogy, that “no poet has ever had a more
exquisite sense of the beautiful than Spenser.”[1225] In Virgil and
Tasso this was not less powerful; but even they, even the latter
himself, do not hang with such a tenderness of delight, with such a
forgetful delay, over the fair creations of their fancy. Spenser is not
averse to images that jar on the mind by exciting horror or disgust, and
sometimes his touches are rather too strong; but it is on love and
beauty, on holiness and virtue, that he reposes with all the sympathy of
his soul. The slowly sliding motion of his stanza, “with many a bout of
linked sweetness long drawn out,” beautifully corresponds to the dreamy
enchantment of his description, when Una, or Belphœbe, or Florimel,
or Amoret, are present to his mind. In this varied delineation of female
perfectness, no earlier poet had equalled him; nor, excepting
Shakspeare, has he had, perhaps, any later rival.
[1225] I allude here to a very brilliant series of papers on the Faery
Queen, published in Blackwood’s Magazine during the years 1834 and
1835.
|Compared to Ariosto.|
83. Spenser is naturally compared with Ariosto. “Fierce wars and
faithful loves did moralize the song” of both poets. But in the
constitution of their minds, in the character of their poetry, they were
almost the reverse of each other. The Italian is gay, rapid, ardent; his
pictures shift like the hues of heaven; even while diffuse, he seems to
leave in an instant what he touches, and is prolix by the number, not
the duration, of his images. Spenser is habitually serious; his slow
stanza seems to suit the temper of his genius; he loves to dwell on the
sweetness and beauty which his fancy portrays. The ideal of chivalry,
rather derived from its didactic theory, than from the precedents of
romance, is always before him; his morality is pure and even stern, with
nothing of the libertine tone of Ariosto. He worked with far worse tools
than the bard of Ferrara, with a language not quite formed, and into
which he rather injudiciously poured an unnecessary archaism, while the
style of his contemporaries was undergoing a rapid change in the
opposite direction. His stanza of nine lines is particularly
inconvenient and languid in narration, where the Italian octave is
sprightly and vigorous; though even this becomes ultimately monotonous
by its regularity, a fault from which only the ancient hexameter and our
blank verse are exempt.
84. Spenser may be justly said to excel Ariosto in originality of
invention, in force and variety of character, in strength and vividness
of conception, in depth of reflection, in fertility of imagination, and
above all, in that exclusively poetical cast of feeling, which discerns
in everything what common minds do not perceive. In the construction and
arrangement of their fable neither deserve much praise; but the siege of
Paris gives the Orlando Furioso, spite of its perpetual shiftings of the
scene, rather more unity in the reader’s apprehension than belongs to
the Faery Queen. Spenser is, no doubt, decidedly inferior in ease and
liveliness of narration, as well as clearness and felicity of language.
But, upon thus comparing the two poets, we have little reason to blush
for our countryman. Yet the fame of Ariosto is spread through Europe,
while Spenser is almost unknown out of England; and even in this age,
when much of our literature is so widely diffused, I have not observed
proofs of much acquaintance with him on the continent.
|Style of Spenser.|
85. The language of Spenser, like that of Shakspeare, is an instrument
manufactured for the sake of the work it was to perform. No other poet
had written like either, though both have had their imitators. It is
rather apparently obsolete by his partiality to certain disused forms,
such as the _y_ before the participle, than from any close resemblance
to the diction of Chaucer or Lydgate.[1226] The enfeebling expletives,
_do_ and _did_, though certainly very common in our early writers, had
never been employed with such an unfortunate predilection as by Spenser.
Their everlasting recurrence is among the great blemishes of his style.
His versification is in many passages beautifully harmonious; but he has
frequently permitted himself, whether for the sake of variety, or from
some other cause, to baulk the ear in the conclusion of a stanza.[1227]
[1226] “Spenser,” says Ben Jonson, “in affecting the ancients writ no
language; yet I would have him read for his matter, but as Virgil
read Ennius.” This is rather in the sarcastic tone attributed to
Jonson.
[1227] Coleridge, who had a very strong perception of the beauty of
Spenser’s poetry, has observed his alternate alliteration, “which
when well used is a great secret in melody; as _‘sad_ to _see_ her
_sorrowful_ constraint’;--‘on the grass her _dainty_ limbs _did_
lay.’” But I can hardly agree with him when he proceeds to say “it
never strikes any unwarned ear as artificial, or other than the
result of the necessary movement of the verse.” The artifice seems
often very obvious. I do not also quite understand, or, if I do,
cannot acquiesce in what follows, that “Spenser’s descriptions are
not in the true sense of the word picturesque, but are _composed of
a wondrous series of images, as in our dreams_.” Coleridge’s
Remains, vol. i. p. 93.
|Inferiority of the latter books.|
86. The inferiority of the last three books to the former is surely very
manifest. His muse gives gradual signs of weariness; the imagery becomes
less vivid, the vein of poetical description less rich, the digressions
more frequent and verbose. It is true that the fourth book is full of
beautiful inventions, and contains much admirable poetry; yet even here
we perceive a comparative deficiency in the quantity of excelling
passages, which becomes far more apparent as we proceed, and the last
book falls very short of the interest which the earlier part of the
Faery Queen had excited. There is perhaps less reason than some have
imagined, to regret that Spenser did not complete his original design.
The Faery Queen is already in the class of longest poems. A double
length, especially if, as we may well suspect, the succeeding parts
would have been inferior, might have deterred many readers from the
perusal of what we now possess. It is felt already in Spenser, as it is
perhaps even in Ariosto, when we read much of either, that tales of
knights and ladies, giants and savage men, end in a satiety which no
poetical excellence can overcome. Ariosto, sensible of this intrinsic
defect in the epic romance, has enlivened it by great variety of
incidents, and by much that carries us away from the peculiar tone of
chivalrous manners. The world he lives in is before his eyes, and to
please it is his aim. He plays with his characters as with puppets that
amuse the spectator and himself. In Spenser, nothing is more remarkable
than the steadiness of his apparent faith in the deeds of knighthood. He
had little turn for sportiveness; and in attempting it, as in the
unfortunate instance of Malbecco, and a few shorter passages, we find
him dull as well as coarse. It is in the ideal world of pure and noble
virtues, that his spirit, wounded by neglect, and weary of trouble,
loved to refresh itself without reasoning or mockery; he forgets the
reader, and cares little for his taste, while he can indulge the dream
of his own delighted fancy. It may be here also observed, that the
elevated and religious morality of Spenser’s poem would secure it, in
the eyes of every man of just taste, from the ridicule which the mere
romances of knight-errantry must incur, and against which Ariosto
evidently guarded himself by the gay tone of his narration. The Orlando
Furioso and the Faery Queen are each in the spirit of its age; but the
one was for Italy in the days of Leo, the other for England under
Elizabeth, before, though but just before, the severity of the
Reformation had been softened away. The lay of Britomart, in twelve
cantos, in praise of Chastity, would have been received with a smile at
the court of Ferrara, which would have had almost as little sympathy
with the justice of Arthegal.
|Allegories of the Faery Queen.|
87. The allegories of Spenser have been frequently censured. One
of their greatest offences, perhaps, is that they gave birth to some
tedious and uninteresting poetry of the same kind. There is usually
something repulsive in the application of an abstract or general name to
a person, in which, though with some want of regard, as I have intimated
above, to the proper meaning of the word, we are apt to think that
allegorical fiction consists. The French and English poets of the Middle
Ages had far too much of this; and it is to be regretted, that Spenser
did not give other appellations to his Care and Despair, as he has done
to Duessa and Talus. In fact, Orgoglio is but a giant, Humiltà a porter,
Obedience a servant. The names, when English, suggest something that
perplexes us; but the beings exhibited are mere persons of the drama,
men and women, whose office or character is designated by their
appellation.
|Blemishes in the diction.|
88. The general style of the Faery Queen is not exempt from several
defects, besides those of obsoleteness and redundancy. Spenser seems to
have been sometimes deficient in one attribute of a great poet, the
continual reference to the truth of nature, so that his fictions should
be always such as might exist on the given conditions. This arises in
great measure from copying his predecessors too much in description, not
suffering his own good sense to correct their deviations from truth.
Thus, in the beautiful description of Una, where she first is introduced
to us, riding
Upon a lowly ass more white than snow;
_Herself much whiter_.
This absurdity may have been suggested by Ovid’s Brachia Sithonia
candidiora nive; but the image in this line is not brought so distinctly
before the mind as to be hideous as well as untrue; it is merely a
hyperbolical parallel.[1228] A similar objection lies to the stanza
enumerating as many kinds of trees as the poet could call to mind, in
the description of a forest,--
The sailing pine, the cedar proud and tall,
The vine-prop elm, the poplar never dry,
The builder oak, sole king of forests all,
The aspine good for staves, the cypress funeral,
with thirteen more in the next stanza. Every one knows that a natural
forest never contains such a variety of species; nor indeed could such a
medley as Spenser, treading in the steps of Ovid, has brought together
from all soils and climates, exist long if planted by the hands of man.
Thus, also, in the last canto of the second book, we have a celebrated
stanza, and certainly a very beautiful one, if this defect did not
attach to it; where winds, waves, birds, voices, and musical instruments
are supposed to conspire in one harmony. A good writer has observed upon
this, that “to a person listening to a concert of voices and
instruments, the interruption of singing birds, winds, and waterfalls,
would be little better than the torment of Hogarth’s enraged
musician.”[1229] But perhaps the enchantment of the Bower of Bliss,
where this is feigned to have occurred, may in some degree justify
Spenser in this instance, by taking it out of the common course of
nature. The stanza is translated from Tasso, whom our own poet has
followed with close footsteps in these cantos of the second book of the
Faery Queen--cantos often in themselves beautiful, but which are
rendered stiff by a literal adherence to the original, and fall very
short of its ethereal grace and sweetness. It would be unjust not to
relieve these strictures, by observing that very numerous passages might
be brought from the Faery Queen of admirable truth in painting, and of
indisputable originality. The cave of Despair, the hovel of Corceca, the
incantation of Amoret, are but a few among those that will occur to the
reader of Spenser.
[1228] Vincent Bourne, in his translation of William and Margaret, has
one of the most elegant lines he ever wrote:--
Candidior nivibus, frigidiorque manus.
But this is said of a ghost.
[1229] Twining’s Translation of Aristotle’s Poetics, p. 14.
|Admiration of the Faery Queen.|
89. The admiration of this great poem was unanimous and enthusiastic. No
academy had been trained to carp at his genius with minute cavilling; no
recent popularity, no traditional fame (for Chaucer was rather venerated
than much in the hands of the reader) interfered with the immediate
recognition of his supremacy. The Faery Queen became at once the delight
of every accomplished gentleman, the model of every poet, the solace of
every scholar. In the course of the next century, by the extinction of
habits derived from chivalry, and the change both of taste and language,
which came on with the civil wars and the restoration, Spenser lost
something of his attraction, and much more of his influence over
literature; yet, in the most phlegmatic temper of the general reader, he
seems to have been one of our most popular writers. Time, however, has
gradually wrought its work; and, notwithstanding the more imaginative
cast of poetry in the present century, it may be well doubted whether
the Faery Queen is as much read or as highly esteemed as in the days of
Anne. It is not perhaps very difficult to account for this: those who
seek the delight that mere fiction presents to the mind (and they are
the great majority of readers), have been supplied to the utmost limit
of their craving, by stores accommodated to every temper, and far more
stimulant than the legends of Faeryland. But we must not fear to assert,
with the best judges of this and of former ages, that Spenser is still
the third name in the poetical literature of our country, and that he
has not been surpassed, except by Dante, in any other.[1230]
[1230] Mr. Campbell has given a character of Spenser, not so
enthusiastic as that to which I have alluded, but so
discriminating, and, in general sound, that I shall take the
liberty of extracting it from his Specimens of the British Poets,
i. 125. “His command of imagery is wide, easy, and luxuriant. He
threw the soul of harmony into our verse, and made it more warmly,
tenderly, and magnificently descriptive than it ever was before,
or, with a few exceptions, than it has ever been since. It must
certainly be owned that in description he exhibits nothing of the
brief strokes and robust power, which characterise the very
greatest poets; but we shall nowhere find more airy and expansive
images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, or a finer
flush in the colours of language, than in this Rubens of English
poetry. His fancy teems exuberantly in minuteness of circumstance,
like a fertile soil sending bloom and verdure through the utmost
extremities of the foliage which it nourishes. On a comprehensive
view of the whole work, we certainly miss the charm of strength,
symmetry, and rapid, or interesting progress; for though the plan
which the poet designed is not completed, it is easy to see that no
additional cantos could have rendered it less perplexed.”
|General parallel of Italian and English poetry.|
90. If we place Tasso and Spenser apart, the English poetry of
Elizabeth’s reign will certainly not enter into competition with that of
the corresponding period in Italy. It would require not only much
national prejudice, but a want of genuine _æsthetic_ discernment to
put them on a level. But it may still be said that our own muses had
their charms; and even that, at the end of the century, there was a
better promise for the future than beyond the Alps. We might compare the
poetry of one nation to a beauty of the court, with noble and regular
features, a slender form, and grace in all her steps, but wanting a
genuine simplicity of countenance, and with somewhat of sickliness in
the delicacy of her complexion, that seems to indicate the passing away
of the first season of youth; while that of the other would rather
suggest a country maiden, newly mingling with polished society, not of
perfect lineaments, but attracting beholders by the spirit, variety, and
intelligence of her expression, and rapidly wearing off the traces of
rusticity, which are still sometimes visible in her demeanour.
SECT. V.--ON LATIN POETRY.
_In Italy--Germany--France--Great Britain._
|Decline of Latin poetry in Italy.|
91. The cultivation of poetry in modern languages did not as yet thin
the ranks of Latin versifiers. They are, on the contrary, more numerous
in this period than before. Italy, indeed, ceased to produce men equal
to those who had flourished in the age of Leo and Clement. Some of
considerable merit will be found in the great collection, “Carmina
Illustrium Poetarum” (Florentiæ, 1719); one too, which rigorously
excluding all voluptuous poetry, makes some sacrifice of genius to
scrupulous morality. The brothers Amaltei are perhaps the best of the
later period. It is not always easy, at least without more pains than I
have taken, to determine the chronology of these poems, which are
printed in the alphabetical order of the authors’ names. But a
considerable number must be later than the middle of the century. It
must be owned that most of these poets employ trivial images, and do not
much vary their forms of expression. They often please, but rarely make
an impression on the memory. They are generally, I think, harmonious;
and perhaps metrical faults, though not uncommon, are less so than among
the Cisalpine Latinists. There appears, on the whole, an evident decline
since the preceding age.
|Compensated in other countries. Lotichius.|
92. This was tolerably well compensated in other parts of Europe. One of
the most celebrated authors is a native of Germany, Lotichius, whose
poems were first published in 1551, and with much amendment in 1561.
They are written in a strain of luscious elegance, not rising far above
the customary level of Ovidian poetry, and certainly not often falling
below it. The versification is remarkably harmonious and flowing, but
with a mannerism not sufficiently diversified; the first foot of each
verse is generally a dactyle, which adds to the grace, but somewhat
impairs the strength. Lotichius is, however, a very elegant and
classical versifier; and perhaps equal in elegy to Joannes Secundus, or
any Cisalpine writer of the sixteenth century.[1231] One of his elegies,
on the siege of Magdeburg, gave rise to a strange notion--that he
predicted, by a sort of divine enthusiasm, the calamities of that city
in 1631. Bayle has spun a long note out of this fancy of some
Germans.[1232] But those who take the trouble, which these critics seem
to have spared themselves, of attending to the poem itself, will
perceive that the author concludes it with prognostics of peace instead
of capture. It was evidently written on the siege of Magdeburg by
Maurice in 1550. George Sabinus, son-in-law of Melanchthon, ranks second
in reputation to Lotichius among the Latin poets of Germany during this
period.
[1231] Baillet calls him the best poet of Germany after Eobanus Hessus.
[1232] Morhof, l. i. c. 19. Bayle, art. Lotichius, note G. This seems
to have been agitated after the publication of Bayle; for I find in
the catalogue of the British Museum a disquisition, by one Krusike,
Utrum Petrus Lotichius secundam obsidionem urbis Magdeburgensis
prædixerit; published as late as 1703.
|Collections of Latin poetry by Gruter.|
93. But France and Holland, especially the former, became the more
favoured haunts of the Latin muse. A collection in three volumes by
Gruter, under the fictitious name of Ranusius Gherus, Deliciæ Poetarum
Gallorum, published in 1609, contains the principal writers of the
former country, some entire, some in selection. In these volumes there
are about 100,000 lines; in the Deliciæ Poetarum Belgarum, a similar
publication by Gruter, I find about as many; his third collection,
Deliciæ Poetarum Italorum, seems not so long, but I have not seen more
than one volume. These poets are disposed alphabetically; few,
comparatively speaking, of the Italians seem to belong to the latter
half of the century, but very much the larger proportion of the French
and Dutch. A fourth collection, Deliciæ Poetarum Germanorum, I have
never seen. All these bear the fictitious name of Gherus. According to a
list in Baillet, the number of Italian poets selected by Gruter is 203;
of French, 108; of Dutch or Belgic, 129; of German, 211.
|Characters of some Gallo-Latin poets.|
94. Among the French poets, Beza, who bears in Gruter’s collection the
name of Adeodatus Seba, deserves high praise, though some of his early
pieces are rather licentious.[1233] Bellay is also an amatory poet; in
the opinion of Baillet he has not succeeded so well in Latin as in
French. The poems of Muretus are perhaps superior. Joseph Scaliger
seemed to me to write Latin verse tolerably well, but he is not rated
highly by Baillet and the authors whom he quotes.[1234] The epigrams of
Henry Stephens are remarkably prosaic and heavy. Passerat is very
elegant; his lines breathe a classical spirit, and are full of those
fragments of antiquity with which Latin poetry ought always to be
inlaid, but in sense they are rather feeble.[1235] The epistles, on the
contrary, of the Chancellor de l’Hospital, in an easy Horatian
versification, are more interesting than such insipid effusions, whether
of flattery or feigned passion, as the majority of modern Latinists
present. They are unequal, and fall too often into a creeping style; but
sometimes we find a spirit and nervousness of strength and sentiment
worthy of his name; and though keeping in general to the level of
Horatian satire, he rises at intervals to a higher pitch, and wants not
the skill of descriptive poetry.
[1233] Baillet, n. 1366, thinks Beza an excellent Latin poet. The
Juvenilia first appeared in 1548. The later editions omitted
several poems.
[1234] Jugemens des Savans, n. 1295. One of Scaliger’s poems celebrates
that immortal flea, which, on a great festival at Poitiers, having
appeared on the bosom of a learned, and doubtless beautiful young
lady, Mademoiselle des Roches, was the theme of all the wits and
scholars of the age. Some of their lines and those of Joe Scaliger
among the number, seem designed, by the freedom they take with the
fair Pucelle, to beat the intruder himself in impudence. See Œuvres
de Pasquier, ii. 950.
[1235] Among the epigrams of Passerat I have found one which Amaltheus
seems to have shortened and improved, retaining the idea, in his
famous lines on Acon and Leonilla. I do not know whether this has
been observed.
Cætera formosi, dextro est orbatus ocello
Frater, et est lævo lumine capta soror.
Frontibus adversis ambo si jungitis ora,
Bina quidem facies, vultus at unus erit.
Sed tu, Carle, tuum lumen transmitte sorori,
Continuo ut vestrûm fiat uterque Deus.
Plena hæc fulgebit fraterna luce Diana,
Hujus frater eris tu quoque, cæcus amor.
This is very good, and Passerat ought to have credit for the
invention; but the other is better. Though most know the lines by
heart, I will insert them here:--
Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,
Et Potis est forma vincere uterque Deos.
Blande puer, lumen quod habes, concede sorori,
Sic tu cæcus amor, sic erit illa Venus.
I have no ground for saying that this was written last, except that
no one would have dreamed of improving it.
|Sammarthanus.|
95. The best of Latin poets whom France could boast was Sammarthanus
(Sainte Marthe), known also, but less favourably, in his own language.
They are more classically elegant than any others which met my eye in
Gruter’s collection; and this, I believe, is the general suffrage of
critics.[1236] Few didactic poems, probably, are superior to his
Pædotrophia, on the nurture of children; it is not a little better,
which indeed is no high praise, than the Balia of Tansillo on the same
subject.[1237] We may place Sammarthanus, therefore, at the head of the
list; and not far from the bottom of it I should class Bonnefons, or
Bonifonius, a French writer of Latin verse in the very worst taste, whom
it would not be worth while to mention, but for a certain degree of
reputation he has acquired. He might also be suspected of designing to
turn into ridicule the effeminacy which some Italians had introduced
into amorous poetry. Bonifonius has closely imitated Secundus, but is
much inferior to him in everything but his faults. The Latinity is full
of gross and obvious errors.[1238]
[1236] Baillet, n. 1401. Some did not scruple to set him above the
best Italians, and one went so far as to say that Virgil would have
been envious of the Pædotrophia.
[1237] The following lines are a specimen of the Pædotrophia, taken
much at random.
Ipsæ etiam Alpinis villosæ in cautibus ursæ,
Ipsæ etiam tigres, et quicquid ubique ferarum est,
Debita servandis concedunt ubera natis.
Tu, quam miti animo natura benigna creavit,
Exuperes feritate feras? nec te tua tangant
Pignora, nec querulos puerili e gutture planctus,
Nec lacrymas miserêris, opemque injusta recuses,
Quam præstare tuum est, et quæ te pendet ab unâ.
Cujus onus teneris hærebit dulce lacertis
Infelix puer, et molli se pectore sternet?
Dulcia quis primi captabit gaudia risûs,
Et primas voces et blæsæ murmura linguæ?
Tune fruenda alii potes illa relinquere demens,
Tantique esse putas teretis servare papillæ
Integrum decus, et juvenilem in pectore florem?
Lib. i. (Gruter. iii. 266.)
It is singular that Sammarthanus (Sainte Marthe), though a French
poet (with less success than in Latin), and one of the most
accomplished men of his time, and also one of the best known in
literary history, is omitted in the Biographie Universelle. Such
negligences must occur in a long work; but the editors are rather
too severe on a preceding collection of biography, the Dictionnaire
Historique of Chaudon and Delandine, for similar faults. Lives will
be found in this much shorter publication which have been
overlooked in their own.
[1238] The following lines are not an unfair specimen of Bonifonius:--
Nympha bellula, nympha mollicella,
Cujus in roseis latent labellis
Meæ deliciæ, meæ salutes, &c.
* * * * *
Salvete aureolæ meæ puellæ
Crines aureolique crispulique,
Salvete et mihi vos puellæ ocelli,
Ocelli improbuli protervulique;
Salvete et veneris pares papillis
Papillæ teretesque turgidæque;
Salvete æmula purpuræ labella;
Tota denique Pancharilla salve.
* * * * *
Nunc te possideo, alma Pancharilla,
Turturilla mea et columbililla.
Bonifonius has been thought worthy of several editions, and has met
with more favourable judges than myself.
|Belgic Poets.|
96. The Deliciæ Poetarum Belgarum appeared to me, on rather a cursory
inspection, inferior to the French. Secundus outshines his successors.
Those of the younger Dousa, whose premature death was lamented by all
the learned, struck me as next in merit. Dominic Baudius is harmonious
and elegant, but with little originality or vigour. These poets are
loose and negligent in versification, ending too often a pentameter with
a polysyllable, and with feeble effect; they have also little idea of
several other common rules of Latin composition.
|Scots poets; Buchanan.|
97. The Scots, in consequence of receiving, very frequently, a
continental education, cultivated Latin poetry with ardour. It was the
favourite amusement of Andrew Melville, who is sometimes a mere
scribbler, at others tolerably classical and spirited. His poem on the
Creation, in Deliciæ Poetarum Scotorum, is very respectable. One by
Hercules Rollock, on the marriage of Anne of Denmark, is better, and
equal, a few names withdrawn, to any of the contemporaneous poetry of
France. The Epistolæ Heroidum of Alexander Bodius are also good. But the
most distinguished among the Latin poets of Europe in this age was
George Buchanan, of whom Joseph Scaliger and several other critics have
spoken in such unqualified terms, that they seem to place him even above
the Italians at the beginning of the sixteenth century.[1239] If such
were their meaning, I should crave the liberty of hesitating.
The best poem of Buchanan, in my judgment, is that on the Sphere, than
which few philosophical subjects could afford better opportunities for
ornamental digression. He is not, I think, in hexameters inferior to
Vida, and certainly far superior to Palearius. In this poem Buchanan
descants on the absurdity of the Pythagorean system which supposes the
motion of the earth. Many good passages occur in his elegies, though I
cannot reckon him equal in this metre to several of the Italians. His
celebrated translation of the Psalms I must also presume to think
over-praised;[1240] it is difficult perhaps to find one, except the
137th, with which he has taken particular pains, that can be called
truly elegant or classical Latin poetry. Buchanan is now and then
incorrect in the quantity of syllables, as indeed is common with his
contemporaries.
[1239] Buchananus unus est in tota Europa omnes post se relinquens
in Latina poesi. Scaligerana Prima.
Henry Stephens, says Maittaire, was the first who placed Buchanan
at the head of all the poets of his age, and all France, Italy, and
Germany, have since subscribed to the same opinion, and conferred
that title upon him. Vitæ Stephanorum, ii. 258. I must confess that
Sainte Marthe appears to me not inferior to Buchanan. The latter is
very unequal: if we frequently meet with a few lines of great
elegance, they are compensated by others of a different
description.
[1240] Baillet thinks it impossible that those who wish for what is
solid as well as what is agreeable in poetry, can prefer any other
Latin verse of Buchanan to his Psalms. Jugemens des Savans, n.
1328. But Baillet and several others exclude much poetry of
Buchanan on account of its reflecting on popery. Baillet and Blount
produce abundant testimonies to the excellence of Buchanan’s
verses. Le Clerc calls his translation of the Psalms incomparable,
Bibl. Choisie, viii. 127, and prefers it much to that by Beza,
which I am not prepared to question. He extols also all his other
poetry, except his tragedies and the poem of the Sphere, which I
have praised above the rest. So different are the humours of
critics! But as I have fairly quoted those who do not quite agree
with myself, and by both number and reputation ought to weigh more
with the reader, he has no right to complain that I mislead his
taste.
98. England was far from strong, since she is not to claim Buchanan, in
the Latin poetry of this age. A poem in ten books, De Republica
Instauranda, by Sir Thomas Chaloner, published in 1579, has not received
so much attention as it deserves, though the author is more judicious
than imaginative, and does not preserve a very good rhythm. It may be
compared with the Zodiacus Vitæ of Palingenius, rather than any other
Latin poem I recollect, to which, however, it is certainly inferior.
Some lines relating to the English constitution, which, though the title
leads us to expect more, forms only the subject of the last book, the
rest relating chiefly to private life, will serve as a specimen of
Chaloner’s powers,[1241] and also display the principles of our
government as an experienced statesman understood them. The Anglorum
Prœlia, by Ockland, which was directed by an order of the Privy
Council to be read exclusively in schools, is an hexameter poem,
versified from the chronicles, in a tame strain, not exceedingly bad,
but still farther from good. I recollect no other Latin verse of the
queen’s reign worthy of notice.
[1241]
Nempe tribus simul ordinibus jus esse sacratas
Condendi leges patrio pro more vetustas
Longo usu sic docta tulit, modus iste rogandi
Haud secus ac basis hanc nostram sic constituit rem,
Ut si inconsultis reliquis pars ulla superbo
Imperio quicquam statuat, seu tollat, ad omnes
Quod spectat, posthac quo nomine læsa vocetur
Publica res nobis, nihil amplius ipse laboro.
* * * * *
Plebs primum reges statuit; jus hoc quoque nostrûm est
Cunctorum, ut regi faveant popularia vota;
(Si quid id est, quod plebs respondet rite rogata)
Nam neque ab invitis potuit vis unica multis
Extorquere datos concordi munere fasces;
Quin populus reges in publica commoda quondam
Egregios certa sub conditione paravit,
Non reges populum; namque his antiquior ille est.
* * * * *
Nec cupiens nova jura ferat, seu condita tollat,
Non prius ordinibus regni de more vocatis,
Ut procerum populique rato stent ordine vota,
Omnibus et positum sciscat conjuncta voluntas.
De Rep. Inst. l. 10.
CHAPTER XV.
HISTORY OF DRAMATIC LITERATURE, FROM 1550 TO 1600.
_Italian Tragedy and Comedy--Pastoral Drama--Spanish Drama--Lope De
Vega--French Dramatists--Early English Drama--Second Æra; of Marlowe
and his Contemporaries--Shakspeare--Character of several of his Plays
written within this Period._
|Italian tragedy.|
1. Many Italian tragedies are extant, belonging to these fifty years,
though not very generally known, nor can I speak of them except through
Ginguéné and Walker, the latter of whom has given a few extracts. The
Marianna and Didone of Lodovico Dolce, the Œdipus of Anguillara, the
Merope of Torelli, the Semiramis of Manfredi, are necessarily
bounded, in the conduct of their fable, by what was received as truth.
But others, as Cinthio had done, preferred to invent their story, in
deviation from the practice of antiquity. The Hadriana of Groto, the
Acripanda of Decio da Orto, and the Torrismond of Tasso are of this
kind. In all these we find considerable beauties of language, a florid
and poetic tone, but declamatory and not well adapted to the rapidity of
action, in which we seem to perceive the germ of that change from common
speech to recitative, which, fixing the attention of the hearer on the
person of the actor rather than on his relation to the scene, destroyed
in great measure the character of dramatic representation. The Italian
tragedies are deeply imbued with horror; murder and cruelty, with all
attending circumstances of disgust, and every pollution of crime,
besides a profuse employment of spectral agency, seem the chief weapons
of the poet’s armoury to subdue the spectator. Even the gentleness of
Tasso could not resist the contagion in his Torrismond. These tragedies
still retain the chorus at the termination of every act. Of the Italian
comedies little can be added to what has been said before; no comic
writer of this period is comparable in reputation to Machiavel, Ariosto,
or even Aretin.[1242] They are rather less licentious; and in fact, the
profligacy of Italian manners began, in consequence probably of a better
example in the prelates of the church, to put on some regard for
exterior decency in the latter part of the century.
[1242] Ginguéné, vol. vi.
|Pastoral drama.|
2. These regular plays, though possibly deserving of more attention than
they have obtained, are by no means the most important portion of the
dramatic literature of Italy in this age. A very different style of
composition has, through two distinguished poets, contributed to spread
the fame of Italian poetry, and the language itself, through Europe. The
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were abundantly productive of pastoral
verse; a style pleasing to those who are not severe in admitting its
conventional fictions. The pastoral dialogue had not much difficulty in
expanding to the pastoral drama. In the Sicilian gossips of Theocritus,
and in some other ancient eclogues, new interlocutors supervene, which
is the first germ of a regular action. Pastorals of this kind had been
written, and possibly represented, in Spain, such as the Mingo Rebulgo,
in the middle of the fifteenth century.[1243] Ginguéné has traced the
progress of similar representations, becoming more and more dramatic, in
Italy.[1244] But it is admitted that the honour of giving the first
example of a true pastoral fable to the theatre was due to Agostino
Beccari of Ferrara. This piece, named Il Sagrifizio, was acted at that
court in 1554. Its priority in a line which was to become famous appears
to be its chief merit. In this, as in earlier and more simple attempts
at pastoral dialogue, the choruses were set to music.[1245]
[1243] Bouterwek’s Spanish Literature, i. 129.
[1244] vi. 327 et post.
[1245] Id. vi. 332.
|Aminta of Tasso.|
3. This pleasing, though rather effeminate, species of poetry was
carried, more than twenty years afterwards, one or two unimportant
imitations of Beccari having intervened, to a point of excellence, which
perhaps it has never surpassed, in the Aminta of Tasso. Its admirable
author was then living at the court of Ferrara, yielding up his heart to
those seductive illusions of finding happiness in the favour of the
great, and even in ambitious and ill-assorted love, which his sounder
judgment already saw through, the Aminta bearing witness to both states
of mind. In the character of Tirsi he has drawn himself, and seems once
(though with the proud consciousness of genius), to hint at that
eccentric melancholy, which soon increased so fatally for his peace.
Ne già cose scrivea degne di riso,
Se ben cose facea degne di riso.
The language of all the interlocutors in the Aminta is alike, nor is the
satyr less elegant or recondite than the learned shepherds. It is in
general too diffuse and florid, too uniform and elaborate, for passion;
especially if considered dramatically, in reference to the story and the
speakers. But it is to be read as what it is, a beautiful poem; the
delicacy and gracefulness of many passages rendering them exponents of
the hearer’s or reader’s feelings, though they may not convey much
sympathy with the proper subject. The death of Aminta, however, falsely
reported to Sylvia, leads to a truly pathetic scene. It is to be
observed that Tasso was more formed by classical poetry, and
more frequently an imitator of it, than any earlier Italian. The
beauties of the Aminta are in great measure due to Theocritus, Virgil,
Ovid, Anacreon, and Moschus.
|Pastor Fido of Guarini.|
4. The success of Tasso’s Aminta produced the Pastor Fido of Guarini,
himself long in the service of the duke of Ferrara, where he had become
acquainted with Tasso; though in consequence of some dissatisfaction at
that court, he sought the patronage of the duke of Savoy. The Pastor
Fido was first represented at Turin in 1585, but seems not to have been
printed for some years afterwards. It was received with general
applause; but the obvious resemblance to Tasso’s pastoral drama could
not fail to excite a contention between their respective advocates,
which long survived the mortal life of the two poets. Tasso, it has been
said, on reading the Pastor Fido, was content to observe that, if his
rival had not read the Aminta, he would not have excelled it. If his
modesty induced him to say no more than this, very few would be induced
to dispute his claim; the characters, the sentiments are evidently
imitated; and in one celebrated instance a whole chorus is parodied with
the preservation of every rhyme.[1246] But it is far more questionable
whether the palm of superior merit, independent of originality, should
be awarded to the later poet. More elegance and purity of taste belong
to the Aminta, more animation and variety to the Pastor Fido. The
advantage in point of morality, which some have ascribed to Tasso, is
not very perceptible; Guarini may transgress rather more in some
passages, but the tone of the Aminta, in strange opposition to the pure
and pious life of its author, breathes nothing but the avowed laxity of
an Italian court. The Pastor Fido may be considered, in a much greater
degree than the Aminta, a prototype of the Italian opera; not that it
was spoken in recitative; but the short and rapid expressions of
passion, the broken dialogue, the frequent changes of personages and
incidents, keep the effect of representation and of musical
accompaniment continually before the reader’s imagination. Any one who
glances over a few scenes of the Pastor Fido will, I think, perceive
that it is the very style which Metastasio, and inferior coadjutors of
musical expression, have rendered familiar to our ears.
[1246] This is that beginning, O bella età dell’oro.
|Italian opera.|
5. The great invention, which though chiefly connected with the history
of music and of society, was by no means without influence upon
literature, the melodrame, usually called the Italian opera, belongs to
the very last years of this century. Italy, long conspicuous for such
musical science and skill as the Middle Ages possessed, had fallen, in
the first part of the sixteenth century, very short of some other
countries, and especially of the Netherlands, from which the courts of
Europe, and even of the Italian princes, borrowed their performers and
their instructors. A revolution in church music, which had become
particularly dry and pedantic, was brought about by the genius of
Palestrina about 1560; and the art, in all its departments, was
cultivated with an increased zeal for all the rest of the century.[1247]
In the splendour that environed the houses of Medici and Este, in the
pageants they loved to exhibit, music, carried to a higher perfection by
foreign artists, and by the natives that now came forward to emulate
them, became of indispensable importance; it had already been adapted to
dramatic representation in choruses; interludes and pieces written for
scenic display were now given with a perpetual accompaniment, partly to
the songs, partly to the dance and pantomime which intervened between
them.[1248] Finally, Ottavio Rinuccini, a poet of considerable genius,
but who is said to have known little of musical science, by meditating
on what is found in ancient writers on the accompaniment to their
dramatic dialogue, struck out the idea of recitative. This he first
tried in the pastoral of Dafne, represented privately in 1594; and its
success led him to the composition of what he entitled a tragedy for
music, on the story of Eurydice. This was represented at the festival on
the marriage of Mary of Medicis in 1600. “The most astonishing effects,”
says Ginguéné, “that the theatrical music of the greatest masters has
produced, in the perfection of the science, are not comparable to those
of this representation, which exhibited to Italy the creation of a new
art.”[1249] It is, however, a different question whether this immense
enhancement of the powers of music, and consequently of its popularity,
has been favourable to the development of poetical genius in this
species of composition; and in general it may be said that, if music
has, on some occasions, been a serviceable handmaid, and even a
judicious monitress, to poetry, she has been apt to prove but a
tyrannical mistress. In the melodrame, Corniani well observes, poetry
became her vassal, and has been ruled with a despotic sway.
[1247] Ranke, with the musical sentiment of a German, ascribes a
wonderful influence in the revival of religion after the middle of
the century to the compositions of Palestrina. Church music had
become so pedantic and technical that the council of Trent had some
doubts whether it should be retained. Pius IV. appointed a
commission to examine this question, who could arrive at no
decision. The artists said it was impossible to achieve what the
church required, a coincidence of expression between the words and
the music. Palestrina appeared at this time, and composed the mass
of Marcellus, which settled the dispute for ever. Other works by
himself and his disciples followed, which elevated sacred music to
the highest importance among the accessories of religious worship.
Die Päpste, vol. i. p. 498. But a large proportion of the
performers, I apprehend, were Germans, especially in theatrical
music.
[1248] Ginguéné, vol. vi., has traced the history of the melodrame
with much pains.
[1249] P. 474. Corniani, vii. 31, speaks highly of the poetical
abilities of Rinuccini. See also Galluzzi, Storia del Gran Ducato,
v. 547.
|The national taste revives in the Spanish drama.|
6. The struggle that seemed arduous in the earlier part of this century
between the classical and national schools of dramatic poetry in Spain,
proved of no long duration. The latter became soon decisively superior;
and before the end of the present period, that kingdom was in possession
of a peculiar and extensive literature, which has attracted the notice
of Europe, and has enriched both the French theatre and our own. The
spirit of the Spanish drama is far different from that which animated
the Italian writers; there is not much of Machiavel in their comedy, and
still less of Cinthio in their tragedy. They abandoned the Greek chorus,
which still fettered their contemporaries, and even the division into
five acts, which later poets, in other countries, have not ventured to
renounce. They gave more complication to the fable, sought more
unexpected changes of circumstance, were not solicitous in tragedy to
avoid colloquial language or familiar incidents, showed a preference to
the tragi-comic intermixture of light with serious matter, and
cultivated grace in poetical diction more than vigour. The religious
mysteries, once common in other parts of Europe, were devoutly kept up
in Spain; and under the name of Autos Sacramentales, make no
inconsiderable portion of the writings of their chief dramatists.[1250]
[1250] Bouterwek.
7. Andrès, favourable as he is to his country, is far from enthusiastic
in his praises of the Spanish theatre. Its exuberance has been its ruin;
no one, he justly remarks, can read some thousand plays in the hope of
finding a few that are tolerable. Andrès, however, is not exempt from a
strong prejudice in favour of the French stage. He admits the ease and
harmony of the Spanish versification, the purity of the style, the
abundance of the thoughts, and the ingenious complexity of the
incidents. This is peculiarly the merit of the Spanish comedy, as its
great defect, in his opinion, is the want of truth and delicacy in the
delineation of the passions, and of power to produce a vivid impression
on the reader. The best work, he concludes rather singularly, of the
comic poets of Spain has been the French theatre.[1251]
[1251] Vol. v. p. 138.
|Lope de Vega.|
|His extraordinary fertility.|
8. The most renowned of these is Lope de Vega, so many of whose dramas
appeared within the present century, that although, like Shakspeare, he
is equally to be claimed by the next, we may place his name, once for
all, in this period. Lope de Vega is called by Cervantes a prodigy of
nature; and such he may justly be reckoned; not that we can ascribe to
him a sublime genius, or a mind abounding with fine original thought,
but his fertility of invention and readiness of versifying are beyond
competition. It was said foolishly, if meant as praise, of Shakspeare,
and we may be sure untruly, that he never blotted a line. This may also
be presumed of Vega. “He required,” says Bouterwek, “no more than four
and twenty hours to write a versified drama of three acts in
redondillas, interspersed with sonnets, tercets, and octaves, and from
beginning to end abounding in intrigues, prodigies, or interesting
situations. This astonishing facility enabled him to supply the Spanish
theatre with upwards of 2000 original dramas, of which not more than 300
have been preserved by printing. In general the theatrical manager
carried away what he wrote before he had even time to revise it; and
immediately a fresh applicant would arrive to prevail on him to commence
a new piece. He sometimes wrote a play in the short space of three or
four hours.” ... “Arithmetical calculations have been employed in order
to arrive at a just estimate of Lope de Vega’s facility in poetic
composition. According to his own testimony, he wrote on an average five
sheets a day; it has therefore been computed that the number of
sheets which he composed during his life must have amounted to 133,225;
and that, allowing for the deduction of a small portion of prose, Lope
de Vega must have written upwards of 21,300,000 verses. Nature would
have overstepped her bounds and have produced the miraculous, had Lope
de Vega, along with this rapidity of invention and composition, attained
perfection in any department of literature.”[1252]
[1252] P. 361-363. Montalvan, Lope’s friend, says that he wrote 1800
plays and 400 autos. In a poem of his own, written in 1609, he
claims 483 plays, and he continued afterwards to write for the
stage. Those that remain and have been collected in twenty-five
volumes are reckoned at about 300.
|His versification.|
9. This peculiar gift of rapid composition will appear more
extraordinary when we attend to the nature of Lope’s versification, very
unlike the irregular lines of our old drama, which it is not perhaps
difficult for a practised hand to write or utter extemporaneously. “The
most singular circumstance attending his verse,” says Lord Holland, “is
the frequency and difficulty of the tasks which he imposes on himself.
At every step we meet with acrostics, echoes, and compositions of that
perverted and laborious kind, from attempting which another author would
be deterred by the trouble of the undertaking, if not by the little real
merit attending the achievement. They require no genius, but they exact
much time; which one should think that such a voluminous poet could
little afford to waste. But Lope made a parade of his power over the
vocabulary: he was not contented with displaying the various order in
which he could dispose the syllables and marshal the rhymes of his
language; but he also prided himself upon the celerity with which he
brought them to go through the most whimsical but the most difficult
evolutions. He seems to have been partial to difficulties for the
gratification of surmounting them.” This trifling ambition is usual
among second-rate poets, especially in a degraded state of public taste;
but it may be questionable, whether Lope de Vega ever performed feats
of skill more surprising in this way than some of the Italian
_improvisatori_, who have been said to carry on at the same time three
independent sonnets, uttering, in their unpremeditated strains, a line
of each in alternate succession. There is reason to believe, that their
extemporaneous poetry, is as good as anything in Lope de Vega.
|His popularity.|
10. The immense popularity of this poet, not limited, among the people
itself, to his own age, bespeaks some attention from criticism. “The
Spaniards who affect fine taste in modern times,” says Schlegel, “speak
with indifference of their old national poets; but the people retain a
lively attachment to them, and their productions are received on the
stage, at Madrid, or at Mexico, with passionate enthusiasm.” It is true
that foreign critics have not in general pronounced a very favourable
judgment of Lope de Vega. But a writer of such prodigious fecundity is
ill appreciated by single plays; the whole character of his composition
manifests that he wrote for the stage, and for the stage of his own
country, rather than for the closet of a foreigner. His writings are
divided into spiritual plays, heroic and historical comedies, most of
them taken from the annals and traditions of Spain, and lastly, comedies
of real life, or, as they were called, “of the hat and sword,” (capa y
espada) a name answering to the _comœdia togata_ of the Roman stage.
These have been somewhat better known than the rest, and have, in
several instances, found their way to our own theatre, by suggesting
plots and incidents to our older writers. The historian of Spanish
literature, to whom I am so much indebted, has given a character of
these comedies, in which the English reader will perhaps recognise much
that might be said also of Beaumont and Fletcher.
|Character of his comedies.|
11. “Lope de Vega’s comedies de Capa y Espada, or those which may
properly be denominated his dramas of intrigue, though wanting in the
delineation of character, are romantic pictures of manners, drawn from
real life. They present, in their peculiar style, no less interest with
respect to situation than his heroic comedies, and the same irregularity
in the composition of the scenes. The language, too, is alternately
elegant and vulgar, sometimes highly poetic, and sometimes, though
versified, reduced to the level of the dullest prose. Lope de Vega seems
scarcely to have bestowed a thought on maintaining probability in the
succession of the different scenes; ingenious complication is with him
the essential point in the interest of his situations. Intrigues are
twisted and entwined together, until the poet, in order to bring his
piece to a conclusion, without ceremony cuts the knots he cannot untie,
and then he usually brings as many couples together as he can by
any possible contrivance match. He has scattered through his pieces
occasional reflections and maxims of prudence; but any genuine morality,
which might be conveyed through the stage, is wanting, for its
introduction would have been inconsistent with that poetic freedom on
which the dramatic interest of the Spanish comedy is founded. His aim
was to paint what he observed, not what he would have approved, in the
manners of the fashionable world of his age; but he leaves it to the
spectator to draw his own inferences.”[1253]
[1253] Bouterwek, p. 375.
|Tragedy of Don Sancho Ortiz.|
12. An analysis of one of these comedies from real life is given by
Bouterwek, and another by Lord Holland. The very few that I have read
appear lively and diversified, not unpleasing in the perusal, but
exciting little interest and rapidly forgotten. Among the heroic pieces
of Lope de Vega a high place appears due to the Estrella de Sevilla,
published with alterations by Triquero, under the name of Don Sancho
Ortiz.[1254] It resembles the Cid in its subject. The king, Sancho the
Brave, having fallen in love with Estrella, sister of Don Bustos Tabera,
and being foiled by her virtue,[1255] and by the vigilance of her
brother, who had drawn his sword upon him, as in disguise he was
attempting to penetrate into her apartment, resolves to have him
murdered, and persuades Don Sancho Ortiz, a soldier full of courage and
loyalty, by describing the attempt made on his person, to undertake the
death of one whose name is contained in a paper he gives him. Sancho is
the accepted lover of Estrella, and is on that day to espouse her with
her brother’s consent. He reads the paper, and after a conflict which is
meant to be pathetic, but in our eyes is merely ridiculous, determines,
as might be supposed, to keep his word to his sovereign. The shortest
course is to contrive a quarrel with Bustos, which produces a duel,
wherein the latter is killed. The second act commences with a pleasing
scene of Estrella’s innocent delight in her prospect of happiness; but
the body of her brother is now brought in, and the murderer, who had
made no attempt to conceal himself, soon appears in custody. His
examination before the judges, who endeavour in vain to extort one word
from him in his defence, occupies part of the third act. The king,
anxious to save his life, but still more so to screen his own honour,
requires only a pretext to pardon the offence. But the noble Castilian
disdains to save himself by falsehood, and merely repeats that he had
not slain his friend without cause, and that the action was atrocious,
but not criminal.
Dice que fue atrocidad,
Pero que no fue delito.
[1254] In Lord Holland’s Life of Lope de Vega, a more complete analysis
than what I have offered is taken from the original play. I have
followed the _rifaccimento_ of Triquero, which is substantially the
same.
[1255] Lope de Vega has borrowed for Estrella the well-known answer of
a lady to a king of France, told with several variations of names,
and possibly true of none.
Soy (she says),
Para esposa vuestra poco,
Paro dama vuestra mucho.
13. In this embarrassment Estrella appears, demanding, not the execution
of justice on her brother’s murderer, but that he should be delivered up
to her. The king, with his usual feebleness, consents to this request,
observing that he knows by experience it is no new thing for her to be
cruel. She is, however, no sooner departed with the royal order, than
the wretched prince repents, and determines to release Sancho, making
compensation to Estrella by marrying her to a ricohombre of Castile. The
lady meantime reaches the prison, and in an interview with her
unfortunate lover, offers him his liberty, which by the king’s
concession is in her power. He is not to be outdone in generous
sentiments, and steadily declares his resolution to be executed. In the
fifth act this heroic emulation is reported by one who had overheard it
to the king. All the people of this city, he replies, are heroes, and
outstrip nature herself by the greatness of their souls. The judges now
enter, and with sorrow report their sentence that Sancho must suffer
death. But the king is at length roused, and publicly acknowledges that
the death of Bustos had been perpetrated by his command. The president
of the tribunal remarks that, as the king had given the order, there
must doubtless have been good cause. Nothing seems to remain but the
union of the lovers. Here, however, the high Castilian principle once
more displays itself. Estrella refuses to be united to one she tenderly
loves, but who has brought such a calamity into her family; and Sancho
himself, willingly releasing her engagement, admits that their marriage
under such circumstances would be a perpetual torment. The lady
therefore chooses, what is always at hand in Catholic fiction, the
dignified retirement of a nunnery, and the lover departs to dissipate
his regrets in the Moorish war.
14. Notwithstanding all in the plan and conduct of this piece, which
neither our own state of manners, nor the laws of any sound criticism
can tolerate, it is very conceivable that, to the factitious taste of a
Spanish audience in the age of Lope de Vega, it would have appeared
excellent. The character of Estrella is truly noble, and much superior
in interest to that of Chimene. Her resentment is more genuine, and free
from that hypocrisy which, at least in my judgment, renders the other
almost odious and contemptible. Instead of imploring the condemnation of
him she loves, it is as her own prisoner that she demands Sancho Ortiz,
and this for the generous purpose of setting him at liberty. But the
great superiority of the Spanish play is at the close. Chimene accepts
the hand stained with her father’s blood, while Estrella sacrifices her
own wishes to a sentiment which the manners of Spain, and we may add,
the laws of natural decency required.
|His spiritual plays.|
15. The spiritual plays of Lope de Vega abound with as many incongruous
and absurd circumstances as the mysteries of our forefathers. The
Inquisition was politic enough to tolerate, though probably the
sternness of Castilian orthodoxy could not approve, these strange
representations which, after all, had the advantage of keeping the
people in mind of the devil, and of the efficacy of holy water in
chasing him away. But the regular theatre, according to Lord Holland,
has always been forbidden in Spain by the church, nor do the kings
frequent it.
|Numancia of Cervantes.|
16. Two tragedies by Bermudez, both on the story of Ines de Castro, are
written on the ancient model, with a chorus, and much simplicity of
fable. They are, it is said, in a few scenes impressive and pathetic,
but interrupted by passages of flat and tedious monotony.[1256]
Cervantes was the author of many dramatic pieces; some of which are so
indifferent as to have been taken for intentional satires upon the bad
taste of his times, so much of it do they display. One or two, however,
of his comedies have obtained some praise from Schlegel and Bouterwek.
But his tragedy of Numancia stands apart from his other dramas, and, as
I conceive, from anything on the Spanish stage. It is probably one of
his earlier works, but was published for the first time in 1784. It is a
drama of extraordinary power, and may justify the opinion of Bouterwek
that, in different circumstances, the author of Don Quixote might have
been the Æschylus of Spain. If terror and pity are the inspiring powers
of tragedy, few have been for the time more under their influence than
Cervantes in his Numancia. The story of that devoted city, its long
resistance to Rome, its exploits of victorious heroism, that foiled
repeatedly the consular legions, are known to every one. Cervantes has
opened his tragedy at the moment when Scipio Æmilianus, enclosing the
city with a broad trench, determines to secure its reduction by famine.
The siege lasted five months, when the Numantines, exhausted by hunger,
but resolute never to yield, setting fire to a pile of their household
goods, after slaying their women and children, cast themselves into the
flame. Every circumstance that can enhance horror, the complaints of
famished children, the desperation of mothers, the sinister omens of
rejected sacrifice, the appalling incantations that reanimate a recent
corpse to disclose the secrets of its prison-house, are accumulated with
progressive force in this tremendous drama. The love-scenes of Morando
and Lira, two young persons whose marriage had been frustrated by the
public calamity, though some incline to censure them, contain nothing
beyond poetical truth, and add, in my opinion, to its pathos, while they
somewhat relieve its severity.
[1256] Bouterwek, 296.
17. Few, probably, would desire to read the Numancia a second time. But
it ought to be remembered that the historical truth of this tragedy,
though, as in the Ugolino of Dante, it augments the painfulness of the
impression, is the legitimate apology of the author. Scenes of agony,
and images of unspeakable sorrow, when idly accumulated by an inventor
at his ease, as in many of our own older tragedies, and in much of
modern fiction, give offence to a reader of just taste, from their
needlessly trespassing upon his sensibility. But in that which excites
an abhorrence of cruelty and oppression, or which, as the Numancia,
commemorates ancestral fortitude, there is a moral power, for the sake
of which the sufferings of sympathy must not be flinched from.
18. The Numancia is divided into four jornadas or acts, each containing
changes of scene, as on our own stage. The metre, by a most
extraordinary choice, is the regular octave stanza, ill-adapted as that
is to the drama, intermixed with the favourite redondilla. The diction,
though sometimes what would seem tame and diffuse to us, who are
accustomed to a bolder and more figurative strain in tragedy than the
southern nations require, rises often with the subject to nervous and
impressive poetry. There are, however, a few sacrifices to the times. In
a finely imagined prosopopœia, where Spain, crowned with towers, appears
on the scene to ask the Duero what hope there could be for Numancia, the
river-god, rising with his tributary streams around him, after bidding
her despair of the city, goes into a tedious consolation, in which the
triumphs of Charles and Philip are specifically, and with as much
tameness as adulation, brought forward as her future recompense. A much
worse passage occurs in the fourth act, where Lira, her brother lying
dead of famine, and her lover of his wounds before her, implores death
from a soldier who passes over the stage. He replies that some other
hand must perform that office; he was born only to adore her.[1257] This
frigid and absurd line, in such a play by such a poet, is an almost
incredible proof of the mischief which the Provençal writers, with their
hyperbolical gallantry, had done to European poetry. But it is just to
observe that this is the only faulty passage, and that the language of
the two lovers is simple, tender, and pathetic. The material
accompaniments of representation on the Spanish theatre seem to have
been full as defective as on our own. The Numancia is printed with stage
directions, almost sufficient to provoke a smile in the midst of its
withering horrors.
[1257]
Otra mano, otro hierro ha da acabaros,
Que yo solo naciò por adoraros.
|French theatre; Jodelle.|
19. The mysteries which had delighted the Parisians for a century and a
half were suddenly forbidden by the parliament as indecent and profane
in 1548. Four years only elapsed before they were replaced, though not
on the same stage, by a different style of representation. Whatever
obscure attempts at a regular dramatic composition may have been traced
in France at an earlier period, Jodelle was acknowledged by his
contemporaries to be the true father of their theatre. His tragedy of
Cleopatre, and his comedy of La Rencontre, were both represented for the
first time before Henry II. in 1552. Another comedy, Eugene, and a
tragedy on the story of Dido, were published about the same time.
Pasquier, who tells us this, was himself a witness of the representation
of the two former.[1258] The Cleopatre, according to Fontenelle, is very
simple, without action or stage effect, full of long speeches, and with
a chorus at the end of every act. The style is often low and ludicrous,
which did not prevent this tragedy, the first-fruits of a theatre which
was to produce Racine, from being received with vast applause. There is
in reality, amidst these raptures that frequently attend an infant
literature, something of an undefined presage of the future which should
hinder us from thinking them quite ridiculous. The comedy of Eugene is
in verse, and, in the judgment of Fontenelle, much superior to the
tragedies of Jodelle. It has more action, a dialogue better conceived,
and some traits of humour and nature. This play, however, is very
immoral and licentious; and it may be remarked that some of its satire
falls on the vices of the clergy.[1259]
[1258] Cette comedie, et la Cleopatre furent representées devant le roy
Henri à Paris en l’Hostel de Rheims, avec un grand applaudissement
de toute la compagnie: et depuis encore au college de Boncourt, ou
toutes les fenestres estoient tapissées d’une infinité de
personnages d’honneur, et la cour si pleine d’escoliers que les
portes du college en regorgeoient. Je le dis comme celuy qui y
estois present, avec le grand Tornebus en une mesme chambre. Et les
entreparleurs estoient tous hommes de nom. Car même Remy Belleau et
Jean de la Peruse jouoient les principaux roullets. Suard tells us,
that the old troop of performers, the Confrères de la Passion,
whose mysteries had been interdicted, availed themselves of an
exclusive privilege granted to them by Charles VI. in 1400, to
prevent the representation of the Cleopatre by public actors.
Jodelle was therefore forced to have it performed by his friends.
See Recherches de la France, l. vii. c. 6. Fontenelle, Hist. du
Theatre François (in Œuvres de Font. edit. 1776) vol. iii. p. 52.
Beauchamps, Recherches sur les Theatres de France. Suard, Melanges
de Literature, vol. iv. p. 59. The last writer, in what he calls
Coup d’Œil sur l’Histoire de l’Ancien Theatre Français (in the same
volume) has given an amusing and instructive sketch of the French
drama down to Corneille.
[1259] Fontenelle, p. 61.
|Garnier.|
20. The Agamemnon of Toutain, published in 1557, is taken from Seneca,
and several other pieces about the same time or soon afterwards, seem
also to be translations.[1260] The Jules Cesar of Grevin was represented
in 1560.[1261] It contains a few lines that La Harpe has extracted, as
not without animation. But the first tragedian that deserves much notice
after Jodelle was Robert Garnier, whose eight tragedies were
collectively printed in 1580. They are chiefly taken from mythology or
ancient history, and are evidently framed according to a standard of
taste which has ever since prevailed on the French stage. But they
retain some characteristics of the classical drama which were soon
afterwards laid aside; the chorus is heard between every act, and a
great portion of the events is related by messengers. Garnier makes
little change in the stories he found in Seneca or Euripides; nor had
love yet been thought essential to tragedy. Though his speeches are
immeasurably long, and overladen with pompous epithets, though they have
often much the air of bad imitations of Seneca’s manner, from whom
probably, if any one should give himself the pains to make the
comparison, some would be found to have been freely translated, we must
acknowledge that in many of his couplets the reader perceives a more
genuine tone of tragedy, and the germ of that artificial style which
reached its perfection in far greater men than Garnier. In almost every
line there is some fault, either against taste or the present rules of
verse; yet there are many which a good poet would only have had to amend
and polish. The account of Polyxena’s death in La Troade is very well
translated from the Hecuba. But his best tragedy seems to be Les Juives,
which is wholly his own, and displays no inconsiderable powers of
poetical description. In this I am confirmed by Fontenelle, who says
that this tragedy has many noble and touching passages; in which he has
been aided by taking much from scripture, the natural sublimity of which
cannot fail to produce an effect.[1262] We find, however, in Les Juives
a good deal of that propensity to exhibit cruelty, by which the Italian
and English theatres were at that time distinguished. Pasquier says,
that every one gave the prize to Garnier above all who had preceded him,
and after enumerating his eight plays, expresses his opinion that they
would be admired by posterity.[1263]
[1260] Beauchamps. Suard.
[1261] Suard, p. 73. La Harpe, Cours de Literature. Grevin also wrote
comedies which were very licentious, as those of the 16th century
generally were in France and Italy, and were not in England, or, I
believe, in Spain.
[1262] P. 71. Suard who dwells much longer on Garnier than either
Fontenelle or La Harpe, observes, as I think, with justice:
Les ouvrages de Garnier meritent de faire epoque dans l’histoire du
theatre, non par la beauté de ses plans; il n’en faut chercher de
bons dans aucune des tragedies du seizième siècle; mais les
sentimens qu’il exprime sont nobles, son style a souvent de
l’elevation sans enflure et beaucoup de sensibilité sa
versification est facile et souvent harmonieuse. C’est lui qui a
fixé d’une manière invariable la succession alternative des rimes
masculines et feminines. Enfin c’est le premier des tragiques
Français dont le lecture pût être utile à ceux qui voudraient
suivre la même carriere; on a même pretendu que son Hyppolite avait
beaucoup aidé Racine dans la composition de Phêdre. Mais s’il l’a
aidé, c’est comme l’Hyppolite de Seneque, dont celui de Garnier
n’est qu’une imitation, p. 81.
[1263] Ibid.
|Comedies of Larivey.|
21. We may consider the comedies of Larivey, published in 1579, as
making a sort of epoch in the French drama. This writer, of whom little
is known, but that he was a native of Champagne, prefers a claim to be
the first who chose subjects for comedy from real life in France
(forgetting in this those of Jodelle), and the first who wrote original
dramas in prose. His comedies are six in number, to which three were
added in a subsequent edition, which is very rare.[1264] These six are
Le Laquais, La Veuve, Les Esprits, Le Morfondu, Les Jaloux, and Les
Ecoliers. Some of them are partly borrowed from Plautus and Terence; and
in general they belong to that school, presenting the usual characters
of the Roman stage, with no great attempt at originality. But the
dialogue is conducted with spirit; and in many scenes, especially in the
play called Le Laquais, which, though the most free in all respects,
appears to me the most comic and amusing, would remind any reader of the
minor pieces of Molière, being conceived, though not entirely executed,
with the same humour. All these comedies of Larivey are highly
licentious both in their incidents and language. It is supposed in the
Biographie Universelle that Molière and Regnard borrowed some ideas from
Larivey; but both the instances alleged will be found in Plautus.
[1264] The first edition itself, I conceive, is not very common; for
few writers within my knowledge have mentioned Larivey. Fontenelle,
I think, could not have read his plays, or he would have give him a
place in his brief sketch of the early French stage, as the father
of comedy in prose. La Harpe was too superficial to know anything
about him. Beauchamps, vol. ii. p. 68, acknowledges his
pretensions, and he has a niche in the Biographie Universelle.
Suard has also done him some justice.
|Theatres in Paris.|
22. No regular theatre was yet established in France. These plays of
Garnier, Larivey, and others of that class, were represented either in
colleges or in private houses. But the Confrères de la Passion, and
another company, the Enfans de Sans Souci, whom they admitted into a
participation of their privilege, used to act gross and stupid farces,
which few respectable persons witnessed. After some unsuccessful
attempts, two companies of regular actors appeared near the close of the
century; one, in 1598, having purchased the exclusive right of the
Confrères de la Passion, laid the foundations of the Comedie Française,
so celebrated and so permanent; the other, in 1600, established by its
permission a second theatre in the Marais. But the pieces they
represented were still of a very low class.[1265]
[1265] Suard.
|English stage.|
|Gammar Gurton’s Needle.|
23. England at the commencement of this period could boast of little
besides the scripture mysteries, already losing ground, but which have
been traced down to the close of the century, and the more popular moral
plays, which furnished abundant opportunities for satire on the times,
for ludicrous humour, and for attacks on the old or the new religion.
The latter, however, were kept in some restraint by the Tudor
government. These moralities gradually drew nearer to regular comedies,
and sometimes had nothing but an abstract name given to an individual,
by which they could be even apparently distinguished from such. We have
already mentioned Ralph Royster Doyster, written by Udal in the reign of
Henry VIII., as the earliest English comedy in a proper sense, so far as
our negative evidence warrants such a position. Mr. Collier has
recovered four acts of another, called Misogonus, which he refers to the
beginning of Elizabeth’s reign.[1266] It is, like the former, a picture
of London life. A more celebrated piece is Gammar Gurton’s Needle,
commonly ascribed to John. Still, afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells.
No edition is known before 1575, but it seems to have been represented
in Christ’s College at Cambridge, not far from the year 1565.[1267] It
is impossible for anything to be meaner in subject and characters than
this strange farce; but the author had some vein of humour, and writing
neither for fame nor money, but to make light-hearted boys laugh, and to
laugh with them, and that with as little grossness as the story would
admit, is not to be judged with severe criticism. He comes however below
Udal, and perhaps the writer of Misogonus. The Supposes of George
Gascoyne, acted at Gray’s Inn in 1566, is but a translation in prose
from the Suppositi of Ariosto. It seems to have been published in the
same year.[1268]
[1266] Hist. of Dramatic Poetry, ii. 464.
[1267] Mr. Collier agrees with Malone in assigning this date, but it is
merely conjectural, as one rather earlier might be chosen with
equal probability. Still is said in the biographies to have been
born in 1543; but this date seems to be too low. He became
Margaret’s professor of divinity in 1570. Gammar Gurton’s Needle
must have been written while the protestant establishment, if it
existed, was very recent, for the parson is evidently a papist.
[1268] Warton, iv. 304. Collier, iii. 6. The original had been first
published in prose, 1525, and from this Gascoyne took his
translation, adopting some of the changes Ariosto had introduced
when he turned it into verse; but he has invented little of his
own. Ibid.
|Gorboduc of Sackville.|
24. But the progress of literature soon excited in one person an
emulation of the ancient drama. Sackville has the honour of having led
the way. His tragedy of Gorboduc was represented at Whitehall before
Elizabeth in 1562.[1269] It is written in what was thought the classical
style, like the Italian tragedies of the same age, but more inartificial
and unimpassioned. The speeches are long and sententious; the action,
though sufficiently full of incident, passes chiefly in narration; a
chorus, but in the same blank verse measure as the rest, divides the
acts; the unity of place seems to be preserved, but that of time is
manifestly transgressed. The story of Gorboduc, which is borrowed from
our fabulous British legends, is as full of slaughter as was then
required for dramatic purposes; but the characters are clearly drawn and
consistently sustained; the political maxims grave and profound; the
language not glowing or passionate, but vigorous; and upon the whole it
is evidently the work of a powerful mind, though in a less poetical mood
than was displayed in the Induction to the Mirror of Magistrates.
Sackville, it has been said, had the assistance of Norton in this
tragedy; but Warton has decided against this supposition from internal
evidence.[1270]
[1269] The 18th of January, 1561, to which date its representation is
referred by Mr. Collier, seems to be 1562, according to the style
of the age; and this tallies best with what is said in the edition
of 1571, that it had been played about nine years before. See
Warton, iv. 179.
[1270] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iv. 194. Mr. Collier supports the claim
of Norton to the first three acts, which would much reduce
Sackville’s glory, ii. 481. I incline to Warton’s opinion, grounded
upon the identity of style, and the superiority of the whole
tragedy to anything we can certainly ascribe to Norton, a coadjutor
of Sternhold in the old version of the Psalms, and a contributor to
the Mirror of Magistrates.
|Preference given to the irregular form.|
25. The regular form adopted in Gorboduc, though not wholly without
imitators, seems to have had little success with the public.[1271] An
action passing visibly on the stage, instead of a frigid
narrative, a copious intermixture of comic buffoonery with the gravest
story, were requisites with which no English audience would dispense.
Thus Edwards treated the story of Damon and Pythias, which, though
according to the notions of those times, it was too bloodless to be
called a tragedy at all, belonged to the elevated class of dramatic
compositions.[1272] Several other objects were taken from ancient
history; this indeed became the usual source of the fable; but if we may
judge from those few that have survived, they were all constructed on
the model which the mysteries had accustomed our ancestors to admire.
[1271] The Jocasta of Gascoyne, translated with considerable freedom,
in adding, omitting, and transposing, from the Phœnissæ of
Euripides, was represented at Gray’s Inn in 1566. Warton, iv. 196.
Collier, iii. 7. Gascoyne had the assistance of two obscure poets
in this play.
[1272] Collier, iii. 2.
|First theatres.|
26. The office of Master of the Revels, in whose province it lay to
regulate, among other amusements of the court, the dramatic shows of
various kinds, was established in 1546. The inns of court vied with the
royal palace in these representations, and Elizabeth sometimes honoured
the former with her presence. On her visits to the universities, a play
was a constant part of the entertainment. Fifty-two names, though
nothing more, of dramas acted at court under the superintendence of the
Master of the Revels, between 1568 and 1580, are preserved.[1273] In
1574 a patent was granted to the Earl of Leicester’s servants to act
plays in any part of England, and in 1576 they erected the first public
theatre in Blackfriars. It will be understood, that the servants of the
Earl of Leicester were a company under his protection; as we apply the
word, Her Majesty’s Servants, at this day, to the performers of Drury
Lane.[1274]
[1273] Collier, i. 193, et post, iii. 24. Of these fifty-two plays
eighteen were upon classical subjects, historical or fabulous,
twenty-one taken from modern history or romance, seven may by their
titles, which is a very fallible criterion, be comedies or farces
from real life, and six may, by the same test, be moralities. It is
possible, as Mr. C. observes, that some of these plays, though no
longer extant in their integrity, may have formed the foundation of
others; and the titles of a few in the list countenance this
supposition.
[1274] See Mr. Collier’s excellent History of Dramatic Poetry to the
Time of Shakspeare, vol. i., which having superseded the earlier
works of Langbaine, Reid, and Hawkins, so far as this period is
concerned, it is superfluous to quote them.
|Plays of Whetstone and others.|
27. As we come down towards 1580, a few more plays are extant. Among
these may be mentioned the Promos and Cassandra of Whetstone, on the
subject which Shakspeare, not without some retrospect to his
predecessors, so much improved in Measure for Measure.[1275] But in
these early dramas there is hardly anything to praise; or, if they
please us at all, it is only by the broad humour of their comic scenes.
There seems little reason, therefore, for regretting the loss of so many
productions, which no one contemporary has thought worthy of
commendation. Sir Philip Sydney, writing about 1583, treats our English
stage with great disdain. His censures indeed fall chiefly on the
neglect of the classical unities, and on the intermixture of kings with
clowns.[1276] It is amusing to reflect, that this contemptuous
reprehension of the English theatre (and he had spoken in as disparaging
terms of our general poetry) came from the pen of Sydney, when
Shakspeare had just arrived at manhood. Had he not been so prematurely
cut off, what would have been the transports of that noble spirit, which
the ballad of Chevy Chase could “stir as with the sound of a trumpet,”
in reading the Faery Queen or Othello!
[1275] Promos and Cassandra is one of the Six Old Plays reprinted by
Stevens. Shakspeare found in it not only the main story of Measure
for Measure, which was far from new, and which he felicitously
altered, by preserving the chastity of Isabella, but several of the
minor circumstances and names, unless even these are to be found in
the novels, from which all the dramatists ultimately derived their
plot.
[1276] “Our tragedies and comedies, not without cause, are cried out
against, observing rules neither of honest civility nor skilful
poetry;” and proceeds to ridicule their inconsistencies and
disregard to time and place. Defence of Poesy.
|Marlowe and his contemporaries.|
|Tamburlaine.|
|Blank verse of Marlowe.|
28. A better æra commenced not long after, nearly coincident with the
rapid development of genius in other departments of poetry. Several
young men of talent appeared, Marlowe, Peele, Greene, Lily, Lodge, Kyd,
Nash, the precursors of Shakspeare, and real founders, as they may in
some respects be called, of the English drama. Sackville’s Gorboduc is
in blank verse, though of bad and monotonous construction; but his
followers wrote, as far as we know, either in rhyme or in prose.[1277]
In the tragedy of Tamburlaine, referred by Mr. Collier to 1586,
and the production wholly or principally, of Marlowe,[1278] a better
kind of blank verse is first employed; the lines are interwoven, the
occasional hemistich and redundant syllables break the monotony of the
measure, and give more of a colloquial spirit to the dialogue.
Tamburlaine was ridiculed on account of its inflated style. The bombast,
however, which is not so excessive as has been alleged, was thought
appropriate to such oriental tyrants. This play has more spirit and
poetry than any which, upon clear grounds, can be shown to have preceded
it. We find also more action on the stage, a shorter and more dramatic
dialogue, a more figurative style, with a far more varied and skilful
versification.[1279] If Marlowe did not re-establish blank verse, which
is difficult to prove, he gave it at least a variety of cadence, and an
easy adaptation of the rhythm to the sense, by which it instantly became
in his hands the finest instrument that the tragic poet has ever
employed for his purpose, less restricted than that of the Italians, and
falling occasionally almost into numerous prose, lines of fourteen
syllables being very common in all our old dramatists, but regular and
harmonious at other times as the most accurate ear could require.
[1277] It may be a slight exception to this that some portions of the
second part of Whetstone’s Promos and Cassandra are in blank verse.
This play is said never to have been represented. Collier, iii. 64.
[1278] Nash has been thought the author of Tamburlaine by Malone, and
his inflated style, in pieces known to be his, may give some
countenance to this hypothesis. It is mentioned, however, as
“Marlowe’s Tamburlaine” in the contemporary diary of Henslow, a
manager or proprietor of a theatre, which is preserved at Dulwich
College. Marlowe and Nash are allowed to have written “Dido Queen
of Carthage” in conjunction. Mr. Collier has produced a body of
evidence to show that Tamburlaine was written, at least
principally, by the former, which leaves no room, as it seems, for
further doubt, vol. iii. p. 113.
[1279] Shakspeare having turned into ridicule a passage or two in
Tamburlaine, the critics have concluded it to be a model of bad
tragedy. Mr. Collier, iii. 115-126, has elaborately vindicated its
dramatic merits, though sufficiently aware of its faults.
|Marlowe’s Jew of Malta,|
|and Faustus.|
29. The savage character of Tamburlaine, and the want of all interest as
to every other, render this tragedy a failure in comparison with those
which speedily followed from the pen of Christopher Marlowe. The first
two acts of the Jew of Malta are more vigorously conceived, both as to
character and circumstance, than any other Elizabethan play, except
those of Shakspeare; and perhaps we may think that Barabas, though not
the prototype of Shylock, a praise of which he is unworthy, may have
suggested some few ideas to the inventor. But the latter acts, as is
usual with our old dramatists, are a tissue of uninteresting crimes and
slaughter.[1280] Faustus is better known; it contains nothing, perhaps,
so dramatic as the first part of the Jew of Malta; yet the occasional
glimpses of repentance and struggles of alarmed conscience in the chief
character are finely brought in. It is full of poetical beauties; but an
intermixture of buffoonery weakens the effect, and leaves it on the
whole rather a sketch by a great genius than a finished performance.
There is an awful melancholy about Marlowe’s Mephistopheles, perhaps
more impressive than the malignant mirth of that fiend in the renowned
work of Goethe. But the fair form of Margaret is wanting; and Marlowe
has hardly earned the credit of having breathed a few casual
inspirations into a greater mind than his own.[1281]
[1280] “Blood,” says a late witty writer, “is made as light of in
some of these old dramas as _money_ in a modern sentimental comedy;
and as _this_ is given away till it reminds us that it is nothing
but counters, so _that_ is spilt till it affects us no more than
its representative, the paint of the property-man in the theatre.”
Lamb’s specimens of Early Dramatic Poets, i. 19.
[1281] The German story of Faust is said to have been published for the
first time in 1587. It was rapidly translated into most languages
of Europe. We need hardly name the absurd supposition, that Faust,
the great printer, was intended.
|His Edward II.|
|Plays whence Henry Vl. was taken.|
30. Marlowe’s Life of Edward II. which was entered on the books of the
Stationers’ Company in 1593, has been deemed by some the earliest
specimen of the historical play founded upon English chronicles. Whether
this be true or not, and probably it is not, it is certainly by far the
best after those of Shakspeare.[1282] And it seems probable that the old
plays of the Contention of Lancaster and York, and the True Tragedy of
Richard Duke of York, which Shakspeare remodelled in the second and
third parts of Henry VI., were in great part by Marlowe, though Greene
seems to put in for some share in their composition.[1283] These plays
claim certainly a very low rank among those of Shakspeare: his
original portion is not inconsiderable; but it is fair to observe, that
some of the passages most popular, such as the death of Cardinal
Beaufort, and the last speech of the Duke of York, are not by his hand.
[1282] Collier observes that, “the character of Richard II. in
Shakspeare seems modelled in no slight degree upon that of
Edward II.” But I am reluctant to admit that Shakspeare modelled
his _characters_ by those of others; and it is natural to ask
whether there were not an extraordinary likeness in the
dispositions as well as fortunes of the two kings.
[1283] These old plays were reprinted by Stevens in 1766. Malone, on a
laborious comparison of them with the second and third parts of
Henry VI., has ascertained that 1771 lines in the latter plays were
taken from the former unaltered, 2373 altered by Shakspeare, while
1899 were altogether his own. It remains to inquire, who are to
claim the credit of these other plays, so great a portion of which
has passed with the world for the genuine work of Shakspeare. The
solution seems to be given, as well as we can expect, in a passage
often quoted from Robert Greene’s Groat’sworth of Wit, published
not long before his death in September 1592. “Yes,” says he,
addressing himself to some one who has been conjectured to be
Peele, but more probably Marlowe, “trust them (the players) not,
for there is an upstart crow, beautified with our feathers, that,
with his tyger’s heart wrapped in a player’s hide, supposes he is
as well able to bombast out a blank verse as the best of you; and
being an absolute Johannes factotum, is, in his own conceit, the
only _Shakescene_ in a country.” An allusion is here manifest to
the “tyger’s heart, wrapt in a woman’s hide,” which Shakspeare
borrowed from the old play. The Contention of the Houses, and which
is here introduced to hint the particular subject of plagiarism
that prompts the complaint of Greene. The bitterness he displays
must lead us to suspect that he had been one himself of those who
were thus preyed upon. But the greater part of the plays in
question is in the judgment, I conceive, of all competent critics,
far above the powers either of Greene or Peele, and exhibits a much
greater share of the spirited versification, called by Jonson the
“mighty line,” of Christopher Marlowe. Malone, upon second
thoughts, gave both these plays to Marlowe, having, in his
dissertation on the three parts of Henry VI., assigned one to
Greene, the other to Peele. None of the three parts have any
resemblance to the manner of Peele.
|Peele.|
31. No one could think of disputing the superiority of Marlowe, to all
his contemporaries of this early school of the English drama. He was
killed in a tavern fray in 1593. There is more room for difference of
tastes as to the second place. Mr. Campbell has bestowed high praises
upon Peele. “His David and Bethsabe is the earliest fountain of pathos
and harmony that can be traced in our dramatic poetry. His fancy is rich
and his feeling tender: and his conceptions of dramatic character have
no inconsiderable mixture of solid veracity [sic] and ideal beauty.
There is no such sweetness of versification and imagery to be found in
our blank verse anterior to Shakspeare.”[1284] I must concur with Mr.
Collier in thinking these compliments excessive. Peele has some command
of imagery, but in every other quality it seems to me that he has scarce
any claim to honour; and I doubt if there are three lines together in
any of his plays that could be mistaken for Shakspeare’s. His Edward I.
is a gross tissue of absurdity, with some facility of language, but
nothing truly good. It has also the fault of grossly violating historic
truth, in hideous misrepresentation of the virtuous Eleanor of Castile;
probably from the base motive of rendering the Spanish nation odious to
the vulgar. This play, which is founded on a ballad equally false, is
referred to the year 1593. The versification of Peele is much inferior
to that of Marlowe; and though sometimes poetical he seems rarely
dramatic.
[1284] Specimens of English Poetry, i. 140. Hawkins says of three lines
in Peele’s David and Bethsabe, that they contain a metaphor worthy
of Æschylus:--
At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt;
And his fair spouse with bright and fiery wings
Sit ever burning on his hateful bones.
It may be rather Æschylean, yet I cannot much admire it. Peele
seldom attempts such flights. “His genius was not boldly original;
but he had an elegance of fancy, a gracefulness of expression, and
a melody of versification which, in the earlier part of his career,
was scarcely approached.” Collier, iii. 191.
|Greene.|
32. A third writer for the stage in this period is Robert Greene, whose
“Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay” may probably be placed about the year
1590. This comedy, though savouring a little of the old school, contains
easy and spirited versification, superior to Peele, and though not so
energetic as that of Marlowe, reminding us perhaps more frequently of
Shakspeare.[1285] Greene succeeds pretty well in that florid and gay
style, a little redundant in images, which Shakspeare frequently gives
to his princes and courtiers, and which renders some unimpassioned
scenes in the historic plays effective and brilliant. There is great
talent shown, though upon a very strange canvas, in Greene’s
“Looking-glass for London and England.” His angry allusion to
Shakspeare’s plagiarism is best explained by supposing that he was
himself concerned in the two old plays which have been converted into
the second and third parts of Henry VI.[1286] In default of a more
probable claimant, I have sometimes been inclined to assign the first
part of Henry VI. to Greene. But those who are far more conversant with
the style of our dramatists do not suggest this; and we are evidently
ignorant of many names, which might have ranked not discreditably by the
side of these tragedians. The first part, however, of Henry VI. is, in
some passages, not unworthy of Shakspeare’s earlier days, nor, in my
judgment, unlike his style; nor in fact do I know any one of his
contemporaries who could have written the scene in the Temple Garden.
The light touches of his pencil have ever been still more inimitable, if
possible, than its more elaborate strokes.[1287]
[1285] “Green in facility of expression and in the flow of his blank
verse is not to be placed below his contemporary Peele. His usual
fault, more discoverable in his plays than in his poems, is an
absence of simplicity; but his pedantic classical references,
frequently without either taste or discretion, he had in common
with the other scribbling scholars of the time. It was Shakspeare’s
good fortune to be in a great degree without the knowledge, and
therefore, if on no other account, without the defect.” Collier,
iii. 153. Tieck gives him credit for “a happy talent, a clear
spirit, and a lively imagination, which characterise all his
writings.” Collier iii. 148.
[1286] Mr. Collier says, iii. 146, Greene may possibly have had a hand
in the True History of Richard Duke of York. But why possibly? when
he claims it, if not in express words, yet so as to leave no doubt
of his meaning. See the note in p. 377.
In a poem written on Greene in 1594, are these lines:--
Green is the pleasing object of an eye;
Greene pleased the eyes of all that looked upon him:
Green is the ground of every painter’s die;
Greene gave the ground to all that wrote upon him:
Nay more, the men that so eclipsed his fame,
Purloined his plumes, can they deny the same?
This seems an allusion to Greene’s own metaphor, and must be taken
for a covert attack on Shakspeare, who had by this time pretty well
eclipsed the fame of Greene.
[1287] “These three gifted men (Peele, Greene, and Marlowe), says their
late editor, Mr. Dyce (Peele’s Works, preface xxxv.), though they
often present to us pictures that in design and colouring outrage
the truth of nature, are the earliest of our tragic writers who
exhibit any just delineation of the workings of passion; and their
language, though now swelling into bombast, and now sinking into
meanness, is generally rich with poetry, while their versification,
though somewhat monotonous, is almost always flowing and
harmonious. They as much excel their immediate predecessors as they
are themselves excelled by Shakspeare.” Not quite as much.
|Other writers of this age.|
|Heywood’s Woman killed with Kindness.|
33. We can hardly afford time to dwell on several other writers anterior
to Shakspeare. Kyd, whom Mr. Collier places, as a writer of blank verse,
next to Marlowe,[1288] Lodge,[1289] Lily, Nash, Hughes, and a few more,
have all some degree of merit. Nor do the anonymous tragedies, some of
which were formerly ascribed to Shakspeare, and which even Schlegel,
with less acuteness of criticism than is usual with him, has deemed
genuine, always want a forcible delineation of passion, and a vigorous
strain of verse, though not kept up for many lines. Among these are
specimens of the domestic species of tragic drama, drawn probably from
real occurrences, such as Arden of Feversham and the Yorkshire Tragedy,
the former of which, especially, has very considerable merit. Its
author, I believe has not been conjectured; but it may be referred to
the last decade of the century.[1290] Another play of the same kind, A
Woman killed with Kindness, bears the date of 1600, and is the earliest
production of a fertile dramatist, Thomas Heywood. The language is not
much raised above that of comedy, but we can hardly rank a tale of
guilt, sorrow, and death, in that dramatic category. It may be read with
interest and approbation at this day, being quite free from extravagance
either in manner or language, the besetting sin of our earlier
dramatists, and equally so from buffoonery. The subject resembles that
of Kotzebue’s drama, the Stranger, but is managed with a nobler
tone of morality. It is true that Mrs. Frankfort’s immediate surrender
to her seducer, like that of Beaumelé in the Fatal Dowry, makes her
contemptible; but this, though it might possibly have originated in the
necessity created by the narrow limits of theatrical time, has the good
effect of preventing that sympathy with her guilt, which is reserved for
her penitence.
[1288] Collier, iii. 207. Kyd is author of Jeronymo, and of the
“Spanish Tragedy,” a continuation of the same story. Shakspeare has
selected some of their absurdities for ridicule, and has left an
abundant harvest for the reader. Parts of the Spanish Tragedy, Mr.
C. thinks, “are in the highest degree pathetic and interesting.”
This perhaps may be admitted, but Kyd is not, upon the whole, a
pleasing dramatist.
[1289] Lodge, one of the best poets of the age, was concerned, jointly
with Greene, in the Looking Glass for London. In this strange
performance the prophet Hosea is brought to Nineveh, and the
dramatis personæ, as far as they are serious, belong to that city:
but all the farcical part relates to London. Of Lodge Mr. C. says,
that he is “second to Kyd in vigour and boldness of conception, but
as a drawer of character, so essential a part of dramatic poetry,
he unquestionably has the advantage,” iii. 214.
[1290] The murder of Arden of Feversham occurred under Edward VI., but
the play was published in 1592. The impression made by the story
must have been deep to produce a tragedy so long afterwards. It is
said by Mr. Collier, that Professor Tieck has inclined to think
Arden of Feversham a genuine work of Shakspeare. I cannot but
venture to suspect that, if this distinguished critic were a
native, he would discern such differences of style, as render this
hypothesis improbable. The speeches in Arden of Feversham have
spirit and feeling, but there is none of that wit, that fertility
of analogical imagery, which the worst plays of Shakspeare display.
The language is also more plain and perspicuous than we ever find
in him, especially on a subject so full of passion. Mr. Collier
discerns the hand of Shakspeare in the Yorkshire Tragedy, and
thinks that “there are some speeches which could scarcely have
proceeded from any other pen,” Collier, iii. 51. It was printed
with his name in 1608; but this, which would be thought good
evidence in most cases, must not be held sufficient. It is
impossible to explain the grounds of internal persuasion in these
nice questions of æsthetic criticism, but I cannot perceive the
hand of Shakspeare in any of the anonymous tragedies.
|William Shakspeare.|
34. Of William Shakspeare,[1291] whom, through the mouths of those whom
he has inspired to body forth the modifications of his immense mind, we
seem to know better than any human writer, it may be truly said that we
scarcely know anything. We see him, so far as we do see him, not in
himself, but in a reflex image from the objectivity in which he was
manifested; he is Falstaff, and Mercutio, and Malvolio, and Jaques, and
Portia, and Imogen, and Lear, and Othello; but to us he is scarcely a
determined person, a substantial reality of past time, the man
Shakspeare. The two greatest names in poetry are to us little more than
names. If we are not yet come to question his unity, as we do that of
“the blind old man of Scio’s rocky isle,” an improvement in critical
acuteness doubtless reserved for a distant posterity, we as little feel
the power of identifying the young man who came up from Stratford, was
afterwards an indifferent player in a London theatre, and retired to his
native place in middle life, with the author of Macbeth and Lear, as we
can give a distinct historic personality to Homer. All that insatiable
curiosity and unwearied diligence have hitherto detected about
Shakspeare serves rather to disappoint and perplex us, than to furnish
the slightest illustration of his character. It is not the register of
his baptism, or the draft of his will, or the orthography of his name
that we seek. No letter of his writing, no record of his conversation,
no character of him drawn with any fulness by a contemporary can be
produced.
[1291] Though I shall not innovate in a work of this kind, not
particularly relating to Shakspeare, I must observe, that Sir
Frederic Madden has offered very specious reasons (in the
Archæologia, vol. xxvi.), for believing that the poet and his
family spelt their name _Shakspere_, and that there are, at
least, no exceptions in his own autographs, as has commonly been
supposed. A copy of Florio’s translation of Montaigne, a book which
he had certainly read (see Malone’s note on Tempest, act ii. scene
1), has been lately discovered with the name _W. Shakspere_
clearly written in it, and there seems no reason to doubt that it
is a genuine signature. This book has, very properly, been placed
in the British Museum, among the choice κειμηλια [keimêlia] of that
repository.
|His first writings for the stage.|
35. It is generally supposed that he settled in London about 1587, being
then twenty-three years old. For some time afterwards we cannot trace
him distinctly. Venus and Adonis, published in 1593, he describes in his
dedication to Lord Southampton, as “the first heir of his invention.” It
is however certain that it must have been written some years before,
unless we take these words in a peculiar sense, for Greene, in his
Groat’sworth of Wit, 1592, alludes, as we have seen, to Shakspeare as
already known among dramatic authors. It appears by this passage, that
he had converted the two plays on the wars of York and Lancaster into
what we read as the second and third parts of Henry VI. What share he
may have had in similar repairs of the many plays then represented,
cannot be determined. It is generally believed that he had much to do
with the tragedy of Pericles, which is now printed among his works, and
which external testimony, though we should not rely too much on that as
to Shakspeare, has assigned to him; but the play is full of evident
marks of an inferior hand.[1292] Its date is unknown; Drake supposes it
to have been his earliest work, rather from its inferiority than on any
other ground. Titus Andronicus is now by common consent denied
to be, in any sense, a production of Shakspeare; very few passages, I
should think not one, resemble his manner.[1293]
[1292] Malone, in a dissertation on the tragedy of Pericles, maintained
that it was altogether an early work of Shakspeare. Stevens
contended that it was a production of some older poet, improved by
him; and Malone had the candour to own that he had been wrong. The
opinion of Stevens is now general. Drake gives the last three acts,
and part of the former, to Shakspeare; but I can hardly think his
share is by any means so large.
[1293] Notwithstanding this internal evidence, Meres, so early as 1598,
enumerates Titus Andronicus among the plays of Shakspeare, and
mentions no other but what is genuine. Drake, ii. 287. But, in
criticism of all kinds, we must acquire a dogged habit of resisting
testimony, when _res ipsa per se vociferatur_ to the contrary.
|Comedy of Errors.|
36. The Comedy of Errors may be presumed by an allusion it contains to
have been written before the submission of Paris to Henry IV. in 1594,
which nearly put an end to the civil war.[1294] It is founded on a very
popular subject. This furnishes two extant comedies of Plautus, a
translation from one of which, the Menœchmi, was represented in Italy
earlier than any other play. It had been already, as Mr. Collier thinks,
brought upon the stage in England; and another play, later than the
Comedy of Errors, has been reprinted by Stevens. Shakspeare himself was
so well pleased with the idea that he has returned to it in Twelfth
Night. Notwithstanding the opportunity which these mistakes of identity
furnish for ludicrous situations and for carrying on a complex plot,
they are not very well adapted to dramatic effect, not only from the
manifest difficulty of finding performers quite alike, but because, were
this overcome, the audience must be in as great embarrassment as the
represented characters themselves. In the Comedy of Errors there are
only a few passages of a poetical vein, yet such perhaps as no other
living dramatist could have written; but the story is well invented and
well managed; the confusion of persons does not cease to amuse; the
dialogue is easy and gay beyond what had been hitherto heard on the
stage; there is little buffoonery in the wit, and no absurdity in the
circumstances.
[1294] Act iii. scene 2. Some have judged the play from this passage
to be as early as 1591, but on precarious grounds.
|Two Gentlemen of Verona.|
37. The Two Gentlemen of Verona ranks above the Comedy of Errors, though
still in the third class of Shakspeare’s plays. It was probably the
first English comedy in which characters are drawn from social life, at
once ideal and true; the cavaliers of Verona and their lady-loves are
graceful personages, with no transgression of the probabilities of
nature; but they are not exactly the real men and women of the same rank
in England. The imagination of Shakspeare must have been guided by some
familiarity with romances before it struck out this play. It contains
some very poetical lines. Though these two plays could not give the
slightest suspicion of the depth of thought which Lear and Macbeth were
to display, it was already evident that the names of Greene, and even
Marlowe, would be eclipsed without any necessity for purloining their
plumes.
|Love’s Labour Lost.|
|Taming of the Shrew.|
38. Love’s Labour Lost is generally placed, I believe, at the bottom of
the list. There is indeed little interest in the fable, if we can say
that there is any fable at all; but there are beautiful coruscations of
fancy, more original conception of character than in the Comedy of
Errors, more lively humour than in the Gentlemen of Verona, more
symptoms of Shakspeare’s future powers as a comic writer than in either.
Much that is here but imperfectly developed came forth again in his
later plays, especially in As you Like it, and Much Ado about Nothing.
The Taming of the Shrew is the only play, except Henry VI., in which
Shakspeare has been very largely a borrower. The best parts are
certainly his, but it must be confessed, that several passages, for
which we give him credit, and which are very amusing, belong to his
unknown predecessor. The original play, reprinted by Stevens, was
published in 1594.[1295] I do not find so much genius in the Taming of
the Shrew as in Love’s Labour Lost; but, as an entire play, it is much
more complete.
[1295] Mr. Collier thinks that Shakspeare had nothing to do with any
of the scenes where Katherine and Petruchio are not introduced. The
underplot resembles, he says, the style of Haughton, author of a
comedy called Englishmen for my Money, iii. 78.
|Midsummer Night’s Dream.|
39. The beautiful play of Midsummer Night’s Dream is placed by Malone as
early as 1592; its superiority to those we have already mentioned
affords some presumption that it was written after them. But it
evidently belongs to the earlier period of Shakspeare’s genius; poetical
as we account it, more than dramatic, yet rather so, because the
indescribable profusion of imaginative poetry in this play overpowers
our senses till we can hardly observe anything else, than from any
deficiency of dramatic excellence. For in reality the structure of the
fable, consisting as it does of three if not four actions, very distinct
in their subjects and personages, yet wrought into each other without
effort or confusion, displays the skill, or rather instinctive felicity
of Shakspeare, as much as in any play he has written. No preceding
dramatist had attempted to fabricate a complex plot, for low comic
scenes, interspersed with a serious action upon which they have no
influence, do not merit notice. The Menœchmi of Plautus had been
imitated by others as well as by Shakspeare; but we speak here of
original invention.
|Its machinery.|
40. The Midsummer Night’s Dream is, I believe, altogether original in
one of the most beautiful conceptions that ever visited the mind of a
poet, the fairy machinery. A few before him had dealt in a vulgar and
clumsy manner with popular superstitions; but the sportive, beneficent,
invisible population of the air and earth, long since established in the
creed of childhood, and of those simple as children, had never for a
moment been blended with “human mortals” among the personages of the
drama. Lily’s Maid’s Metamorphosis is probably later than this play of
Shakspeare, and was not published till 1600.[1296] It is unnecessary to
observe that the fairies of Spenser, as he has dealt with them, are
wholly of a different race.
[1296] Collier, iii. 185. Lily had, however, brought fairies, without
making them speak, into some of his earlier plays. Ibid.
|Its language.|
41. The language of Midsummer Night’s Dream is equally novel with the
machinery. It sparkles in perpetual brightness with all the hues of the
rainbow; yet there is nothing overcharged or affectedly ornamented.
Perhaps no play of Shakspeare has fewer blemishes, or is from beginning
to end in so perfect keeping; none in which so few lines could be
erased, or so few expressions blamed. His own peculiar idiom, the dress
of his mind, which began to be discernible in the Two Gentlemen of
Verona, is more frequently manifested in the present play. The
expression is seldom obscure, but it is never in poetry, and hardly in
prose, the expression of other dramatists, and far less of the people.
And here, without reviving the debated question of Shakspeare’s
learning, I must venture to think, that he possessed rather more
acquaintance with the Latin language than many believe. The phrases,
unintelligible and improper, except in the sense of their primitive
roots, which occur so copiously in his plays, seem to be unaccountable
on the supposition of absolute ignorance. In the Midsummer Night’s
Dream, these are much less frequent than in his later dramas. But here
we find several instances. Thus, “things base and vile, holding no
_quantity_,” for value; rivers, that “have overborn their
_continents_,” the _continente ripa_ of Horace; “_compact_ of
imagination;” “something of great _constancy_,” for consistency; “sweet
Pyramus _translated_ there;” “the law of Athens, which by no means we
may _extenuate_.” I have considerable doubts whether any of these
expressions would be found in the contemporary prose of Elizabeth’s
reign, which was less overrun by pedantry than that of her successor;
but, could authority be produced for Latinisms so forced, it is still
not very likely that one, who did not understand their proper meaning,
would have introduced them into poetry. It would be a weak answer that
we do not detect in Shakspeare any imitations of the Latin poets. His
knowledge of the language may have been chiefly derived, like that of
schoolboys, from the dictionary, and insufficient for the thorough
appreciation of their beauties. But, if we should believe him well
acquainted with Virgil or Ovid, it would be by no means surprising that
his learning does not display itself in imitation. Shakspeare seems now
and then to have a tinge on his imagination from former passages; but he
never designedly imitates, though, as we have seen, he has sometimes
adopted. The streams of invention flowed too fast from his own mind to
leave him time to accommodate the words of a foreign language to our
own. He knew that to create would be easier, and pleasanter, and
better.[1297]
[1297] The celebrated essay by Farmer on the learning of Shakspeare,
put an end to such notions as we find in Warburton and many of the
older commentators, that he had imitated Sophocles, and I know not
how many Greek authors. Those indeed who agree with what I have
said in a former chapter as to the state of learning under
Elizabeth, will not think it probable that Shakspeare could have
acquired any knowledge of Greek. It was not a part of such
education as he received. The case of Latin is different: we know
that he was at a grammar school, and could hardly have spent two or
three years there without bringing away a certain portion of the
language.
|Romeo and Juliet.|
42. The tragedy of Romeo and Juliet is referred by Malone to the year
1596. Were I to judge by internal evidence, I should be inclined to date
this play before the Midsummer Night’s Dream; the great frequency of
rhymes, the comparative absence of Latinisms, the want of that
thoughtful philosophy, which, when it had once germinated in
Shakspeare’s mind, never ceased to display itself, and several of the
faults that juvenility may best explain and excuse, would justify this
inference.
|Its plot.|
43. In one of the Italian novels to which Shakspeare had frequently
recourse for his fable, he had the good fortune to meet with this simple
and pathetic subject. What he found he has arranged with great skill.
The incidents in Romeo and Juliet are rapid, various, unintermitting in
interest, sufficiently probable, and tending to the catastrophe. The
most regular dramatist has hardly excelled one writing for an infant and
barbarian stage. It is certain that the observation of the unity of
time, which we find in this tragedy, unfashionable as the name of unity
has become in our criticism, gives an intenseness of interest to the
story, which is often diluted and dispersed in a dramatic history. No
play of Shakspeare is more frequently represented, or honoured with more
tears.
|Its beauties and blemishes.|
44. If from this praise of the fable we pass to other considerations, it
will be more necessary to modify our eulogies. It has been said above of
the Midsummer Night’s Dream, that none of Shakspeare’s plays have fewer
blemishes. We can by no means repeat this commendation of Romeo and
Juliet. It may be said rather that few, if any, are more open to
reasonable censure; and we are almost equally struck by its excellencies
and its defects.
45. Madame de Stael has truly remarked, that in Romeo and Juliet we
have, more than in any other tragedy, the mere passion of love; love, in
all its vernal promise, full of hope and innocence, ardent beyond all
restraint of reason, but tender as it is warm. The contrast between this
impetuosity of delirious joy, in which the youthful lovers are first
displayed, and the horrors of the last scene, throws a charm of deep
melancholy over the whole. Once alone each of them, in these earlier
moments, is touched by a presaging fear; it passes quickly away from
them, but is not lost on the reader. To him there is a sound of despair
in the wild effusions of their hope, and the madness of grief is mingled
with the intoxication of their joy. And hence it is that, notwithstanding
its many blemishes, we all read and witness this tragedy with delight.
It is a symbolic mirror of the fearful realities of life, where “the
course of true love,” has so often “not run smooth,” and moments of as
fond illusion as beguiled the lovers of Verona have been exchanged,
perhaps as rapidly, not indeed for the dagger and the bowl, but for the
many-headed sorrows and sufferings of humanity.
|The characters.|
46. The character of Romeo is one of excessive tenderness. His first
passion for Rosaline, which no vulgar poet would have brought forward,
serves to display a constitutional susceptibility. There is indeed so
much of this in his deportment and language, that we might be in some
danger of mistaking it for effeminacy, if the loss of his friend had not
aroused his courage. It seems to have been necessary to keep down a
little the other characters, that they might not overpower the principal
one; and though we can by no means agree with Dryden, that if Shakspeare
had not killed Mercutio, Mercutio would have killed him, there might
have been some danger of his killing Romeo. His brilliant vivacity shows
the softness of the other a little to a disadvantage. Juliet is a child,
whose intoxication in loving and being loved whirls away the little
reason she may have possessed. It is however impossible, in my opinion,
to place her among the great female characters of Shakspeare’s creation.
|The language.|
47. Of the language of this tragedy what shall we say? It contains
passages that every one remembers, that are among the nobler efforts of
Shakspeare’s poetry, and many short and beautiful touches of his
proverbial sweetness. Yet, on the other hand, the faults are in
prodigious number. The conceits, the phrases that jar on the mind’s ear,
if I may use such an expression, and interfere with the very emotion the
poet would excite, occur at least in the first three acts without
intermission. It seems to have formed part of his conception of this
youthful and ardent pair, that they should talk irrationally. The
extravagance of their fancy, however, not only forgets reason, but
wastes itself in frigid metaphors and incongruous conceptions; the tone
of Romeo is that of the most bombastic commonplace of gallantry, and the
young lady differs only in being one degree more mad. The voice of
virgin love has been counterfeited by the authors of many fictions: I
know none who have thought the style of Juliet would represent it. Nor
is this confined to the happier moments of their intercourse. False
thoughts and misplaced phrases deform the whole of the third act. It may
be added that, if not dramatic propriety, at least the interest of the
character, is affected by some of Juliet’s allusions. She seems indeed
to have profited by the lessons and language of her venerable
guardian; and those who adopt the edifying principle of deducing a moral
from all they read, may suppose that Shakspeare intended covertly to
warn parents against the contaminating influence of such domestics.
These censures apply chiefly to the first three acts; as the shadows
deepen over the scene, the language assumes a tone more proportionate to
the interest; many speeches are exquisitely beautiful; yet the tendency
to quibbles is never wholly eradicated.
|Second period of Shakspeare.|
48. The plays we have hitherto mentioned, to which one or two more might
be added, belong to the earlier class, or, as we might say, to his first
manner. In the second period of his dramatic life, we should place his
historical plays, and such others as were written before the end of the
century or perhaps before the death of Elizabeth. The Merchant of
Venice, As You Like It, and Much Ado about Nothing, are among these. The
versification in these is more studied, the pauses more artificially
disposed, the rhymes, though not quite abandoned, become less frequent,
the language is more vigorous and elevated, the principal characters are
more strongly marked, more distinctly conceived, and framed on a deeper
insight into mankind. Nothing in the earlier plays can be compared, in
this respect, with the two Richards, or Shylock, or Falstaff, or
Hotspur.
|The historical plays.|
49. Many attempts had been made to dramatise the English chronicles, but
with the single exception of Marlowe’s Edward II., so unsuccessfully,
that Shakspeare may be considered as almost an original occupant of the
field. He followed historical truth with considerable exactness; and, in
some of his plays, as in that of Richard II., and generally in Richard
III. and Henry VIII., admitted no imaginary personages, nor any scenes
of amusement. The historical plays have had a great effect on
Shakspeare’s popularity. They have identified him with English feelings
in English hearts, and are very frequently read more in childhood, and
consequently better remembered than some of his superior dramas. And
these dramatic chronicles borrowed surprising liveliness and probability
from the national character and form of government. A prince, and a
courtier, and a slave are the stuff on which the historic dramatist
would have to work in some countries; but every class of freemen, in the
just subordination, without which neither human society, nor the stage,
which should be its mirror, can be more than a chaos of huddled units,
lay open to the selection of Shakspeare. What he invented is as truly
English, as truly historical, in the large sense of moral history, as
what he read.
|Merchant of Venice.|
50. The Merchant of Venice is generally esteemed the best of
Shakspeare’s comedies. This excellent play is referred to the year
1597.[1298] In the management of the plot, which is sufficiently complex
without the slightest confusion or incoherence, I do not conceive that
it has been surpassed in the annals of any theatre. Yet there are those
who still affect to speak of Shakspeare as a barbarian; and others who,
giving what they think due credit to his genius, deny him all judgment
and dramatic taste. A comparison of his works with those of his
contemporaries, and it is surely to them that we should look, will prove
that his judgment is by no means the least of his rare qualities. This
is not so remarkable in the mere construction of his fable, though the
present comedy is absolutely perfect in that point of view, and several
others are excellently managed, as in the general keeping of the
characters, and the choice of incidents. If Shakspeare is sometimes
extravagant, the Marstons and Middletons are seldom otherwise. The
variety of characters in the Merchant of Venice, and the powerful
delineation of those upon whom the interest chiefly depends, the
effectiveness of many scenes in representation, the copiousness of the
wit, and the beauty of the language, it would be superfluous to extol;
nor is it our office to repeat a tale so often told as the praise of
Shakspeare. In the language there is the commencement of a metaphysical
obscurity which soon became characteristic; but it is perhaps less
observable than in any later play.
[1298] Meres, in his Palladis Tamia, or Wit’s Treasury, 1598, has a
passage of some value in determining the age of Shakspeare’s plays,
both by what it contains, and by what it omits. “As Plautus and
Seneca are accounted the best for comedy and tragedy among the
Latins, so Shakspeare among the English is the most excellent in
both kinds for the stage; for comedy witness his Gentlemen of
Verona, his Errors, his Love’s Labour Lost, his Love’s Labour Won
[the original appellation of All’s Well that Ends Well], his
Midsummer Night’s Dream, and his Merchant of Venice; for tragedy
his Richard II., his Richard III., Henry IV., King John, _Titus
Andronicus_, and his Romeo and Juliet.” Drake, ii. 287.
|As You Like It.|
51. The sweet and sportive temper of Shakspeare, though it never
deserted him, gave way to advancing years, and to the mastering force of
serious thought. What he read we know but very imperfectly; yet, in the
last years of this century, when five and thirty summers had ripened his
genius, it seems that he must have transfused much of the wisdom of past
ages into his own all-combining mind. In several of the historical
plays, in the Merchant of Venice, and especially in As You Like It, the
philosophic eye, turned inward on the mysteries of human nature, is more
and more characteristic; and we might apply to the last comedy the bold
figure that Coleridge has less appropriately employed as to the early
poems, that “the creative power and the intellectual energy wrestle as
in a war embrace.” In no other play, at least, do we find the bright
imagination and fascinating grace of Shakspeare’s youth so mingled with
the thoughtfulness of his maturer age. This play is referred with
reasonable probability to the year 1600. Few comedies of Shakspeare are
more generally pleasing, and its manifold improbabilities do not much
affect us in perusal. The brave injured Orlando, the sprightly but
modest Rosalind, the faithful Adam, the reflecting Jaques, the serene
and magnanimous Duke, interest us by turns, though the play is not so
well managed as to condense our sympathy, and direct it to the
conclusion.
|Jonson’s Every Man in his Humour.|
52. The comic scenes of Shakspeare had generally been drawn from novels,
and laid in foreign lands. But several of our earliest plays, as has
been partly seen, delineate the prevailing manners of English life. None
had acquired a reputation which endured beyond their own time till Ben
Jonson in 1596 produced, at the age of twenty-two, his first comedy,
Every Man in His Humour; an extraordinary monument of early genius, in
what is seldom the possession of youth, a clear and unerring description
of human character, various, and not extravagant beyond the necessities
of the stage. He had learned the principles of comedy no doubt, from
Plautus and Terence; for they were not to be derived from the moderns at
home or abroad; but he could not draw from them the application of
living passions and manners; and it would be no less unfair, as Gifford
has justly observed, to make Bobadil a copy of Thraso, than to deny the
dramatic originality of Kitely.
53. Every Man in his Humour is perhaps the earliest of European domestic
comedies that deserves to be remembered; for the Mandragola of Machiavel
shrinks to a mere farce in comparison.[1299] A much greater master of
comic powers than Jonson was indeed his contemporary, and, as he perhaps
fancied, his rival; but for some reason, Shakspeare had never yet drawn
his story from the domestic life of his countrymen. Jonson avoided the
common defect of the Italian and Spanish theatre, the sacrifice of all
other dramatic objects to one only, a rapid and amusing succession of
incidents; his plot is slight and of no great complexity; but his
excellence is to be found in the variety of his characters, and in their
individuality very clearly defined with little extravagance.
[1299] This would not have been approved by a modern literary
historian. Quelle etait, avant que Molière parût et même de son
temps, la comedie moderne comparable à la Calandria, à la
Mandragore, aux meilleures pieces de l’Arioste, à celles de
l’Aretin, du Cecchi, du Lasca, du Bentivoglio, de Francesco
d’Ambra, et de tant d’Autres? Ginguéné, vi. 316. This comes of
deciding before we know anything of the facts. Ginguéné might
possibly be able to read English, but certainly had no sort of
acquaintance with the English theatre. I should have no hesitation
in replying that we could produce at least forty comedies, before
the age of Molière, superior to the best of those he has mentioned,
and perhaps three times that number as good as the worst.
CHAPTER XVI.
HISTORY OF POLITE LITERATURE IN PROSE FROM 1550 TO 1600.
SECT. I.
_Style of best Italian Writers--Those of France--England._
|Italian writers.|
|Casa.|
|Tasso.|
1. I am not aware that we can make any great distinction in the
character of the Italian writers of this and the preceding period,
though they are more numerous in the present. Some of these have been
already mentioned on account of their subjects. In point of style, to
which we now chiefly confine ourselves, Casa is esteemed among the
best.[1300] The Galateo is certainly diffuse, but not so languid as some
contemporary works; nor do we find in it, I think, so many of
the inversions which are common blemishes in the writings of this age.
The prose of Tasso is placed by Corniani almost on a level with his
poetry for beauty of diction. “We find in it,” he says, “dignity,
rhythm, elegance, and purity without affectation, and perspicuity
without vulgarity. He is never trifling or verbose, like his
contemporaries of that century; but endeavours to fill every part of his
discourses with meaning.”[1301] These praises may be just, but there is
a tediousness in the moral essays of Tasso, which, like most other
productions of that class, assert what the reader has never seen denied,
and distinguish what he is in no danger of confounding.
[1300] Corniani, v. 174. Parini called the Galateo, Capo d’opera di
nostra lingua.
[1301] Corniani, vi. 240.
|Firenzuola. Character of Italian prose.|
2. Few Italian writers, it is said by the editors of the voluminous
Milan collection, have united equally with Firenzuola the most simple
naïveté to a delicate sweetness, that diffuses itself over the heart of
the reader. His dialogue on the Beauty of Women is reckoned one of the
best of his works. It is diffuse, but seems to deserve the praise
bestowed upon its language. His translation of the Golden Ass of
Apuleius is read with more pleasure than the original. The usual style
of Italian prose in this, accounted by some its best age, is elaborate,
ornate, yet not to excess, with a rhythmical structure apparently much
studied, very rhetorical and for the most part trivial, as we should now
think, in its matter. The style of Machiavel, to which, perhaps the
reader’s attention was not sufficiently called while we were concerned
with his political philosophy, is eminent for simplicity, strength, and
clearness. It would not be too much to place him at the head of the
prose writers of Italy. But very few had the good taste to emulate so
admirable a model. “They were apt to presume,” says Corniani, “that the
spirit of good waiting consisted in the artificial employment of
rhetorical figures. They hoped to fertilize the soil barren of argument
by such resources. They believed that they should become eloquent by
accumulating words upon words, and phrases upon phrases, hunting on
every side for metaphors, and exaggerating the most trifling theme by
frigid hyperboles.”[1302]
[1302] Corniani, vi. 52.
|Italian letter-writers.|
3. A treatise on Painting, by Raffaelle Borghino, published in 1584,
called Il Riposo, is highly praised for its style by the Milan editors;
but it is difficult for a foreigner to judge so correctly of these
delicacies of language, as he may of the general merits of composition.
They took infinite pains with their letters, great numbers of which have
been collected. Those of Annibal Caro are among the best known;[1303]
but Pietro Aretino, Paolo Manuzio, and Bonfadio are also celebrated for
their style. The appearance of labour and affectation is still less
pleasing in epistolary correspondence than in writings more evidently
designed for the public eye; and there will be found abundance of it in
these Italian writers, especially in addressing their superiors. Cicero
was a model perpetually before their eyes, and whose faults they did not
perceive. Yet perhaps the Italian writings of this period, with their
flowing grace, are more agreeable than the sententious antitheses of the
Spaniards. Both are artificial, but the efforts of the one are bestowed
on diction and cadence, those of the other display a constant strain to
be emphatic and profound. What Cicero was to Italy, Seneca became to
Spain.
[1303] It is of no relevancy to the history of literature, but in one
of Caro’s letters to Bernardo Tasso about 1544, he censures the
innovation of using the third person in addressing a correspondent.
Tutto questo secolo (dice Monsignor de la Casa) è adulatore; ognuno
che scrive dà de le signorie; ognuno, a chi si scrive, le vuole; e
non pure i grandi, ma i mezzani e i plebei quasi aspirano a questi
gran nomi, e si tengono anco per affronto, se non gli hanno, e
d’errore son notati quelli, che non gli danno. Cosa, che a me pare
stranissima e stomachosa, che habbiamo a parlar con uno, come se
fosse un altro, e tutta via in astratto, quasi con la idea di
colui, con chi si parla, non con la persona sua propria. Pure
l’abuso è gia fatto, ed è generale, &c., lib. i. p. 122. (edit.
1581.) I have found the third person used as early as a letter of
Paolo Manuzio to Castlevetro in 1543; but where there was any
intimacy with an equal rank, it is not much employed; nor is it
always found in that age in letters to men of very high rank from
their inferiors.
|Davanzati’s Tacitus.|
4. An exception to the general character of diffuseness is found in the
well-known translation of Tacitus by Davanzati. This, it has often been
said, he has accomplished in fewer words than the original. No one, as
in the story of the fish, which was said to weigh less in water than out
of it, inquires into the truth of what is confidently said, even where
it is obviously impossible. But whoever knows the Latin and Italian
languages must know that a translation of Tacitus into Italian cannot be
made in fewer words. It will be found, as might be expected, that
Davanzati has succeeded by leaving out as much as was required to
compensate the difference that articles and auxiliary verbs made against
him. His translation is also censured by Corniani,[1304] as full of
obsolete terms and Florentine vulgarisms.
[1304] vi. 58.
|Jordano Bruno.|
5. We can place under no better head than the present, much of that
lighter literature which, without taking the form of romance, endeavours
to amuse the reader by fanciful invention and gay remark. The Italians
have much of this; but it is beyond our province to enumerate
productions of no great merit or renown. Jordano Bruno’s celebrated
Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante is one of this class. Another of Bruno’s
light pieces is entitled, La Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, con l’Aggiunta
del’Asino Cillenico. This has more profaneness in it than the Spaccio
della Bestia. The latter, as is well known, was dedicated to Sir Philip
Sydney; as was also another little piece, Gli Eroici Furori. In this he
has a sonnet addressed to the English ladies: “Dell’Inghilterra o Vaghe
Ninfe e Belle;” but ending, of course, with a compliment, somewhat at
the expense of these beauties, to “l’unica Diana Qual’è trà voi quel,
che tra gl’astri il sole.” It had been well for Bruno if he had kept
himself under the protection of Diana. The “chaste beams of that watery
moon” were less scorching than the fires of the Inquisition.
|French writers. Amyot.|
6. The French generally date the beginning of an easy and natural style
in their own language from the publication of James Amyot’s translation
of Plutarch in 1559. Some earlier writers, however, have been mentioned
in another place, and perhaps some might have been added. The French
style of the sixteenth century is for the most part diffuse, endless in
its periods, and consequently negligent of grammar; but it was even then
lively and unaffected, especially in narration, the memoirs of that age
being still read with pleasure. Amyot, according to some, knew Greek but
indifferently, and was perhaps on that account a better model of his own
language; but if he did not always render the meaning of Plutarch, he
has made Plutarch’s reputation, and that, in some measure, of those who
have taken Plutarch for their guide. It is well known how popular, more
perhaps than any other ancient, this historian and moralist has been in
France; but it is through Amyot that he has been read. The style of his
translator, abounding with the native idiom, and yet enriching the
language, not at that time quite copious enough for its high vocation in
literature, with many words which usage and authority have recognised,
has always been regarded with admiration, and by some, in the prevalence
of a less natural taste, with regret. It is in French prose what that of
Marot is in poetry, and suggests, not an uncultivated simplicity, but
the natural grace of a young person, secure of appearing to advantage,
but not at bottom indifferent to doing so. This naïveté, a word which,
as we have neither naturalised nor translated it, I must adopt, has ever
since been the charm of good writing in France. It is, above all, the
characteristic of one who may justly be called the disciple of Amyot,
and who extols him above all other writers in the language--Montaigne.
The fascination of Montaigne’s manner is acknowledged by all who read
him; and with a worse style, or one less individually adapted to his
character, he would never have been the favourite of the world.[1305]
[1305] See the articles on Amyot in Baillet, iv. 428, Bayle, La Harpe.
Biogr. Universelle. Préface aux Œuvres de Pascal, par Neufchateau.
|Montaigne; Du Vair.|
7. In the essays of Montaigne a few passages occur of striking, though
simple eloquence. But it must be admitted that the familiar idiomatic
tone of Amyot was better fitted to please than to awe, to soothe the
mind than to excite it, to charm away the cares of the moment than to
impart a durable emotion. It was also so remote from the grand style
which the writings of Cicero and the precepts of rhetoric had taught the
learned world to admire, that we cannot wonder to find some who sought
to model their French by a different standard. The only one of these, so
far as I am aware, that falls within the sixteenth century is Du Vair, a
man not less distinguished in public life than in literature, having
twice held the great seals of France under Louis XIII. “He composed,”
says a modern writer, “many works, in which he endeavoured to be
eloquent; but he fell into the error, at that time so common, of too
much wishing to Latinise our mother tongue. He has been charged with
fabricating words, such as sponsion, cogitation, contumélie, dilucidite,
contemnement, &c.”[1306] Notwithstanding these instances of bad
taste which, when collected, seem more monstrous than as they are
dispersed in his writings, Du Vair is not devoid of a flowing eloquence,
which, whether perfectly congenial to the spirit of the language or not,
has never wanted its imitators and admirers, and those very successful
and brilliant, in French literature.[1307] It was of course the manner
of the bar and of the pulpit after the pulpit laid aside its buffoonery,
far more than that of Amyot and Montaigne.
[1306] Neufchateau, in Préface à Pascal, p. 181. Bouterwek, v. 326,
praises Du Vair, but he does not seem a favourite with his
compatriot critics.
[1307] Du Vair’s Essay de la Constance et Consolations ès Malheurs
Publiques, of which the first edition is in 1594, furnishes some
eloquent declamation in a style unlike that of Amyot. Repassez en
votre memorie l’histoire de toute l’antiquité; et quand vous
trouverez un magistrat qui aura eu grand credit envers un peuple,
ou auprès d’un prince, et qui se sera voulu comporter
vertueusement, dites hardiment; Je gage que cestui-ci a été banni,
que cestui-ci a été tué, qui cestui-ci a été empoisonné. A Athènes,
Aristidès, Themistoclès, et Phocion; à Rome infinis desquels je
laisse les noms pour n’emplir le papier, me contentant de Camille,
Scipion, et Ciceron pour l’antiquité, de Papinien pour les temps
des empereurs Romains, et de Boece sous les Gots. Mais pourquoi le
prenons nous si haut. Qui avons nous vu de notre siècle tenir les
sceaux de France, qui n’ait été mis en cette charge, pour en être
dejetté avec contumelie? Celui qui auroit vu M. le Chancelier
Olivier, ou M. le Chancelier de l’Hospital, partir de la cour pour
se retirer en leurs maisons, n’auroit jamais envié de tels
honneurs, ni de tels charges. Imaginez vous ces braves et
venerables vieillards, esquels reluisoient toutes sortes de vertus,
et esquels entre une infinité de grandes parties vous n’cussiez sçu
que choisir, remplis d’erudition, consommez ès affaires, amateurs,
de leur patrie, vraiment dignes de telles charges, si le siècle
eust été digne d’eux. Apres avoir longuement et fidèlement servis
la patrie, on leur dresse des querelles d’Allemans, et de fausses
accusations pour les bannir des affaires, on plutot pour en priver
les affaires; comme un navire agité de la conduite de si sages et
experts pilotes, afin de le faire plus aisément briser, p. 76
(edit. 1604.)
|Satire Menippée.|
8. It is not in my power to communicate much information as to the minor
literature of France. One book may be named as being familiarly known,
the Satire Menippée. The first edition bears the date of 1593, but is
said not to have appeared till 1594, containing some allusions to events
of that year. It is a ridicule on the proceedings of the League, who
were then masters of Paris, and has commonly been ascribed to Leroy,
canon of Rouen, though Passerat, Pithou, Rapin, and others, are said to
have had some share in it. This book is historically curious, but I do
not perceive that it displays any remarkable degree of humour or
invention. The truth appears so much throughout, that it cannot be
ranked among works of fiction.[1308]
[1308] Biog. Univ. Vigneul-Marville, i. 197.
|English writers.|
|Ascham.|
9. In the scanty and obscure productions of the English press under
Edward and Mary, or in the early years of Elizabeth, we should search, I
conceive, in vain for any elegance or eloquence in writing. Yet there is
an increasing expertness and fluency, and the language insensibly
rejecting obsolete forms, the manner of our writers is less uncouth, and
their sense more pointed and perspicuous than before. Wilson’s Art of
Rhetorique is at least a proof that some knew the merits of a good
style, if they did not yet bring their rules to bear on their own
language. In Wilson’s own manner there is nothing remarkable. The first
book which can be worth naming at all is Ascham’s Schoolmaster,
published in 1570, and probably written some years before. Ascham is
plain and strong in his style, but without grace or warmth; his
sentences have no harmony of structure. He stands, however, as far as I
have seen, above all other writers in the first half of the queen’s
reign. The best of these, like Reginald Scott, express their meaning
well, but with no attempt at a rhythmical structure or figurative
language; they are not bad writers, because their solid sense is aptly
conveyed to the mind; but they are not good, because they have little
selection of words, and give no pleasure by means of Style. Puttenham is
perhaps the first who wrote a well-measured prose; in his Art of English
Poesie, published in 1586, he is elaborate, studious of elevated and
chosen expression, and rather diffuse, in the manner of the Italians of
the sixteenth century, who affected that fulness of style, and whom he
probably meant to imitate. But in these later years of the queen, when
almost every one was eager to be distinguished for sharp wit or ready
learning, the want of good models of writing in our own language gave
rise to some perversion of the public taste. Thoughts and words began to
be valued, not as they were just and natural, but as they were removed
from common apprehension, and most exclusively the original property of
those who employed them. This in poetry showed itself in affected
conceits and in prose led to the pedantry of recondite mythological
allusion, and of a Latinised phraseology.
|Euphues of Lilly.|
10. The most remarkable specimen of this class is the Euphues of
Lilly, a book of little value, but which deserves notice on account of
the influence it is recorded to have had upon the court of Elizabeth; an
influence also over the public taste, which is manifested in the
literature of the age. It is divided into two parts, having separate
titles; the first, “Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit;” the second, “Euphues
and his England.” This is a very dull story of a young Athenian, whom
the author places at Naples in the first part and brings to England in
the second; it is full of dry commonplaces. The style which obtained
celebrity is antithetical, and sententious to affectation; the perpetual
effort with no adequate success rendering the book equally disagreeable
and ridiculous, though it might not be difficult to find passages rather
more happy and ingenious than the rest. The following specimen is taken
at random, and though sufficiently characteristic, is perhaps rather
unfavourable to Lilly, as a little more affected and empty than usual.
11. “The sharpest north-east wind, my good Euphues, doth never last
three days, tempests have but a short time, and the more violent the
thunder is, the less permanent it is. In the like manner it falleth out
with jars and carpings of friends, which, begun in a moment, are ended
in a moment. Necessary it is that among friends there should be some
thwarting, but to continue in anger not convenient: the camel first
troubleth the water before he drink; the frankincense is burned before
it smell; friends are tried before they be trusted, lest, shining like
the carbuncle as though they had fire, they be found, being touched, to
be without fire. Friendship should be like the wine, which Homer much
commending calleth Maroneum, whereof one pint being mingled with five
quarts of water, yet it keepeth his old strength and virtue, not to be
qualified by any discurtesie. Where salt doth grow nothing else can
breed; where friendship is built no offence can harbour. Then, Euphues,
let the falling out of friends be the renewing of affection, that in
this we may resemble the bones of the lion, which, lying still and not
moved, begin to rot, but being stricken one against another, break out
like fire, and wax green.”
12. “The lords and gentlemen in that court (of Elizabeth) are also an
example,” he says in a subsequent passage, “for all others to follow,
true types of nobility, the only stay and staff of honour, brave
courtiers, stout soldiers, apt to revel in peace and ride in war. In
fight fierce, not dreading death; in friendship firm, not breaking
promise; courteous to all that deserve well, cruel to none that deserve
ill. Their adversaries they trust not--that showeth their wisdom; their
enemies they fear not--that argueth their courage. They are not apt to
proffer injuries, not fit to take any; loth to pick quarrels, but
longing to revenge them.” Lilly pays great compliments to the ladies for
beauty and modesty, and overloads Elizabeth with panegyric. “Touching
the beauty of this prince, her countenance, her majesty, her personage,
I cannot think that it may be sufficiently commended, when it cannot be
too much marvailed at; so that I am constrained to say, as Praxiteles
did when he began to paint Venus and her son, who doubted whether the
world could afford colours good enough for two such fair faces, and I
whether my tongue can yield words to blaze that beauty, the perfection
whereof none can imagine; which, seeing it is so, I must do like those
that want a clear sight, who being not able to discern the sun in the
sky, are inforced to behold it in the water.”
|Its popularity.|
13. It generally happens that a style devoid of simplicity, when first
adopted, becomes the object of admiration for its imagined ingenuity and
difficulty; and that of Euphues was well adapted to a pedantic
generation who valued nothing higher than far-fetched allusions and
sententious precepts. All the ladies of the time, we are told, were
Lilly’s scholars; “she who spoke not Euphuism being as little regarded
at court as if she could not speak French.” “His invention,” says one of
his editors, who seems well worthy of him, “was so curiously strung,
that Elizabeth’s court held his notes in admiration.”[1309] Shakspeare
has ridiculed this style in Love’s Labour Lost, and Jonson in Every Man
out of his Humour; but, as will be seen on comparing the extracts I have
given above, with the language of Holofernes and Fastidious Brisk, a
little in the tone of caricature, which Sir Walter Scott has heightened
in one of his novels, till it bears no great resemblance to the real
Euphues. I am not sure that Shakspeare has never caught the Euphuistic
style, when he did not intend to make it ridiculous, especially in some
speeches of Hamlet.
[1309] In Biogr. Britannica, art. Lilly.
|Sydney’s Arcadia.|
14. The first good prose writer, in any positive sense of the word, is
Sir Philip Sydney. The Arcadia appeared in 1590. It has been said of the
author of this famous romance, to which, as such, we shall have soon to
revert, that “we may regard the whole literary character of that age as
in some sort derived and descended from him, and his work as the
fountain from which all the vigorous shoots of that period drew
something of their verdure and strength. It was indeed the Arcadia which
first taught to the contemporary writers that inimitable interweaving
and contexture of words, that bold and unshackled use and application of
them, that art of giving to language, appropriated to objects the most
common and trivial, a kind of acquired and adventitious loftiness, and
to diction in itself noble and elevated a sort of superadded dignity,
that power of ennobling the sentiments by the language, and the language
by the sentiments, which so often excites our admiration in perusing the
writers of the age of Elizabeth.”[1310] This panegyric appears a good
deal too strongly expressed, and perhaps the Arcadia had not this great
influence over the writers of the latter years of Elizabeth, whose age
is, in the passage quoted, rather too indefinitely mentioned. We are
sometimes apt to mistake an improvement springing from the general
condition of the public mind for imitation of the one writer who has
first displayed the effects of it. Sydney is, as I have said, our
earliest good writer; but if the Arcadia had never been published, I
cannot believe that Hooker or Bacon would have written worse.
[1310] Retrospective Review, vol. ii. p. 42.
|His Defence of Poesie.|
15. Sydney’s Defence of Poesie, as has been surmised by his last editor,
was probably written about 1581. I should incline to place it later than
the Arcadia; and he may perhaps allude to himself where he says; “some
have mingled matters heroical and pastoral.” This treatise is elegantly
written, with perhaps too artificial a construction of sentences; the
sense is good, but the expression is very diffuse, which gives it too
much the air of a declamation. The great praise of Sydney in this
treatise is, that he has shown the capacity of the English language for
spirit, variety, gracious idiom, and masculine firmness. It is worth
notice that under the word poesy he includes such works as his own
Arcadia, or in short any fiction. “It is not rhyming and versing that
maketh poesy; one may be a poet without versing, and a versifier without
poetry.”
|Hooker.|
16. But the finest, as well as the most philosophical, writer of the
Elizabethan period is Hooker. The first book of the Ecclesiastical
Polity is at this day one of the masterpieces of English eloquence. His
periods indeed are generally much too long and too intricate, but
portions of them are often beautifully rhythmical; his language is rich
in English idiom without vulgarity, and in words of a Latin source
without pedantry; he is more uniformly solemn than the usage of later
times permits, or even than writers of that time, such as Bacon,
conversant with mankind as well as books, would have reckoned necessary;
but the example of ancient orators and philosophers upon themes so grave
as those which he discusses may justify the serious dignity from which
he does not depart. Hooker is perhaps the first in England who adorned
his prose with the images of poetry; but this he has done more
judiciously and with more moderation than others of great name; and we
must be bigots in Attic severity, before we can object to some of his
grand figures of speech. We may praise him also for avoiding the
superfluous luxury of quotation, a rock on which the writers of the
succeeding age were so frequently wrecked.
|Character of Elizabethan writers.|
17. It must be owned, however, by every one not absolutely blinded by a
love of scarce books, that the prose literature of the queen’s reign,
taken generally, is but very mean. The pedantic Euphuism of Lilly
overspreads the productions which aspire to the praise of politeness;
while the common style of most pieces of circumstance, like those of
Martin Mar-prelate and his answerers (for there is little to choose in
this respect between parties), or of such efforts at wit and satire as
came from Greene, Nash, and other worthies of our early stage, is low,
and, with few exceptions, very stupid ribaldry. Many of these have a
certain utility in the illustration of Shakspeare and of ancient
manners, which is neither to be overlooked in our contempt for such
trash, nor to be mistaken for intrinsic merit. If it is alleged that I
have not read enough of the Elizabethan literature to censure it, I must
reply that, admitting my slender acquaintance with the numberless little
books that some years since used to be sold at vast prices, I may still
draw an inference from the inability of their admirers, or at least
purchasers, to produce any tolerable specimens. Let the labours of Sir
Egerton Brydges, the British Bibliographer, the Censura Literaria, the
Restituta, collections so copious, and formed with so much industry,
speak for the prose of the queen’s reign. I would again repeat that good
sense in plain language was not always wanting upon serious subjects; it
is to polite writing alone that we now refer.[1311] Spenser’s dialogue
upon the State of Ireland, the Brief Conceit of English Policy, and
several other tracts are written as such treatises should be written,
but they are not to be counted in the list of eloquent or elegant
compositions.
[1311] It is not probable that Brydges, as a man of considerable taste
and judgment, whatever some other pioneers in the same track may
have been, would fail to select the best portions of the authors he
has so carefully perused. And yet I would almost defy any one to
produce five passages in prose from his numerous volumes, so far as
the sixteenth century is concerned, which have any other merit than
that of illustrating some matter of fact, or of amusing by their
oddity. I have only noted, in traversing that long desert, two
sermons by one Edward Dering, preached before the queen (British
Bibliographer, i. 260 and 560), which show considerably more vigour
than was usual in the style of that age.
SECT. II.--ON CRITICISM.
_State of Criticism in Italy--Scaliger--Castelvetro--Salviati--In
other Countries--England._
|State of criticism.|
18. In the earlier periods with which we have been conversant, criticism
had been the humble handmaid of the ancient writers, content to explain,
or sometimes aspiring to restore, but seldom presuming to censure their
text, or even to justify the superstitious admiration that modern
scholars felt for it. But there is a different and far higher criticism,
which excites and guides the taste for truth and beauty in works of
imagination; a criticism to which even the great masters of language are
responsible, and from which they expect their reward. But of the many
who have sat in this tribunal, a small minority have been recognised as
rightful arbiters of the palms they pretend to confer, and an appeal to
the public voice has as often sent away the judges in dishonour as
confirmed their decision.
|Scaliger’s Poetry.|
|His preference of Virgil to Homer.|
19. It is a proof at least of the talents and courage which distinguished
Julius Cæsar Scaliger, that he, first of all the moderns (or, if there
are exceptions, they must be partial and inconsiderable), undertook to
reduce the whole art of verse into system, illustrating and confirming
every part by a profusion of poetical literature. His Poetics form an
octavo of about 900 pages, closely printed. We can give but a slight
sketch of so extensive a work. In the first book he treats of the
different species of poems; in the second, of different metres; the
third is more miscellaneous, but relates chiefly to figures and turns of
phrase; the fourth proceeds with the same subject, but these two are
very comprehensive. In the fifth we come to apply these principles to
criticism; and here we find a comparison of various poets one with
another, especially of Homer with Virgil. The sixth book is a general
criticism on all Latin poets, ancient and modern. The seventh is a kind
of supplement to the rest, and seems to contain all the miscellaneous
matter that he found himself to have omitted, together with some
questions purposely reserved, as he tells us, on account of their
difficulty. His comparison of Homer with Virgil is very elaborate,
extending to every simile or other passage, wherein a resemblance or
imitation can be observed, as well as to the general management of their
epic poems. In this comparison he gives an invariable preference to
Virgil, and declares that the difference between these poets is as great
as between a lady of rank and an awkward wife of a citizen. Musæus he
conceives to be far superior to Homer, according to the testimony of
antiquity; and his poem of Hero and Leander, which it does not occur to
him to suspect, is the only one in Greek that can be named in
competition with Virgil, as he shows by comparison of the said poem with
the very inferior effusions of Homer. If Musæus had written on the same
subject as Homer, Scaliger does not doubt but that he would have left
the Iliad and Odyssey far behind.[1312]
[1312] Quod si Musæus ea, quæ Homerus Scripsit, scripsisset, longè
melius eum scripturum fuisse judicamus.
The following is a specimen of Scaliger’s style of criticism,
chosen rather for its shortness than any other cause:--
Ex vicesimo tertio Iliadis transtulit versus illos in comparationem;
μαστιγι δ' αιεν ελαυνε κατωμαδον αἰ δέ οἱ ἱπποι
ὑψοσ' αειρεσθην ῥιμφα πρησσοντε κελευθον.
[mastigi d’ aien elaune katômadon; ai de hoi hippoi
hypsos' aeiresthên rhimpha prêssonte keleuthon.]
ισχνολογια [ischnologia] multa; at in nostro animata oratio;
Non tam præcipites bijugo certamine campum Corripuere, ruuntque
effusi carcere currus, &c. Cum virtutibus horum carminum non est
conferenda jejuna illa humilitas; audent præferre tamen grammatici
temerii. Principio, nihil infelicius quam μαστιγι αιεν ελαυνεν
[mastigi aien elaunen]. Nam continuatio et equorum diminuit
opinionem, et contemptum facit verberum. Frequentibus intervallis
stimuli plus proficiunt. Quod vero admirantur Græculi, pessimum
est, υψοσ' αειρεσθην [hypsos' aeiresthên]. Extento namque, et, ut
milites loquantur, clauso cursu non subsiliente opus est. Quare
divinus vir, _undantia lora_; hoc enim pro flagro, et _præcipites_,
et _corripuere campum_; idque in præterito, ad celeritatem. Et
_ruunt_, quasi in diversa, adeo celeres sunt. Illa vero supra omnem
Homerum, _proni in verbera pendent_. l. v. c. 3.
20. These opinions will not raise Scaliger’s taste very greatly in our
eyes. But it is not perhaps surprising that an Italian, accustomed to
the polished effeminacy of modern verse, both in his language and in
Latin, should be delighted with the poem of Hero and Leander, which has
the sort of charm that belongs to the statues of Bacchus, and soothes
the ear with voluptuous harmony, while it gratifies the mind with
elegant and pleasing imagery. It is not, however, to be taken for
granted that Scaliger is always mistaken in his judgments on particular
passages in these greatest of poets. The superiority of the Homeric
poems is rather incontestable in their general effect, and in the
vigorous originality of his verse, than in the selection of
circumstance, sentiment, or expression. It would be a sort of prejudice
almost as tasteless as that of Scaliger, to refuse the praise of real
poetic superiority to many passages of Virgil, even as compared with the
Iliad, and far more with the Odyssey. If the similes of the older poet
are more picturesque and animated, those of his imitator are more
appropriate and parallel to the subject. It would be rather whimsical to
deny this to be a principal merit in a comparison. Scaliger sacrifices
Theocritus as much as Homer at the altar of Virgil, and of course
Apollonius has little chance with so partial a judge. Horace and Ovid,
at least the latter, are also held by Scaliger superior to the Greeks
whenever they come into competition.
|His critique on modern Latin poets.|
21. In the fourth chapter of the sixth book, Scaliger criticises the
modern Latin poets, beginning with Marullus; for what is somewhat
remarkable, he says that he had been unable to see the Latin poems of
Petrarch. He rates Marullus low, though he dwells at length on his
poetry, and thinks no better of Augurellus. The continuation of the
Æneid by Maphæus he highly praises; Augerianus not at all. Mantuan has
some genius, but no skill; and Scaliger is indignant that some ignorant
schoolmasters should teach from him rather than from Virgil. Of Dolet he
speaks with great severity; his unhappy fate does not atone for the
badness of his verses in the eyes of so stern a critic; “the fire did
not purify him, but rather he polluted the fire.” Palingenius, though
too diffuse, he accounts a good poet, and Cotta as an imitator of
Catullus. Palearius aims rather to be philosophical than poetical.
Castiglione is excellent; Bembus wants vigour, and sometimes elegance;
he is too fond, as many others are, of trivial words. Of Politian
Scaliger does not speak highly; he rather resembles Statius, has no
grace, and is careless of harmony. Vida is reckoned, he says, by most
the first poet of our time; he dwells, therefore, long on the Ars
Poetica, and extols it highly, though not without copious censure. Of
Vida’s other poems the Bombyx is the best. Pontanus is admirable for
everything, if he had known where to stop. To Sannazarius and
Fracastorius he assigns the highest praise of universal merit, but
places the last at the head of the whole band.
|Critical influence of the academies.|
22. The Italian language, like those of Greece and Rome, had been
hitherto almost exclusively treated by grammarians, the superior
criticism having little place even in the writings of Bembo. But soon
after the middle of the century, the academies established in many
cities, dedicating much time to their native language, began to point
out beauties, and to animadvert on defects beyond the province of
grammar. The enthusiastic admiration of Petrarch poured itself forth in
tedious commentaries upon every word of every sonnet; one of which,
illustrated with the heavy prolixity of that age, would sometimes be the
theme of a volume. Some philosophical or theological pedants
spiritualised his meaning, as had been attempted before; the absurd
paradox of denying the real existence of Laura is a known specimen of
their refinements. Many wrote on the subject of his love for her; and a
few denied its Platonic purity, which, however, the academy of Ferrara
thought fit to decree. One of the heretics, by name Cresci, ventured
also to maintain that she was married; but this probable hypothesis had
not many followers.[1313]
[1313] Crescimbeni, Storia della Volgar Poesia, ii. 295-309.
|Dispute of Caro and Castelvetro.|
23. Meantime a multitude of new versifiers, chiefly close copyists of
the style of Petrarch, lay open to the malice of their competitors, and
the strictness of these self-chosen judges of song. A critical
controversy that sprung up about 1558 between two men of letters, very
prominent in their age, Annibal Caro and Ludovico Castelvetro, is
celebrated in the annals of Italian literature. The former had published
a canzone in praise of the king of France, beginning--
Venite all’ombra de’ gran gigli d’oro.
Castelvetro made some sharp animadversions on this ode, which seems
really to deserve a good deal of censure, being in bad taste, turgid,
and foolish. Caro replied with the bitterness natural to a wounded poet.
In this there might be nothing unpardonable, and even his abusive
language might be extenuated at least by many precedents in literary
story; but it is imputed to Caro that he excited the Inquisition against
his suspected adversary. Castelvetro had been of the celebrated academy
of Modena, whose alleged inclination to Protestantism had proved,
several years before, the cause of its dissolution, and of the
persecution which some of its members suffered. Castelvetro, though he
had avoided censure at that time, was now denounced about 1560, when the
persecution was hottest, to the Inquisition at Rome. He obeyed its
summons, but soon found it prudent to make his escape, and reached
Chiavenna in the Grison dominions. He lived several years afterwards in
safe quarters, but seems never to have made an open profession of the
reformed faith.[1314]
[1314] Muratori, Vita del Castelvetro, 1727. Crescimbeni, ii. 431.
Tiraboschi, x. 31. Ginguéné, vii. 365. Corniani, vi. 61.
|Castelvetro on Aristotle’s Poetics.|
24. Castelvetro himself is one of the most considerable among the
Italian critics; but his taste is often lost in subtlety, and his
fastidious temper seems to have sought nothing so much as occasion for
censure. His greatest work is a commentary upon the Poetics of
Aristotle; and it may justly claim respect, not only as the earliest
exposition of the theory of criticism, but for its acuteness, erudition,
and independence of reasoning, which disclaims the Stagyrite as a
master, though the diffuseness usual in that age, and the microscopic
subtlety of the writer’s mind may render its perusal tedious. Twining,
one of the best critics on the Poetics, has said, in speaking of the
commentaries of Castelvetro and of a later Italian, Beni, that “their
prolixity, their scholastic and trifling subtlety, their useless
tediousness of logical analysis, their microscopic detection of
difficulties invisible to the naked eye of common sense, and their waste
of confutation upon objections made only by themselves, and made on
purpose to be confuted--all this, it must be owned, is disgusting and
repulsive. It may sufficiently release a commentator from the duty of
reading their works throughout, but not from that of examining and
consulting them; for in both these writers, but more especially in Beni,
there are many remarks equally acute and solid; many difficulties will
be seen clearly stated, and sometimes successfully removed; many things
usefully illustrated and clearly explained; and if their freedom of
censure is now and then disgraced by a little disposition to cavil, this
becomes almost a virtue when compared with the servile and implicit
admiration of Dacier.”[1315]
[1315] Twining’s Aristotle’s Poetics, preface, p. 13.
|Severity of Castelvetro’s criticism.|
25. Castelvetro in his censorious humour did not spare the greatest
shades that repose in the laurel groves of Parnassus, nor even those
whom national pride had elevated to a level with them. Homer is less
blamed than any other; but frequent shafts are levelled at Virgil, and
not always unjustly, if poetry of real genius could ever bear the
extremity of critical rigour, in which a monotonous and frigid
mediocrity has generally found refuge.[1316] In Dante he finds fault
with the pedantry that has filled his poem with terms of science,
unintelligible and unpleasing to ignorant men, for whom poems are
chiefly designed.[1317] Ariosto he charges with plagiarism, laying
unnecessary stress on his borrowing some stories, as that of Zerbino,
from older books; and even objects to his introduction of false
names of kings, since we may as well invent new mountains and rivers, as
violate the known truths of history.[1318] This punctilious cavil is
very characteristic of Castelvetro. Yet he sometimes reaches a strain of
philosophical analysis, and can by no means be placed in the ranks of
criticism below La Harpe, to whom, by his attention to verbal
minuteness, as well as by the acrimony and self-confidence of his
character, he may in some measure be compared.
[1316] One of his censures falls on the minute particularity of the
prophecy of Anchises in the sixth Æneid; peccando Virgilio nella
convenevolezza della profetia, la quale non suole condescendere a
nomi proprj, ne a cose tanto chiare e particolari, ma, tacendo i
nomi, suole manifestare le persone, e le loro azioni con figure di
parlare alquanto oscure, si come si vede nelle profetie della
scrittura sacra e nell’Alessandra di Licophrone, p. 219 (edit.
1576). This is not unjust in itself; but Castelvetro wanted the
candour to own, or comprehensiveness to perceive, that a prophecy
of the Roman history, couched in allegories, would have had much
less effect on Roman readers.
[1317] Rendendola massimamente per questa via difficile ad intendere
e meno piacente a uomini idioti, per gli quali principalmente si
fanno i poemi, p. 597. But the comedy of Dante was about as much
written for _gl’idioti_, as the Principia of Newton.
[1318] Castelvetro, p. 212. He objects on the same principle to
Giraldi Cinthio, that he had chosen a subject for tragedy which
never had occurred, nor had been reported to have occurred, and
this of royal persons unheard of before, il qual peccato di
prendere soggetto tale per la tragedia non è da perdonare, p. 103.
|Ercolano of Varchi.|
26. The Ercolano of Varchi, a series of dialogues, belongs to the
inferior but more numerous class of critical writings, and after some
general observations on speech and language as common to men, turns to
the favourite theme of his contemporaries, their native idiom. He is one
who with Bembo contends that the language should not be called Italian,
or even Tuscan, but Florentine, though admitting, what might be
expected, that few agree to this except the natives of the city. Varchi
had written on the side of Caro against Castelvetro, and though upon the
whole he does not speak of the latter in the Ercolano with incivility,
cannot restrain his wrath at an assertion of the stern critic of Modena,
that there were as famous writers in the Spanish and French as in the
Italian language. Varchi even denies that there was any writer of
reputation in the first of these except Juan de la Mena, and the author
of Amadis de Gaul. Varchi is now chiefly known as the author of a
respectable history, which, on account of its sincerity, was not
published till the last century. The prejudice that, in common with some
of his fellow-citizens, he entertained in favour of the popular idiom of
Florence, has affected the style of his history, which is reckoned both
tediously diffuse, and deficient in choice of phrase.[1319]
[1319] Corniani, vi. 43.
|Controversy about Dante.|
27. Varchi, in a passage of the Ercolano, having extolled Dante even in
preference to Homer, gave rise to a controversy wherein some Italian
critics did not hesitate to point out the blemishes of their countryman.
Bulgarini was one of these. Mazzoni undertook the defence of Dante in a
work of considerable length, and seems to have poured out, still more
abundantly than his contemporaries, a torrent of philosophical
disquisition. Bulgarini replied again to him.[1320] Crescimbeni speaks
of these discussions as having been advantageous to Italian
poetry.[1321] The good effects, however, were not very sensibly
manifested in the next century.
[1320] Id. vi. 260. Ginguéné, vii. 491.
[1321] Hist. della Volgar Poesia, ii. 282.
|Academy of Florence.|
28. Florence was the chief scene of these critical wars. Cosmo I., the
most perfect type of the prince of Machiavel, sought by the
encouragement of literature in this its most innocuous province, as he
did by the arts of embellishment, both to bring over the minds of his
subjects a forgetfulness of liberty, and to render them unapt for its
recovery. The Academy of Florence resounded with the praises of
Petrarch. A few seceders from this body established the more celebrated
academy Della Crusca, of the _sieve_, whose appellation bespoke the
spirit in which they meant to sift all they undertook to judge. They
were soon engaged, and with some loss to their fame, in a controversy
upon the Gierusalemme Liberata. Camillo Pellegrino, a Neapolitan, had
published in 1584 a dialogue on epic poetry, entitled Il Caraffa,
wherein he gave preference to Tasso above Ariosto. Though Florence had
no peculiar interest in this question, the academicians thought
themselves guardians of the elder bard’s renown; and Tasso had offended
the citizens by some reflections in one of his dialogues. The academy
permitted themselves, in a formal reply, to place even Pulci and Boiardo
above Tasso. It was easier to vindicate Ariosto from some of
Pellegrino’s censures, which are couched in the pedantic tone of
insisting with the reader that he ought not to be pleased. He has
followed Castelvetro in several criticisms. The rules of epic poetry so
long observed, he maintains, ought to be reckoned fundamental
principles, which no one can dispute without presumption. The academy
answer this well on behalf of Ariosto. Their censures on the Jerusalem
apply, in part to the characters and incidents, wherein they are
sometimes right, in part to the language, many phrases, according to
them, being bad Italian, as _pietose_ for _pie_ in the first
line.[1322]
[1322] In the second volume of the edition of Tasso at Venice, 1735,
the Caraffa of Pellegrino, the Defence of Ariosto by the Academy,
Tasso’s Apology, and the Infarinato of Salviati, are cut into
sentences, placed to answer each other like a dialogue. This
produces an awkward and unnatural effect, as passages are torn from
their context to place them in opposition.
The criticism on both sides becomes infinitely wearisome; yet not
more so than much that we find in our modern reviews, and with the
advantage of being more to the purpose, less ostentatious, and with
less pretence to eloquence or philosophy. An account of the
controversy will be found in Crescimbeni, Ginguéné, or Corniani,
and more at length in Serassi’s Life of Tasso.
|Salviati’s attack on Tasso.|
29. Salviati, a verbose critic, who had written two quarto volumes on
the style of Boccaccio, assailed the new epic in two treatises, entitled
L’Infarinato. Tasso’s Apology followed very soon; but it has been
sometimes thought that these criticisms, acting on his morbid intellect,
though he repelled them vigorously, might have influenced that waste of
labour, by which, in the last years of his life, he changed so much of
his great poem for the worse. The obscurer insects whom envy stirred up
against its glory are not worthy to be remembered. The chief praise of
Salviati himself is that he laid the foundations of the first classical
dictionary of any modern language, the Vocabulario della Crusca.[1323]
[1323] Corniani, vi. 204. The Italian literature would supply several
more works on criticism, rhetoric, and grammar. Upon all these
subjects it was much richer, at this time, than the French or
English.
|Pinciano’s Art of Poetry.|
30. Bouterwek has made us acquainted with a treatise in Spanish on the
art of poetry, which he regards as the earliest of its kind in modern
literature. It could not be so according to the date of its publication,
which is in 1596; but the author, Alonzo Lopez Pinciano was physician to
Charles V., and it was therefore written, in all probability, many years
before it appeared from the press. The title is rather quaint,
Philosophia Antigua Poetica, and it is written in the form of letters.
Pinciano is the first who discovered the Poetics of Aristotle, which he
had diligently studied, to be a fragment of a larger work, as is now
generally admitted. “Whenever Lopez Pinciano,” says Bouterwek, “abandons
Aristotle, his notions respecting the different poetic styles are as
confused as those of his contemporaries; and only a few of his notions
and distinctions can be deemed of importance at the present day. But his
name is deserving of honourable remembrance, for he was the first writer
of modern times who endeavoured to establish a philosophic art of
poetry; and, with all his veneration for Aristotle, he was the first
scholar who ventured to think for himself, and to go somewhat farther
than his master.”[1324] The Art of Poetry, by Juan de la Cueva, is a
poem of the didactic class, containing some information as to the
history of Spanish verse.[1325] The other critical treatises which
appeared in Spain about this time seem to be of little importance; but
we know by the writings of Cervantes, that the poets of the age of
Philip were, as usual, followed by the animal for whose natural prey
they are designed, the sharp-toothed and keen-scented critic.
[1324] Hist. of Sp. Lit., p. 323.
[1325] It is printed entire in the eighth volume of Parnaso Español.
|French treatises of criticism.|
31. France produced very few books of the same class. The Institutiones
Oratoriæ of Omer Talon is an elementary and short treatise of
rhetoric.[1326] Baillet and Goujet gave some praise to the Art of Poetry
by Pelletier, published in 1555.[1327] The treatise of Henry Stephens,
on the Conformity of the French Language with the Greek, is said to
contain very good observations.[1328] But it must be (for I do not
recollect to have seen it) rather a book of grammar than of superior
criticism. The Rhetorique Française of Fouquelin (1555) seems to be
little else than a summary of rhetorical figures.[1329] That of
Courcelles, in 1557, is not much better.[1330] All these relate rather
to prose than to poetry. From the number of versifiers in France, and
the popularity of Ronsard and his school, we might have expected a
larger harvest of critics. Pasquier, in his valuable miscellany, Les
Recherches de la France, has devoted a few pages to this subject, but
not on an extensive or systematic plan; nor can the two Bibliothéques
Françaises, by La Croix du Maine and Verdier, both published in 1584,
though they contain a great deal of information as to the literature of
France, with some critical estimates of books, be reckoned in the class
to which we are now adverting. In this department of literature, without
doing a great deal, we had perhaps rather the advantage over our
neighbours.
[1326] Gibert, Baillet, printed in Jugemens des Savans, viii. 181.
[1327] Baillet, iii. 351. Goujet, iii. 97. Pelletier had previously
rendered Horace’s Art of Poetry into French verse, id. 66.
[1328] Baillet, iii. 353.
[1329] Gibert, p. 184.
[1330] Id. p. 366.
|Wilson’s Art of Rhetorique.|
32. Thomas Wilson, afterwards secretary of state, and much employed
under Elizabeth, is the author of an “Art of Rhetorique,” dated in the
preface January 1553. The rules in this treatise are chiefly from
Aristotle, with the help of Cicero and Quintilian, but his examples and
illustrations are modern. Warton says that it is the first system of
criticism in our language.[1331] But in common use of the word it is no
criticism at all, any more than the treatise of Cicero de Oratore; it is
what it professes to be, a system of rhetoric in the ancient manner;
and, in this sense, it had been preceded by the work of Leonard Cox,
which has been mentioned in a former chapter. Wilson was a man of
considerable learning, and his Art of Rhetorique is by no means without
merit. He deserves praise for censuring the pedantry of learned phrases,
or, as he calls them, “strange _inkhorn_ terms,” advising men “to speak
as is commonly received;” and he censures also what was not less
pedantic, the introduction of a French or Italian idiom, which the
travelled English affected in order to show their politeness, as the
scholars did the former to prove their erudition. Wilson had before
published an Art of Logic.
[1331] Hist. of Engl. Poetry, iv. 157.
|Gascoyne; Webbe.|
33. The first English criticism, properly speaking, that I find, is a
short tract by Gascoyne, doubtless the poet of that name, published in
1575; “Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making of Verse or
Rhyme in English.” It consists only of ten pages, but the observations
are judicious. Gascoyne recommends that the sentence should as far as
possible be finished at the close of two lines in the couplet
measure.[1332] Webbe, author of a “Discourse of English Poetry” (1586),
is copious in comparison with Gascoyne, though he stretches but to
seventy pages. His taste is better shown in his praise of Spenser for
the Shepherd’s Kalendar, than of Gabriel Harvey for his “Reformation of
our English verse;” that is, by forcing it into uncouth Latin measures,
which Webbe has himself most unhappily attempted.
[1332] Gascoyne, with all the other early English critics, was
republished in a collection by Mr. Haslewood in two volumes,
1811 and 1815.
|Puttenham’s Art of Poesie.|
34. A superior writer to Webbe was George Puttenham, whose “Art of
English Poesie,” published in 1589, is a small quarto of 258 pages in
three books. It is in many parts very well written, in a measured prose,
rather elaborate and diffuse. He quotes occasionally a little Greek.
Among the contemporary English poets, Puttenham extols “for eclogue and
pastoral poetry Sir Philip Sydney and Master Chaloner, and that other
gentleman who wrote the late Shepherd’s Kalendar. For ditty and amorous
ode I find Sir Walter Rawleigh’s vein most lofty, _insolent_,
[bold? or uncommon?] and passionate; Master Edward Dyer for elegy most
sweet, solemn, and of high conceit; Gascon [Gascoyne] for a good metre
and for a plentiful vein; Phaer and Golding for a learned and well
connected verse, specially in translation, clear, and very faithfully
answering their author’s intent. Others have also written with much
facility, but more commendably perhaps, if they had not written so much
nor so popularly. But last in recital and first in degree is the queen
our sovereign lady, whose learned, delicate, noble muse easily
surmounteth all the rest that have written before her time or since, for
sense, sweetness, and subtilty, be it in ode, elegy, epigram, or any
other kind of poem, heroic or lyric, wherein it shall please her majesty
to employ her pen, even by so much odds as her own excellent estate and
degree exceedeth all the rest of her most humble vassals.”[1333] On this
it may be remarked, that the only specimen of Elizabeth’s poetry which,
as far as I know, remains, is prodigiously bad.[1334] In some passages
of Puttenham, we find an approach to the higher province of
philosophical criticism.
[1333] Puttenham, p. 51. of Haslewood’s edition, or in Censura
Literaria, i. 348.
[1334] Ellis’s Specimens, ii. 162.
|Sydney’s Defence of Poesy.|
35. These treatises of Webbe and Puttenham may have been preceded in
order of writing, though not of publication, by the performance of a
more illustrious author, Sir Philip Sydney. His Defence of Poesy was not
published till 1595. The Defence of Poesy has already been reckoned
among the polite writings of the Elizabethan age, to which class it
rather belongs than to that of criticism; for Sydney rarely comes to any
literary censure, and is still farther removed from any profound
philosophy. His sense is good, but not ingenious, and the declamatory
tone weakens its effect.
SECT. III.--ON WORKS OF FICTION.
_Novels and Romances in Italy and Spain--Sydney’s Arcadia._
|Novels of Bandello;|
36. The novels of Bandello, three parts of which were published in 1554,
and a fourth in 1573, are perhaps the best known and the most admired in
that species of composition after those of Boccaccio. They have been
censured as licentious, but are far less so than any of
preceding times, and the reflections are usually of a moral cast. These
however, as well as the speeches, are very tedious. There is not a
little predilection in Bandello for sanguinary stories. Ginguéné praises
these novels for just sentiments, adherence to probability, and choice
of interesting subjects. In these respects, we often find a superiority
in the older novels above those of the nineteenth century, the golden
age, as it is generally thought, of fictitious story. But, in the
management of these subjects, the Italian and Spanish novelists show
little skill; they are worse cooks of better meat; they exert no power
over the emotions beyond what the intrinsic nature of the events related
must produce; they sometimes describe well, but with no great
imagination; they have no strong conception of character, no deep
acquaintance with mankind, not often much humour, no vivacity and spirit
of dialogue.
|of Cinthio.|
37. The Hecatomithi, or Hundred Tales, of Giraldi Cinthio have become
known in England by the recourse that Shakspeare has had to them in two
instances, Cymbeline and Measure for Measure, for the subjects of his
plays. Cinthio has also borrowed from himself in his own tragedies. He
is still more fond of dark tales of blood than Bandello. He seems
consequently to have possessed an unfortunate influence over the stage;
and to him, as well as his brethren of the Italian novel, we trace those
scenes of improbable and disgusting horror, from which, though the
native taste and gentleness of Shakspeare for the most part disdained
such helps, we recoil in almost all the other tragedians of the old
English school. Of the remaining Italian novelists that belong to this
period, it is enough to mention Erizzo, better known as one of the
founders of medallic science. His Sei Giornate contain thirty-six
novels, called Avvenimenti. They are written with intolerable prolixity,
but in a pure and even elevated tone of morality. This character does
not apply to the novels of Lasca.
|of the Queen of Navarre.|
38. The French novels, ascribed to Margaret Queen of Navarre, and first
published in 1558, with the title “Histoire des Amans fortunés,” are
principally taken from the Italian collections or from the fabliaux of
the trouveurs. Though free in language, they are written in a much less
licentious spirit than many of the former, but breathe throughout that
anxiety to exhibit the clergy, especially the regulars, in an odious or
ridiculous light, which the principles of their illustrious authoress
might lead us to expect. Belleforest translated, perhaps with some
variation, the novels of Bandello into French.[1335]
[1335] Bouterwek, v. 286, mentions by name several other French
novelists of the sixteenth century: I do not know anything of them.
|Spanish romances of chivalry.|
39. Few probably will now dispute, that the Italian novel, a picture of
real life, and sometimes of true circumstances, is perused with less
weariness than the Spanish romance, the alternative then offered to the
lovers of easy reading. But this had very numerous admirers in that
generation, nor was the taste confined to Spain. The popularity of
Amadis de Gaul and Palmerin of Oliva, with their various continuators,
has been already mentioned.[1336] One of these, “Palmerin of England,”
appeared in French at Lyons in 1555. It is uncertain who was the
original author, or in what language it was first written. Cervantes has
honoured it with a place next to Amadis. Mr. Southey, though he
condescended to abridge Palmerin of England, thinks it inferior to that
Iliad of romantic adventure. Several of the tales of knight-errantry
that are recorded to have stood on the unfortunate shelves of Don
Quixote, belong to this latter part of the century, among which Don
Bellianis of Greece is better known by name than any other. These
romances were not condemned by Cervantes alone. “Every poet and prose
writer,” says Bouterwek, “of cultivated talent, laboured to oppose the
contagion.”[1337]
[1336] La Noue, a severe Protestant, thinks them as pernicious to the
young as the writings of Machiavel had been to the old. This he
dwells upon in his sixth discourse. “De tout temps,” this honest
and sensible writer says, “il y a eu des hommes, qui ont esté
diligens d’escrire et mettre en lumière des choses vaines. Ce qui
plus les y a conviez est, que ils sçavoient que leurs labeurs
seroient agréables a ceux de leurs siècles, dont la plus part a
toujours heimé [aimé] la vanité, comme le poisson fait l’eau. Les
vieux romans dont nous voyons encor les fragmens par-ci et par-la,
a savoir de Lancelot du Lac, de Perceforest, Tristan, Giron le
courtois, et autres, font foy de ceste vanité antique. On s’en est
repeu l’espace de plus de cinq cens ans, jusques à ce que nostre
langage estant devenu plus orné, et nostres esprits plus
fretillans, il a fallu inventer quelque nouveauté pour les egayer.
Voila comment les livres d’Amadis sont venus en evidence parmi nous
en ce dernier siècle. Mais pour en parler au vrai, l’Espagne les a
engendrez, et la France les a seulement revetus de plus beaux
habillemens. Sous le regne du roy Henry second, ils ont eu leur
principale vogue; et croy qui si quelqu’un les eust voulu alors
blasmer, en luy eust craché au visage,” &c. p. 153, edit. 1588.
[1337] In the opinion of Bouterwek (v. 282), the taste for chivalrous
romance declined in the latter part of the century, through the
prevalence of a classical spirit in literature, which exposed the
mediæval fictions to derision. The number of shorter and more
amusing novels might probably have more to do with it; the serious
romance has a terrible enemy in the lively. But it revived, with a
little modification, in the next age.
|Diana of Montemayor.|
40. Spain was the parent of a romance in a very different style, but, if
less absurd and better written, not perhaps much more interesting to us
than those of chivalry, the Diana of Montemayor. Sannazaro’s beautiful
model of pastoral romance, the Arcadia, and some which had been written
in Portugal, take away the merit of originality from this celebrated
fiction. It formed, however, a school in this department of literature,
hardly less numerous, according to Bouterwek, than the imitators of
Amadis.[1338] The language of Montemayor is neither laboured nor
affected, and though sometimes of rather too formal a solemnity,
especially in what the author thought philosophy, is remarkably
harmonious and elevated; nor is he deficient in depth of feeling or
fertility of imagination. Yet the story seems incapable of attracting
any reader of this age. The Diana, like Sannazaro’s Arcadia, is mingled
with much lyric poetry, which Bouterwek thinks, is the soul of the whole
composition. Cervantes indeed condemns all the longer of these poems to
the flames, and gives but limited praise to the Diana. Yet this romance,
and a continuation of it by Gil Polo, had inspired his own youthful
genius in the Galatea. The chief merit of the Galatea, published in
1584, consists in the poetry which the story seems intended to hold
together. In the Diana of Montemayor, and even in the Galatea, it has
been supposed that real adventures and characters were generally
shadowed--a practice not already without precedent, and which, by the
French especially, was carried to a much greater length in later times.
[1338] Hist. Span. Lit. p. 305.
|Novels in the picaresque style.|
|Guzman d’Alfarache.|
41. Spain became celebrated about the end of this century for her novels
in the _picaresque_ style, of which Lazarillo de Tormes is the oldest
extant specimen. The continuation of this little work is reckoned
inferior to the part written by Mendoza himself; but both together are
amusing and inimitably short.[1339] The first edition of the most
celebrated romance of this class, Guzman d’Alfarache, falls within the
sixteenth century. It was written by Matthew Aleman, who is said to have
lived long at court. He might there have acquired, not a knowledge of
the tricks of common rogues, but an experience of mankind, which is
reckoned one of the chief merits of his romance. Many of his stories
also relate to the manners of a higher class than that of his hero.
Guzman d’Alfarache is a sort of prototype of Gilblas, though, in fact,
La Sage has borrowed very freely from all the Spanish novels of this
school. The adventures are numerous and diversified enough to amuse an
idle reader, and Aleman has displayed a great deal of good sense in his
reflections, which are expressed in the pointed condensed style affected
by most writers of Spain. Cervantes has not hesitated to borrow from him
one of Sancho’s celebrated adjudications, in the well-known case of the
lady, who was less pugnacious in defence of her honour than of the purse
awarded by the court as its compensation. This story is, however, if I
am not mistaken, older than either of them.[1340]
[1339] In a former chapter, on the authority of Nicolas Antonio, which
I do not find very trustworthy, I have said that the first edition
of Lazarillo de Tormes was in 1586. It seems, however, to be
doubtful, from what we read in Brunet, whether this edition exists.
In return he mentions one printed at Burgos in 1554, and three at
Antwerp in 1553 and 1555. Supplement au Manuel du Libraire, art.
Hurtado. The following early edition is also in the British Museum,
of which I transcribe the title-page. La Vida de Lazarillo de
Tormes y de sus fortunas y adversidades, nuevamente impressa,
corregida, y de nuevo anadida en este segunda impression. Vendense
en Alcala de Henares en casa de Salzedo librero año de N.D. 1554. A
colophon recites the same date and place of impression. The
above-mentioned Antwerp edition of 1553 seems to be rather
apocryphal. If it exists, it must be the first; and is it likely
that the first should have been printed out of Spain?
Though the continuation of Lazarillo de Tormes is reckoned inferior
to the original, it contains the only story in the whole novel
which has made its fortune, that of the man who was exhibited as a
sea-monster.
[1340] The following passage, which I extract from the Retrospective
Review, vol. v. p. 199, is a fair and favourable specimen of Aleman
as a moralist, who is however apt to be tedious, as moralists
usually are.
“The poor man is a kind of money that is not current, the subject
of every idle housewife’s chat, the offscum of the people, the dust
of the street, first trampled under foot, and then thrown on the
dunghill; in conclusion, the poor man is the rich man’s ass. He
dineth with the last, fareth with the worst, and payeth dearest;
his sixpence will not go so far as the rich man’s threepence; his
opinion is ignorance, his discretion foolishness, his suffrage
scorn, his stock upon the common, abused by many, and abhorred by
all. If he come into company he is not heard; if any chance to meet
him, they seek to shun him; if he advise, though never so wisely,
they grudge and murmur at him; if he work miracles, they say he is
a witch; if virtuous, that he goeth about to deceive; his venial
sin is a blasphemy; his thought is made treason; his cause, be it
never so just, is not regarded; and to have his wrongs righted, he
must appeal to that other life. All men crush him; no man favoureth
him. There is no man that will relieve his wants; no man that will
bear him company when he is alone and oppressed with grief. None
help him, all hinder him; none give him, all take from him; he is
debtor to none, and yet must make payment to all. O the unfortunate
and poor condition of him that is poor, to whom even the very hours
are sold which the clock striketh, and payeth custom for the
sunshine in August.”
This is much in the style of our English writers in the first part
of the seventeenth century, and confirms what I have suspected,
that they formed it in a great measure on the Spanish school.
Though this sententiousness and antithetical balancing of clauses
is not pleasant to read, it is less insipid than the nerveless
elegance of the Italians. Guzman d’Alfarache was early translated
into English, as most other Spanish books were; and the language
itself was more familiar in the reigns of James and Charles than it
became afterwards.
|Las Guerras de Granada.|
42. It may require some excuse that I insert in this place Las Guerras
de Granada, a history of certain Moorish factions in the last days of
that kingdom, both because it has been usually referred to the
seventeenth century, and because many have conceived it to be a true
relation of events. It purports to have been translated by Gines Perez
de la Hita, an inhabitant of the city of Murcia, from an Arabic original
of one Aben Hamili. Its late English translator seems to entertain no
doubt of its authenticity; and it has been sagaciously observed that no
Christian could have known the long genealogies of Moorish nobles which
the book contains. Most of those, however, who read it without
credulity, will feel, I presume, little difficulty in agreeing with
Antonio, who ranks it “among Milesian fables, though very pleasing to
those who have nothing to do.” The Zegris and Abencerrages, with all
their romantic exploits, seem to be mere creations of Castilian
imagination; nor has Conde, in his excellent history of the Moors in
Spain, once deigned to notice them even as fabulous; so much did he
reckon this famous production of Perez de la Hita below the historian’s
regard. Antonio mentions no edition earlier than that of Alcala in 1604;
the English translator names 1601 for the date of its publication, an
edition of which year is in the Museum; nor do I find that any one has
been aware of an earlier, published at Saragoça in 1595, except Brunet,
who mentions it as rare and little known. It appears by the same
authority that there is another edition of 1598.
|Sydney’s Arcadia.|
43. The heroic and pastoral romance of Spain contributed something, yet
hardly so much as has been supposed, to Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia, the
only original production of this kind, except such wretched and obscure
attempts at story as are beneath notice, which our older literature can
boast. The Arcadia was published in 1590, having been written, probably,
by its highly accomplished author about ten years before.
|Its character.|
44. Walpole, who thought fit to display the dimensions of his own mind,
by announcing that he could perceive nothing remarkable in Sir Philip
Sydney (as if the suffrage of Europe in what he admits to be an age of
heroes were not a decisive proof that Sydney himself over-topped those
sons of Anak), says of the Arcadia, that it is “a tedious lamentable
pedantic pastoral romance, which the patience of a young virgin in love
cannot now wade through.” We may doubt whether Walpole could altogether
estimate the patience of a reader so extremely unlike himself; and his
epithets, except perhaps the first, are inapplicable; the Arcadia is
more free from pedantry than most books of that age; and though we are
now so accustomed to a more stimulant diet in fiction, that few would
read it through with pleasure, the story is as sprightly as most other
romances, sometimes indeed a little too much so, for the Arcadia is not
quite a book for “young virgins,” of which some of its admirers by
hearsay seem not to have been aware. By the epithet “pastoral,” we may
doubt whether Walpole knew much of this romance beyond its name; for it
has far less to do with shepherds than with courtiers, though the idea
might probably be suggested by the popularity of the Diana. It does not
appear to me that the Arcadia is more tiresome and uninteresting than
the generality of that class of long romances, proverbially among the
most tiresome of all books; and, in a less fastidious age, it was read,
no doubt, even as a story, with some delight.[1341] It displays a
superior mind, rather complying with a temporary taste than affected by
it, and many pleasing passages occur, especially in the tender and
innocent loves of Pyrocles and Philoclea. I think it, nevertheless, on
the whole inferior in sense, style, and spirit, to the Defence of Poesy.
The following passage has some appearance of having suggested a
well-known poem in the next age to the lover of Sacharissa; we may
readily believe that Waller had turned over, in the glades of Penshurst,
the honoured pages of her immortal uncle.[1342]
[1341] “It appears,” says Drake, “to have been suggested to the mind
of Sir Philip by two models of very different ages, and to have
been built, in fact, on their admixture; these are the Ethiopic
History of Heliodorus, bishop of Tricca in Thessaly, and the
Arcadia of Sannazaro,” p. 549. A translation of Heliodorus had been
published a short time before.
[1342] The poem I mean is that addressed to Amoret, “Fair! that you may
truly know,” drawing a comparison between her and Sacharissa.
45. “The elder is named Pamela, by many men not deemed inferior to her
sister; for my part, when I marked them both, methought there was (if at
least such perfections may receive the word of more) more sweetness in
Philoclea, but more majesty in Pamela: methought love played in
Philoclea’s eyes, and threatened in Pamela’s; methought Philoclea’s
beauty only persuaded, but so persuaded as all hearts must yield;
Pamela’s beauty used violence, and such violence as no heart could
resist, and it seems that such proportion is between their minds.
Philoclea so bashful, as if her excellencies had stolen into her before
she was aware; so humble, that she will put all pride out of
countenance; in sum, such proceeding as will stir hope, but teach hope
good manners; Pamela, of high thoughts, who avoids not pride with not
knowing her excellencies, but by making that one of her excellencies to
be void of pride; her mother’s wisdom, greatness, nobility, but, if I
can guess aright, knit with a more constant temper.”
|Inferiority of other English fictions.|
46. The Arcadia stands quite alone among English fictions of this
century. But many were translated in the reign of Elizabeth from the
Italian, French, Spanish, and even Latin, among which Painter’s Palace
of Pleasure, whence Shakspeare took several of his plots, and the
numerous labours of Antony Munday may be mentioned. Palmerin of England
in 1580, and Amadis of Gaul in 1592, were among these; others of less
value, were transferred from the Spanish text by the same industrious
hand; and since these, while still new, were sufficient to furnish all
the gratification required by the public, our own writers did not much
task their invention to augment the stock. They would not have been very
successful, if we may judge by such deplorable specimens as Breton and
Greene, two men of considerable poetical talent, have left us.[1343] The
once famous story of the Seven Champions of Christendom, by one Johnson,
is of rather a superior class; the adventures are not original, but it
is by no means a translation from any single work.[1344] Mallory’s
famous romance, La Morte d’Arthur, is of much earlier date, and was
first printed by Caxton. It is, however, a translation from several
French romances, though written in very spirited language.
[1343] The Mavilia of Breton, the Dorastus and Fawnia of Greene, will
be found in the collections of the indefatigable Sir Egerton
Brydges. The first is below contempt; the second, if not quite so
ridiculous, is written with a quaint affected and empty Euphuism.
British Bibliographer, i. 508. But as truth is generally more
faithful to natural sympathies than fiction, a little tale, called
Never too Late, in which Greene has related his own story, is
unaffected and pathetic. Drake’s Shakspeare and his Times, i. 489.
[1344] Drake, i. 529.
CHAPTER XVII.
HISTORY OF PHYSICAL AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE, FROM 1500 TO 1600.
SECT. I.--ON MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE.
_Algebraists of this Period--Vieta--Slow Progress of Copernican
Theory--Tycho Brahe--Reform of Calendar--Mechanics--Stevinus--Gilbert._
|Tartaglia and Cardan.|
1. The breach of faith towards Tartaglia, by which Cardan communicated
to the world the method of solving cubic equations, having rendered them
enemies, the injured party defied the aggressor to a contest, wherein
each should propose thirty-one problems to be solved by the other.
Cardan accepted the challenge, and gave a list of his problems, but
devolved the task of meeting his antagonist on his disciple Ferrari. The
problems of Tartaglia are so much more difficult than those of Cardan,
and the latter’s representative so frequently failed in solving them, as
to show the former in a higher rank among algebraists, though we have
not so long a list of his discoveries.[1345] This is told by himself in
a work of miscellaneous mathematical and physical learning, Quesiti ed
invenzioni diverse, published in 1546. In 1555, he put forth the first
part of a treatise intitled Trattato di numeri e misure, the second part
appearing in 1560.
[1345] Montucla, p. 568.
|Algebra of Pelletier.|
2. Pelletier of Mans, a man advantageously known both in literature and
science, published a short treatise on algebra in 1554. He does not give
the method of solving cubic equations, but Hutton is mistaken in
supposing that he was ignorant of Cardan’s work, which he quotes. In
fact he promises a third book, this treatise being divided into two, on
the higher parts of algebra; but I do not know whether this be found in
any subsequent edition. Pelletier does not employ the signs + and -,
which had been invented by Stifelies, using _p_ and _m_ instead, but we
find the sign √ of irrationality. What is perhaps the most original in
this treatise, is that its author perceived that, in a quadratic
equation, where the root is rational, it must be a divisor of the
absolute number.[1346]
[1346] Pelletier seems to have arrived at this not by observation, but
in a scientific method. Comme _x_² = 2_x_ + 15. (I substitute the
usual signs for clearness), il est certain que _x_ que nous
cherchons doit estre contenu également en 15, puisque _x_² est égal
à deux _x_, et 15 davantage, et que tout nombre _censique_ (quarré)
contient les racines également et précisément. Maintenant puisque 2
_x_ font certain nombre de racines, il faut donc que 15 fasse
l’achèvement des racines qui sont nécessaires pour accomplir _x_².
p. 40. (Lyon, 1554.)
|Record’s Whetstone of Wit.|
3. In the Whetstone of Wit, by Robert Record, in 1557, we find the signs
+ and -, and, for the first time, that of equality =, which he
invented.[1347] Record knew that a quadratic equation has two roots. The
scholar, for it is in dialogue, having been perplexed by this as a
difficulty, the master answers, “That variety of roots doth declare that
one equation in number may serve for two several questions. But the form
of the question may easily instruct you which of these two roots you
shall take for your purpose. Howbeit, sometimes you may take
both.”[1348] He says nothing of cubic equations, having been prevented
by an interruption, the nature of which he does not divulge, from
continuing his algebraic lessons. We owe therefore nothing to Record but
his invention of a sign. As these artifices not only abbreviate, but
clear up the process of reasoning, each successive improvement in
notation deserves, even in the most concise sketch of mathematical
history, to be remarked. But certainly they do not exhibit any peculiar
ingenuity, and might have occurred to the most ordinary student.
[1347] “And to avoid the tedious repetition of these words, “is equal
to,” I will set, as I do often in work use, a pair of parallels,
_gemowe_ lines of one length thus =, because no two things can be
more equal.” The word _gemowe_, from the French _gemeau_, twin
(Cotgrave) is very uncommon: it was used for a double ring, a
_gemel_ or _gemou_ ring. Todd’s Johnson’s Dictionary.
[1348] This general mode of expression might lead us to suppose, that
Record was acquainted with negative, as well as positive roots, the
fictæ radices of Cardan. That a quadratic equation of a certain
form has two positive roots, had long been known. In a very modern
book, it is said that Mohammed ben Musa, an Arabian of the reign of
Almamon, whose algebra was translated by the late Dr. Rosen in
1831, observes that there are two roots in the form _ax_² + _b_ =
_cx_, but that this cannot be in the other three cases. Libri,
Hist. des Sciences Mathématiques en Italie, vol. ii. (1838).
Leonard of Pisa had some notion of this, but did not state it,
according to M. Libri, so generally as Ben Musa. Upon reference to
Colebrook’s Indian Algebra, it will appear that the existence of
two positive roots in some cases, though the conditions of the
problem will often be found to exclude the application of one of
them, is clearly laid down by the Hindoo algebraists. But one of
them says, “People do not approve a negative absolute number.”
|Vieta.|
|His discoveries.|
4. The great boast of France, and indeed of algebraical science
generally, in this period, was Francis Viète, oftener called Vieta, so
truly eminent a man that he may well spare laurels which are not his
own. It has been observed in another place, that after Montucla had
rescued from the hands of Wallis, who claims everything for Harriott,
many algebraical methods indisputably contained in the writings of his
own countryman, Cossali has stepped forward, with an equal cogency of
proof, asserting the right of Cardan to the greater number of them. But
the following steps in the progress of algebra may be justly attributed
to Vieta alone. 1. We must give the first place to one less difficult in
itself, than important in its results. In the earlier algebra,
alphabetical characters were not generally employed at all, except that
the Res, or unknown quantity, was sometimes set down R. for the sake of
brevity. Stifelius, in 1544, first employed a literal notation, A. B. C.
to express unknown quantities, while Cardan, and according to Cossali,
Luca di Borgo, to whom we may now add Leonard of Pisa himself, make some
use of letters to express indefinite numbers.[1349] But Vieta first
applied them as general symbols of quantity, and by thus forming the
scattered elements of specious analysis into a system, has been justly
reckoned the founder of a science, which, from its extensive
application, has made the old problems of mere numerical algebra appear
elementary and almost trifling. “Algebra,” says Kästner, “from
furnishing amusing enigmas to the Cossists,” as he calls the first
teachers of the art, “became the logic of geometrical invention.”[1350]
It would appear a natural conjecture, that the improvement, towards
which so many steps had been taken by others, might occur to the mind of
Vieta simply as a means of saving the trouble of arithmetical operations
in working out a problem. But those who refer to his treatise entitled,
De Arte Analytica isagoge, or even the first page of it, will, I
conceive, give credit to the author for a more scientific view of his
own invention. He calls it logistice speciosa, as opposed to the
logistice numerosa of the older analysis;[1351] his theorems are all
general, the given quantities being considered as indefinite, nor does
it appear that he substituted letters for the known quantities in the
investigation of particular problems. Whatever may have suggested this
great invention to the mind of Vieta, it has altogether changed the
character of his science.
[1349] Vol. i. p. 54. A modern writer has remarked, that Aristotle
employs letters of the alphabet to express indeterminate
quantities, and says it has never been observed before. He refers
to the Physics, in Aristot. Opera, i. 543, 550, 565, &c., but
without mentioning any edition. The letters α [alpha], β [beta], γ
[gamma], &c. express force, mass, space or time. Libri, Hist. des
Sciences Mathématiques en Italie, i. 104. Upon reference to
Aristotle, I find many instances in the sixth book of the Physicæ
Auscultationes, and in other places.
Though I am reluctant to mix in my text which is taken from
established writers, any observations of my own on a subject
wherein my knowledge is so very limited as in mathematics, I may
here remark, that although Tartaglia and Cardan do not use single
letters as symbols of known quantity, yet, when they refer to a
geometrical construction, they employ in their equations double
letters, the usual signs of lines. Thus we find, in the Ars Magna,
AB _m_ AC, where we should put _a_ - _b_. The want of a good algorithm
was doubtless a great impediment, but it was not quite so deficient
as from reading modern histories of algebraical discovery, without
reference to the original writers, we might be led to suppose.
The process by which the rule for solving cubic equations was
originally discovered, seems worthy, as I have intimated in another
place (p. 221), of exciting our curiosity. Maseres has investigated
this in the Philosophical Transactions for 1780, reprinted in his
Tracts on Cubic and Biquadratic Equations, p. 55-69, and in
Scriptores Logarithmici, vol. ii. It is remarkable, that he does
not seem to have been aware of what Cardan has himself told us on
the subject in the sixth chapter of the Ars Magna; yet he has
nearly guessed the process which Tartaglia pursued; that is, by a
geometrical construction. It is manifest, by all that these
algebraists have written on the subject, that they had the clearest
conviction they were dealing with continuous, or geometrical, not
merely with discreet, or arithmetical, quantity. This gave them an
insight into the fundamental truth, which is unintelligible so long
as algebra passes for a specious _arithmetic_, that _every_ value,
which the conditions of the problem admit, may be assigned to
unknown quantities, without distinction of rationality and
irrationality. To abstract number itself irrationality is
inapplicable.
[1350] Geschichte der Mathematik, i. 63.
[1351] Forma autem Zetesin ineundi ex arte propria est, non jam in
numeris suam logicam exercente, quæ fuit oscitantia veterum
analystarum, sed per logisticen sub specie noviter inducendam,
feliciorem multo et potiorem numerosa, ad comparandum inter se
magnitudines, proposita primum homogeniorum lege, &c. p. i. edit.
1646.
A profound writer on algebra, Mr. Peacock, has lately defined it,
“the science of general reasoning by symbolical language.” In this
sense there was very little algebra before Vieta, and it would be
improper to talk of its being known to the Greeks, Arabs, or
Hindoos. The definition would also include the formulas of logic.
The original definition of algebra seems to be, the science of
finding an equation between known and unknown quantities, per
oppositionem et restaurationem.
5. Secondly, Vieta understood the transformation of equations, so as to
clear them from coefficients or surd roots, or to eliminate the second
term. This however is partly claimed by Cossali for Cardan. Yet it seems
that the process employed by Cardan was much less neat and short than
that of Vieta, which is still in use.[1352] 3. He obtained a solution of
cubic equations in a different method from that of Tartaglia. 4. “He
shows,” says Montucla, “that when the unknown quantity of any equation
may have several positive values, for it must be admitted that it is
only these that he considers, the second term has for its coefficient
the sum of these values with the sign -, the third has the sum of the
products of these values multiplied in pairs; the fourth the sum of such
products multiplied in threes, and so forth; finally, that the absolute
term is the product of all the values. Here is the discovery of Harriott
pretty nearly made.” It is at least no small advance towards it.[1353]
Cardan is said to have gone some way towards this theory, but not with
much clearness, nor extending it to equations above the third degree. 5.
He devised a method of solving equations by approximation, analogous to
the process of extracting roots, which has been superseded by the
invention of more compendious rules.[1354] 6. He has been regarded by
some as the true author of the application of algebra to geometry,
giving copious examples of the solution of problems by this method,
though all belonging to straight lines. It looks like a sign of the
geometrical relation under which he contemplated his own science, that
he uniformly denominates the first power of the unknown quantity
_latus_. But this will be found in older writers.[1355]
[1352] It is fully explained in his work De Recognitione Æquationum,
cap. 7.
[1353] Some theorems given by Vieta very shortly and without
demonstration, show his knowledge of the structure of equations. I
transcribe from Maseres, who has expressed them in the usual
algebraic language. Si _a_ + _b_ × _x_ - _x_² æquetur _ab_, _x_
explicabilis est de qualibet illarum duarum _a_ vel _b_. The second
theorem is:--
a} ab}
Si x³ - b}x² + ac}x
c} bc}
æquetur _abc_, _x_ explicabilis est de qualibet illarum trium _a_,
_b_, vel _c_. The third and fourth theorems extend this to higher
equations.
[1354] Montucla, i. 600. Hutton’s Mathematical Dictionary. Biog.
Univers. art. Viète.
[1355] It is certain that Vieta perfectly knew the relation of algebra
to magnitude as well as number, as the first pages of his In Artem
Analyticam Isagoge fully show. But it is equally certain that
Tartaglia and Cardan, and much older writers, Oriental as well as
European, knew the same; it was by help of geometry, which Cardan
calls _via regia_, that the former made his great discovery of the
solution of cubic equations. Cossali, ii. 147. Cardan, Ars Magna,
ch. xi.
_Latus_ and _radix_ are used indifferently for the first power of
the unknown quantity in the Ars Magna. Cossali contends that Fra
Luca had applied algebra to geometry. Vieta, however, it is said,
was the first who taught how to construct geometrical figures by
means of algebra, Montucla, p. 604. But compare Cossali, p. 427.
A writer lately quoted, and to whose knowledge and talents I bow
with deference, seems, as I would venture to suggest, to have
overrated the importance of that employment of letters to signify
quantities, known or unknown, which he has found in Aristotle, and
in several of the moderns, and in consequence to have depreciated
the real merit of Vieta. Leonard of Pisa, it seems, whose algebra
this writer has for the first time published, to his own honour and
the advantage of scientific history, makes use of letters as well
as lines, to represent quantities. Quelquefois il emploie des
lettres pour exprimer des quantités indéterminées, connues ou
inconnues, sans les représenter par des lignes. On voit ici comment
les modernes ont été amenés à se servir des lettres d’Alphabet
(même pour exprimer des quantités connues) long temps avant Viète,
à qui on a attribué à tort une notation qu’il faudrait peut-être
faire remonter jusqu’à Aristote, et que tant d’Algébraistes
modernes ont employée avant le géomètre Français. Car outre Leonard
di Pise, Paciolo et d’Autres géomètres Italiens firent usage des
lettres pour indiquer les quantités connues, et c’est d’eux plutôt
que d’Aristote que les modernes ont appris cette notation. Libri,
vol. ii. p. 34. But there is surely a wide interval between the use
of a short symbolic expression for particular quantities, as M.
Libri has remarked in Aristotle, or even the _partial_ employment
of letters to designate known quantities, as in the Italian
algebraists, and the method of stating general relations by the
exclusive use of letters, which Vieta first introduced. That
Tartaglia and Cardan, and even, as it now appears, Leonard of Pisa
went a certain way towards the invention of Vieta, cannot much
diminish his glory; especially when we find that he entirely
apprehended the importance of his own logistice speciosa in
science. I have mentioned above, that, as far as my observation has
gone, Vieta does not work particular problems by the specious
algebra.
6. “Algebra,” says a philosopher of the present day, “was still only an
ingenious art, limited to the investigation of numbers; Vieta displayed
all its extent, and instituted general expressions for particular
results. Having profoundly meditated on the nature of algebra, he
perceived that the chief characteristic of the science is to express
relations. Newton with the same idea defined algebra an universal
arithmetic. The first consequences of this general principle of Vieta
were his own application of his specious analysis to geometry, and the
theory of curve lines, which is due to Descartes; a fruitful idea, from
which the analysis of functions, and the most sublime discoveries, have
been deduced. It has led to the notion that Descartes is the
first who applied algebra to geometry; but this invention is really due
to Vieta; for he resolved geometrical problems by algebraic analysis,
and constructed figures by means of these solutions. These
investigations led him to the theory of angular sections, and to the
general equations which express the values of chords.”[1356] It will be
seen in the notes that some of this language requires a slight
limitation.
[1356] M. Fourier, quoted in Biographie Universelle.
7. The Algebra of Bombelli, published in 1589, is the only other
treatise of the kind during this period that seems worthy of much
notice. Bombelli saw better than Cardan the nature of what is called the
irreducible case in cubic equations. But Vieta, whether after Bombelli
or not, is not certain, had the same merit.[1357] It is remarkable that
Vieta seems to have paid little regard to the discoveries of his
predecessors. Ignorant, probably, of the writings of Record, and perhaps
even of those of Stifelius, he neither uses the sign = of equality,
employing instead the clumsy word Æquatio, or rather Æquetur,[1358] nor
numeral exponents; and Hutton observes that Vieta’s algebra has, in
consequence, the appearance of being older than it is. He mentions,
however, the signs + and -, as usual in his own time.
[1357] Cossali. Hutton.
[1358] Vieta uses =, but it is to denote that the proposition is true
both of + and -; where we put ±. It is almost a presumption of
copying one from another, that several modern writers say Vieta’s
word is _æquatio_. I have always found it _æquetur_; a difference
not material in itself.
|Geometers of this period.|
8. Amidst the great progress of algebra through the sixteenth century,
the geometers, content with what the ancients had left them, seem to
have had little care but to elucidate their remains. Euclid was the
object of their idolatry; no fault could be acknowledged in his
elements, and to write a verbose commentary upon a few propositions was
enough to make the reputation of a geometer. Among the almost
innumerable editions of Euclid that appeared, those of Commandin and
Clavius, both of them in the first rank of mathematicians for that age,
may be distinguished. Commandin, especially, was much in request in
England, where he was frequently reprinted, and Montucla calls him the
model of commentators for the pertinence and sufficiency of his notes.
The commentary of Clavius, though a little prolix, acquired a still
higher reputation. We owe to Commandin editions of the more difficult
geometers, Archimedes, Pappus, and Apollonius; but he attempted little,
and that without success, beyond the province of a translator and a
commentator. Maurolycus of Messina had no superior among contemporary
geometers. Besides his edition of Archimedes, and other labours on the
ancient mathematicians, he struck out the elegant theory, in which
others have followed him, of deducing the properties of the conic
sections from those of the cone itself. But we must refer the reader to
Montucla, and other historical and biographical works, for the less
distinguished writers of the sixteenth age.[1359]
[1359] Montucla. Kästner. Hutton. Biogr. Univ.
|Joachim Rhæticus.|
9. The extraordinary labour of Joachim Rhæticus in his trigonometrical
calculations, has been mentioned in our first volume. His Opus Palatinum
de Triangulis was published from his manuscript by Valentine Otho, in
1594. But the work was left incomplete, and the editor did not
accomplish what Joachim had designed. In his tables the sines, tangents,
and secants are only calculated to ten, instead of fifteen places of
decimals. Pitiscus, in 1613, not only completed Joachim’s intention, but
carried the minuteness of calculation a good deal farther.[1360]
[1360] Montucla, p. 581.
|Copernican theory.|
10. It can excite no wonder that the system of Copernicus, simple and
beautiful as it is, met with little encouragement for a long time after
its promulgation, when we reflect upon the natural obstacles to its
reception. Mankind can in general take these theories of the celestial
movements only upon trust from philosophers; and in this instance it
required a very general concurrence of competent judges to overcome the
repugnance of what called itself common sense, and was in fact a
prejudice as natural, as universal, and as irresistible as could
influence human belief. With this was united another, derived from the
language of Scripture; and though it might have been sufficient to
answer, that phrases implying the rest of the earth and motion of the
sun are merely popular, and such as those who are best convinced of the
opposite doctrine must employ in ordinary language, this was neither
satisfactory to the vulgar, nor recognised by the church. Nor were the
astronomers in general much more favourable to the new theory than
either the clergy or the multitude. They had taken pains to familiarise
their understandings with the Ptolemaic hypothesis; and it may be often
observed that those who have once mastered a complex theory are better
pleased with it than with one of more simplicity. The whole weight of
Aristotle’s name, which, in the sixteenth century, not only biassed the
judgment, but engaged the passions, connected as it was with general
orthodoxy and preservation of established systems, was thrown into the
scale against Copernicus. It was asked what demonstration could be given
of his hypothesis; whether the movements of the heavenly bodies could
not be reconciled to the Ptolemaic; whether the greater quantity of
motion, and the complicated arrangement which the latter required, could
be deemed sufficient objections to a scheme proceeding from the Author
of nature, to whose power and wisdom our notions of simplicity and
facility are inapplicable; whether the moral dignity of man, and his
peculiar relations to the Deity, unfolded in Scripture, did not give the
world he inhabits a better claim to the place of honour in the universe,
than could be pretended, on the score of mere magnitude, for the sun. It
must be confessed, that the strongest presumptions in favour of the
system of Copernicus were not discovered by himself.
11. It is easy, says Montucla, to reckon the number of adherents to the
Copernican theory during the sixteenth century. After Rhæticus, they may
be nearly reduced to Reinold, author of the Prussian tables; Rothman,
whom Tycho drew over afterwards to his own system; Christian Wursticius
(Ursticius), who made some proselytes in Italy; finally, Mæstlin, the
illustrious master of Kepler. He might have added Wright and Gilbert,
for the credit of England. Among the Italian proselytes made by
Wursticius, we may perhaps name Jordano Bruno, who strenuously asserts
the Copernican hypothesis; and two much greater authorities in physical
science, Benedetti and Galileo himself. It is evident that the
preponderance of valuable suffrages was already on the side of
truth.[1361]
[1361] Montucla, p. 638.
|Tycho Brahe.|
12. The predominant disinclination to contravene the apparent testimonies
of sense and Scripture had, perhaps, more effect than the desire of
originality in suggesting the middle course taken by Tycho Brahe. He was
a Dane of noble birth, and early drawn by the impulse of natural genius
to the study of astronomy. Frederic III., his sovereign, after Tycho had
already obtained some reputation, erected for him the observatory of
Uraniburg in a small isle of the Baltic. In this solitude he passed
above twenty years, accumulating the most extensive and accurate
observations which were known in Europe before the discovery of the
telescope and the improvement of astronomical instruments. These,
however, were not published till 1606, though Kepler had previously used
them in his Tabulæ Rodolphinæ. Tycho himself did far more in this
essential department of the astronomer than any of his predecessors; his
resources were much beyond those of Copernicus, and the latter years of
this century may be said to make an epoch in physical astronomy.
Frederic, Landgrave of Hesse, was more than a patron of the science. The
observations of that prince have been deemed worthy of praise long after
his rank had ceased to avail them. The emperor Rodolph, when Tycho had
been driven by envy from Denmark, gave him an asylum and the means of
carrying on his observations at Prague, where he died in 1601. He was
the first in modern times who made a catalogue of stars, registering
their positions as well as his instruments permitted him. This
catalogue, published in his Progymnasmata in 1602, contained 777, to
which, from Tycho’s own manuscripts, Kepler added 223 stars.[1362]
[1362] Montucla, p. 653-659.
|His system.|
13. In the new mundane system of Tycho Brahe, which, though first
regularly promulgated to the world in his Progymnasmata, had been
communicated in his epistles to the Landgrave of Hesse, he supposes the
five planets to move round the sun, but carries the sun itself with
these five satellites, as well as the moon, round the earth. Though
this, at least at the time, might explain the known phenomena as well as
the two other theories, its want of simplicity always prevented its
reception. Except Longomontanus, the countryman and disciple of Tycho,
scarce any conspicuous astronomer adopted an hypothesis which, if it had
been devised some time sooner, would perhaps have met with better
success. But in the seventeenth century, the wise all fell into the
Copernican theory, and the many were content without any theory at all.
14. A great discovery in physical astronomy may be assigned to Tycho.
Aristotle had pronounced comets to be meteors generated below
the orbit of the moon. But a remarkable comet in 1577 having led Tycho
to observe its path accurately, he came to the conclusion that these
bodies are far beyond the lunar orbit, and that they pass through what
had always been taken for a solid firmament, environing the starry orbs,
and which plays no small part in the system of Ptolemy. He was even near
the discovery of their elliptic revolution; the idea of a curve round
the sun having struck him, though he could not follow it by
observation.[1363]
[1363] Montucla, p. 662.
|Gregorian calendar.|
15. The acknowledged necessity of reforming the Julian calendar gave in
this age a great importance to astronomy. It is unnecessary to go into
the details of this change, effected by the authority of Gregory XIII.,
and the skill of Lilius and Clavius, the mathematicians employed under
him. The new calendar was immediately received in all countries
acknowledging the pope’s supremacy; not so much on that account, though
a discrepancy in the ecclesiastical reckoning would have been very
inconvenient, as of its real superiority over the Julian. The protestant
countries came much more slowly into the alteration; truth being no
longer truth, when promulgated by the pope. It is now admitted that the
Gregorian calendar is very nearly perfect, at least as to the
computation of the solar year, though it is not quite accurate for the
purpose of finding Easter. In that age, it had to encounter the
opposition of Mæstlin, an astronomer of deserved reputation, and of
Scaliger, whose knowledge of chronology ought to have made him
conversant with the subject, but who, by a method of squaring the
circle, which he announces with great confidence as a demonstration,
showed the world that his genius did not guide him to the exact
sciences.[1364]
[1364] Montucla, p. 674-686.
|Optics.|
16. The science of optics, as well as all other branches of the mixed
mathematics, fell very short of astronomy in the number and success of
its promoters. It was carried not much farther than the point where
Alhazen, Vitello, and Roger Bacon left it. Maurolycus of Messina, in a
treatise published in 1575, though written, according to Montucla, fifty
years before, entitled Theoremata de Lumine et Umbra, has mingled a few
novel truths with error. He explains rightly the fact that a ray of
light, received through a small aperature of any shape, produces a
circular illumination on a body intercepting it at some distance; and
points out why different defects of vision are remedied by convex or
concave lenses. He had however mistaken notions as to the visual power
of the eye, which he ascribed not to the retina but to the crystalline
humour; and on the whole, Maurolycus, though a very distinguished
philosopher in that age, seems to have made few considerable discoveries
in physical science.[1365] Baptista Porta, who invented, or at least
made known, the camera obscura, though he dwells on many optical
phenomena in his Magia Naturalis, sometimes making just observations,
had little insight into the principles that explain them.[1366] The
science of perspective has been more frequently treated, especially in
this period, by painters and architects than by mathematicians. Albert
Durer, Serlio, Vignola, and especially Peruzzi, distinguished themselves
by practical treatises; but the geometrical principles were never well
laid down before the work of Guido Ubaldi in 1600.[1367]
[1365] Id. p. 695.
[1366] Montucla, p. 698.
[1367] Id. p. 708.
|Mechanics.|
17. This author, of a noble family in the Apennines, ranks high also
among the improvers of theoretical mechanics. This great science,
checked, like so many others, by the erroneous principles of Aristotle,
made scarce any progress till near the end of the century. Cardan and
Tartaglia wrote upon the subject; but their acuteness in abstract
mathematics did not compensate for a want of accurate observation and a
strange looseness of reasoning. Thus Cardan infers that the power
required to sustain a weight on an inclined plane varies in the exact
ratio of the angle, because it vanishes when the plane is horizontal,
and becomes equal to the weight when the plane is perpendicular. But
this must be the case if the power follows any other law of direct
variation, as that of the sine of inclination, that is, the height,
which it really does.[1368] Tartaglia, on his part, conceived that a
cannon-ball did not indeed describe two sides of a parallelogram, as was
commonly imagined even by scientific writers, but, what is hardly less
absurd, that its point-blank direction and line of perpendicular descent
are united by a circular arch, to which they are tangents. It was
generally agreed, till the time of Guido Ubaldi, that the arms of a
lever charged with equal weights, if displaced from the horizontal
position, would recover it when set at liberty. Benedetti of Turin had
juster notions than his Italian contemporaries; he ascribed the
centrifugal force of bodies to their tendency to move in a straight
line; he determined the law of equilibrium for the oblique lever, and
even understood the composition of motions.[1369]
[1368] Id. p. 690.
[1369] Montucla, p. 693.
18. If, indeed, we should give credit to the sixteenth century for all
that was actually discovered, and even reduced to writing, we might now
proceed to the great name of Galileo. For it has been said that his
treatise Della Scienza Mechanica was written in 1592, though not
published for more than forty years afterwards.[1370] But as it has been
our rule, with not many exceptions, to date books from their
publication, we must defer any mention of this remarkable work to the
next volume. The experiments, however, made by Galileo, when lecturer in
mathematics at Pisa, on falling bodies, come strictly within our limits.
He was appointed to this office in 1589, and left it in 1592. Among the
many unfounded assertions of Aristotle in physics, it was one that the
velocity of falling bodies was proportionate to their weights; Galileo
took advantage of the leaning tower of Pisa to prove the contrary. But
this important, though obvious experiment, which laid open much of the
theory of motion, displeased the adherents of Aristotle so highly, that
they compelled him to leave Pisa. He soon obtained a chair in the
university of Padua.
[1370] Playfair has fallen into the mistake of supposing that this
treatise was _published_ in 1592; and those who, on second
thoughts, would have known better, have copied him.
|Statics of Stevinus.|
19. But on the same principle that we exclude the work of Galileo on
mechanics from the sixteenth century, it seems reasonable to mention
that of Simon Stevinus of Bruges; since the first edition of his Statics
and Hydrostatics was printed in Dutch as early as 1585, though we can
hardly date its reception among the scientific public before the Latin
edition in 1608. Stevinus has been chiefly known by his discovery of the
law of equilibrium on the inclined plane, which had baffled the
ancients, and, as we have seen, was mistaken by Cardan. Stevinus
supposed a flexible chain of uniform weight to descend down the sides of
two connected planes, and to hang in a sort of festoon below. The chain
would be in equilibrio, because, if it began to move, there would be no
reason why it should not move for ever, the circumstances being
unaltered by any motion it could have; and thus there would be a
perpetual motion, which is impossible. But the part below, being equally
balanced, must, separately taken, be in equilibrio. Consequently the
part above, lying along the planes, must also be in equilibrio; and
hence the weight of the two parts of the chain must be equal, or if that
lying along the shorter plane be called the power, it will be to the
other as the lengths; or if there be but one plane, and the power hang
perpendicularly, as the height to the length.
20. It has been doubted whether this demonstration of Stevinus be
satisfactory, and also whether the theorem had not been proved in a
different manner by an earlier writer. The claims of Stevinus, however,
have very recently been maintained by an author of high reputation.[1371]
The Statics of this ingenious mathematician contain several novel and
curious theorems on the properties of other mechanical powers besides
the inclined plane. But Montucla has attributed to him what I cannot
find in his works. “In resolving these questions (concerning the ratios
of weights on the oblique pulley), and several others, he frequently
makes use of the famous principle which is the basis of the Nouvelle
Mécanique of M. Varignon. He forms a triangle, of which the three sides
are parallel to the three directions, namely, of the weight and the two
powers which support it; and he shows that these three lines express
this weight and these powers respectively.”[1372] Playfair, copying
Montucla, I presume, without looking at Stevinus, has repeated this
statement, and it will be found in other modern histories of physical
science. This theorem, however, of Varignon, commonly called the
triangle of forces, will not, unless I am greatly mistaken, be
discovered in Stevinus. Had it been known to him, we may presume that he
would have employed it, as is done in modern works on mechanics, for
demonstrating the law of equilibrium on the inclined plane, instead of
his catenarian hypothesis, which is at least not so elegant or capable
of so simple a proof. It is true that in treating of the oblique pulley,
he resolves the force into two, one parallel, the other perpendicular to
the weight; and thus displays his acquaintance with the composition of
forces. But whether he had a clear perception of all the dynamical laws,
involved in the demonstration of Varignon’s theorem, may possibly be
doubtful; at least, we do not find that he has employed it.
[1371] Playfair’s Dissertation. Whewell’s Hist. of Inductive Sciences,
ii. 11, 14. Compare Drinkwater’s Life of Galileo, p. 83. The
reasoning which Mr. W. suggests for Stevinus, whether it had
occurred to him or not, may be very just, but borders, perhaps,
rather too much on the metaphysics of science.
[1372] Montucla, ii. 180.
|Hydrostatics.|
21. The first discovery made in hydrostatics since the time of Archimedes
is due to Stevinus. He found that the vertical pressure of fluids on a
horizontal surface is as the product of the base of the vessel by its
height, and showed the law of pressure even on the sides.[1373]
[1373] Montucla, ii. 180.
|Gilbert on the Magnet.|
22. The year 1600 was the first in which England produced a remarkable
work in physical science; but this was one sufficient to raise a lasting
reputation to its author. Gilbert, a physician, in his Latin treatise on
the Magnet, not only collected all the knowledge which others had
possessed on that subject, but became at once the father of experimental
philosophy in this island, and by a singular felicity and acuteness of
genius, the founder of theories which have been revived after the lapse
of ages, and are almost universally received into the creel of the
science. The magnetism of the earth itself, his own original hypothesis,
nova illa nostra et inaudita de tellure sententia, could not, of course,
be confirmed by all the experimental and analogical proof, which has
rendered that doctrine accepted in recent philosophy; but it was by no
means one of those vague conjectures that are sometimes unduly
applauded, when they receive a confirmation by the favour of fortune. He
relied on the analogy of terrestrial phenomena to those exhibited by
what he calls a _terrella_, or artificial spherical magnet. What
may be the validity of his reasonings from experiment it is for those
who are conversant with the subject to determine, but it is evidently by
the torch of experiment that he was guided. A letter from Edward Wright,
whose authority as a mathematician is of some value, admits the
terrestrial magnetism to be proved. Gilbert was also one of our earliest
Copernicans, at least as to the rotation of the earth;[1374] and with
his usual sagacity inferred, before the invention of the telescope; that
there must be a multitude of fixed stars beyond the reach of our
vision.[1375]
[1374] Mr. Whewell thinks that Gilbert was more doubtful about the
annual than the diurnal motion of the earth, and informs us that in
a posthumous work he seems to hesitate between Tycho and
Copernicus. Hist. of Inductive Sciences, i. 389. Gilbert’s argument
for the diurnal motion would extend to the annual. Non probabilis
modo sed manifesta videtur terræ diurna circumvolutio, cum natura
semper agit per pauciora magis quam plura, atque rationi magis
consentaneum videtur unum exiguum corpus telluris diurnam
volutationem efficere quam mundum totum circumferri.
[1375] l. 6. c. 3. The article on Gilbert in the Biographie Universelle
is discreditable to that publication. If the author was so very
ignorant as not to have known anything of Gilbert, he might at
least have avoided the assumption that nothing was to be known.
Sarpi, who will not be thought an incompetent judge, names Gilbert
with Vieta, as the only original writers among his contemporaries.
Non ho veduto in questo secolo uomo quale abbia scritto cosa sua
propria, salvo Vieta in Francia e Gilberti in Inghilterra. Lettere
di Fra Paolo, p. 31.
SECT. II.--ON NATURAL HISTORY.
_Zoology--Gesner, Aldrovandus. Botany--Lobel, Cæsalpin, and others._
|Gesner’s Zoology.|
23. Zoology and botany, in the middle of the sixteenth century, were as
yet almost neglected fields of knowledge; scarce anything had been added
to the valuable history of animals by Aristotle, and those of plants by
Theophrastus and Dioscorides. But in the year 1551 was published the
first part of an immense work, the History of Animals, by that prodigy
of general erudition, Conrad Gesner. This treats of viviparous
quadrupeds; the second, which appeared in 1554, of the oviparous; the
third, in 1555, of birds; the fourth, in the following year, of fishes
and aquatic animals; and one, long afterwards published in 1587, relates
to serpents. The first part was reprinted with additions in 1560, and a
smaller work of woodcuts and shorter descriptions, called Icones
Animalium, appeared in 1553.
|Its character by Cuvier.|
24. This work of the first great naturalist of modern times is thus
eulogised by one of the latest:--“Gesner’s History of Animals,” says
Cuvier, “may be considered as the basis of all modern zoology; copied
almost literally by Aldrovandus, abridged by Jonston, it has become the
foundation of much more recent works; and more than one famous author
has borrowed from it silently most of his learning; for those passages
of the ancients, which have escaped Gesner, have scarce ever been
observed by the moderns. He deserved their confidence by his accuracy,
his perspicuity, his good faith, and sometimes by the sagacity of his
views. Though he has not laid down any natural classification by genera,
he often points out very well the true relations of beings.”[1376]
[1376] Biogr. Universelle, art. Gesner.
|Gesner’s arrangement.|
25. Gesner treats of every animal under eight heads or chapters: 1. Its
name in different languages; 2. Its external description and usual place
of habitation (or what naturalists call _habitat_); 3. Its natural
actions, length of life, diseases, &c.; 4. Its disposition, or, as we
may say, moral character; 5. Its utility, except for food and medicine;
6. Its use as food; 7. Its use in medicine; 8. The philological
relations of the name and qualities, their proper and figurative use in
language, which is subdivided into several sections. So comprehensive a
notion of zoology displays a mind accustomed to encyclopedic systems,
and loving the labours of learning for their own sake. Much of course
would have a very secondary value in the eyes of a good naturalist. His
method is alphabetical, but it may be reckoned an alphabet of genera;
for he arranges what he deems cognate species together. In the Icones
Animalium we find somewhat more of classification. Gesner divides
quadrupeds into Animalia Mansueta and Animalia Fera; the former in two,
the latter in four orders. Cuvier, in the passage above cited, writing
probably from memory, has hardly done justice to Gesner in this respect.
The delineations in the History of Animals and in the Icones are very
rude; and it is not always easy, with so little assistance from
engraving, to determine the species from his description.
|His additions to known quadrupeds.|
26. Linnæus, though professing to give the synonyms of his predecessors,
has been frequently careless and unjust towards Gesner; his mention of
several quadrupeds (the only part of the latter’s work at which I have
looked), having been unnoticed in the Systema Naturæ. We do not find
however that Gesner had made very considerable additions to the number
of species known to the ancients; and it cannot be reckoned a proof of
his acuteness in zoology, that he placed the hippopotamus among aquatic
animals, and the bat among birds. In the latter extraordinary error he
was followed by all other naturalists till the time of Ray. Yet he shows
some judgment in rejecting plainly fabulous animals. In the edition of
1551 I find but few quadrupeds, except those belonging to the countries
round the Mediterranean, or mentioned by Pliny and Ælian.[1377] The
Reindeer, which it is doubtful whether the ancients knew, though there
seems reason to believe that it was formerly an inhabitant of Poland and
Germany, he found in Albertus Magnus; and from him too Gesner had got
some notion of the Polar Bear. He mentions the Musk deer, which was
known through the Arabian writers, though unnoticed by the ancients. The
new world furnished him with a scanty list. Among these is the Opossum,
or Semi-Vulpa (for which Linnæus has not given him credit), an account
of which he may have found in Pinzon or Peter Martyr;[1378] the Manati,
of which he found a description in Hernando’s History of the Indies; and
the Guinea Pig, Cuniculus Indus, which he says was, within a few years,
first brought to Europe from the New World, but was become everywhere
common. In the edition of 1560, several more species are introduced.
Olaus Magnus had, in the meantime, described the Glutton; and Belon had
found an Armadillo among itinerant quacks in Turkey, though he knew that
it came from America.[1379] Belon had also described the Axis deer of
India. The Sloth appears for the first time in this edition of Gesner,
and the Sagoin, or Ouistiti, as well as what he calls Mus Indicus alius,
which Linnæus refers to the Racoon, but seems rather to be the Nasua, or
Coati Mondi. Gesner has given only three cuts of monkeys, but was aware
that there were several kinds, and distinguishes them in description. I
have not presumed to refer his cuts to particular species, which
probably, on account of their rudeness, a good naturalist would not
attempt. The Simia Inues, or Barbary ape, seems to be one, as we might
expect.[1380] Gesner was not very diligent in examining the histories of
the New World. Peter Martyr and Hernando would have supplied him with
several he has overlooked, as the Tapir, the Pecary, the Anteater, and
the fetid Polecat.[1381]
[1377] In Cardan, De Subtilitate, lib. 10, published in 1550, I find
the anteater, ursus formicarius, which, if I am not mistaken,
Gesner has omitted, though it is in Hernando d’Oviedo; also a
cercopithecus, as large as man, which persists long in standing
erect, amat pueros et mulieres, conaturque concumbere, quod nos
vidimus. This was probably one of the large baboons of Africa.
[1378] In the voyage of Pinzon, the companion of Columbus in his last
voyage, when the continent of Guiana was discovered, which will be
found in the Novus Orbis of Grynæus, a specimen of the genus
Didelphis is mentioned with the astonishment which the first
appearance of the marsupial type would naturally excite in a
European. Conspexere etiamnum ibi animal quadrupes, prodigiosum
quidem; nam pars anterior vulpem, posterior vero simiam
præsentabat, nisi quod pedes effingit humanos; aures autem habet
noctuæ, et infra consuetam alvum aliam habet instar crumenæ, in qua
delitescunt catuli ejus tantisper, donec tuto prodire queant, et
absque parentis tutela cibatum quærere, nec unquam exeunt crumenam,
nisi cum sugunt. Portentosum hoc animal cum catulis tribus Sibiliam
delatum est; et ex Sibilia Illiberim, id est Granatam, in gratiam
regum, qui novis semper rebus oblectantur, p. 116, edit. 1532. In
Peter Martyr, De Rebus Oceanicis, dec. i. lib. 9, we find a longer
account of the monstrosum illud animal vulpino rostro,
cercopithecea cauda, verpertilioneis auribus, manibus humanius,
pedibus simiam æmulans; quod natos jam filios alio gestat quocunque
proficiscatur utero exteriore in modum magnæ crumenæ. This animal,
he says, lived some months in Spain, and was seen by him after its
death. Several species are natives of Guiana.
[1379] Tatus, quadrupes peregrina. The species figured in Gesner is
Dasypus novem cinctus. This animal, however, is mentioned by
Hernando d’Oviedo under the name Bardati.
[1380] Sunt et cynocephalorum diversa genera, nec unum genus
caudatorum. I think he knew the leading characteristics founded on
the tail, but did not attend accurately to subordinate
distinctions, though he knew them to exist. The three principal
Simian divisions were familiarly known in Europe not very long
after the time of Gesner, as we find by an old song of Elizabeth’s
time:--
The ape, the monkey, and baboon did meet
A breaking of their fast in Friday Street.
British Bibliographer, i. 342.
[1381] The Tapir is mentioned by Peter Martyr, the rest in Hernando.
|Belon.|
27. Less acquainted with books but with better opportunities of
observing nature than Gesner, his contemporary Belon made greater
accessions to zoology. Besides, his excellent travels in the Levant and
Egypt, we have from him a history of fishes in Latin, printed in 1553,
and translated by the author into French, with alterations and
additions; and one of birds, published in French in 1555, written with
great learning, though not without fabulous accounts, as was usual in
the earlier period of natural history. Belon was perhaps the first, at
least in modern times, who had glimpses of a great typical conformity in
nature. In one of his works he places the skeletons of a man and a bird
in apposition, in order to display their essential analogy. He
introduced also many exotic plants into France. Every one knows, says a
writer of the last century, that our gardens owe all their beauty to
Belon.[1382] The same writer has satisfactorily cleared this eminent
naturalist from the charge of plagiarism, to which credit had been
hastily given.[1383] Belon may on the whole be placed by the side of
Gesner.
[1382] Liron, Singularités Historiques, i. 456.
[1383] Id. p. 438. It had been suspected that the manuscripts of
Gilles, the author of a compilation from Ælian, who had himself
travelled in the east, fell into the hands of Belon who published
them as his own. Gesner has been thought to insinuate this; but
Liron is of opinion that Belon was not meant by him.
|Salviani and Rondelet’s Ichthyology.|
28. Salviani published in 1558 a history of fishes (Animalium Aquatilium
Historia), with figures well executed, but by no means numerous. He
borrows most of his materials from the ancients, and having frequently
failed in identifying the species they describe, cannot be read without
precaution.[1384] But Rondelet (De Piscibus Marinis, 1554), was far
superior as an ichthyologist, in the judgment of Cuvier, to any of his
contemporaries, both by the number of fishes he has known, and the
accuracy of his figures, which exceed three hundred for fresh-water and
marine species. His knowledge of those which inhabit the Mediterranean
Sea was so extensive that little has been added since his time. “It is
the work,” says the same great authority, “which has supplied almost
everything which we find on that subject in Gesner, Aldrovandus,
Willoughby, Artedi, and Linnæus; and even Lacepede has been obliged, in
many instances, to depend on Rondelet.” The text, however, is far
inferior to the figures, and is too much occupied with an attempt to fix
the ancient names of the several species.[1385]
[1384] Biogr. Univ. (Cuvier.)
[1385] Biogr. Univ.
|Aldrovandus.|
29. The very little book of Dr. Caius on British Dogs, published in
1570, the whole of which I believe has been translated by Pennant in his
British Zoology, is hardly worth mentioning; nor do I know that
zoological literature has anything more to produce till almost the close
of the century, when the first and second volumes of Aldrovandus’s vast
natural history was published. These, as well as the third, which
appeared in 1603, treat of birds; the fourth is on insects; and these
alone were given to the world by the laborious author, a professor of
natural history at Bologna. After his death in 1605, nine more folio
volumes, embracing with various degrees of detail most other parts of
natural history, were successively published by different editors. “We
can only consider the works of Aldrovandus,” says Cuvier, “as an immense
compilation without taste or genius; the very plan and materials being
in a great measure borrowed from Gesner; and Buffon has had reason to
say that it would be reduced to a tenth part of its bulk by striking out
the useless and impertinent matter.”[1386] Buffon, however, which Cuvier
might have gone on to say, praises the method of Aldrovandus and his
fidelity of description, and even ranks his work above every other
natural history.[1387] I am not acquainted with its contents; but
according to Linnæus, Aldrovandus, or the editors of his posthumous
volumes, added only a very few species of quadrupeds to those mentioned
by Gesner, among which are the Zebra, the Jerboa, the Musk Rat of
Russia, and the Manis or Scaly Anteater.[1388]
[1386] Id.
[1387] Hist. Naturelle, Premier Discours. The truth is that all
Buffon’s censures on Aldrovandus fall equally on Gesner, who is not
less accumulative of materials not properly bearing on natural
history, and not much less destitute of systematic order. The
remarks of Buffon on this waste of learning are very just, and
applicable to the works of the sixteenth century on almost every
subject as well as zoology.
[1388] Collections of natural history seem to have been formed by all
who applied themselves to the subject in the sixteenth century;
such as Cordus, Mathiolus, Mercati, Gesner, Agricola, Belon,
Rondelet, Ortelius, and many others. Hakluyt mentions the cabinets
of some English collectors from which he had derived assistance.
Beckmann’s Hist. of Inventions, ii. 57.
|Botany; Turner.|
30. A more steady progress was made in the science of botany, which
commemorates, in those living memorials with which she delights to
honour her cultivators, several names still respected, and several books
that have not lost their utility. Our countryman, Dr. Turner, published
the first part of a New Herbal in 1551; the second and third did not
appear till 1562 and 1568. “The arrangement,” says Pulteney, “is
alphabetical according to the Latin names, and after the description he
frequently specifies the places and growth. He is ample in his
discrimination of the species, as his great object was to ascertain the
Materia Medica of the ancients, and of Dioscorides in particular,
throughout the vegetable kingdom. He first gives names to many English
plants; and allowing for the time when specifical distinctions were not
established, when almost all the small plants were disregarded, and the
Cryptogamia almost wholly overlooked, the number he was acquainted with
is much beyond what could easily have been imagined in an original
writer on his subject.”[1389]
[1389] Pulteney’s Historical Sketch of the Progress of Botany in
England, p. 68.
|Maranta; Botanical Gardens.|
31. The work of Maranta, published in 1559, on the method of
understanding medicinal plants, is, in the judgment of a later writer of
considerable reputation, nearly at the head of any in that age. The
author is independent, though learned, extremely acute in discriminating
plants known to the ancients, and has discovered many himself,
ridiculing those who dared to add nothing to Dioscorides.[1390] Maranta
had studied in the private gardens formed by Pinelli at Naples. But
public gardens were common in Italy. Those of Pisa and Padua were the
earliest, and perhaps the most celebrated. One established by the Duke
of Ferrara, was peculiarly rich in exotic plants procured from Greece
and Asia.[1391] And perhaps the generous emulation in all things
honourable between the houses of Este and Medici led Ferdinand of
Tuscany, sometime afterwards near the end of the century, to enrich the
gardens of Pisa with the finest plants of Asia and America. The climate
of France was less favourable; the first public garden seems to have
been formed at Montpellier, and there was none at Paris in 1558.[1392]
Meantime the vegetable productions of newly discovered countries became
familiar to Europe. Many are described in the excellent History of the
Indies by Hernando d’Oviedo, such as the Cocos, the Cactus, the Guiacum.
Another Spanish author, Carate, first describes the Solanum Tuberosum,
or potato, under the name of Papas.[1393] It has been said that tobacco
is first mentioned, or at least first well described by Benzoni, in Nova
Novi Orbis Historia, (Geneva, 1578).[1394] Belon went to the Levant soon
after the middle of the century, on purpose to collect plants; several
other writers of voyages followed before its close. Among these was
Prosper Alpinus, who passed several years in Egypt, but his principal
work, De Plantis Exoticis is posthumous, and did not appear till 1627.
He is said to be the first European author who has mentioned
coffee.[1395]
[1390] Sprengel Historia Rei Herbariæ (1807), i. 345.
[1391] Id. 360.
[1392] Id. 363.
[1393] Id. 378.
[1394] Id. 373.
[1395] Id. 384. Corniani, vi. 25. Biogr. Univ. Yet, in the article on
Rauwolf, a German naturalist, who published an account of his
travels in the Levant as early as 1581, he is mentioned as one of
the first qui ait parlé de l’usage de boire du café, et en ait
décrit la preparation avec exactitude. It is possible that this
book of Rauwolf being written in German, and the author being
obscure in comparison with Prosper Alpinus, his prior claim has
been till lately overlooked.
|Gesner.|
32. The critical examination of the ancients, the establishment of
gardens, the travels of botanists thus furnished a great supply of
plants; it was now required to compare and arrange them. Gesner first
undertook this; he had formed a garden of his own at Zurich, and has the
credit of having discovered the true system of classifying plants
according to the organs of fructification; which however he does not
seem to have made known, nor were his botanical writings published till
the last century. Gesner was the first who mentions the Indian Sugarcane
and the Tobacco, as well as many indigenous plants. It is said that he
was used to chew and smoke tobacco, “by which he rendered himself giddy
and in a manner drunk.”[1396] As Gesner died in 1564, this carries back
the knowledge of tobacco in Europe several years beyond the
above-mentioned treatise of Benzoni.
[1396] Sprengel, 373, 390.
|Dodoens.|
33. Dodoens, or Dodonæus, a Dutch physician, in 1553, translated into
his own language the history of plants by Fuchs, to which he added 133
figures. These, instead of using the alphabetical order of his
predecessor, he arranged according to a method which he thought more
natural. “He explains,” says Sprengel, “well and learnedly the ancient
botanists, and described many plants for the first time;” among these
are the Ulex Europæus and the Hyacinthus non scriptus. The great aim of
rendering the modern Materia Medica conformable to the ancient seems to
have made the early botanists rather inattentive to objects before their
eyes. Dodoens himself is rather a physician than a botanist, and is more
diligent about the uses of plants than their characteristics. He
collected all his writings, under the title Stirpium Historiæ Pemptades
Sex, at Antwerp in 1583, with 1341 figures, a greater number than had
yet been published.
|Lobel.|
34. The Stirpium Adversaria by Pena and Lobel, the latter of whom is
best known as a botanist, was published at London in 1570. Lobel indeed,
though a native of Lille, having passed most of his life in England, may
be fairly counted among our botanists. He had previously travelled much
over Europe. “In the execution of this work,” says Pulteney, “there is
exhibited, I believe, the first sketch, rude as it is, of a natural
method of arrangement, which however extends no further than throwing
the plants into large tribes, families, or orders, according to the
external appearance or habit of the whole plant or flower, without
establishing any definitions or characters. The whole forms forty-four
tribes. Some contain the plants of or two modern genera, others many,
and some, it must be owned, very incongruous to each other. On the whole
they are much superior to Dodoens’s divisions.”[1397] Lobel’s Adversaria
contains descriptions of 1200 or 1500 plants with 272 engravings; the
former are not clear or well expressed, and in this he is inferior to
his contemporaries; the latter are on copper, very small, but
neat.[1398] In a later work, the Plantarum Historia, Antwerp, 1576, the
number of figures is very considerably greater, but the book has been
less esteemed, being a sort of complement to the other. Sprengel speaks
more highly of Lobel than the Biographie Universelle.
[1397] Historical Sketch, p. 102.
[1398] Sprengel, 399.
|Clusius.|
35. Clusius or Lecluse, born at Arras, and a traveller, like many other
botanists, over Europe, till he settled at Leyden as professor of botany
in 1593, is generally reckoned the greatest master of his science whom
the age produced. His descriptions are remarkable for their exactness,
precision, elegance, and method, though he seems to have had little
regard to natural classification. He has added a long list to the
plants, already known. Clusius began by a translation of Dodoens into
Latin; he published several other works within the century.[1399]
[1399] Sprengel, 407. Biogr. Univ. Pulteney.
|Cæsalpin.|
36. Cæsalpin was not only a botanist, but greater in this than in any
other of the sciences he embraced. He was the first (the writings of
Gesner, if they go so far, being in his time unpublished) who
endeavoured to establish a natural order of classification on
philosophical principles. He founded it on the number, figure, and
position of the fructifying parts, observing the situation of the calix
and flower relatively to the germen, the divisions of the former, and in
general what has been regarded in later systems as the basis of
arrangement. He treats of trees and of herbs separately, as two grand
divisions, but under each follows his own natural system. The
distinction of sexes he thought needless in plants, on account of their
greater simplicity; though he admits it to exist in some, as in the hemp
and the juniper. His treatise on Plants, in 1583, is divided into
sixteen books; in the first of which he lays down the principles
of vegetable anatomy and physiology. Many ideas, says Du Petit Thouars,
are found there of which the truth was long afterwards recognised. He
analysed the structure of seeds, which he compares to the eggs of
animals; an analogy, however, which had occurred to Empedocles among the
ancients. “One page alone,” the same writer observes, “in the dedication
of Cæsalpin to the Duke of Tuscany, concentrates the principles of a
good botanical system so well that notwithstanding all the labours of
later botanists, nothing material could be added to his sketch, and if
this one page out of all the writings of Cæsalpin remained, it would be
enough to secure him an immortal reputation.”[1400] Cæsalpin
unfortunately gave no figures of plants, which may have been among the
causes that his system was so long overlooked.
[1400] Biogr. Univ. Sprengel, after giving an analysis of the system
of Cæsalpin, concludes: En primi systematis carpologici specimen,
quod licet imperfectum sit, ingenii tamen summi monumentum et
aliorum omnium ad Gærtnerium usque exemplar est, p. 430.
|Dalechamps; Bauhin.|
37. The Historia Generalis Plantarum by Dalechamps, in 1587, contains
2731 figures, many of which, however, appear to be repetitions. These
are divided into eighteen classes according to their form and size, but
with no natural method. His work is imperfect and faulty; most of the
descriptions are borrowed from his predecessors.[1401] Tabernæmontanus,
in a book in the German language, has described 5800 species, and given
2480 figures.[1402] The Phytopinax of Gerard Bauhin (Basle, 1596) is the
first important work of one who, in conjunction with his brother John,
laboured for forty years in the advancement of botanical knowledge. It
is a catalogue of 2460 plants, including, among about 250 others that
were new, the first accurate description of the potato, which, as he
informs us, was already cultivated in Italy.[1403]
[1401] Sprengel, 432.
[1402] Id. 496.
[1403] Id. 451.
|Gerard’s Herbal.|
38. Gerard’s Herbal, published in 1597, was formed on the basis of
Dodoens, taking in much from Lobel and Clusius; the figures are from the
blocks used by Tabernæmontanus. It is not now esteemed at all by
botanists, at least in this first edition; “but,” says Pulteney, “from
its being well timed, from its comprehending almost the whole of the
subjects then known, by being written in English, and ornamented with a
more numerous set of figures than had ever accompanied any work of the
kind in this kingdom, it obtained great repute.”[1404]
[1404] Hist. Sketch, p. 122.
SECT. III.--ON ANATOMY AND MEDICINE.
_Fallopius, Eustachius, and other Anatomists--State of Medicine._
|Anatomy; Fallopius.|
39. Few sciences were so successfully pursued in this period as that of
anatomy. If it was impossible to snatch from Vesalius the pre-eminent
glory that belongs to him as almost its creator, it might still be said
that two men now appeared who, had they lived earlier, would probably
have gone as far, and who, by coming later, were enabled to go beyond
him. These were Fallopius and Eustachius, both Italians. The former is
indeed placed by Sprengel even above Vesalius, and reckoned the first
anatomist of the sixteenth century. No one had understood that delicate
part of the human structure, the organ of hearing, so well as Fallopius,
though even he left much for others. He added several to the list of
muscles, and made some discoveries in the intestinal and generative
organs.[1405]
[1405] Portal. Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine.
|Eustachius.|
|Coiter.|
40. Eustachius, though on the whole inferior to Fallopius, went beyond
him in the anatomy of the ear, in which a canal, as is well known, bears
his name. One of his biographers has gone so far as to place him above
every anatomist for the number of his discoveries. He has treated very
well of the teeth, a subject little understood before, and was the first
to trace the vena azygos through all its ramifications. No one before
had exhibited the structure of the human kidneys, Vesalius having
examined them only in dogs.[1406] The scarcity of human subjects was in
fact an irresistible temptation to take upon trust the identity between
quadrupeds and man, which misled the great anatomists of the sixteenth
century.[1407] Comparative anatomy was therefore not yet promoted to its
real dignity, both as an indispensable part of natural history, and as
opening the most conclusive and magnificent views of teleology. Coiter,
an anatomist born in Holland, but who passed his life in Italy, Germany,
and France, was perhaps the first to describe the skeletons of several
animals; though Belon, as we have seen, had views far beyond his age in
what is strictly comparative anatomy. Coiter’s work bears the date of
1575; in 1566 he had published one on human osteology, where that of the
fœtus is said to be first described, though some attribute this merit to
Fallopius. Coiter is called in the Biographie Universelle one of the
creators of pathological anatomy.
[1406] Portal.
[1407] The church had a repugnance to permit the dissection of dead
bodies, but Fallopius tells us that the Duke of Tuscany was
sometimes obliging enough to send a living criminal to the
anatomists, _quem interficimus nostro modo et anatomisamus_.
Sprengel suggests that “nostro modo” meant by opium; but this seems
to be merely a conjecture. Hist. de la Médecine, iv. 11.
|Columbus.|
|Circulation of the blood.|
41. Columbus (De Re Anatomica, Venice, 1559), the successor of Vesalius
at Padua, and afterwards professor at Pisa and Rome, has announced the
discovery of several muscles, and given the name of vomer to the small
bone which sustains the cartilage of the nose, and which Vesalius had
taken for a mere process of the sphenoid. Columbus, though too arrogant
in censuring his great predecessor, generally follows him.[1408]
Arrantius, in 1571, is among the first who made known the anatomy of the
gravid uterus, and the structure of the fœtus.[1409] He was also
conversant, as Vidius, a professor at Paris of Italian birth, as early
as 1542, had already been, with the anatomy of the brain. But this was
much improved by Varoli in his Anatomia, published in 1573, who traced
the origin of the optic nerves, and gave a better account than any one
before him of the eye and of the voice. Piccolomini (Anatomiæ
Prælectiones, 1586) is one of the first who described the cellular
tissue, and in other respects has made valuable observations. Ambrose
Paré, a French surgeon, is deemed the founder of chirurgic science, at
least in that country. His works were first collected in 1561; but his
treatise on gunshot wounds is as old as 1545. Several other names are
mentioned with respect by the historians of medicine and anatomy; such
as those of Alberti, Benivieni, Donatus, and Schank. Never, says Portal,
were anatomy and surgery better cultivated, with more emulation or more
encouragement, than about the end of the sixteenth century. A long list
of minor discoveries in the human frame are recorded by this writer and
by Sprengel. It will be readily understood that we give these names,
which of itself it is rather an irksome labour to enumerate, with no
other object than that none of those who by their ability and diligence
carried forward the landmarks of human knowledge, should miss, in a
history of general literature, of their meed of remembrance. We reserve
to a later chapter those passages in the anatomists of this age, which
have seemed to anticipate the great discovery that immortalizes the name
of Harvey.
[1408] Portal, i. 541.
[1409] Portal, vol. ii. p. 3.
|Medicinal science.|
42. These continual discoveries in the anatomical structure of man
tended to guide and correct the theory of medicine. The observations of
this period became more acute and accurate. Those of Plater and Foresti,
especially the latter, are still reputed classical in medical
literature. Prosper Alpinus may be deemed the father in modern times of
diagnostic science.[1410] Plater, in his Praxis Medica, made the first,
though an imperfect attempt, at a classification of diseases. Yet the
observations made in this age, and the whole practical system, are not
exempt from considerable faults; the remedies were too topical, the
symptoms of disease were more regarded than its cause; the theory was
too simple and general; above all, a great deal of credulity and
superstition prevailed in the art.[1411] Many among the first in science
believed in demoniacal possessions and sorcery, or in astrology. This
was most common in Germany, where the school of Paracelsus,
discreditably to the national understanding, exerted much influence. The
best physicians of the century were either Italian or French.
[1410] Sprengel, iii. 173.
[1411] Id. 156.
43. Notwithstanding the bigoted veneration for Hippocrates that most
avowed, several physicians, not at all adhering to Paracelsus,
endeavoured to set up a rational experience against the Greek school,
when they thought them at variance. Joubert of Montpelier, in his
Paradoxes (1566), was a bold innovator of this class; but many of his
paradoxes are now established truths. Botal of Asti, a pupil of
Fallopius, introduced the practice of venesection on a scale before
unknown, but prudently aimed to show that Hippocrates was on his side.
The faculty of medicine, however, at Paris condemned it as erroneous and
very dangerous. His method, nevertheless, had great success, especially
in Spain.[1412]
[1412] Sprengel, iii. p. 215.
SECT. IV.--ON ORIENTAL LITERATURE.
|Syriac version of New Testament.|
44. This is a subject over which, on account of my total ignorance of
eastern languages, I am glad to hasten. The first work that appears
after the middle of the century is a grammar of the Syriac, Chaldee and
Rabbinical, compared with the Arabic and Ethiopic languages, which
Angelo Canini, a man as great in oriental as in Grecian learning,
published at Paris in 1554. In the next year Widmanstadt gave, from the
press of Vienna, the first edition of the Syriac version of the New
Testament.[1413] Several lexicons and grammars of this tongue, which is
in fact only a dialect not far removed from the Chaldee, though in a
different alphabetical character, will be found in the bibliographical
writers. The Syriac may be said to have been now fairly added to the
literary domain. The Antwerp Polyglot of Arias Montanus, besides a
complete Chaldee paraphrase of the Old Testament, the Complutensian
having only contained the Pentateuch, gives the New Testament in Syriac,
as well as Pagnini’s Latin translation of the Old.[1414]
[1413] Schelhorn, Amœnitates Literariæ, xiii. 234. Biogr. Universelle.
Andrès, xix. 45. Eichhorn, v. 435. In this edition the Syriac text
alone appeared; Henry Stephens reprinted it with the Greek and with
two Latin translations.
[1414] Andrès, xix. 49. The whole edition is richer in materials than
that of Ximenes.
|Hebrew critics.|
45. The Hebrew language was studied, especially among the German
protestants, to a considerable extent, if we may judge from the number
of grammatical works published within this period. Among these Morhof
selects the Erotemata Linguæ Hebrææ by Neander, printed at Basle in
1567. Tremellius, Chevalier, and Drusius among protestants, Masius and
Clarius in the church of Rome, are the most conspicuous names. The
first, an Italian refugee, is chiefly known by his translation of the
Bible into Latin, in which he was assisted by Francis Junius. The
second, a native of France, taught Hebrew at Cambridge, and was there
the instructor of Drusius, whose father had emigrated from Flanders on
the ground of religion. Drusius himself, afterwards professor of Hebrew
at the university of Franeker, has left writings of more permanent
reputation than most other Hebraists of the sixteenth century; they
relate chiefly to biblical criticism and Jewish antiquity, and several
of them have a place in the Critici Sacri and in the collection of
Ugolini.[1415] Clarius is supposed to have had some influence on the
decree of the council of Trent, asserting the authenticity of the
Vulgate.[1416] Calasio was superior probably to them all, but his
principal writings do not belong to this period. No large proportion of
the treatises published by Ugolini ought, so far as I know their
authors, to be referred to the sixteenth century.
[1415] Drusius is extolled by all critics except Scaliger (Scaligerana
Secunda), who seems to have conceived one of his personal
prejudices against the Franeker professor, and depreciates his
moral character. Simon thinks Drusius the most learned and
judicious writer we find in the Critici Sacri. Hist. Critique du V.
T., p. 498. Biogr. Univ. Blount.
[1416] Clarius, according to Simon, knew Hebrew but indifferently,
and does little more than copy Munster, whose observations are too
full of Judaism, as he consulted no interpreters but the rabbinical
writers. Masius, the same author says, is very learned, but has the
like fault of dealing in rabbinical expositions, p. 499.
|Its study in England.|
46. The Hebrew language had been early studied in England, though there
has been some controversy as to the extent of the knowledge which the
first translators of the Bible possessed. We know that both Chevalier
read lectures on Hebrew at Cambridge not long after the queen’s
accession, and his disciple Drusius at Oxford, from 1572 to 1576.[1417]
Hugh Broughton was a deeply learned rabbinical scholar. I do not know
that we could produce any other name of marked reputation; and we find
that the first Hebrew types, employed in any considerable number, appear
in 1592. These are in a book not relating directly to Hebrew, Rheses
Institutiones Linguæ Cambro-Britannicæ. But a few Hebrew characters,
very rudely cut in wood, are found in Wakefield’s Oration, printed as
early as 1524.[1418]
[1417] Wood’s Hist. and Antiquities. In 1574, he was appointed to read
publicly in Syriac.
[1418] Preface to Herbert’s Typographical Antiquities.
|Arabic begins to be studied.|
47. The Syriac and Chaldee were so closely related to Hebrew, both as
languages, and in the theological purposes for which they were studied,
that they did not much enlarge the field of oriental literature. The
most copious language, and by far the most fertile of books, was the
Arabic. A few slight attempts at introducing a knowledge of this had
been made before the middle of the century. An Arabic as well as Syriac
press at Vienna was first due to the patronage of Ferdinand I. in 1554,
but for a considerable time no fruit issued from it. But the increasing
zeal of Rome for the propagation of its faith, both among infidels and
schismatics, gave a larger sweep to the cultivation of oriental
languages. Gregory XIII. founded a Maronite College at Rome in 1584, for
those Syrian Christians of Libanus who had united themselves to the
catholic church; the cardinal Medici, afterwards grand Duke of Florence,
established an oriental press in the city about 1580 under the
superintendence of John Baptista Raimondi; and Sixtus V. in 1588 that of
the Vatican, which, though principally designed for early Christian
literature, was possessed of types for the chief eastern languages.
Hence the Arabic, hitherto almost neglected, began to attract more
attention; the gospels in that language were published at Rome in 1590
or 1591; some works of Euclid and Avicenna had preceded; one or two
elementary books on grammar appeared in Germany; and several other
publications belong to the last years of the century.[1419] Scaliger now
entered upon the study of Arabic with all his indefatigable activity.
Yet, at the end of the century, few had penetrated far into a region so
novel and extensive, and in which the subsidiary means of knowledge were
so imperfect. The early grammars are represented by Eichhorn as being
very indifferent, and in fact very few Arabic books had been printed.
The edition of the Koran by Pagninus in 1529 was unfortunately
suppressed, as we have before mentioned, by the zeal of the court of
Rome. Casaubon, writing to Scaliger in 1597, declares that no one within
his recollection had even touched with the tips of his fingers that
language, except Postel in a few rhapsodies; and that neither he nor any
one else had written anything on the Persic.[1420] Gesner however in his
Mithridates, 1558, had given the Lord’s Prayer in twenty-two languages;
to which Rocca at Rome, in 1591, added three more; and Megiser increased
the number, in a book published next year at Frankfort, to forty.[1421]
[1419] Eichhorn, v. 641, et alibi. Tiraboschi, viii. 195. Ginguéné,
vol. vii. p. 258.
[1420] Nostra autem memoria, qui eas linguas vel ακρῳ [akrô], quod
aiunt, δακτυλῳ [daktulô], attigerit, novi neminem, nisi quod
Postellum nescio quid muginatum esse de lingua Arabica memini. Sed
illa quam tenuia, quam exilia! de Persicâ, quod equidem memini,
neque ille, neque alius quisquam vel γρὺ το λεγομενον [grhu to
legomenon]. Epist. ciii.
[1421] Biogr. Univ. arts. Megiser and Rocca.
SECT. V.--ON GEOGRAPHY.
_Voyages in the Indies--Those of the English--Of Ortelius and others._
|Collection of Voyages by Ramusio.|
48. A more important accession to the knowledge of Europe as to the rest
of the world, than had hitherto been made through the press, is due to
Ramusio, a Venetian who had filled respectable offices under the
republic. He published in 1550 the first volume of his well-known
collection of Travels; the second appeared in 1559, and the third in
1565. They have been reprinted several times, and all the editions are
not equally complete. No general collection of travels had hitherto been
published, except the Novus Orbis of Grynæus, and though the greater
part perhaps of those included in Ramusio’s three volumes had appeared
separately, others came forth for the first time. The Africa of Leo
Africanus, a baptized Moor, with which Ramusio begins, is among these;
and it is upon this work that such knowledge as we possessed, till very
recent times, as to the interior of that continent, was almost entirely
founded. Ramusio in the remainder of this volume gives many voyages in
Africa, the East Indies, and Indian Archipelago, including two accounts
of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the world, and one of Japan, which had
very lately been discovered. The second volume is dedicated to travels
through northern Europe and Asia, beginning with that of Marco Polo,
including also the curious, though very questionable voyage of the Zeni
brothers, about 1400, to some unknown region north of Scotland. In the
third volume we find the conquests of Cortes and Pizarro, with all that
had already been printed of the excellent work of Hernando d’Oviedo on
the western world. Few subsequent collections of voyages are more
esteemed for the new matter they contain than that of Ramusio.[1422]
[1422] Biog. Univ.
|Curiosity they awakened.|
49. The importance of such publications as that of Ramusio was soon
perceived, not only in the stimulus they gave to curiosity or cupidity
towards following up the paths of discovery, but in calling the
attention of reflecting minds, such as Bodin and Montaigne, to so
copious a harvest of new facts, illustrating the physical and social
character of the human species. But from the want of a rigid
investigation, or more culpable reasons, these early narratives are
mingled with much falsehood, and misled some of the more credulous
philosophers almost as often as they enlarged their knowledge.
|Other Voyages.|
50. The story of the Portuguese conquests in the east, more
varied and almost as wonderful as romance, was recounted in the Asia of
Joam de Barros (1552), and in that of Castanheda in the same and two
ensuing years; these have never been translated. The great voyage of
Magellan had been written by one of his companions, Pigafetta. This was
first published in Italian in 1556. The History of the Indies by Acosta,
1590, may perhaps belong more strictly to other departments of
literature than to geography.
|Accounts of China.|
|India and Russia.|
51. The Romish missionaries, especially the Jesuits, spread themselves
with intrepid zeal during this period over infidel nations. Things
strange to European prejudice, the books, the laws, the rites, the
manners, the dresses of those remote people, were related by them on
their return, for the most part orally, but sometimes through the press.
The vast empire of China, the Cathay of Marco Polo, over which an air of
fabulous mystery had hung, and which is delineated in the old maps with
much ignorance of its position and extent, now first was brought within
the sphere of European knowledge. The Portuguese had some traffic to
Canton, but the relations they gave were uncertain, till, in 1577, two
Augustin friars persuaded a Chinese officer to take them into the
country. After a residence of four months they returned to Manilla, and
in consequence of their reports, Phillip II. sent, in 1580, an embassy
to the court of Pekin. The History of China by Mendoza, as it is called,
contains all the knowledge that the Spaniards were able to collect by
these means; and it may be said, on comparison with later books on the
same subject, to be as full and ample an account of China as could have
been given in such circumstances. This book was published in 1585, and
from that time, but no earlier, do we date our acquaintance with that
empire.[1423] Maffei, in his History of India, threw all the graces of a
pure Latin style over his description of the east. The first part of a
scarce and curious collection of voyages to the two Indies, with the
names of De Bry and Merian as its editors, appeared at Frankfort in
1590. Six other volumes were published at intervals down to 1634.
Possevin, meantime, told us more of a much nearer state, Muscovy, than
was before familiar to western Europe, though the first information had
been due to England.
[1423] Biogr. Univ. This was translated into English by R. Parke in
1588; at least I believe it to be the same work, but have never
seen the original.
|English discoveries in the Northern Seas.|
52. The spirit of lucre vied with that of religion in penetrating
unknown regions. In this the English have most to boast: they were the
first to pass the Icy Cape and anchor their ships in the White Sea. This
was in the famous voyage of Chancellor in 1553. Anthony Jenkinson soon
afterwards, through the heart of Russia, found his way to Bokhara and
Persia. They followed up the discoveries of Cabot in North America; and,
before the end of the century, had ascertained much of the coasts about
Labrador and Hudson’s Bay, as well as those of Virginia, the first
colony. These English voyages were recorded in the three parts of the
Collection of Voyages, by Hakluyt, published in 1598, 1599, and 1600.
Drake, second to Magellan in that bold enterprise, traversed the
circumference of the world; and the reign of Elizabeth, quite as much as
any later age, bears witness to the intrepidity and skill, if not
strictly to the science, of our sailors. For these undaunted navigators
traversing the unexplored wilderness of ocean in small ill-built
vessels, had neither any effectual assistance from charts, nor the means
of making observations themselves, or of profiting by those of others.
Hence, when we come to geographical knowledge, in the proper sense of
the word, we find it surprisingly scanty, even at the close of the
sixteenth century.
|Geographical Books; Ortelius.|
53. It had not, however, been neglected, so far as a multiplicity of
books could prove a regard to it. Ortelius, in his Theatrum Orbis
Terrarum (the first edition of which was in 1570, augmented afterwards
by several maps of later dates), gives a list of about 150 geographical
treatises, most of them subsequent to 1560. His own work is the first
general atlas since the revival of letters, and has been justly reckoned
to make an epoch in geography, being the basis of all collections of
maps since formed, and deserving, it is said, even yet to be consulted,
notwithstanding the vast progress of our knowledge of the earth.[1424]
The maps in the later editions of the sixteenth century bear various
dates. That of Africa is of 1590; and though the outline is tolerably
given, we do not find the Mauritius Isles, while the Nile is carried
almost to the Cape of Good Hope, and made to issue from a great lake. In
the map of America, dated 1587, the outline on the N. E. side contains
New France, with the _city_ of Canada; the St. Lawrence traverses the
country, but without lakes; Florida is sufficiently distinguished, but
the intervening coast is loosely laid down. Estotiland, the supposed
discovery of the Zeni, appears to the north, and Greenland beyond. The
outline of South America is worse, the southern parts covering nearly as
much longitude as the northern, an error which was in some measure
diminished in a map of 1603. An immense solid land, as in all the older
maps, connects Terra del Fuego with New Guinea. The delineation of the
southern coasts of Asia is not very bad, even in the earlier maps of
Ortelius, but some improvement is perceived in his knowledge of China
and the adjacent seas in that of the world, given in the edition of
1588. The maps of Europe in Ortelius are chiefly defective as to the
countries on the Baltic Sea and Russia; but there is a general
incorrectness of delineation which must strike the eye at once of any
person slightly experienced in geography.
[1424] Biog. Univ.
54. Gerard Mercator, a native of the duchy of Juliers, where he passed
the greater part of his life, was perhaps superior to Ortelius. His fame
is most diffused by the invention of a well-known mode of delineating
hydrographical charts, in which the parallels and meridians intersect
each other at right angles. The first of these was published in 1569;
but the principle of the method was not understood till Edward Wright,
in 1599, explained it in his Correction of Errors in Navigation.[1425]
The Atlas of Mercator, in an edition of 1598, which contains only part
of Europe, is superior to that of Ortelius; and as to England, of which
there had been maps published by Lluyd in 1569, and by Saxton in 1580,
it may be reckoned very tolerably correct. Lluyd’s map indeed is
published in the Atlas of Ortelius. But, in the northern regions of
Europe we still find a mass of arbitrary erroneous conjecture.
[1425] Montucla, ii. 651. Biogr. Univ. art. Mercator.
55. Botero, the Piedmontese Jesuit, mentioned in another place, has
given us a cosmography, or general description of as much of the world
as was then known, entitled Relazioni Universali; the edition I have
seen is undated, but he mentions the discovery of Nova Zembla in 1594.
His knowledge of Asia is very limited, and chiefly derived from Marco
Polo. China, he says, extends from 17° to 52° of latitude, and has 22°
of longitude. Japan is sixty leagues from China and 150 from America.
The coasts, Botero observes, from Bengal to China are so dangerous, that
two or three are lost out of every four ships, but the master who
succeeds in escaping these perils is sure to make his fortune.
56. But the best map of the sixteenth century is one of uncommon rarity,
which is found in a very few copies of the first edition of Hakluyt’s
Voyages. This contains Davis’s Straits (Fretum Davis), Virginia by name,
and the lake Ontario. The coasts of Chili is placed more correctly than
the prior maps of Ortelius; and it is noticed in the margin that this
trending of the coast less westerly than had been supposed was
discovered by Drake in 1577, and confirmed by Sarmiento and Cavendish.
The huge Terra Australis of the old geography is left out. Corea is
represented near its place, and China with some degree of correctness;
even the north coast of New Holland is partially traced. The Strait of
Anian, which had been presumed to divide Asia from America, has
disappeared, while a marginal note states that the distance between
those two continents in latitude 38° is not less than 1200 leagues. The
Ultra-Indian region is inaccurate; the sea of Aral is still unknown, and
little pains have been taken with central and northern Asia. But upon
the whole it represents the utmost limit of geographical knowledge at
the close of the sixteenth century, and far excels the maps in the
edition of Ortelius at Antwerp in 1588.
SECT. VI.--ON HISTORY.
|Guicciardini.|
57. The history of Italy by Guicciardini, though it is more properly a
work of the first part of the century, was not published till 1564. It
is well known for the solidity of the reflections, the gravity and
impartiality with which it is written, and the prolixity of the
narration; a fault, however, frequent and not unpardonable in historians
contemporary and familiar with the events they relate. If the siege of
Pisa in 1508 appeared so uninteresting a hundred years afterwards, as to
be the theme of ridicule with Boccalini, it was far otherwise as to the
citizens of Florence soon after the time. Guicciardini has generally
held the first place among Italian historians, though he is by no means
equal in literary merit to Machiavel. Adriani, whose continuation of
Guicciardini extends to 1574, is little read, nor does he seem
to be much recommended by style. No other historian of that country need
be mentioned as having been published within the sixteenth century.
|French Memoirs.|
58. The French have ever been distinguished for those personal memoirs
of men more or less conversant with public life, to which Philip de
Comines led the way. Several that fell within this period are deserving
of being read, nor only for their relation of events, with which we do
not here much concern ourselves, but for a lively style, and
occasionally for good sense and acute thinking. Those of Montluc may be
praised for the former. Spain had a considerable historian in Mariana,
twenty books of whose history were published in Latin in 1592, and five
more in 1595; the concluding five books do not fall within the century.
The style is vigorous and classical, the thoughts judicious. Buchanan’s
history of Scotland has already been praised for the purity of its
language. Few modern histories are more redolent of an antique air. We
have nothing to boast in England; our historical works of the
Elizabethan age are mere chronicles, and hardly good even as such. Nor
do I know any Latin historians of Germany or the Low Countries who, as
writers, deserve our attention.
SECT. VII.--GENERAL STATE OF LITERATURE.
|Universities in Italy.|
59. The great Italian universities of Bologna, Padua, Pisa, and Pavia,
seem to have lost nothing of their lustre throughout the century. New
colleges, new buildings in that stately and sumptuous architecture which
distinguishes this period, bore witness to a continual patronage, and a
public demand for knowledge. It is true that the best days of classical
literature had passed away in Italy. But the revival of theological
zeal, and of those particular studies which it fostered, might perhaps
more than compensate in keeping up a learned class for this decline of
philology. The sciences also of medicine and mathematics attracted many
more students than before. The Jesuit colleges, and those founded by
Gregory XIII., have been mentioned in a former part of this volume. They
were endowed at a large expense in that palmy state of the Roman see.
|In other countries.|
60. Universities were founded at Altdorf and Leyden in 1575, at
Helmstadt in 1576. Others of less importance began to exist in the same
age. The University of Edinburgh derives its origin from the charter of
James in 1582. Those of Oxford and Cambridge, reviving as we have seen
after a severe shock at the accession of Elizabeth, continued through
her reign to be the seats of a progressive and solid erudition. A few
colleges were founded in this age. I should have wished to give some
sketch of the mode of instruction pursued in these two universities. But
sufficient materials have not fallen in my way; what I have been able to
glean, has already been given to the reader in former pages of this
volume. It was the common practice at Oxford, observed in form down to
this century, that every candidate for the degree of bachelor of arts,
independently of other exercises, should undergo an examination (become
absolutely nominal), in the five sciences of grammar, logic, rhetoric,
ethics, and geometry; every one for that of master of arts, in the
additional sciences of physics, metaphysics, Hebrew, and some more.
These were probably the ancient trivium and quadrivium; enlarged,
perhaps after the sixteenth century, according to the increase of
learning, and the apparent necessity of higher qualifications. But it
would be, I conceive, a great mistake to imagine that the requisitions
for academical degrees were ever much insisted upon. The universities
sent forth abundance of illiterate graduates in every age. And as they
had little influence, at least of a favourable sort, either on
philosophy or polite literature, we are not to overrate their importance
in the history of the intellectual progress of mankind.[1426]
[1426] Lord Bacon animadverts (De Cogitatis et Visis) on the fetters
which the universities imposed on the investigation of truth; and
Morhof ascribes the establishment of the academies in Italy to the
narrow and pedantic spirit of the universities, l. i. c. 14.
|Libraries.|
61. Public libraries were considerably enlarged during this period.
Those of Rome, Ferrara, and Florence in Italy, of Vienna and Heidelberg
in Germany, stood much above any others. Sixtus V. erected the splendid
repository of the Vatican. Philip II. founded that of the Escurial,
perhaps after 1580, and collected books with great labour and expense;
all who courted the favour of Spain contributing also by presents of
rarities.[1427] Ximenes had established the library of Alcala;
and that of Salamanca is likewise more ancient than this of the
Escurial. Every king of France took a pride in adding to the royal
library of Paris. By an ordinance of 1556, a copy of every book printed
with privilege was to be deposited in this library. It was kept at
Fontainebleau, but transferred to Paris in 1595. During the civil wars
its progress was slow.[1428] The first prince of Orange founded the
public library of Leyden, which shortly became one of the best in
Europe. The catalogue was published in 1597. That bequeathed by
Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, to the university of Oxford, was dispersed
in the general havoc made under Edward VI. At the close of the century,
the university had no public library. But Sir Thomas Bodley had already,
in 1597, made the generous offer of presenting his own, which was
carried into effect in the first years of the ensuing age.[1429] In the
colleges there were generally libraries. If we could believe Scaliger
these were good; but he had never been in England, and there is no
reason, I believe, to estimate them highly.[1430] Archbishop Parker had
founded, or at least greatly enlarged, the public library of Cambridge.
Many private persons of learning and opulence had formed libraries in
England under Elizabeth; some of which still subsist in the mansions of
ancient families. I incline to believe that there was at least as
competent a stock of what is generally called learning among our gentry
as in any continental kingdom; their education was more literary, their
habits more peaceable, their religion more argumentative. Perhaps we
should make an exception for Italy, in which the spirit of collecting
libraries was more prevalent.
[1427] Mariana, in a long passage wherein he describes the Escurial
palace, gives this account of the library; Vestibulo bibliotheca
imposita, majori longitudine omnino pedum centum octoginta quinque,
lata pedes triginta duos, libros servat præsertim Græcos
manuscriptos, præcipuæ plerosque vetustatis; qui ex omnibus Europæ
partibus ad famam novi operis magno numero confluxerunt: auro
pretiosiores thesauri, _digni quorum evolvendorum major eruditis
hominibus facultas contingeret_. _Quod enim ex captivis et
majestate revinctis literis emolumentum?_ De rege et regis
institutione, l. iii. c. 10. The noble freedom of Mariana breaks
out, we see, in the midst of his praise of royal magnificence. Few,
if any, libraries, except those of the universities, were
accessible to men of studious habits; a reproach that has been very
slowly effaced. I have often been astonished, in considering this,
that so much learning was really acquired.
[1428] Jugler’s Hist. Literaria, c. iii. s. 5. This very laborious work
of the middle of the last century, contains the most ample account
of public libraries throughout Europe that I have been able to
find. The German libraries, with the two exceptions of Vienna and
Heidelberg, do not seem to have become of much importance in the
sixteenth century.
[1429] Wood’s Hist. and Ant. p. 922.
[1430] Scalig. Secunda, p. 236. De mon temps, he says in the same place,
il y avoit à Londres douze bibliothèques _complètes_, et à Paris
quatre-vingt. I do not profess to understand this epithet.
|Collections of Antiquities in Italy.|
62. The last forty years of the sixteenth century, were a period of
uninterrupted peace in Italy. Notwithstanding the pressure of
governments always jealous, and sometimes tyrannical, it is manifest
that at least the states of Venice and Tuscany had grown in wealth, and
in the arts that attend it. Those who had been accustomed to endure the
license of armies, found a security in the rule of law which compensated
for many abuses. Hence that sort of property, which is most exposed to
pillage, became again a favourite acquisition; and, among the costly
works of art, which adorned the houses of the wealthy, every relic of
antiquity found its place. Gems and medals, which the books of Vico and
Erizzo had taught the owners to arrange and to appreciate, were sought
so eagerly, that, according to Hubert Goltzius, as quoted by Pinkerton,
there were in Italy 380 of such collections. The marbles and bronzes,
the inscriptions of antiquity, were not less in request, and the well
known word, _virtuosi_, applied to these lovers of what was rare
and beautiful in art or nature, bespoke the honour in which their
pursuits were held. The luxury of literature displayed itself in scarce
books, elegant impressions, and sumptuous bindings.
|Pinelli.|
63. Among the refined gentlemen, who devoted to these graceful
occupations their leisure and their riches, none was more celebrated
than Gian Vincenzio Pinelli. He was born of a good family at Naples in
1538. A strong thirst for knowledge, and the consciousness that his
birth exposed him to difficulties and temptations at home which might
obstruct his progress, induced him to seek, at the age of twenty-four,
the university of Padua, at that time the renowned scene of learning and
of philosophy.[1431] In this city he spent forty-three years, the
remainder of his life. His father was desirous that he should practise
the law; but after a short study of this Pinelli resumed his favourite
pursuits. His fortune indeed was sufficiently large to render any
sacrifice of them unreasonable; and it may have been out of dislike of
his compulsory reading, that in forming his vast library he excluded
works of jurisprudence. This library was collected by the labour of many
years. The catalogues of the Frankfort fairs, and those of the principal
booksellers in Italy, were diligently perused by Pinelli; nor did any
work of value appear from the press on either side of the Alps which he
did not instantly add to his shelves. This great library was regularly
arranged, and though he did not willingly display its stores to the
curious and ignorant, they were always accessible to scholars. He had
also a considerable museum of globes, maps, mathematical instruments,
and fossils; but he only collected the scarcer coins. In his manners,
Pinelli was a finely polished gentleman, but of weak health, and for
this cause devoted to books, and seldom mingling with gay society, nor
even belonging to the literary academies of the city, but carrying on an
extensive correspondence, and continually employed in writing extracts
or annotations. Yet he has left nothing that has been published. His own
house was as it were a perpetual academy, frequented by the learned of
all nations. If Pinelli was not a man of great genius, nor born to be of
much service to any science, we may still respect him for a love of
learning, and a nobleness of spirit, which has preserved his
memory.[1432]
[1431] Animadverterat autem hic noster, domi, inter amplexus parentum
et familiarium obsequia, in urbe deliciarum plena, militaribus et
equestribus, quam musarum studiis aptiore, non perventurum sese ad
eam gloriæ metam quam sibi destinaverat, ideo gymnasii Patavini
fama permotus, &c. Gualdi, Vita Pinelli. This life by a
contemporary, or nearly such, is republished in the Vitæ Illustrium
Virorum by Bates.
[1432] Gualdi. Tiraboschi, vi. 214. The library of Pinelli was
dispersed, and in great part destroyed by pirates not long
afterwards. That long since formed by one of his family is well
known to book collectors.
|Italian academies.|
64. The literary academies of Italy continued to flourish even more than
before; many new societies of the same kind were founded. Several
existed at Florence, but all others have been eclipsed by the Della
Crusca, established in 1582. Those of another Tuscan city, which had
taken the lead in such literary associations, did not long survive its
political independence; the jealous spirit of Cosmo extinguished the
Rozzi of Siena in 1568. In governments as suspicious as those of Italy,
the sort of secrecy belonging to these meetings, and the encouragement
they gave to a sentiment of mutual union, were at least sufficient
reasons for watchfulness. We have seen how the academy of Modena was
broken up on the score of religion. That of Venice, perhaps for the same
reason, was dissolved by the senate in 1561, and did not revive till
1593. These, however, were exceptions to the rule; and it was the
general policy of governments to cherish in the nobility a love of
harmless amusements. All Lombardy and Romagna were full of academies;
they were frequent in the kingdom of Naples, and in the ecclesiastical
states.[1433] They are a remarkable feature in the social condition of
Italy, and could not have existed perhaps in any other country. They
were the encouragers of a numismatic and lapidary erudition, elegant in
itself, and throwing for ever its little sparks of light on the still
ocean of the past, but not very favourable to comprehensive observation,
and tending to bestow on an unprofitable pedantry the honours of real
learning. This, indeed, is the inherent vice of all literary societies,
accessible too frequently to those who, for amusement or fashion’s sake,
love as much knowledge as can be reached with facility, and from the
nature of their transactions, seldom capable of affording scope for any
extensive research.
[1433] Tiraboschi, viii. 125-179, is so full on this subject, that I
have not had recourse to other writers who have, sometimes with
great prolixity, investigated a subject more interesting in its
details to the Italians than to us. Ginguéné adds very little to
what he found in his predecessor.
|Society of Antiquaries in England.|
65. No academy or similar institution can be traced at this time, as far
as I know, in France or Germany. But it is deserving of remark, that one
sprung up in England, not indeed of the classical and polite character
that belonged to the Infiammati of Padua, or the Della Crusca of
Florence, yet useful in its objects, and honourable alike to its members
and to the country. This was the Society of Antiquaries, founded by
Archbishop Parker in 1572. Their object was the preservation of ancient
documents, illustrative of history, which the recent dissolution of
religious houses, and the shameful devastation attending it, had exposed
to great peril. They intended also, by the reading of papers at their
meetings, to keep alive the love and knowledge of English antiquity. In
the second of these objects this society was more successful than in the
first; several short dissertations, chiefly by Arthur Agard, their most
active member, have been afterwards published. The Society comprised
very reputable names, chiefly lawyers, and continued to meet till early
in the reign of James, who, from some jealousy, thought fit to dissolve
it.[1434]
[1434] See life of Agard, in Biogr. Brit. and in Chalmers. But the best
account is in the Introduction to the first volume of the
Archæologia. The present society of Antiquaries is the
representative, but after long intermission, of this Elizabethan
progenitor.
|New books and catalogues of them.|
66. The chief cities on this side of the Alps, whence new editions came
forth, were Paris, Basle, Lyons, Leyden, Antwerp, Brussels, Strasburg,
Cologne, Heidelberg, Frankfort, Ingolstadt, and Geneva. In all these,
and in all other populous towns, booksellers, who were generally also
printers, were a numerous body. In London at least forty or fifty were
contemporaneous publishers in the latter part of Elizabeth’s reign; but
the number elsewhere in England was very small. The new books on the
continent, and within the Alps and Pyrenees, found their principal mart
at the annual Frankfort fairs. Catalogues of such books began to be
published, according to Beckmann, in 1554.[1435] In a collective
catalogue of all books offered for sale at Frankfort, from 1564 to 1592,
I find the number, in Latin, Greek, and German, to be about 16,000. No
Italian or French appear in this catalogue, being probably reserved for
another. Of theology in Latin there are 3200, and in this department the
catholic publications rather exceed the protestant. But of the theology
in the German language the number is 3700, not one-fourth of which is
catholic. Scarcely any mere German poetry appears, but a good deal in
both languages with musical notes. Law furnishes about 1600 works. I
reckoned twenty-seven Greek and thirty-two Latin grammars, not counting
different editions of the same. There are at least seventy editions of
parts of Aristotle. The German books are rather more than one-third of
the whole. Among the Latin I did not observe one book by a writer of
this island. In a compilation by Clessius, in 1602, purporting to be a
conspectus of the publications of the sixteenth century, formed partly
from catalogues of fairs, partly from those of public libraries, we
find, at least in the copy I have examined, but which seems to want one
volume, a much smaller number of productions than in the former, but
probably with more selection. The books in modern languages are less
than 1000, half French, half Italian. In this catalogue also the
catholic theology rather outnumbers the protestant, which is perhaps not
what we should have expected to find.
[1435] Hist. of Inventions, iii. 120. “George Willer, whom some
improperly call Viller, and others Walter, a bookseller at
Augsburg, who kept a large shop, and frequented the Frankfort
fairs, first fell upon the plan of causing to be printed every fair
a catalogue of all the new books, in which the size and printers’
names were marked.” There seems to be some doubt whether the first
year of these catalogues was 1554 or 1564: the collection mentioned
in the text leads us rather to suspect the latter.
|Literary correspondence.|
67. These catalogues, in the total absence of literary journals, were
necessarily the great means of communicating to all the lovers of
learning in Cisalpine Europe (for Italy had resources of her own) some
knowledge of its progress. Another source of information was the
correspondence of scholars with each other. It was their constant usage,
far more than in modern times, to preserve an epistolary intercourse. If
their enmities were often bitter, their contentions almost always
violent, many beautiful instances of friendship and sympathy might be
adduced on the other side; they deemed themselves a distinct cast, a
priesthood of the same altar, not ashamed of poverty, nor disheartened
by the world’s neglect, but content with the praise of those whom
themselves thought worthy of praise, and hoping something more from
posterity than they obtained from their own age.
|Bibliographical works.|
68. We find several attempts at a literary or rather bibliographical
history of a higher character than these catalogues. The Bibliotheca
Universalis of Gesner was reprinted in 1574, with considerable
enlargements by Simler. Conrad Lycosthenes afterwards made additions to
it, and Verdier published a supplement. Verdier was also the author of a
Bibliothèque Française, of which the first edition appeared in 1584.
Another with the same title was published in the same year by La Croix
du Maine. Both these follow the strange alphabetical arrangement by
Christian instead of family names, so usual in the sixteenth century. La
Croix du Maine confines himself to French authors, but Verdier includes
all who had been translated. The former is valued for his accuracy and
for curious particulars in biography; the second for the extracts he has
given. Doni pretended to give a history of books in his Libreria, but it
has not obtained much reputation, and falls, according to the testimony
of those who are acquainted with it, below the compilations
above-mentioned.[1436]
[1436] Morhof. Goujet. Biogr. Univ.
|Restraints on the Press.|
69. The despotism of the state, and far more of the church, bore heavily
on the press in Italy. Spain, mistress of Milan and Naples, and Florence
under Cosmo I., were jealous governments. Venice, though we are apt to
impute a rigid tyranny to its senate, appears to have indulged rather
more liberty of writing on political topics to its subjects, on the
condition, no doubt, that they should eulogise the wisdom of the
republic; and, comparatively to the neighbouring regions of Italy, the
praise both of equitable and prudent government may be ascribed to that
aristocracy. It had at least the signal merit of keeping ecclesiastical
oppression at a distance; a Venetian might write with some freedom of
the papal court. One of the accusations against Venice, in her dispute
with Paul V., was for allowing the publication of books that had been
censured at Rome.[1437]
[1437] Ranke, ii. 330.
|Index Expurgatorius.|
70. But Rome struck a fatal blow, and perhaps more deadly than she
intended, at literature in the Index Expurgatorius of prohibited books.
It had long been the regulation that no book should be printed without a
previous license. This was of course a restraint on the freedom of
writing, but it was less injurious to the trade of the printer and
bookseller than the subsequent prohibition of what he had published or
purchased at his own cost and risk. The first list of books prohibited
by the church was set forth by Paul IV. in 1559. His Index includes all
Bibles in modern languages, enumerating forty-eight editions, chiefly
printed in countries still within the obedience of the church. Sixty-one
printers are put under a general ban; all works of every description
from their presses being forbidden. Stephens and Oporinus have the
honour of being among these.[1438] This system was pursued and
rigorously acted upon by the successors of the imperious Caraffa. The
council of Trent had its own list of condemned publications. Philip II.
has been said to have preceded the pope himself in a similar
proscription. Wherever the sway of Rome and Spain was felt, books were
unsparingly burned, and to this cause is imputed the scarcity of many
editions.
[1438] Schelhorn, Amœnit. Liter. vii. 98. viii. 342 and 485. The two
dissertations on prohibited books here quoted are full of curious
information.
|Its effects.|
71. In its principle, which was apparently that of preserving obedience,
the prohibitory system might seem to have untouched many great walks of
learning and science. It is of course manifest that it fell with but an
oblique blow upon common literature. Yet, as a few words or sentences
were sufficient to elicit a sentence of condemnation, often issued with
little reflection, it was difficult for any author to be fully secure;
and this inspired so much apprehension into printers, that they became
unwilling to incur the hazard of an obnoxious trade. These occupations,
says Galluzzi, which had begun to prosper at Florence, never recovered
the wound inflicted by the severe regulations of Paul IV. and Pius
V.[1439] The art retired to Switzerland and Germany. The booksellers
were at the mercy of an Inquisition, which every day contrived new
methods of harassing them. From an interdiction of the sale of certain
prohibited books, the church proceeded to forbid that of all which were
not expressly permitted. The Guinti, a firm not so eminent as it had
been in the early part of the century, but still the honour of Florence,
remonstrated in vain. It seems probable, however, that after the death
of Pius V., the most rigorous and bigoted pontiff that ever filled the
chair, some degree of relaxation took place.
[1439] Ist. del Gran Ducato, iii. 442.
|Restrictions in England.|
72. The restraints on the printing and sale of books in England, though
not so overpowering as in Italy, must have stood in the way of useful
knowledge under Elizabeth. The Stationers’ Company, founded in 1555,
obtained its monopoly at the price of severe restrictions. The Star
Chamber looked vigilantly at the dangerous engine it was compelled to
tolerate. By the regulations it issued in 1585, no press was allowed to
be used out of London, except one at Oxford, and another at Cambridge.
Nothing was to be printed without allowance of the council; extensive
powers both of seizing books and of breaking the presses were given to
the officers of the crown.[1440] Thus every check was imposed on
literature, and it seems unreasonable to dispute that they had some
efficacy in restraining its progress, though less, perhaps, than we
might in theory expect, because there was always a certain degree of
connivance and indulgence. Even the current prohibition of importing
popish books, except for the use of such as the council should permit to
use them, must have affected the trade in modern Latin authors beyond
the bounds of theology.
[1440] Herbert, iii. 1668.
|Latin more employed on this account.|
73. These restrictions do not seem to have had any material operation in
France, in Germany, or the Low Countries. And they certainly tended very
considerably to keep up the usage of writing in Latin; or rather,
perhaps, it may be said, they were less rigorously urged in those
countries, because Latin continued to be the customary tongue of
scholars. We have seen that great license was used in political writings
in that language. The power of reading Latin was certainly so diffused,
that no mystery could be affected by writing it; yet it seemed to be a
voluntary abstaining from an appeal to the passions of the multitude,
and passed better without censure than the same sense in a modern dress.
|Influence of literature.|
74. The influence of literature on the public mind was already very
considerable. All kinds of reading had become deeper and more diffused.
Pedantry is the usual, perhaps the inevitable, consequence of a genuine
devotion to learning, not surely in each individual, but in classes and
bodies of men. And this was an age of pedants. To quote profusely from
ancient writers, seemed to be a higher merit than to rival them; they
furnished both authority and ornament, they did honour to the modern,
who shone in these plumes of other birds with little expense of thought,
and sometimes the actual substance of a book is hardly discernible under
this exuberance of rich incrustations. Tacitus, Sallust, Cicero, and
Seneca (for the Greeks were in comparison but little read), and many of
the Latin poets, were the books that, directly, or by the secondary
means of quotation, had most influence over the public opinion. Nor was
it surprising that the reverence for antiquity should be still
undiminished; for, though the new literature was yielding abundant
crops, no comparison between the ancients and moderns could as yet
fairly arise. Montaigne, fearless and independent as he was, gave up
altogether the pretensions of the latter; yet no one was more destined
to lead the way to that renunciation of the authority of the former
which the seventeenth century was to witness. He and Machiavel were the
two writers who produced the greatest effect upon this age. Some others,
such as Guevara and Castiglione, might be full as much read, but they
did not possess enough of original thought to shape the opinions of
mankind. And these two, to whom we may add Rabelais, seem to be the only
writers of the sixteenth century, setting aside poets and historians,
who are now much read by the world.
INDEX.
Page
Aberlard, Poetry of, 17
Academies, Italian Literary, 229
Academy del Cimento, The, 831
---- French, Established, 630
---- Neapolitan, 112
Afra Behn, Plays of, 808
Agricola, The first Mineralogist, 227
---- Works of, 103
Agrippa, Cornelius, 192
Augustine, Antonio, 201
Alamanni, 202
Alciati, Andrew, 201
Aldine Editions, The, 109
Aldus, Press of, 125
Algebra, Descartes on, 650
---- Earliest Work on, 118
Alchemy, Study of, 58
Amadis de Gaul, The, 66, 152
Aminto, Passo’s, 351
Amyot, His Translations, 371
Ana, The, 820
Anatomy, Fallopius on, 397
---- Leaders in studying, 842
Andreæ, John Valentine, 532, _and note_
Anglo-Saxon, Change of, to English, 22
Antiquaries, Society of, founded, 405
Apianus, Cosmography of, 228
Apology, Jewell’s, 272
Arabic, Rise of Study of, 399
Arcadia, Sir Philip Sydney’s, 383
---- Character of, 383
---- Walpole on, 383
Aretin, Leonard, 44
---- Plays of, 211
Argensola, The Brothers, 570
Arianism in Italy, 181
Ariosto, Satires of, 203
Aristotle countenanced by Melancthon, 189
---- Veneration shown for, 189
Arithmetic of Sacro Bosco, 56
Arnauld on true and false ideas, 725
Art of Rhetoric, Cox’s, 219
Ascham, His Character of Cambridge, 168
---- Writings of, 372
Astronomy in Middle Ages, 58
Augsburg, Confession of, 173
---- Diet of, 259
Averroes on the Soul, 93
Avis aux Refugiéz, 772
Ayala, Balthazar, on War, 315
Bacon, Lord, 468
---- Conception of his Philosophy, 469
---- Essays of, 293, 529
---- his fame on the Continent, 489
---- his Instauratio Magna, 469
---- ---- ---- ---- Analysis of, 469
---- ignorant of Mathematics, 488
---- Nature of his Philosophy, 472
---- Novum Organum, 478
---- Plan of Philosophy, 469
Bacon, Roger, 57
Balbi, Catholicon of, 40
Baldi, Sonnets of, 319
Ballads, Early Spanish, 59
Balzac, Letters of, 628
Bandello, Novels of, 380
Barbarism, A relapse into, 38
Barbarus, Hermolaus, 111
Barclay, his works, 642
Barlæus, Gaspar, 589
Barrow, Sermons of, 703
Basson, Sebastian, 463
Bath, Adelard of, 56
Bayle on the Comet, 819
---- his Dictionary, 819
---- Philosophical Commentary of, 700
Beaumont, Fletcher and, 611
Bellarmin, Works of, 273
Bellenden, de Statu, 534
Bello Francesco, 113
Belon, Zoology of, 394
Belphegor, Machiavel’s, 215
Bembo, Care of, 159
---- Life of, 217
---- Works of, 159, 201
Berigard, Claude, 463
Benserade, Poems of, 781
Bentley, Richard, the Critic, 682
Berchonius, 59
Beza, Works of, 27
Bible, Cranmer’s, 187
---- First printed, 76
---- Latin Versions of the, 137
---- Mazarin, 77
---- The Authorised Version, 457
Bibles, Early English, 187
Block-books, 75
Blood, Circulation of the, discovered, 665
Boccalini, Trajan, 624
Bodin, compared with Aristotle and Machiavel, 310
Bodleian, Foundation of the, 674
Boehm, Jacob, 464
Boethius, his Consolation of Philosophy, 1
---- Poem on, 13
Boiardo, Works of, 112
Boileau, Works of, 780
Bookselling, Rise of, 121
---- The Universities and, 123
Books, Early, price and form of, 122
---- Number of, printed at close of the Fourteenth Century, 120
---- Price of in Middle Ages, 52
---- Sold by printers, 121
Bossu on Epic Poems, 816
Bossuet, Exposition of Faith, 688
---- other Works, 689
---- Sermons of, 702
Botany, Turner’s, 395
Botero, Giovanni, 301
Boucher, Treatise of, 299
Bouhours, Works by, 813
Bourdalone, Style of, 701
Boyle, Works of, 833
Brahé, Tycho, 387
---- System of, 387
Brandt, Sebastian, 117
Browne, Thomas, 531
---- his Religio Medici, 531
---- William, 581
Bruno, characteristics of his system, 285
Buchanan, de Jure Regni, 296
---- Poetry of, 349
Buda, Royal Library at, 81
Budæus, Budé on, 115
---- his Commentaries, 161
---- Style of, 162
Bunyan, John, 828
Burnet, his Theory of Earth, 841
Burton, The Anatomy of Melancholy, 637
Bury, Richard of, 39
Butler, Hudibras of, 783
Byzantine Literature, 48
Cabbala, The Jewishp, 100
Calderon, his Comedies, 593
----- his Tragedies, 595
Calendar, Gregorian, 390
Calisto and Melibœa, Drama of, 128
Calvin, John, 177
---- Institutes of, 177
Camoenss, The Lusiad of, 330
Cancionero General, The, 61
Cardan, Jerome, 193
---- Discoveries of, 221
Carew, Poetry of, 584
Cartesian Theory, The, 655
Casa, Poems of, 318
Casaubon, Isaac, 248, 410
---- Wavering of, 428, 430, _note_
Cassander, Consultation of, 265
Castalio, Sebastian, 270
Castelvetro, Ludovico, 377
Castile, Rhymes in Language of, 60
---- The Language of, 21
Castillejo, 329
Casuistry, Schemes of, 523
Casuists, English, 527
---- Literature of the, 521
Cathani, Labours of, 276
Catholicon, Balbi’s, 40
Cats, Father, 577
Caxton, First Works of, 79
Celio Magno, Odes of, 319
Celso Minop, 271
Cena de li Ceneri, The, 282
Century, Twelfth, Progress during, 6
Cervantes, his Don Quixote, 638
---- Minor Novels, 640
Cesalpin, System of, 280
Ceva, Poems of, 791
Chapman, his Translation of Homer, 341
Charlemagne, Few schools before, 4
---- Greeks under, 45
---- Work effected by, 4
Charron, Pierre, 529
---- on Wisdom, 529
Chaucer, Gower and, 24
Chaulieu, Poems of, 781
Cheke, Teaching of, 168
Chiabrera, Poems of, 569
---- Style of, 569
Chillingworth, his Religion of Protestants, 436
China, Jesuits in, 401
Chivalry, Effects of, on Poetry, 64
---- Romances of, 215
Christianismi Restitutio, The, 268, _note_
Christianity, Vindicators of, 699
Chronicle, The Saxon, 23
Chronology, Lydiat’s, 420
---- Scaliger’s, 258
Chrysoloras, Disciples of, 49
Chrysostom, Saville’s, 412
Church, Early Learning in the, 2
---- High, Rise of in England, 427, 435
Cicero, Editions of, 160
Ciceronianus, The, 159
---- Scaliger on the, 160
Cid, The, 597
Citizens, Privileges of, 303
Clarendon, History of, 636
Classics, First Editions of, 231
Clergy, Discipline of the, 261
---- Prejudices of, against profane learning, 2
---- Use of their prejudices, 3
Codex, Chartaceus, 30
Colleges at Alcala and Louvain, 134
---- not derived from Saracens, 9
Colonna, Vittoriap, 202
Columbus, the Anatomist, 398
Columns, Double, use of, 241
Comedies of the Restoration, 807
Comedy, First English, 214
Comenius, Popularity of, 409
Commès, Philip de, 118
Commentators, English, about 1600, 453
Commonwealths, Origin of, 303
Concord, Form of, 267
Congreve, Plays of, 807, 808
Conti, Account of the East by, 72
Controversy raised by Baius, 267
Copernican Theory, The, 386
Copernicus, Labours of, 222
Corneille, Pierre, Plays of, 597
---- Style of, 598
Corneille, Thomas, 799
Cortesius, Paulus, 89
Costanzo, Poems of, 319
Cowley, Johnson’s Character of, 580
Crashaw and Donne, 580
Crellius, Ruanus and, 440
Cremonini, 281
Criticism in the Sixteenth Century, 375
Critics about 1600, 414
Cruquius of Ypres, 236
Cudworth, Ralph, 707
Cumberland, Richard, 747
Daillé on the Fathers, 435
Dalgarno, George, 735
Daniel, his History of England, 635
Dante, Petrarch and, 22
De Bergerac, Novels of, 827
De Gongora, Luis, 572
---- Style of, 572
---- Works of, 572
De Leon, Luis, 328
De Lisle, Map of the World by, 845
De Retz, Memoirs of, 846
De Sevigné, Madame, 812
De Vega, Lope, 353
---- Fertility of, 353
---- Popularity of, 354
---- Style of, 354
---- Versification of, 354
De Villegas, Manuel Estevan, 571
Dead, Dialogues of the, 811
Decline of German Poetry, 20
Defensio Fidei Nicenæ, The, 695
Deistical Writers, 277
Delineation, Arts of, 93
Della Causa, The, 282
Delphin Editions, 680
Denham, Sir John, 579
Descartes, René, 491
---- Attacked by Gassendi, 497
---- Charged with Plagiarism, 505
---- Early Life, 491
---- his Meditations, 495
---- his Mental Labours, 492
---- his Paradoxes, 499
---- his Publications, 492
---- his Superiority, 497
---- Merits of his Writings, 503
---- on Free will, 503
---- on Intuitive Truth, 501
Desportes, Poems of, 335
Deventes, College at, 54
Devotional Works in 1600, 454
Dictionary, Della Crusca, 625
Dodorus, Clusius and, 396
D’Oliva, Perez, 195
Don Quixote, 638
Don Sancho Ortiz, Analysis of, 355
Donne, Crashaw and Cowley, 580
Dramatic Mysteries, Origin of, 105
Drayton, Michael, 581
---- His Polyolbion, 591
Dryden, Early Poems, 787
---- Fables, 789
---- Odes, 790
---- Style of, 821
---- Tragedies, 805
---- Translations, 790
Ductor Dubitantium, Taylor’s, 745
Dunbar, Poems of, 130
Dupin on Ancient Discipline, 686
Du Vair, Works of, 371
Earle, John, Works of, 637
Eastern Languages, Early Study of, 128
Ecclesiastical Polity, The, 289
Elizabeth, Learning under, 249
Encomium Moræ, The, 143
Encyclopædias of Middle Ages, 58
England, Reformed Tenets in, 178
England, Revival of Learning in, 3
English, Use of, 22
Equations, Cubic, Invention of, 220
Episcopius, Works of, 440
Erasmus, Adages of, 139
---- Character of, 139
---- Epistles of, 175
---- First Visit to England, 116
---- His Controversy with Luther, 174
---- Jealousy of, 139
---- Quotations from, 140
---- Testament of, 142
---- Zeal of, 114
Erastianism, Disputes on, 444
Ercilla, The Araucana of, 329
Erpenius, Works of, 671
Essays, Bacon’s, 293
---- Montaigne’s, 290
---- Sir W. Temple’s, 824
Essex, Earl of, 633
Etherege, Plays of, 808
Euclid, Early Translations of, 56
Europe, Language in, in 1400, 25
Eustachius on Anatomy, 397
Evelyn, Works of, 821
Faber of Savoy, 313
Fabricius on the Language of Brutes, 663
Faery Queen, The, 343
---- Style of, 344
---- Superiority of First Volume, 343
Fallopius on Anatomy, 397
Fanaticism, Growth of, 172
Farces, First Real, 107
Farquhar, Plays of, 809
Fenelon on Female Education, 761
---- Works of, 696
Fermat, the Geometer, 651
Fernel, Works of, 220
Ferreira, 331
Ficinus, Works of, 98
Fiction, Popular Moral, 66
Figures in MSS. of Boethius, 55
Filacaja, Vincenzo, 777
Filli di Sciro, The, 592
Fléchier, Style of, 703
Fletcher, Beaumont and, 611
---- Phineas and Giles, 577
Fleury, Ecclesiastical History, 687
Florence, Academy of, 229
---- History of, 199
Fontenelle, Character of, 810, 817
---- Poems of, 782
Ford, John, 621
France, Troubadours of, 21
Francesca of Rimini, 26
Franco-Gallia, The, 295
Free will, Molina on, 268
France, Classical Study in, 53
French, Diffusion of, 19
---- During Eleventh Century, 14
---- Early, 13
---- in England, Disuse of, 24
---- Whence it came, 13
Friars, Mendicant, The, 9
Fuchs, Leonard, 226
Fur Prædestinatus, Sancroft’s, 693
Galileo, compared with, Bacon, 486
---- Discoveries of, 653
Gallantry, Effects of on Poetry, 64
---- Probable Origin of, 64
Garnier, 357
Gascoyne, George, 337
Gasparin, Style of, 43
---- Works of, 42, 43
Gassendi, Syntagma Philosophicum of, 710
---- Bernier on, 713
---- Works of, 467, 468
Gemalis Dies, The, 160
Genius, Want of, in Dark Ages, 5
Gentilis, Albenius, 316
---- De Jure Belli, 377
Geology, Rise of the Science, 840
Gerard, Herbal of, 397
German Poetry, Decline of, 20
---- ---- of Swabian Period, 19
Germany, Schools in, 89
Gesner, Conrad, 241, 392
---- His Zoology, 392
---- Quadrupeds discovered by, 393
Gilbert, his Treatise on the Magnet, 392
Glanvil, his Scepsis Scientifica, 733
---- the Plus Ultra, 735
Glosa, Nature of the, 61
Glosses, Meaning of, 31
---- Use of, 31
Gloucester, Library of Duke of, 54
Godefroy, James, 775
Gomberville, 641
Gorboduc, Sackville’s, 359
Governor, Sir T. Elyot’s, 195
Gower, Chaucer and, 24
Grammars of the Sixteenth Century, 239 _note_.
---- Provençal, 14
Greek, better known after 1580, 251
---- Corruption of Language, 47
---- Dawn of in England, 115
---- Early Grammars and Lexicons, 112
---- Latin Translations of, 50
---- Learned by Petrarch, 48
---- Learning in Middle Ages, 45
---- Printing, Early, 84
---- Revival of Study of, 44
---- Study of at Paris, 91
---- Taught by Chrysoloras, 49
---- Taught to Boys, 167
Greeks, Emigration of, to Italy, 52
Grew, Discoveries of, 839
Grocyn, Linaire and, 135
Groot, Gerard, College of, 54
Grotius, De Imperio Circa Sacra, 444
---- De Jure Belli, 544 _et seq._
---- his Arrangement, 565
---- his Defects, 565
---- Objections to, 561
---- Religious Doubts of, 428
---- Vindicated against Rousseau, 565
---- Works of, 414
Gruchius, Works of, 255
Gruter, his Collection of Inscriptions, 419
---- his Suspicions, 413
Grymæus, Geography of, 228
Guevara, Treatise of, 194
Guiciardini, History of, 402
Guidi, Poems of, 777
Gymnasium, Roman, 131
Habington, 585
Hales on Schism, 438
Hardy, Plays of, 596
Harmonia Apostolica, Bull’s, 694
Harriott, Works of, 649
Harvey, his Anatomical Discoveries, 665
Havelok the Dane, 18
Hawes, Stephen, 153
Hebraists of the Fifteenth Century, 227
Hebrew, First Printed, 95
---- in the Sixteenth Century, 670
Heinsius, Daniel, 413
Herbert, Lord, of Cherbury, 456, 465
Herrera, Works of, 329
Herrick, Robert, 586
Heterodoxy, Italian, 179
Heywood, Plays of, 622
---- Thomas, 363
Hippocrates, Study of, 224
History, Natural, from 1600-1650, 662
Hobbes, Political Works of, 538
---- The Leviathan of, 506
---- Analysis of, 506 _et seq._
Hooft, Peter, 577
Hooke, Works of, 834
Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity, 289
---- his Theory of Natural Law, 290
Horace, Lambinus’s, 235
Hottoman, Francis, 295
Hudibras, Butler’s, 783
Huet, The Censura of, 715
Hymns, German, 206
Icon Basilice, The, 636
Immutable Morality, Cudworth’s, 745
Index Expurgatorius, The, 407
Ingulfus, History of, 15
Instauratio Magna, The, 469
Irnerius, Works of, 31
Italian, Early, 22
---- Language, Origin of, 10
Italy, Printing in, 83
Jansenism, Rise of, 441
Jansenius, Tenets of, 691
Jesuits, Colleges of the, 262
---- Patronized by Popes, 263
---- Rise of the, 181
---- Rising Influence of the, 261
---- their Popularity, 181
Jewell, Apology of, 272
Joachim, Rhæticus, 388
Jodelle, Father of the French Theatre, 357
John II., Poetry under, 62
---- of Ravenna, 41
---- of Salisbury, 36
Jonson, Ben, 585
---- his Every Man in his Humour, 369
---- Plays of, 609
Journal des Sçavans, The, 817
Julian Period, Invention of the, 258
Jurisprudence, Golden Ages of, 311
---- in 1500, 200
Jurists, Decline of, after Accursius, 32
---- Early, 32
---- Scholastic, 33
Kempis, Thomas à, Works of, 68
Kepler, Discoveries of, 652
King’s Quair, The, 63
Knolles, his History of the Turks, 634
Knowledge, Limited by Sense, 481
La Bruyere, Characters of, 758
La Fayette, Madame, 826
La Fontaine, Fables of, 779
La Forge, Regis and, 714
La Motte le Vayer, 632
La Noue, Works of, 301
Labbe, Philip, 411
Lacteals, Discoveries of the, 668
Land, Views of, 427
Lanfrance and his Schools, 35
Language, A New, formed from Latin, 12
Language, Early Imperfections of, 6
---- Modern, Metres of, 15
Languet, Vindicæ of, 295
Latin becomes a New Language, 12
---- Colloquial Corruption of, 11
---- in the Lower Empire, 11
---- in the Seventh Century, 12
---- Origin of Rhyme in, 16
---- Poems, Mediæval, 210
Latinists, Apology for the, 217
---- in 1600, 415
Laws, Abridgments of, 31
Layamon, Works of, 23
Leaguers, Tenets of the, 298
Learned, Persecution of the, 81
Learning, Decline of in Sixth Century, 2
---- Encouraged by a Pope, 51
---- General, Rise of, 26
---- in England, Revival of, 3
---- in England under Edward VI., 249
Lebrixa, Character of, 86
Legal Study, Importance of, 30
Leibnitz on Roman Law, 775
---- The Protogæa of, 841
Leipsic Acts, The, 819
Leo X., a Patron of Letters, 131
Letters, The Paston, 82
Lexicon, Constantin’s, 237
---- Feirari’s, 672
---- Scapula’s, 238, _note_.
Libraries, New Public, 230
---- Public, Want of, 169
Library, Bodleian, Founded, 674
---- of Charles V., 39
---- Vatican, Founded, 230
Lilly, his Euphues, 373
---- Popularity of, 373
Lipsius, and other antiquaries, 256
Lister, Studies of, 836
Literature, Checks upon, 407
---- Theological, of Sixteenth Century, 183
Loci Communes, The, 275
Locke on Education, 759
---- on Government, 768
---- on Human Understanding, 736
---- on the Coin, 773
---- on Toleration, 700
Logarithms, Invention of, 645
Logic, Aconcio’s, 286
---- Campanella on, 460
---- Inductive, 481 _et seq._
---- Ramus’s, Success of, 288
Lombard, Peter, 7
London, First Theatre in, 360
Lotichius, 347
Love songs, Abelard’s, 17
---- Spanish, 61
Lucan, May’s supplement to, 591
Lully, Raymond, 155
---- his method, 155
Lusiad, The, 330
---- Defects of, 330
---- Excellencies of, 330
Luther, Character of, 182
---- Dangerous tenets of, 148
---- Differences from Zwingle, 172
---- Theses of, 146
Lutrin, The, 780
Lydgate, Works of, 63
Lyndsay, Poems of, 207
Lyrics, Portuguese, early, 117
Machiavel, Nicolas, 196, 211
---- Motives of, 197
---- some of his rules not immoral, 197
---- The Prince, of, 197
---- Works of, 198
Malebranche, Theory of, 717
Malherbe, Poems of, 573
---- Style of, 573
Malpighi, Discoveries of, 840
Manana, de Rege, 299
Mantuan, Works of, 111
Manuscripts, Copying of, 36
Manutius, de Civitate, 253
---- Epistles of, 245
Maps, Early, 94
Maranta on gardening, 395
Margarita, Antoniana, The, 287
Marlowe, Plays of, 360
Marot, Poems of, 206
Marsham, Sir John, 685
Massinger, Philip, 618
Matthiola, System of, 226
Medici, Lorenzo de, 80
Medicine, Early Study of, 58
---- Revival of Greek methods of, 223
Meigret, Orthography of, 219
Melancthon, Early Studies of, 127
---- Tenets of, 266
Melville, Andrew, 253
Memoirs, Political, 301
Mendicant Friars, The, 9
Mendoza, Works of, 208, 673
Mercator, Gerard, 402
Metre, Romances in, 18
Metres of Modern Languages, 15
---- Spanish, 60
Microscope, first used in Anatomy, 842
Milton, John, 586
---- Allegro, 587
---- Compared with Dante, 784
---- Comus, 586
---- Il Penseroso, 587
---- Lycidas, 587
---- Paradise Lost, 783
---- Paradise Regained, 787
---- Samson Agonistes, 787
---- Sonnets, 588
Minot, Lawrence, 24
Mirandola, Picus of, 101
---- Credulity of, 101
---- Literary Works of, 102
Miscellanies of Politian, 95
Moliére, Plays of, 799
Montaigne, Essays of, 290
---- Characteristics of, 291
Montesquieu, Bodin compared with, 310
Moralities, Early, 107
Morals, Italian writers on, 292
More, Henry, 709
More, Utopia of, 137
Morgante Maggiore, The, 97
Morison, Robert, 837
Motion, Laws of, 658
Mun, Thomas, on Foreign Trade, 773
Muretus, Marc Antony, 233
Mysteries, Desire to explore, 99
---- Early English, 105
Naudé, Gabriel, 534
Napier, Works of, 645
Nizolius, Marius, 286
Norris, Essay of, 725
Northern Seas, Discoveries in, 401
Nosce Teipsum, The, 340
Novum Organum, The, 478
Numencia, The, of Cervantes, 356
Numerals, Arabic, 55
Numismatics, Works on, 257
Oceana, Harrington’s, 766
Opinion, Religious, in Fifteenth Century, 67
Opitz, Martin, 575
---- Followers of, 576
Optics, Discoveries in, 660
Opus Magnus, Bacon’s, 57
Oracles, The History of, 811
Orientalists, Celebrated, 844
Orlando Furioso, The, 150
---- a continuation of Boiardo, 150
---- its popularity, 150
---- its want of seriousness, 150
---- Style of, 151
Orlando Innamorata, The, 112
Ortelius, Works of, 401
Otway, Plays of, 806
Oxford, University of, founded, 8
Paley, Compared with Puffendorf, 707
Pallavicino, Ferrante, 625
Pantheism, Bruno and, 283
Papal Power, Decline of, 425
Papal Power, Discussion of, 274
Paper, Cotton, First use of, 28
---- Invention of, 28
---- Linen, as old as 1100, 29
---- ---- First use of, 28
---- ---- Known to Peter of Clugni, 29
---- of mixed materials, 29
Papias, Vocabulary of, 36
Papyrus, Use of the, 28
Paracelsus, Theophrastus, 191, 463
---- his extravagances, 192
---- his impostures, 192
Paradise Lost, Milton’s, 783
Parchment, Use of, 28
Paris, University of, founded, 6
---- ---- increase of, 8
Paruta, Paolo, 302
Pascal, Malebranche and, 724
---- Provincial letters of, 744
---- Thoughts of, 697, 725
Pastor Fido, Guarini’s, 351
Pastourelles, Early, 18
Patrizzi, 281
Pearson on the Creed, 704
Peele, Greene and, 362
Pelletier, Algebra of, 385
Pellican, 227
Perkins, his Cases of Conscience, 527
Perrault, Charles, 816
Petavius, the Jesuit, 421
Peter Martyr, Epistles of, 156
Petrarch, Dante and, 22
---- Latin Poems of, 41
---- Restoration of Letters by, 40
---- Style of, 41
Philology, Stephens’s Works on, 243
Philosophy, Consolation of, 1
---- Scholastic, Defeat of, 188
---- Scholastic, Origin of, 7
---- Speculative, 188
---- Stanley’s History of, 707
Pibrac, 335
Pilgrim’s Progress, The, 828
Pinelli, Occupations of, 404
Platonists, Aristotelians and, 74
Poem, Early, on Boethius, 13
Poetry, Early English, 62
---- German, Decline of, 20
---- German, of Swabian Period, 19
---- Provençal, 16
Poets, Early Spanish, 203
---- Elizabethan, 342
---- Minor, from 1650-1700, 790
Poggio, Bracciolini, 42
---- on the Views of Rome, 72
Politian, Works of, 95, 105
Political Philosophy in the Sixteenth Century, 294
Polyglott, Walton’s, 843
Pontanus, Works of, 111
Popery, Taylor’s Dissuasive from, 690
Port-Royal Writers, 679
Poynet on Politique Power, 296
Prerogative Argument, 485, _note_.
Press, The, of Aldus, 125
Printing, Effects of, on Reformation, 124
---- Invention of, 75
---- Progress of, 79
---- Restraint of, 124
Progress in the Tenth Century, 4
Prophesying, Taylor’s Liberty of, 449
Prose-writers under Elizabeth, 373
Protestantism Extinguished in Italy, 260
---- ---- ---- ---- And Spain, 261
Protestants, use of the Term, 173
---- The Religion of, 426
Provençal Grammar, 14
Psalter, Early Printed, 77
Publications, Early European, 85
Puffendorf, his Theory of Politics, 762
---- The Law of Nature, 753
Pulci, Works of, 97
Purbach, Discoveries of, 78
Quevedo, Satires of, 571
---- Visions of, 825
Rabelais, 216
Racine, Plays of, 793, 802
---- Style of, 798
Raleigh, his History of the World, 635
Ramus, Peter, mentioned by Bacon, 191
---- Peter, New Logic of, 190
Ramusio, Voyages of, 400
Rapin, René, on Gardens, 792
---- Critical Works of, 815
Ray, Works of, 835, 838
Reading and Writing, Ignorance of, 25
Réflexions sur l’Eloquence, Les, 815
Reformation, Burnet’s History of the, 846
---- Origin of the, 146
Regiomontanus, 93
Regnard, Plays of, 802
Regnier, Statues of, 574
Religion, Differences of, Effects of, on Poetry, 66
Republic, Analysis of the, 302
Reuchlin,, 104
---- The Monks and, 145
Reviews, Early, 817
Rhetoric, Cox’s Art of, 219
Rhetorique, Wilson’s Art of, 379
Rhyme, Origin of in Latin, 16
Ribeyro, Works of, 205
Richard of Bury, 39
Richelieu, his Care for Liberty, 426
Rienzi, The Story of, 52
Rivinus, System of, 838
Rochefoucault, 757
Roger Bacon, Works of, 57
Roman Laws, never wholly unknown, 31
Romances, Metrical, 18
---- of Chivalry, The, 65
Rome, Loss of Learning on Fall of, 1
---- Conversions to, 263
---- Supremacy of, 422
Ronsard, Poems of, 333
Roscelin, Story of, 7
Rose, Bishop of Senlis, 298
Rosmunda, The, 132
Rota, Bernardino, 320
Rowley, Thomas, 83
Royal Society, Origin of the, 832
Ruanus, Crellius and, 440
Rueda, Lope de, 212
Ruel, Studies of, 226
Rymer on Tragedy, 823
Sachs, Hans, Dramas of, 213
Sackville, Works of, 336
St. Evremond, 812
Salmasius, Works of, 412, 415
Salvator, Rosa, Satires of, 778
Sanchez, Minerva of, 244
---- Sceptical Theory of, 285
Sansons, Maps of the, 844
Santeul, Latin Poems, 793
Sarpi, Fra Paolo, 423
Saville on Roman Militia, 257
Saxon Chronicle, The, 23
Scaliger, Joseph, 247
---- as a Critic, 375
Scaliger assists Gruter, 419
Scarron, Roman Comique of, 826
Schools, Early teaching in, 136
---- Greek Taught in, 251
Science in Sixteenth Century, 645
Sciences, Academy of, at Paris, 832
---- of Middle Ages, 55
Scioppius, Work of, 416
Scot, Reginald, 278
Scotland, Learning in about 1550, 253
Scotus, 91
---- Reasonings of, 92
Scripture, Early Translation of, 85
Sebonde, Raymond de, 69
---- Real Objects of, 70
Secchia Rapita, The, 568
Secular Variation, Law of, 176
Segrais, Novels of, 827
Seicentisti, Opinions on the, 566
Selden, De Jure Naturali, 528
Semi-Pelagian School, The, 439
Sermons, Donne’s and Taylor’s, 454
---- Latimer’s, 184
Serra, Antonio, 537
Servetus, Labours of, 180
---- Life of, 269
Servitude, Domestic, 303
Shadwell, Plays of, 808
Shakspeare, William, 364, 602
---- As You Like it, 369
---- Comedy of Errors, 365
---- First Writings, 364
---- Historical Plays, 368
---- Love’s Labours Lost, 365
---- Lear, 604
---- Lucrece, 340
---- Measure for Measure, 603
---- Merry Wives of Windsor, 603
---- Midsummer Night’s Dream, 365
---- Pericles, 605
---- Poems, 340
---- Roman Tragedies, 606
---- Romeo and Juliet, 366
---- Sonnets, 582
---- Twelfth Night, 602
---- Two Gentlemen of Verona, 365
---- Venus and Adonis, 340
Shirley, Plays of, 621
Skelton, Works of, 154
Smith, Teaching of, 167
Societies, German Literary, 575
Socinianism, Rise of, 181
Sonnets, Shakspeare’s, 583
Soto, Dominic, 289
South, Sermons of, 704
Southern, Plays of, 807
Spain, Pastoral Romances of, 117
Spanish Language, Origin of, 10
Spenser, his Sense of Beauty, 344
---- Resembles Ariosto, 344
---- Shepherd’s Kalendar of, 337
---- Style of, 345
Spregel, the Dutch Ennius, 576
Spinosa, Ethics of, 726, 746
---- Politics of, 764
Stampa, Gaspara, 321
---- her Love for Collalto, 321
---- her Second Love, 322
---- her Style, 322
Statics, Galileo’s, 657
Stephens, Thesaurus of, 163, 237
---- Works of, 236
Stevinus, Statics of, 391
Strada, his Prolusiones, 627
Sturm on German Schools, 165
Suarez, of Granada, 524
---- on Laws, 544
---- Works of, 525
Surrey, Wyatt and, 207
Surville, Clotilde de, 83
Swift, his Tale of a Tub, 831
Sydney, Algernon, on Government, 767
---- Sir Philip, his Defence of Poesie, 338
---- his Poetry, 339
Syriac, New Testament in, 399
Table Talk, Selden’s, 532
Tacitus of Lipsius, The, 235
Tale of a Tub, The, 831
Talent, Deficiency of Poetical, in Tenth Century, 5
Tasso, Bernardo, The Amadigi of, 323
---- Torquato, 324
---- compared with others, 326
---- his Jerusalem, 324
---- ---- ---- Characters of, 325
---- ---- ---- Faults in, 325
---- his Styles, 324
---- Virgil and, 326
Tassoni, Alessandro, 568
Taste, Prevalence of Bad, 5
Tauler, John, 25
Taylor, Bishop Jeromy, 447
Telemaque, Fenelon’s, 828
Telesio, System of, 281
Theatre, English, Revival of, 804
---- First French, 107
Theosophists, Paracelsists, and, 463
Thesauri of Grævius and Gronovius, 683
Thesaurus Criticus, Gruter’s, 234
Thomas À Kempis, School of, 55
Tillotson, Sermons of, 704
Toleration, Arguments for, 446
Tournebœuf, or Turnebus, 233
Tournefort, System of, 838
Tractate, Milton’s, 758
Tracts, Statistical, 775
Treatise de Imitatione Christi, 68
Trent, Council of, 182
---- ---- Efforts of, 264
Trinitarian Controversy, The, 268
Turkish Spy, The, 829
Tyndale, Bible of, 187
Tyrannicide, Poynet and, 297
Universities, Rise of, 8
Usher, Chronology of, 684
Usury, Noodt on, 776
Utopia, More’s, 137
Valla, Laurentius, 72
---- Defects of his Work, 73
---- Heeren’s Praise of it, 73
---- Testament, Annotations on New, 73
Valors, Henry, 681
Van Helmont, 669
Vanbrugh, Plays of, 809
Vanini, Writings of, 455
Vatican Library, The, 230
Vesalius, Works of, 224
Victa, Francis, 385
Victoria, Learning of, 44
Vincent of Beauvais, 59
Vinci, Leonardo de, 108
Vocabulary of Papias, 36
Voiture, Poems of, 574
Vondel, 577
Vossius, Gerard, 417
Vulgar Errors, Browne’s, 677
Vulgate, The, 187
---- Authenticity of, 278
Waller, Poetry of, 782
Walton, the Complete Angler, 824
Webster, Plays of, 622
White, Thomas, 706
Wilkins, Bishop, 736
Wit, Whetstone of, The, 385
Witchcraft, Scot on, 278
Writers, Romish, 183
Writing, Rise of Knowledge of, 27
Wyatt, Surrey and, 207
Wycherley, Plays of, 803
Ximenes, Cardinal, 134
Zerbi, Anatomy of, 130
Zwingle, Work of, 147
Transcriber’s Notes:
This volume contains the table of contents for both Volumes 1 and 2. The
index, contained at the end of Volume 2, was duplicated and added
to this book. Pages 1-408 pertain to this volume, 409-847 to
Volume 2.
Sidenotes were moved to the beginning of the paragraph to which they
pertain and are surrounded by pipes, |like this|.
Words in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like this_.
Transliterations of words and phrases in Greek were added within brackets.
Footnotes were renumbered sequentially, indented, and moved to follow the
numbered section in which the related anchor occurs.
The author/editor usually omitted quotation marks around cited text;
this was not changed. All other punctuation and accents marks were
standardized.
In a later edition of this book, footnote 1009 reads ‘... without name of
place ...’ instead of ‘... without date of place...’ No alteration was
made to this text.
Words with missing or partially printed letters were completed. Obvious
spelling errors were corrected. Capitalization of words was corrected,
where appropriate. Obsolete and archaic spellings were retained.
Variations of names that appear more than once were left unchanged (e.g.
Boccace vs. Boccaccio and Zwingle vs. Zuingle). Other corrections are
listed below.
Corrections:
For consistency within the text, one instance of ‘Shakspaere’ and two
instances of ‘Shakespeare’ were changed to ‘Shakspeare’ and ‘free-will’
was changed to ‘free will.’
Duplicate sidenote, |Vincent of Beauvais|, was removed from Chapter II,
Section 38.
Duplicate word ‘the’ was removed from Chapter IV., Section 11: ‘... much
beyond the the limits of representation...’
In Footnote 579, the Epistle number ‘MVXI’ was changed to ‘MXVI.’
In footnote 1312, ‘αἰ δέ’ was corrected from ‘οἱ δ ε’ in the original.
In the index, ‘Bengard’ was changed to ‘Berigard’; for the entry
‘Calendar, Gregorian,’ the page number was changed from 388 to 390;
and for the entry under Rome, ‘Perversions’ was changed to ‘Conversions.’
*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries, Vol. 1" ***
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