The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

Cernere fumum!

622

Andr. Naugerii, Orationes duae carminaque aliquot, Venet. 1530, 4^o. The few ‘Carmina’ are to be found partly or wholly in the Deliciae. On N. and his death, see Pier. Val. De inf. lit. ed. Menken, 326 sqq.

623

Compare Petrarch’s greeting to Italy, written more than a century earlier (1353) in Petr. Carmina Minora, ed. Rossetti, ii. pp. 266 sqq.

624

To form a notion of what Leo X. could swallow, see the prayer of Guido Postumo Silvestri to Christ, the Virgin, and all the Saints, that they would long spare this ‘numen’ to earth, since heaven had enough of such already. Printed in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, v. 337.

625

Molza’s Poesie volgari e Latine, ed. by Pierantonio Serassi, Bergamo 1747.

626

Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 36.

627

Sannazaro ridicules a man who importuned him with such forgeries: ‘Sint vetera haec aliis, mî nova semper erunt.’ (Ad Rufum, Opera, 1535, fol. 41 a.)

628

‘De mirabili urbe Venetiis’ (Opera, fol. 38 b):

Viderat Adriacis Venetam Neptunus in undis
Stare urbem et toto ponere jura mari:
Nunc mihi Tarpejas quantum vis Juppiter arceis
Objice et illa tui mœnia Martis ait,
Si pelago Tybrim praefers, urbem aspice utramque
Illam homines dices, hanc posuisse deos.

629

Lettere de’principi, i. 88, 98.

630

Malipiero, Ann. Veneti, Arch. Stor. vii. i. p. 508. At the end we read, in reference to the bull as the arms of the Borgia:

‘Merge, Tyber, vitulos animosas ultor in undas;
Bos cadat inferno victima magna Jovi!’

631

On the whole affair, see Roscoe, Leone X., ed. Bossi, vii. 211, viii. 214 sqq. The printed collection, now rare, of these Coryciana of the year 1524 contains only the Latin poems; Vasari saw another book in the possession of the Augustinians in which were sonnets. So contagious was the habit of affixing poems, that the group had to be protected by a railing, and even hidden altogether. The change of Goritz into ‘Corycius senex’ is suggested by Virgil, Georg. iv. 127. For the miserable end of the man at the sack of Rome, see Pierio Valeriano, De infelic. literat. ed. Menken, p. 369.

632

The work appeared first in the Coryciana, with introductions by Silvanus and Corycius himself; also reprinted in the Appendices to Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, and in the Deliciae. Comp. Paul. Jov. Elogia, speaking of Arsillus. Further, for the great number of the epigrammatists, see Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, l. c. One of the most biting pens was Marcantonio Casanova. Among the less known, Jo. Thomas Muscanius (see Deliciae) deserves mention. On Casanova, see Pier. Valer. De infel. lit. ed. Menken, p. 376 sqq.; and Paul. Jov. Elogia, p. 142 sqq., who says of him: ‘Nemo autem eo simplicitate ac innocentiâ vitae melior;’ Arsillus (l. c.) speaks of his ‘placidos sales.’ Some few of his poems in the Coryciana, J. 3 a sqq. L. 1 a, L. 4 b.

633

Marin Sanudo, in the Vite de’duchi di Venezia, Murat. xii. quotes them regularly.

634

Scardeonius, De urb. Patav. antiq. (Graev. thes. vi. 11, col. 270), names as the inventor a certain Odaxius of Padua, living about the middle of the fifteenth century. Mixed verses of Latin and the language of the country are found much earlier in many parts of Europe.

635

It must not be forgotten that they were very soon printed with both the old Scholia and modern commentaries.

636

Ariosto, Satira, vii. Date 1531.

637

Of such children we meet with several, yet I cannot give an instance in which they were demonstrably so treated. The youthful prodigy Giulio Campagnola was not one of those who were forced with an ambitious object. Comp. Scardeonius, De urb. Patav. antiq. in Graev. thes. vi. 3, col. 276. For the similar case of Cecchino Bracci, d. 1445 in his fifteenth year, comp. Trucchi, Poesie Ital. inedite, iii. p. 229. The father of Cardano tried ‘memoriam artificialem instillare,’ and taught him, when still a child, the astrology of the Arabians. See Cardanus, De propria vita cap. 34. Manoello may be added to the list, unless we are to take his expression, ‘At the age of six years I am as good as at eighty,’ as a meaningless phrase. Comp. Litbl. des Orients, 1843, p. 21.

638

Bapt. Mantuan. De calamitatibus temporum, l. i.

639

Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, Progymnasma adversus literas et literatos. Opp. ed. Basil. 1580, ii. 422-445. Dedications 1540-1541; the work itself addressed to Giov. Franc. Pico, and therefore finished before 1533.

640

Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, Hercules. The dedication is a striking evidence of the first threatening movements of the Inquisition.

641

He passed, as we have seen, for the last protector of the scholars.

642

De infelicitate literatorum. On the editions, see above, p. 86, note 4. Pier. Val., after leaving Rome, lived long in a good position as professor at Padua. At the end of his work he expresses the hope that Charles V. and Clement VII. would bring about a better time for the scholars.

643

Comp. Dante, Inferno, xiii. 58 sqq., especially 93 sqq., where Petrus de Vineis speaks of his own suicide.