The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy

How favourable public opinion was to that form of poetry, and how nearly it supplanted all others, has been already shown (p. 252 (#x10_x_10_i40)). We may be very sure that the most gifted and highly developed nation then existing in the world did not renounce the use of a language such as the Italian out of mere folly and without knowing what they were doing. It must have been a weighty reason which led them to do so.

This cause was the devotion to antiquity. Like all ardent and genuine devotion it necessarily prompted men to imitation. At other times and among other nations we find many isolated attempts of the same kind. But only in Italy were the two chief conditions present which were needful for the continuance and development of neo-Latin poetry: a general interest in the subject among the instructed classes, and a partial reawakening of the old Italian genius among the poets themselves—the wondrous echo of a far-off strain. The best of what is produced under these conditions is not imitation, but free production. If we decline to tolerate any borrowed forms in art, if we either set no value on antiquity at all, or attribute to it some magical and unapproachable virtue, or if we will pardon no slips in poets who were forced, for instance, to guess or to discover a multitude of syllabic quantities, then we had better let this class of literature alone. Its best works were not created in order to defy criticism, but to give pleasure to the poet and to thousands of his contemporaries.[600 - For what follows see Deliciae poetarum Italorum; Paul. Jov. Elogia; Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, De poetis nostri temporis; and the Appendices to Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi.]

The least success of all was attained by the epic narratives drawn from the history or legends of antiquity. The essential conditions of a living epic poetry were denied, not only to the Romans who now served as models, but even to the Greeks after Homer. They could not be looked for among the Latins of the Renaissance. And yet the ‘Africa’ of Petrarch[601 - There are two new editions of the poem, that of Pingaud (Paris, 1872), and that of Corradini (Padua, 1874). In 1874 two Italian translations also appeared by G. B. Gaudo and A. Palesa. On the Africa, compare L. Geiger: Petrarca, pp. 122 sqq., and p. 270, note 7.] probably found as many and as enthusiastic readers and hearers as any epos of modern times. The purpose and origin of the poem are not without interest. The fourteenth century recognised with sound historical tact the time of the second Punic war as the noon-day of Roman greatness; and Petrarch could not resist writing of this time. Had Silius Italicus been then discovered, Petrarch would probably have chosen another subject; but, as it was, the glorification of Scipio Africanus the Elder was so much in accordance with the spirit of the fourteenth century, that another poet, Zanobi di Strada, also proposed to himself the same task, and only from respect for Petrarch withdrew the poem with which he had already made great progress.[602 - Filippo Villani, Vite, ed. Galetti, p. 16.] If any justification were needed for the ‘Africa,’ it lies in the fact that in Petrarch’s time and afterwards Scipio was as much an object of public interest as if he were then alive, and that he was held by many to be a greater man than Alexander, Pompey, and Cæsar.[603 - Franc. Aleardi Oratio in laudem Franc. Sfortiae, in Marat. xxv. col. 384. In comparing Scipio with Caesar, Guarino and Cyriacus Anconitanus held the latter, Poggio (Opera, epp. fol. 125, 134 sqq.) the former, to be the greater. For Scipio and Hannibal in the miniatures of Attavante, see Vasari, iv. 41. Vita di Fiesole. The names of both used for Picinino and Sforza. See p. 99. There were great disputes as to the relative greatness of the two. Shepherd-Tonelli, i. 262 sqq. and Rosmini: Guarino, ii. 97-111.] How many modern epics treat of a subject at once so popular, so historical in its basis, and so striking to the imagination? For us, it is true, the poem is unreadable. For other themes of the same kind the reader may be referred to the histories of literature.

A richer and more fruitful vein was discovered in expanding and completing the Greco-Roman mythology. In this too Italian poetry began early to take a part, beginning with the ‘Teseide’ of Boccaccio, which passes for his best poetical work. Under Martin V. Maffeo Vegio wrote in Latin a thirteenth book to the Æneid; besides which we meet with many less considerable attempts, especially in the style of Claudian—a ‘Meleagris,’ a ‘Hesperis,’ and so forth. Still more curious were the newly-invented myths, which peopled the fairest regions of Italy with a primæval race of gods, nymphs, genii, and even shepherds, the epic and bucolic styles here passing into one another. In the narrative or conversational eclogue after the time of Petrarch, pastoral life was treated in a purely conventional manner,[604 - The brilliant exceptions, where rural life is treated realistically, will also be mentioned below.] as a vehicle of all possible feelings and fancies; and this point will be touched on again in the sequel. For the moment, we have only to do with the new myths. In them, more clearly than anywhere else, we see the double significance of the old gods to the men of the Renaissance. On the one hand, they replace abstract terms in poetry, and render allegorical figures superfluous; and, on the other, they serve as free and independent elements in art, as forms of beauty which can be turned to some account in any and every poem. The example was boldly set by Boccaccio, with his fanciful world of gods and shepherds who people the country round Florence in his ‘Ninfale d’Ameto’ and ‘Ninfale Fiesolano.’ Both these poems were written in Italian. But the masterpiece in this style was the ‘Sarca’ of Pietro Bembo,[605 - Printed in Mai, Spicilegium Romanum, vol. viii. pp. 488-504; about 500 hexameter verses. Pierio Valeriano followed out the myth in his poetry. See his Carpio, in the Deliciae poetarum Italorum. The frescoes of Brusasorci in the Pal. Murari at Verona represent the subject of the Sarca.] which tells how the rivergod of that name wooed the nymph Garda; of the brilliant marriage feast in a cave of Monte Baldo; of the prophecies of Manto, daughter of Tiresias; of the birth of the child Mincius; of the founding of Mantua; and of the future glory of Virgil, son of Mincius and of Maia, nymph of Andes. This humanistic rococo is set forth by Bembo in verses of great beauty, concluding with an address to Virgil, which any poet might envy him. Such works are often slighted as mere declamation. This is a matter of taste on which we are all free to form our own opinion.

Further, we find long epic poems in hexameters on biblical or ecclesiastical subjects. The authors were by no means always in search of preferment or of papal favour. With the best of them, and even with less gifted writers, like Battista Mantovano, the author of the ‘Parthenice,’ there was probably an honest desire to serve religion by their Latin verses—a desire with which their half-pagan conception of Catholicism harmonised well enough. Gyraldus goes through a list of these poets, among whom Vida, with his ‘Christiad’ and Sannazaro, with his three books, ‘De partu Virginis,’[606 - Newly edited and translated by Th. A. Fassnacht in Drei Perlen der neulateinischen Poesie. Leutkirch and Leipzig, 1875. See further, Goethe’s Werke (Hempel’sche Ausgabe), vol. xxxii. pp. 157 and 411.] hold the first place. Sannazaro (b. 1458, d. 1530) is impressive by the steady and powerful flow of his verse, in which Christian and pagan elements are mingled without scruple, by the plastic vigour of his description, and by the perfection of his workmanship. He could venture to introduce Virgil’s fourth eclogue into his song of the shepherds at the manger (III. 200 sqq.) without fearing a comparison. In treating of the unseen world, he sometimes gives proofs of a boldness worthy of Dante, as when King David in the Limbo of the Patriarchs rises up to sing and prophesy (I. 236 sqq.), or when the Eternal, sitting on the throne clad in a mantle shining with pictures of all the elements, addresses the heavenly host (III. 17 sqq). At other times he does not hesitate to weave the whole classical mythology into his subject, yet without spoiling the harmony of the whole, since the pagan deities are only accessory figures, and play no important part in the story. To appreciate the artistic genius of that age in all its bearings, we must not refuse to notice such works as these. The merit of Sannazaro will appear the greater, when we consider that the mixture of Christian and pagan elements is apt to disturb us much more in poetry than in the plastic arts. The latter can still satisfy the eye by beauty of form and colour, and in general are much more independent of the significance of the subject than poetry. With them, the imagination is interested chiefly in the form, with poetry, in the matter. Honest Battista Mantovano in his calendar of the festivals,[607 - De sacris diebus.] tried another expedient. Instead of making the gods and demigods serve the purposes of sacred history, he put them, as the Fathers of the Church did, in active opposition to it. When the angel Gabriel salutes the Virgin at Nazareth, Mercury flies after him from Carmel, and listens at the door. He then announces the result of his eavesdropping to the assembled gods, and stimulates them thereby to desperate resolutions. Elsewhere,[608 - E.g. in his eighth eclogue.] it is true, in his writings, Thetis, Ceres, Æolus, and other pagan deities pay willing homage to the glory of the Madonna.

The fame of Sannazaro, the number of his imitators, the enthusiastic homage which was paid to him by the greatest men—by Bembo, who wrote his epitaph, and by Titian, who painted his portrait—all show how dear and necessary he was to his age. On the threshold of the Reformation he solved for the Church the problem, whether it were possible for a poet to be a Christian as well as a classic; and both Leo and Clement were loud in their thanks for his achievements.

And, finally, contemporary history was now treated in hexameters or distichs, sometimes in a narrative and sometimes in a panegyrical style, but most commonly to the honour of some prince or princely family. We thus meet with a Sforziad,[609 - There are two unfinished and unprinted Sforziads, one by the elder, the other by the younger Filelfo. On the latter, see Favre, Mélanges d’Hist. Lit. i. 156; on the former, see Rosmini, Filelfo, ii. 157-175. It is said to be 12,800 lines long, and contains the passage: ‘The sun falls in love with Bianca.’] a Borseid, a Laurentiad, a Borgiad (see p. 223), a Triulziad, and the like. The object sought after was certainly not attained; for those who became famous and are now immortal owe it to anything rather than to this sort of poems, to which the world has always had an ineradicable dislike, even when they happen to be written by good poets. A wholly different effect is produced by smaller, simpler and more unpretentious scenes from the lives of distinguished men, such as the beautiful poem on Leo X.’s ‘Hunt at Palo,’[610 - Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi, viii. 184. A poem in a similar style, xii. 130. The poem of Angilbert on the Court of Charles the Great curiously reminds us of the Renaissance. Comp. Pertz. Monum. ii.] or the ‘Journey of Julius II.’ by Hadrian of Corneto (p. 119 (#x7_x_7_i6)). Brilliant descriptions of hunting-parties are found in Ercole Strozza, in the above-mentioned Hadrian, and in others; and it is a pity that the modern reader should allow himself to be irritated or repelled by the adulation with which they are doubtless filled. The masterly treatment and the considerable historical value of many of these most graceful poems, guarantee to them a longer existence than many popular works of our own day are likely to attain.

In general, these poems are good in proportion to the sparing use of the sentimental and the general. Some of the smaller epic poems, even of recognised masters, unintentionally produce, by the ill-timed introduction of mythological elements, an impression that is indescribably ludicrous. Such, for instance, is the lament of Ercole Strozza[611 - Strozzi, Poetae, p. 31 sqq. ‘Caesaris Borgiae ducis epicedium.’] on Cæsar Borgia. We there listen to the complaint of Rome, who had set all her hopes on the Spanish Popes Calixtus III. and Alexander VI., and who saw her promised deliverer in Cæsar. His history is related down to the catastrophe of 1503. The poet then asks the Muse what were the counsels of the gods at that moment,[612 - ‘Pontificem addiderat, flammis lustralibus omneisCorporis ablutum labes, Dis Juppiter ipsis,’ etc.] and Crato tells how, upon Olympus, Pallas took the part of the Spaniards, Venus of the Italians, how both then embrace the knees of Jupiter, how thereupon he kisses them, soothes them, and explains to them that he can do nothing against the fate woven by the Parcæ, but that the divine promises will be fulfilled by the child of the House of Este-Borgia.[613 - This was Ercole II. of Ferrara, b. April 4, 1508, probably either shortly before or shortly after the composition of this poem. ‘Nascere, magne puer, matri expectate patrique,’ is said near the end.] After relating the fabulous origin of both families, he declares that he can confer immortality on Cæsar as little as he could once, in spite of all entreaties, on Memnon or Achilles; and concludes with the consoling assurance that Cæsar, before his own death, will destroy many people in war. Mars then hastens to Naples to stir up war and confusion, while Pallas goes to Nepi, and there appears to the dying Cæsar under the form of Alexander VI. After giving him the good advice to submit to his fate and be satisfied with the glory of his name, the papal goddess vanishes ‘like a bird.’

Yet we should needlessly deprive ourselves of an enjoyment, which is sometimes very great, if we threw aside everything in which classical mythology plays a more or less appropriate part. Here, as in painting and sculpture, art has often ennobled what is in itself purely conventional. The beginnings of parody are also to be found by lovers of that class of literature (pp. 159 sqq.) e.g. in the Macaroneid—to which the comic Feast of the Gods, by Giovanni Bellini, forms an early parallel.

Many, too, of the narrative poems in hexameters are merely exercises, or adaptations of histories in prose, which latter the reader will prefer, where he can find them. At last, everything—every quarrel and every ceremony—came to be put into verse, and this even by the German humanists of the Reformation.[614 - Comp. the collections of the Scriptores by Schardius, Freher, &c., and see above p. 126, note 1.] And yet it would be unfair to attribute this to mere want of occupation, or to an excessive facility in stringing verses together. In Italy, at all events, it was rather due to an abundant sense of style, as is further proved by the mass of contemporary reports, histories, and even pamphlets, in the ‘terza rima.’ Just as Niccolò da Uzzano published his scheme for a new constitution, Macchiavelli his view of the history of his own time, a third, the life of Savonarola, and a fourth, the siege of Piombino by Alfonso the Great,[615 - Uzzano, see Archiv. iv. i. 296. Macchiavelli, i Decennali. The life of Savonarola, under the title Cedrus Libani, by Fra Benedetto. Assedio di Piombino, Murat. xxv. We may quote as a parallel the Teuerdank and other northern works in rhyme (new ed. of that by Haltaus, Quedlinb. and Leipzig, 1836). The popular historical songs of the Germans, which were produced in great abundance in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, may be compared with these Italian poems.] in this difficult metre, in order to produce a stronger effect, so did many others feel the need of hexameters, in order to win their special public. What was then tolerated and demanded, in this shape, is best shown by the didactic poetry of the time. Its popularity in the fifteenth century is something astounding. The most distinguished humanists were ready to celebrate in Latin hexameters the most commonplace, ridiculous, or disgusting themes, such as the making of gold, the game of chess, the management of silkworms, astrology, and venereal diseases (morbus gallicus), to say nothing of many long Italian poems of the same kind. Nowadays this class of poems is condemned unread, and how far, as a matter of fact, they are really worth the reading, we are unable to say.[616 - We may remark of the Coltivazione of L. Alamanni, written in Italian ‘versi sciolti,’ that all the really poetical and enjoyable passages are directly or indirectly borrowed from the ancients (an old ed., Paris, 1540; new ed. of the works of A., 2 vols., Florence, 1867).] One thing is certain, that epochs far above our own in the sense of beauty—the Renaissance and the Greco-Roman world—could not dispense with this form of poetry. It may be urged in reply, that it is not the lack of a sense of beauty, but the greater seriousness and the altered method of scientific treatment which renders the poetical form inappropriate, on which point it is unnecessary to enter.

One of these didactic works has of late years been occasionally republished[617 - E.g. by C. G. Weise, Leipzig, 1832. The work, divided into twelve books, named after the twelve constellations, is dedicated to Hercules II. of Ferrara. In the dedication occur the remarkable words: ‘Nam quem alium patronum in totâ Italiâ invenire possum, cui musae cordisunt, qui carmen sibi oblatum aut intelligat, aut examine recto expendere sciat?’ Palingenius uses ‘Juppiter’ and ‘Deus’ indiscriminately.]—the ‘Zodiac of Life,’ by Marcellus Palingenius (Pier Angello Manzolli), a secret adherent of Protestantism at Ferrara, written about 1528. With the loftiest speculations on God, virtue, and immortality, the writer connects the discussion of many questions of practical life, and is, on this account, an authority of some weight in the history of morals. On the whole, however, his work must be considered as lying outside the boundaries of the Renaissance, as is further indicated by the fact that, in harmony with the serious didactic purpose of the poem, allegory tends to supplant mythology.

But it was in lyric, and more particularly in elegiac poetry, that the poet-scholar came nearest to antiquity; and next to this, in epigram.

In the lighter style, Catullus exercised a perfect fascination over the Italians. Not a few elegant Latin madrigals, not a few little satires and malicious epistles, are mere adaptations from him; and the death of parrots and lapdogs is bewailed, even where there is no verbal imitation, in precisely the tone and style of the verses on Lesbia’s Sparrow. There are short poems of this sort, the date of which even a critic would be unable to fix,[618 - L. B. Alberti’s first comic poem, which purported to be by an author Lepidus, was long considered as a work of antiquity.] in the absence of positive evidence that they are works of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

On the other hand, we can find scarcely an ode in the Sapphic or Alcaic metre, which does not clearly betray its modern origin. This is shown mostly by a rhetorical verbosity, rare in antiquity before the time of Statius, and by a singular want of the lyrical concentration which is indispensable to this style of poetry. Single passages in an ode, sometimes two or three strophes together, may look like an ancient fragment; but a longer extract will seldom keep this character throughout. And where it does so, as, for instance, in the fine Ode to Venus, by Andrea Navagero, it is easy to detect a simple paraphrase of ancient masterpieces.[619 - In this case (see below, p. 266, note 2) of the introduction to Lucretius, and of Horace, Od. iv. 1.] Some of the ode-writers take the saints for their subject, and invoke them in verses tastefully modelled after the pattern of analogous odes of Horace and Catullus. This is the manner of Navagero, in the Ode to the Archangel Gabriel, and particularly of Sannazaro (p. 260 (#x10_x_10_i51)), who goes still further in his appropriation of pagan sentiment. He celebrates above all his patron saint,[620 - The invocation of a patron saint is an essentially pagan undertaking, as has been noticed at p. 57. On a more serious occasion, comp. Sannazaro’s Elegy: ‘In festo die divi Nazarii martyris.’ Sann. Elegiae, 1535, fol. 166 sqq.] whose chapel was attached to his lovely villa on the shores of Posilippo, ‘there where the waves of the sea drink up the stream from the rocks, and surge against the walls of the little sanctuary.’ His delight is in the annual feast of S. Nazzaro, and the branches and garlands with which the chapel is hung on this day, seem to him like sacrificial gifts. Full of sorrow, and far off in exile, at St. Nazaire, on the banks of the Loire, with the banished Frederick of Aragon, he brings wreaths of box and oak leaves to his patron saint on the same anniversary, thinking of former years, when all the youth of Posilippo used to come forth to greet him on flower-hung boats, and praying that he may return home.[621 - Si satis ventos tolerasse et imbresAc minas fatorum hominumque fraudesDa Pater tecto salientem avitoCernere fumum!]

Perhaps the most deceptive likeness to the classical style is borne by a class of poems in elegiacs or hexameters, whose subject ranges from elegy, strictly so-called, to epigram. As the humanists dealt most freely of all with the text of the Roman elegiac poets, so they felt themselves most at home in imitating them. The elegy of Navagero addressed to the night, like other poems of the same age and kind, is full of points which remind us of his models; but it has the finest antique ring about it. Indeed Navagero[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.] always begins by choosing a truly poetical subject, which he then treats, not with servile imitation, but with masterly freedom, in the style of the Anthology, of Ovid, of Catullus, or of the Virgilian eclogues. He makes a sparing use of mythology, only, for instance, to introduce a sketch of country life, in a prayer to Ceres and other rural divinities. An address to his country, on his return from an embassy to Spain, though left unfinished, might have been worthy of a place beside the ‘Bella Italia, amate sponde’ of Vincenzo Monti, if the rest had been equal to this beginning:

‘Salve, cura Deûm, mundi felicior ora,
Formosae Veneris dulces salvete recessus;
Ut vos post tantos animi mentisque labores
Aspicio lustroque libens, ut munere vestro
Sollicitas toto depello e pectore curas!’[623 - Compare Petrarch’s greeting to Italy, written more than a century earlier (1353) in Petr. Carmina Minora, ed. Rossetti, ii. pp. 266 sqq.]

The elegiac or hexametral form was that in which all higher sentiment found expression, both the noblest patriotic enthusiasm (see p. 119, the elegy on Julius II.) and the most elaborate eulogies on the ruling houses,[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.] as well as the tender melancholy of a Tibullus. Francesco Mario Molza, who rivals Statius and Martial in his flattery of Clement VII. and the Farnesi, gives us in his elegy to his ‘comrades,’ written from a sick-bed, thoughts on death as beautiful and genuinely antique as can be found in any of the poets of antiquity, and this without borrowing anything worth speaking of from them.[625 - Molza’s Poesie volgari e Latine, ed. by Pierantonio Serassi, Bergamo 1747.] The spirit and range of the Roman elegy were best understood and reproduced by Sannazaro, and no other writer of his time offers us so varied a choice of good poems in this style as he. We shall have occasion now and then to speak of some of these elegies in reference to the matter they treat of.

The Latin epigram finally became in those days an affair of serious importance, since a few clever lines, engraved on a monument or quoted with laughter in society, could lay the foundation of a scholar’s celebrity. This tendency showed itself early in Italy. When it was known that Guido della Polenta wished to erect a monument at Dante’s grave, epitaphs poured in from all directions,[626 - Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 36.] ‘written by such as wished to show themselves, or to honour the dead poet, or to win the favour of Polenta.’ On the tomb of the Archbishop Giovanni Visconti (d. 1354), in the Cathedral at Milan, we read at the foot of 36 hexameters: ‘Master Gabrius de Zamoreis of Parma, Doctor of Laws, wrote these verses.’ In course of time, chiefly under the influence of Martial, and partly of Catullus, an extensive literature of this sort was formed. It was held the greatest of all triumphs, when an epigram was mistaken for a genuine copy from some old marble,[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.)] or when it was so good that all Italy learned it by heart, as happened in the case of some of Bembo’s. When the Venetian government paid Sannazaro 600 ducats for a eulogy in three distichs,[628 - ‘De mirabili urbe Venetiis’ (Opera, fol. 38 b):Viderat Adriacis Venetam Neptunus in undisStare urbem et toto ponere jura mari:Nunc mihi Tarpejas quantum vis Juppiter arceisObjice et illa tui mœnia Martis ait,Si pelago Tybrim praefers, urbem aspice utramqueIllam homines dices, hanc posuisse deos.] no one thought it an act of generous prodigality. The epigram was prized for what it was, in truth, to all the educated classes of that age—the concentrated essence of fame. Nor, on the other hand, was any man then so powerful as to be above the reach of a satirical epigram, and even the most powerful needed, for every inscription which they set before the public eye, the aid of careful and learned scholars, lest some blunder or other should qualify it for a place in the collections of ludicrous epitaphs.[629 - Lettere de’principi, i. 88, 98.] The epigraph and the epigram were branches of the same pursuit; the reproduction of the former was based on a diligent study of ancient monuments.

The city of epigrams and inscriptions was, above all others, Rome. In this state without hereditary honours, each man had to look after his own immortality, and at the same time found the epigram an effective weapon against his competitors. Pius II. counts with satisfaction the distichs which his chief poet Campanus wrote on any event of his government which could be turned to poetical account. Under the following popes satirical epigrams came into fashion, and reached, in the opposition to Alexander VI. and his family, the highest pitch of defiant invective. Sannazaro, it is true, wrote his verses in a place of comparative safety, but others in the immediate neighbourhood of the court ventured on the most reckless attacks (p. 112 (#x7_x_7_i0)). On one occasion when eight threatening distichs were found fastened to the door of the library,[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!’] Alexander strengthened his guard by 800 men; we can imagine what he would have done to the poet if he had caught him. Under Leo X., Latin epigrams were like daily bread. For complimenting or for reviling the pope, for punishing enemies and victims, named or unnamed, for real or imaginary subjects of wit, malice, grief, or contemplation, no form was held more suitable. On the famous group of the Virgin with Saint Anna and the Child, which Andrea Sansovino carved for S. Agostino, no less than 120 persons wrote Latin verses, not so much, it is true, from devotion, as from regard for the patron who ordered the work.[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.] This man, Johann Goritz of Luxemburg, papal referendary of petitions, not only held a religious service on the feast of Saint Anna, but gave a great literary dinner in his garden on the slopes of the Capitol. It was then worth while to pass in review, in a long poem ‘De poetis urbanis,’ the whole crowd of singers who sought their fortune at the court of Leo. This was done by Franciscus Arsillus[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.]—a man who needed the patronage neither of pope nor prince, and who dared to speak his mind, even against his colleagues. The epigram survived the pontificate of Paul III. only in a few rare echoes, while the epigraph continued to flourish till the seventeenth century, when it perished finally of bombast.

In Venice, also, this form of poetry had a history of its own, which we are able to trace with the help of the ‘Venezia’ of Francesco Sansovino. A standing task for the epigram-writers was offered by the mottos (Brievi) on the pictures of the Doges in the great hall of the ducal palace—two or four hexameters, setting forth the most noteworthy facts in the government of each.[633 - Marin Sanudo, in the Vite de’duchi di Venezia, Murat. xii. quotes them regularly.] In addition to this, the tombs of the Doges in the fourteenth century bore short inscriptions in prose, recording merely facts, and beside them turgid hexameters or leonine verses. In the fifteenth century more care was taken with the style; in the sixteenth century it is seen at its best; and then soon after came pointless antithesis, prosopopœia, false pathos, praise of abstract qualities—in a word, affectation and bombast. A good many traces of satire can be detected, and veiled criticism of the living is implied in open praise of the dead. At a much later period we find a few instances of a deliberate recurrence to the old, simple style.

Architectural works and decorative works in general were constructed with a view to receiving inscriptions, often in frequent repetition; while the Northern Gothic seldom, and with difficulty, offered a suitable place for them, and in sepulchral monuments, for example, left free only the most exposed parts—namely the edges.

By what has been said hitherto we have, perhaps, failed to convince the reader of the characteristic value of this Latin poetry of the Italians. Our task was rather to indicate its position and necessity in the history of civilisation. In its own day, a caricature of it appeared[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.]—the so-called maccaronic poetry. The masterpiece of this style, the ‘opus maccaronicorum,’ was written by Merlinus Coccaius (Teofilo Folengo of Mantua). We shall now and then have occasion to refer to the matter of this poem. As to the form—hexameter and other verses, made up of Latin words and Italian words with Latin endings—its comic effect lies chiefly in the fact that these combinations sound like so many slips of the tongue, or the effusions of an over-hasty Latin ‘improvisatore.’ The German imitations do not give the smallest notion of this effect.

CHAPTER XI.

FALL OF THE HUMANISTS IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

AFTER a brilliant succession of poet-scholars had, since the beginning of the fourteenth century, filled Italy and the world with the worship of antiquity, had determined the forms of education and culture, had often taken the lead in political affairs and had, to no small extent, reproduced ancient literature—at length in the sixteenth century, before their doctrines and scholarship had lost hold of the public mind, the whole class fell into deep and general disgrace. Though they still served as models to the poets, historians, and orators, personally no one would consent to be reckoned of their number. To the two chief accusations against them—that of malicious self-conceit, and that of abominable profligacy—a third charge of irreligion was now loudly added by the rising powers of the Counter-reformation.

Why, it may be asked, were not these reproaches, whether true or false, heard sooner? As a matter of fact, they were heard at a very early period, but the effect they produced was insignificant, for the plain reason that men were far too dependent on the scholars for their knowledge of antiquity—that the scholars were personally the possessors and diffusers of ancient culture. But the spread of printed editions of the classics,[635 - It must not be forgotten that they were very soon printed with both the old Scholia and modern commentaries.] and of large and well-arranged hand-books and dictionaries, went far to free the people from the necessity of personal intercourse with the humanists, and, as soon as they could be but partly dispensed with, the change in popular feeling became manifest. It was a change under which the good and bad suffered indiscriminately.

The first to make these charges were certainly the humanists themselves. Of all men who ever formed a class, they had the least sense of their common interests, and least respected what there was of this sense. All means were held lawful, if one of them saw a chance of supplanting another. From literary discussion they passed with astonishing suddenness to the fiercest and the most groundless vituperation. Not satisfied with refuting, they sought to annihilate an opponent. Something of this must be put to the account of their position and circumstances; we have seen how fiercely the age, whose loudest spokesmen they were, was borne to and fro by the passion for glory and the passion for satire. Their position, too, in practical life was one that they had continually to fight for. In such a temper they wrote and spoke and described one another. Poggio’s works alone contain dirt enough to create a prejudice against the whole class—and these ‘Opera Poggii’ were just those most often printed, on the north, as well as on the south, side of the Alps. We must take care not to rejoice too soon, when we meet among these men a figure which seems immaculate; on further inquiry there is always a danger of meeting with some foul charge, which, even when it is incredible, still discolours the picture. The mass of indecent Latin poems in circulation, and such things as the ribaldry on the subject of his own family, in Pontano’s dialogue, ‘Antonius,’ did the rest to discredit the class. The sixteenth century was not only familiar with all these ugly symptoms, but had also grown tired of the type of the humanist. These men had to pay both for the misdeeds they had done, and for the excess of honour which had hitherto fallen to their lot. Their evil fate willed it that the greatest poet of the nation wrote of them in a tone of calm and sovereign contempt.[636 - Ariosto, Satira, vii. Date 1531.]

Of the reproaches which combined to excite so much hatred, many were only too well founded. Yet a clear and unmistakable tendency to strictness in matters of religion and morality was alive in many of the philologists, and it is a proof of small knowledge of the period, if the whole class is condemned. Yet many, and among them the loudest speakers, were guilty.

Three facts explain, and perhaps diminish their guilt: the overflowing excess of favour and fortune, when the luck was on their side: the uncertainty of the future, in which luxury or misery depended on the caprice of a patron or the malice of an enemy; and finally, the misleading influence of antiquity. This undermined their morality, without giving them its own instead; and in religious matters, since they could never think of accepting the positive belief in the old gods, it affected them only on the negative and sceptical side. Just because they conceived of antiquity dogmatically—that is, took it as the model for all thought and action—its influence was here pernicious. But that an age existed, which idolised the ancient world and its products with an exclusive devotion, was not the fault of individuals. It was the work of a historical providence, and all the culture of the ages which have followed, and of the ages to come, rests upon the fact that it was so, and that all the ends of life but this one were then deliberately put aside.

The career of the humanists was, as a rule, of such a kind that only the strongest characters could pass through it unscathed. The first danger came, in some cases, from the parents, who sought to turn a precocious child into a miracle of learning,[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.] with an eye to his future position in that class which then was supreme. Youthful prodigies, however, seldom rise above a certain level; or, if they do, are forced to achieve their further progress and development at the cost of the bitterest trials. For an ambitious youth, the fame and the brilliant position of the humanists were a perilous temptation; it seemed to him that he too ‘through inborn pride could no longer regard the low and common things of life.’ He was thus led to plunge into a life of excitement and vicissitude, in which exhausting studies, tutorships, secretaryships, professorships, offices in princely households, mortal enmities and perils, luxury and beggary, boundless admiration and boundless contempt, followed confusedly one upon the other, and in which the most solid worth and learning were often pushed aside by superficial impudence. But the worst of all was, that the position of the humanist was almost incompatible with a fixed home, since it either made frequent changes of dwelling necessary for a livelihood, or so affected the mind of the individual that he could never be happy for long in one place. He grew tired of the people, and had no peace among the enmities which he excited, while the people themselves in their turn demanded something new (p. 211 (#x9_x_9_i26)). Much as this life reminds us of the Greek sophists of the Empire, as described to us by Philostratus, yet the position of the sophists was more favourable. They often had money, or could more easily do without it than the humanists, and as professional teachers of rhetoric, rather than men of learning, their life was freer and simpler. But the scholar of the Renaissance was forced to combine great learning with the power of resisting the influence of ever-changing pursuits and situations. Add to this the deadening effect of licentious excess, and—since do what he might, the worst was believed of him—a total indifference to the moral laws recognised by others. Such men can hardly be conceived to exist without an inordinate pride. They needed it, if only to keep their heads above water, and were confirmed in it by the admiration which alternated with hatred in the treatment they received from the world. They are the most striking examples and victims of an unbridled subjectivity.

The attacks and the satirical pictures began, as we have said, at an early period. For all strongly marked individuality, for every kind of distinction, a corrective was at hand in the national taste for ridicule. And in this case the men themselves offered abundant and terrible materials which satire had but to make use of. In the fifteenth century, Battista Mantovano, in discoursing of the seven monsters,[638 - Bapt. Mantuan. De calamitatibus temporum, l. i.] includes the humanists, with many others, under the head ‘Superbia.’ He describes how, fancying themselves children of Apollo, they walk along with affected solemnity and with sullen, malicious looks, now gazing at their own shadow, now brooding over the popular praise they hunted after, like cranes in search of food. But in the sixteenth century the indictment was presented in full. Besides Ariosto, their own historian Gyraldus[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.] gives evidence of this, whose treatise, written under Leo X., was probably revised about the year 1540. Warning examples from ancient and modern times of the moral disorder and the wretched existence of the scholars meet us in astonishing abundance, and along with these accusations of the most serious nature are brought formally against them. Among these are anger, vanity, obstinacy, self-adoration, a dissolute private life, immorality of all descriptions, heresy, atheism; further, the habit of speaking without conviction, a sinister influence on government, pedantry of speech, thanklessness towards teachers, and abject flattery of the great, who first give the scholar a taste of their favours and then leave him to starve. The description is closed by a reference to the golden age, when no such thing as science existed on the earth. Of these charges, that of heresy soon became the most dangerous, and Gyraldus himself, when he afterwards republished a perfectly harmless youthful work,[640 - Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, Hercules. The dedication is a striking evidence of the first threatening movements of the Inquisition.] was compelled to take refuge beneath the mantle of Duke Hercules II. of Ferrara,[641 - He passed, as we have seen, for the last protector of the scholars.] since men now had the upper hand who held that people had better spend their time on Christian themes than on mythological researches. He justifies himself on the ground that the latter, on the contrary, were at such a time almost the only harmless branches of study, as they deal with subjects of a perfectly neutral character.

But if it is the duty of the historian to seek for evidence in which moral judgment is tempered by human sympathy, he will find no authority comparable in value to the work so often quoted of Pierio Valeriano,[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.] ‘On the Infelicity of the Scholar.’ It was written under the gloomy impressions left by the sack of Rome, which seems to the writer, not only the direct cause of untold misery to the men of learning, but, as it were, the fulfilment of an evil destiny which had long pursued them. Pierio is here led by a simple and, on the whole, just feeling. He does not introduce a special power, which plagued the men of genius on account of their genius, but he states facts, in which an unlucky chance often wears the aspect of fatality. Not wishing to write a tragedy or to refer events to the conflict of higher powers, he is content to lay before us the scenes of every-day life. We are introduced to men, who in times of trouble lose, first their incomes, and then their places; to others, who in trying to get two appointments, miss both; to unsociable misers, who carry about their money sewn into their clothes, and die mad when they are robbed of it; to others, who accept well-paid offices, and then sicken with a melancholy, longing for their lost freedom. We read how some died young of a plague or fever, and how the writings which had cost them so much toil were burnt with their bed and clothes; how others lived in terror of the murderous threats of their colleagues; how one was slain by a covetous servant, and another caught by highwaymen on a journey, and left to pine in a dungeon, because unable to pay his ransom. Many died of unspoken grief for the insults they received and the prizes of which they were defrauded. We are told of the death of a Venetian, because his son, a youthful prodigy, was dead; and the mother and brothers followed, as if the lost child drew them all after him. Many, especially Florentines, ended their lives by suicide;[643 - Comp. Dante, Inferno, xiii. 58 sqq., especially 93 sqq., where Petrus de Vineis speaks of his own suicide.] others through the secret justice of a tyrant. Who, after all, is happy?—and by what means? By blunting all feeling for such misery? One of the speakers in the dialogue in which Pierio clothed his argument, can give an answer to these questions—the illustrious Gasparo Contarini, at the mention of whose name we turn with the expectation to hear at least something of the truest and deepest which was then thought on such matters. As a type of the happy scholar, he mentions Fra Urbano Valeriano of Belluno,[644 - Pier. Valer. pp. 397 sqq., 402. He was the uncle of the writer.] who was for years teacher of Greek at Venice, who visited Greece and the East, and towards the close of his life travelled, now through this country, now through that, without ever mounting a horse; who never had a penny of his own, rejected all honours and distinctions, and after a gay old age, died in his eighty-fourth year, without, if we except a fall from a ladder, having ever known an hour of sickness. And what was the difference between such a man and the humanists? The latter had more free will, more subjectivity, than they could turn to purposes of happiness. The mendicant friar, who had lived from his boyhood in the monastery, and never eaten or slept except by rule, ceased to feel the compulsion under which he lived. Through the power of this habit he led, amid all outward hardships, a life of inward peace, by which he impressed his hearers far more than by his teaching. Looking at him, they could believe that it depends on ourselves whether we bear up against misfortune or surrender to it. ‘Amid want and toil he was happy, because he willed to be so, because he had contracted no evil habits, was not capricious, inconstant, immoderate; but was always contented with little or nothing.’ If we heard Contarini himself, religious motives would no doubt play a part in the argument—but the practical philosopher in sandals speaks plainly enough. An allied character, but placed in other circumstances, is that of Fabio Calvi of Ravenna, the commentator of Hippocrates.[645 - Cœlii Calcagnini, Opera, ed. Basil. 1544, p. 101, in the Seventh Book of the Epistles, No. 27, letter to Jacob Ziegler. Comp. Pierio Val. De inf. lit. ed. Menken, p. 369 sqq.] He lived to a great age in Rome, eating only pulse ‘like the Pythagoreans,’ and dwelt in a hovel little better than the tub of Diogenes. Of the pension, which Pope Leo gave him, he spent enough to keep body and soul together, and gave the rest away. He was not a healthy man, like Fra Urbano, nor is it likely that, like him, he died with a smile on his lips. At the age of ninety, in the sack of Rome, he was dragged away by the Spaniards, who hoped for a ransom, and died of hunger in a hospital. But his name has passed into the kingdom of the immortals, for Raphael loved the old man like a father, and honoured him as a teacher, and came to him for advice in all things. Perhaps they discoursed chiefly of the projected restoration of ancient Rome (p. 184 (#x8_x_8_i41)), perhaps of still higher matters. Who can tell what a share Fabio may have had in the conception of the School of Athens, and in other great works of the master?

We would gladly close this part of our essay with the picture of some pleasing and winning character. Pomponius Laetus, of whom we shall briefly speak, is known to us principally through the letter of his pupil Sabellicus,[646 - M. Ant. Sabellici Opera, Epist. l. xi. fol. 56. See, too, the biography in the Elogia of Paolo Giovio, p. 76 sqq. The former appeared separately at Strasburg in 1510, under the title Sabellicus: Vita Pomponii Laeti.] in which an antique colouring is purposely given to his character. Yet many of its features are clearly recognisable. He was (p. 251 (#x10_x_10_i39)) a bastard of the House of the Neapolitan Sanseverini, princes of Salerno, whom he nevertheless refused to recognise, writing, in reply to an invitation to live with them, the famous letter: ‘Pomponius Laetus cognatis et propinquis suis, salutem. Quod petitis fieri non potest. Valete.’ An insignificant little figure, with small, quick eyes, and quaint dress, he lived during the last decades of the fifteenth century, as professor in the University of Rome, either in his cottage in a garden on the Esquiline hill, or in his vineyard on the Quirinal. In the one he bred his ducks and fowls; the other he cultivated according to the strictest precepts of Cato, Varro, and Columella. He spent his holidays in fishing or bird-catching in the Campagna, or in feasting by some shady spring or on the banks of the Tiber. Wealth and luxury he despised. Free himself from envy and uncharitable speech, he would not suffer them in others. It was only against the hierarchy that he gave his tongue free play, and passed, till his latter years, for a scorner of religion altogether. He was involved in the persecution of the humanists begun by Pope Paul II., and surrendered to this pontiff by the Venetians; but no means could be found to wring unworthy confessions from him. He was afterwards befriended and supported by popes and prelates, and when his house was plundered in the disturbances under Sixtus IV., more was collected for him than he had lost. No teacher was more conscientious. Before daybreak he was to be seen descending the Esquiline with his lantern, and on reaching his lecture-room found it always filled to overflowing with pupils who had come at midnight to secure a place. A stutter compelled him to speak with care, but his delivery was even and effective. His few works give evidence of careful writing. No scholar treated the text of ancient authors more soberly and accurately. The remains of antiquity which surrounded him in Rome touched him so deeply, that he would stand before them as if entranced, or would suddenly burst into tears at the sight of them. As he was ready to lay aside his own studies in order to help others, he was much loved and had many friends; and at his death, even Alexander VI. sent his courtiers to follow the corpse, which was carried by the most distinguished of his pupils. The funeral service in the Araceli was attended by forty bishops and by all the foreign ambassadors.

It was Laetus who introduced and conducted the representations of ancient, chiefly Plautine, plays in Rome (p. 255 (#x10_x_10_i43)). Every year, he celebrated the anniversary of the foundation of the city by a festival, at which his friends and pupils recited speeches and poems. Such meetings were the origin of what acquired, and long retained, the name of the Roman Academy. It was simply a free union of individuals, and was connected with no fixed institution. Besides the occasions mentioned, it met[647 - Jac. Volaterran. Diar. Rom. in Muratori. xxiii. col. 161, 171, 185. Anecdota literaria, ii. pp. 168 sqq.] at the invitation of a patron, or to celebrate the memory of a deceased member, as of Platina. At such times, a prelate belonging to the academy would first say mass; Pomponio would then ascend the pulpit and deliver a speech; some one else would then follow him and recite an elegy. The customary banquet, with declamations and recitations, concluded the festival, whether joyous or serious, and the academicians, notably Platina himself, early acquired the reputation of epicures.[648 - Paul. Jov. De Romanis piscibus, cap. 17 and 34.] At other times, the guests performed farces in the old Atellan style. As a free association of very varied elements, the academy lasted in its original form down to the sack of Rome, and included among its guests Angelus Coloccius, Joh. Corycius (p. 269 (#x11_x_11_i12)) and others. Its precise value as an element in the intellectual life of the people is as hard to estimate as that of any other social union of the same kind; yet a man like Sadoleto[649 - Sadoleti, Epist. 106, of the year 1529.] reckoned it among the most precious memories of his youth. A large number of other academies appeared and passed away in many Italian cities, according to the number and significance of the humanists living in them, and to the patronage bestowed by the great and wealthy. Of these we may mention the Academy of Naples, of which Jovianus Pontanus was the centre, and which sent out a colony to Lecce,[650 - Anton. Galatei, Epist. 10 and 12, in Mai, Spicileg. Rom. vol. viii.] and that of Pordenone, which formed the court of the Condottiere Alviano. The circle of Ludovico Moro, and its peculiar importance for that prince, has been already spoken of (p. 42 (#x5_x_5_i2)).

About the middle of the sixteenth century, these associations seem to have undergone a complete change. The humanists, driven in other spheres from their commanding position, and viewed askance by the men of the Counter-reformation, lost the control of the academies: and here, as elsewhere, Latin poetry was replaced by Italian. Before long every town of the least importance had its academy, with some strange, fantastic name,[651 - This was the case even before the middle of the century. Comp. Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, De poetis nostri temp. ii.] and its own endowment and subscriptions. Besides the recitation of verses, the new institutions inherited from their predecessors the regular banquets and the representation of plays, sometimes acted by the members themselves, sometimes under their direction by young amateurs, and sometimes by paid players. The fate of the Italian stage, and afterwards of the opera, was long in the hands of these associations.

PART IV.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE WORLD AND OF MAN

CHAPTER I.

JOURNEYS OF THE ITALIANS

FREED from the countless bonds which elsewhere in Europe checked progress, having reached a high degree of individual development and been schooled by the teachings of antiquity, the Italian mind now turned to the discovery of the outward universe, and to the representation of it in speech and in form.

On the journeys of the Italians to distant parts of the world, we can here make but a few general observations. The crusades had opened unknown distances to the European mind, and awakened in all the passion for travel and adventure. It may be hard to indicate precisely the point where this passion allied itself with, or became the servant of, the thirst for knowledge; but it was in Italy that this was first and most completely the case. Even in the crusades the interest of the Italians was wider than that of other nations, since they already were a naval power and had commercial relations with the East. From time immemorial the Mediterranean sea had given to the nations that dwelt on its shores mental impulses different from those which governed the peoples of the North; and never, from the very structure of their character, could the Italians be adventurers in the sense which the word bore among the Teutons. After they were once at home in all the eastern harbours of the Mediterranean, it was natural that the most enterprising among them should be led to join that vast international movement of the Mohammedans which there found its outlet. A new half of the world lay, as it were, freshly discovered before them. Or, like Polo of Venice, they were caught in the current of the Mongolian peoples, and carried on to the steps of the throne of the Great Khan. At an early period, we find Italians sharing in the discoveries made in the Atlantic ocean; it was the Genoese who, in the 13th century, found the Canary Islands.[652 - Luigi Bossi, Vita di Cristoforo Colombo, in which there is a sketch of earlier Italian journeys and discoveries, p. 91 sqq.] In the same year, 1291, when Ptolemais, the last remnant of the Christian East, was lost, it was again the Genoese who made the first known attempt to find a sea-passage to the East Indies.[653 - See on this subject a treatise by Pertz. An inadequate account is to be found in Æneas Sylvius, Europae status sub Frederico III. Imp. cap. 44 (in Freher’s Scriptores, ed. 1624, vol. ii. p. 87). On Æn. S. see Peschel o.c. 217 sqq.] Columbus himself is but the greatest of a long list of Italians who, in the service of the western nations, sailed into distant seas. The true discoverer, however, is not the man who first chances to stumble upon anything, but the man who finds what he has sought. Such a one alone stands in a link with the thoughts and interests of his predecessors, and this relationship will also determine the account he gives of his search. For which reason the Italians, although their claim to be the first comers on this or that shore may be disputed, will yet retain their title to be pre-eminently the nation of discoverers for the whole latter part of the Middle Ages. The fuller proof of this assertion belongs to the special history of discoveries.[654 - Comp. O. Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, 2nd edit., by Sophus Ruge, Munich, 1877, p. 209 sqq. et passim.] Yet ever and again we turn with admiration to the august figure of the great Genoese, by whom a new continent beyond the ocean was demanded, sought and found; and who was the first to be able to say: ‘il mondo è poco’—the world is not so large as men have thought. At the time when Spain gave Alexander VI. to the Italians, Italy gave Columbus to the Spaniards. Only a few weeks before the death of that pope (July 7th, 1503), Columbus wrote from Jamaica his noble letter to the thankless Catholic kings, which the ages to come can never read without profound emotion. In a codicil to his will, dated Valladolid, May 4th, 1506, he bequeathed to ‘his beloved home, the Republic of Genoa, the prayer-book which Pope Alexander had given him, and which in prison, in conflict, and in every kind of adversity had been to him the greatest of comforts.’ It seems as if these words cast upon the abhorred name of Borgia one last gleam of grace and mercy.

The development of geographical and the allied sciences among the Italians must, like the history of their voyages, be touched upon but very briefly. A superficial comparison of their achievements with those of other nations shows an early and striking superiority on their part. Where, in the middle of the fifteenth century, could be found, anywhere but in Italy, such an union of geographical, statistical, and historical knowledge as was found in Æneas Sylvius? Not only in his great geographical work, but in his letters and commentaries, he describes with equal mastery landscapes, cities, manners, industries and products, political conditions and constitutions, wherever he can use his own observation or the evidence of eye-witnesses. What he takes from books is naturally of less moment. Even the short sketch[655 - Pii II. Comment. l. i. p. 14. That he did not always observe correctly, and sometimes filled up the picture from his fancy, is clearly shown, e.g., by his description of Basel. Yet his merit on the whole is nevertheless great. On the description of Basel see G. Voigt; Enea Silvio, i. 228; on E. S. as Geographer, ii. 302-309. Comp. i. 91 sqq.] of that valley in the Tyrolese Alps, where Frederick III. had given him a benefice, and still more his description of Scotland, leaves untouched none of the relations of human life, and displays a power and method of unbiassed observation and comparison impossible in any but a countryman of Columbus, trained in the school of the ancients. Thousands saw and, in part, knew what he did, but they felt no impulse to draw a picture of it, and were unconscious that the world desired such pictures.

In geography[656 - In the sixteenth century, Italy continued to be the home of geographical literature, at a time when the discoverers themselves belonged almost exclusively to the countries on the shores of the Atlantic. Native geography produced in the middle of the century the great and remarkable work of Leandro Alberti, Descrizione di tutta l’Italia, 1582. In the first half of the sixteenth century, the maps in Italy were in advance of those of other countries. See Wieser: Der Portulan des Infanten Philipp II. von Spanien in Sitzungsberichte der Wien. Acad. Phil. Hist. Kl. Bd. 82 (1876), pp. 541 sqq. For the different Italian maps and voyages of discovery, see the excellent work of Oscar Peschel: Abhandl. zur Erd-und Völkerkunde (Leipzig, 1878). Comp. also, inter alia: Berchet, Il planisfero di Giovanni Leandro del’anno 1452 fa-simil nella grandezza del’ original Nota illustrativa, 16 S. 4^o. Venezia, 1879. Comp. Voigt, ii. 516; and G. B. de Rossi, Piante iconogrofiche di Roma anteriori al secolo XVI. Rome, 1879. For Petrarch’s attempt to draw out a map of Italy, comp. Flavio Biondo: Italia illustrata (ed. Basil.), p. 352 sqq.; also Petr. Epist. var. LXI. ed. Fracass. iii. 476. A remarkable attempt at a map of Europe, Asia and Africa is to be found on the obverse of a medal of Charles IV. of Anjou, executed by Francesco da Laurana in 1462.] as in other matters, it is vain to attempt to distinguish how much is to be attributed to the study of the ancients, and how much to the special genius of the Italians. They saw and treated the things of this world from an objective point of view, even before they were familiar with ancient literature, partly because they were themselves a half-ancient people, and partly because their political circumstances predisposed them to it; but they would not so rapidly have attained to such perfection had not the old geographers showed them the way. The influence of the existing Italian geographies on the spirit and tendencies of the travellers and discoverers was also inestimable. Even the simple ‘dilettante’ of a science—if in the present case we should assign to Æneas Sylvius so low a rank—can diffuse just that sort of general interest in the subject which prepares for new pioneers the indispensable groundwork of a favourable predisposition in the public mind. True discoverers in any science know well what they owe to such mediation.

CHAPTER II.

NATURAL SCIENCE IN ITALY

FOR the position of the Italians in the sphere of the natural sciences, we must refer the reader to the special treatises on the subject, of which the only one with which we are familiar is the superficial and depreciatory work of Libri.[657 - Libri, Histoire des Sciences Mathématiques en Italie. 4 vols. Paris, 1838.] The dispute as to the priority of particular discoveries concerns us all the less, since we hold that, at any time, and among any civilised people, a man may appear who, starting with very scanty preparation, is driven by an irresistible impulse into the path of scientific investigation, and through his native gifts achieves the most astonishing success. Such men were Gerbert of Rheims and Roger Bacon. That they were masters of the whole knowledge of the age in their several departments, was a natural consequence of the spirit in which they worked. When once the veil of illusion was torn asunder, when once the dread of nature and the slavery to books and tradition were overcome, countless problems lay before them for solution. It is another matter when a whole people takes a natural delight in the study and investigation of nature, at a time when other nations are indifferent, that is to say, when the discoverer is not threatened or wholly ignored, but can count on the friendly support of congenial spirits. That this was the case in Italy, is unquestionable.[658 - To pronounce a conclusive judgment on this point, the growth of the habit of collecting observations, in other than the mathematical sciences, would need to be illustrated in detail. But this lies outside the limits of our task.] The Italian students of nature trace with pride in the ‘Divine Comedy’ the hints and proofs of Dante’s scientific interest in nature.[659 - Libri, op. cit. ii. p. 174 sqq. See also Dante’s treatise, De aqua et terra; and W. Schmidt, Dante’s Stellung in der Geschichte der Cosmographie, Graz, 1876. The passages bearing on geography and natural science from the Tesoro of Brunetto Latini are published separately: Il trattato della Sfera di S. Br. L., by Bart. Sorio (Milan, 1858), who has added B. L.’s system of historical chronology.] On his claim to priority in this or that discovery or reference, we must leave the men of science to decide; but every layman must be struck by the wealth of his observations on the external world, shown merely in his pictures and comparisons. He, more than any other modern poet, takes them from reality, whether in nature or human life, and uses them, never as mere ornament, but in order to give the reader the fullest and most adequate sense of his meaning. It is in astronomy that he appears chiefly as a scientific specialist, though it must not be forgotten that many astronomical allusions in his great poem, which now appear to us learned, must then have been intelligible to the general reader. Dante, learning apart, appeals to a popular knowledge of the heavens, which the Italians of his day, from the mere fact that they were a nautical people, had in common with the ancients. This knowledge of the rising and setting of the constellations has been rendered superfluous to the modern world by calendars and clocks, and with it has gone whatever interest in astronomy the people may once have had. Nowadays, with our schools and hand-books, every child knows—what Dante did not know—that the earth moves round the sun; but the interest once taken in the subject itself has given place, except in the case of astronomical specialists, to the most absolute indifference.

The pseudo-science, which also dealt with the stars, proves nothing against the inductive spirit of the Italians of that day. That spirit was but crossed, and at times overcome, by the passionate desire to penetrate the future. We shall recur to the subject of astrology when we come to speak of the moral and religious character of the people.

The Church treated this and other pseudo-sciences nearly always with toleration; and showed itself actually hostile even to genuine science only when a charge of heresy or necromancy was also in question—which certainly was often the case. A point which it would be interesting to decide is this: whether, and in what cases, the Dominican (and also the Franciscan) Inquisitors in Italy, were conscious of the falsehood of the charges, and yet condemned the accused, either to oblige some enemy of the prisoner or from hatred to natural science, and particularly to experiments. The latter doubtless occurred, but it is not easy to prove the fact. What helped to cause such persecutions in the North, namely, the opposition made to the innovators by the upholders of the received official, scholastic system of nature, was of little or no weight in Italy. Pietro of Albano, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, is well known to have fallen a victim to the envy of another physician, who accused him before the Inquisition of heresy and magic;[660 - Scardeonius, De urb. Patav. antiq. in Graevii Thesaur. ant. Ital. tom. vi. pars iii. col. 227. A. died in 1312 during the investigation; his statue was burnt. On Giov. Sang. see op. cit. col. 228 sqq. Comp. on him, Fabricius, Bibl. Lat. s. v. Petrus de Apono. Sprenger in Esch. u. Gruber, i. 33. He translated (a. 1292-1293) astrological works of Abraham ibn Esra, printed 1506.] and something of the same kind may have happened in the case of his Paduan contemporary, Giovannino Sanguinnacci, who was known as an innovator in medical practice. He escaped, however, with banishment. Nor must it be forgotten that the inquisitorial power of the Dominicans was exercised less uniformly in Italy than in the North. Tyrants and free cities in the fourteenth century treated the clergy at times with such sovereign contempt, that very different matters from natural science went unpunished.[661 - See below, part vi. chapter 2.] But when, with the fifteenth century, antiquity became the leading power in Italy, the breach it made in the old system was turned to account by every branch of secular science. Humanism, nevertheless, attracted to itself the best strength of the nation, and thereby, no doubt, did injury to the inductive investigation of nature.[662 - See the exaggerated complaints of Libri, op. cit. ii. p. 258 sqq. Regrettable as it may be that a people so highly gifted did not devote more of its strength to the natural sciences, we nevertheless believe that it pursued, and in part attained, still more important ends.] Here and there the Inquisition suddenly started into life, and punished or burned physicians as blasphemers or magicians. In such cases it is hard to discover what was the true motive underlying the condemnation. And after all, Italy, at the close of the fifteenth century, with Paolo Toscanelli, Luca Paccioli and Lionardo da Vinci, held incomparably the highest place among European nations in mathematics and the natural sciences, and the learned men of every country, even Regiomontanus and Copernicus, confessed themselves its pupils.[663 - On the studies of the latter in Italy, comp. the thorough investigation by C. Malagola in his work on Codro Urceo (Bologna, 1878, cap. vii. 360-366).]