Tacitus and Bracciolini Part 7

Here then was Bracciolini again in Rome, not then a city of saints and sacred things, but of scoffing priests and absolved sinners: we all know what Luther said on returning to Wittenberg, after his first visit to Rome: "everything is permitted there except to be an honest man." If that was true at the commencement of the sixteenth century, it was much more true at the commencement of the fifteenth.

Count Corniani, in his "Ages of Italian Literature," is of opinion that Bracciolini had been in Hungary (II. 76). If so, it must have been after he left England; he could not then have been so soon, as I have stated, in Rome: he was there, however, for a certainty, as some of his letters now extant show, in the earlier portion of the spring of the following year; even this is against his having been in Hungary, except on the ground that almost immediately after he had arrived there, he found that whatever it was that Lamberteschi had offered to him was neither practicable nor agreeable; therefore he relinquished it and accepted the office of Secretary in the Papal Court. Bracciolini, however, does not seem to have gone to Hungary; nor was there any necessity that he should have done so, if my theory be correct; for then, so far from Lamberteschi's offer being neither practicable nor agreeable, it was both so feasible and pleasant, that it was in order to accomplish it, he expressly accepted the Secretary's post in the Court of Rome. He could not have carried out the forgery had he remained in England, because he would not have had the necessary leisure, on account of the heavy duties attached to his cure; and we have seen how he could get neither a sinecure nor a simple prebend; but to be in the Secretariate of the Papacy was to be the holder of an office with little or nothing to do, which gave him ample leisure for literary pursuits. He, therefore, became reconciled to accepting the Papal Secretaryship; "it being the way with a wise man," he observed in a philosophic spirit, "to do the best he can under circ.u.mstances, and be satisfied." If by being Secretary to the Pope he saw he could procure what he wanted, which was "obtaining a support," stick to the Secretariate he would; accordingly, he staid in Rome, devoting himself to his books. "Parere temporis semper sapientis est habitum. Si videro me hac via consecuturum, quod cupio, hoc est aliquod sustentaculum, tum adhaeream: quiescens in studiis, hic manebo" (Ep. II. 2).

As if preparing for some great literary undertaking connected with antiquity, he wrote from Rome on the 15th of May, 1423, to his friend Niccoli to let him have without the least delay all his notes and extracts from the various books (and they not a few and miscellaneous) which he had read; here it may be observed that what Cortese, Bishop of Urbino, says of the Camaldolese General, Traversari, is strictly applicable to him:--"Such was his inexhaustible love of reading, he regretted a moment spent away from his books; and every day, when not engaged in writing, devoured the compositions of the ancient Greeks and Romans": ("Erat in hoc homine inexhaustus quidem legendi amor; nullum enim patiebatur esse vacuum tempus. Quotidie aut scribebat, aut aliquid ex Graecis Latinisque litteris mandabat"):--"Mittas ad me, rogo, singula commentariola mea, hoc est, excerpta illa ex variis libris, quos legi, quae sunt plurima, ac dispersa; collige simul omnia, oro te, et ad me quamprimum mittas" (Ep. II. 2).

Having, no doubt, obtained in due time the notes and extracts wanted, apparently in the autumn of 1423, he then set about the commencement of his immortal and wonderful forgery, or, as he styles it in the fabrication itself, his "condensed and inglorious drudgery,"--"n.o.bis in arto et inglorius labor" (Annal. IV. 31); for in a letter written from Rome in the night of the 8th of October that year he makes a reflection about "beginnings of any kind being arduous and difficult," following up the remark with these striking words: that "what the ancients did pleasantly, quickly and easily was to him troublesome, tedious and burdensome"; a remark which he could not have made unless he was attempting something in the way of the ancients; unless, moreover, he was just setting about it; then he consoles himself by again repeating his favourite sage old saw from Virgil: that "hard work gets over everything":--"In quibusvis quoque rebus principia sunt ardua et difficilia; ut quod antiquioribus in officio sit jucundum, promptum ac leve, mihi sit molestum, tardum, onerosum.

Sed 'labor omnia vincit improbus'" (Ep. II. 5).

A month after this significant declaration he was hard at work forging the Annals of Tacitus; for we find him earnestly plying for books that were indispensable for any one writing the history of the early Roman Emperors. In a letter to Niccoli dated Rome, the 6th of November, 1423, he begs his friend to do all he can to get him some map of Ptolemy's Geography; to bear it in mind in case one should happen to fall in his way; also not to forget Suetonius and the other historians, and, above all, Plutarch's Lives of Ill.u.s.trious Characters: "Vellem aliquam Chartam Ptolemaei Geographiae, si fieri posset; in hoc cogita, si quid forte inciderit; ac etiam Suetonium, aliosque Historicos, et praesertim Plutarchi Viros Ill.u.s.tres non obliviscaris" (Ep. II. 7).

If it be said that Bracciolini wrote a History of Florence, and that these remarks which, unquestionably, refer to some "history"

from the expression "describendi gesta illius," apply to that work, it must be borne in mind that he did not write that history until towards the close of his life, that is, more than thirty years after these letters which pa.s.sed between him and Niccoli, for the events recorded in his History of Florence are carried down to as late as the year 1455; that that historical work is the only one he wrote under his own name; that it is no more written in imitation of the ancients, than any other of his acknowledged productions; and that even if it were, he would not have required for its composition such maps as Ptolemy's, nor such works as those of Suetonius and Plutarch. In fact, the most acute ingenuity cannot rescue Bracciolini from the charge that in October 1423 he, then resident in Rome, began to forge a work with the intention of palming it off upon the world as written by an ancient Roman: as I proceed I shall convincingly show that that ancient Roman was Tacitus, and that that work was the Annals.

CHAPTER IV.

BRACCIOLINI AS A BOOKFINDER.

I. Doubts on the authenticity of the Latin, but not the Greek Cla.s.sics.--II. At the revival of letters Popes and Princes offered large rewards for the recovery of the ancient cla.s.sics.--III. The labours of Bracciolini as a bookfinder.--IV. Belief put about by the professional bookfinders that MSS. were soonest found in obscure convents in barbarous lands.--V. How this reasoning throws the door open to fraud and forgery.--VI. The bands of bookfinders consisted of men of genius in every department of literature and science.--VII. Bracciolini endeavours to escape from forging the Annals by forging the whole lost History of Livy.--VIII. His Letter on the subject to Niccoli quoted, and examined.-- IX. Failure of his attempt, and he proceeds with the forgery of the Annals.

I. When we thus see Bracciolini setting to work in this quiet, business-like manner to forge the Annals of Tacitus, as if it were a general, common-place occurrence, a grave suspicion enters the mind whether it was not a thing very ordinarily done in his day; if so, whether we may not have a wholesale fabrication of the Latin cla.s.sics; which is very annoying to contemplate when we remember the number of works we shall have to reject as not having been written by ancient Romans but by modern Italians, of the fifteenth, and possibly the close of the fourteenth centuries. The suspicion becomes all the stronger with the fact before us that the literature of the ancient Romans was totally extinguished in Europe in the very opening centuries of the Christian aera; and that their language would have been also lost had it not been preserved till the age of Justinian (527-565) by the pleadings and writings of the leading lawyers; after which it is generally believed that it was continued to be preserved, along with the literature of the ancient Romans, in the buildings founded by the various monastic orders of Christians. Here again we are met by another equally vexing circ.u.mstance, it being excessively questionable whether monasteries ever really conserved, to any, even the least extent, the interests of human knowledge. Monks never had any love for learning; did not appreciate the volumes of antiquity; in fact, could not read them; for the Latin was not their Latin; and they are not likely to have preserved what they did not appreciate and could not read: the libraries they founded were for bibles, missals and prayer-books: the schools they established were for teaching children to read the Testament and prayer book, and to sing hymns and psalms, while the ancient ma.n.u.scripts they transcribed were, at best, the hagiological productions of the Fathers of the Christian Church.

But even if the works of the ancient Romans were preserved by the monks in their convent libraries, that was only till the approach of the last quarter of the sixth century. Then came the dark period of the conquest of Italy by the last swarm of the northern barbarians from their native settlements in Pannonia: Italy continued under the iron yoke of the dominion of these illiterate Lombards till their final overthrow towards the commencement of the last quarter of the eighth century by the great conqueror, warrior, Christian and devoted admirer of learning, Charlemagne: during that period literature became entirely extinguished, for in all the vigour and savage freedom of their fresh and unworn barbarism these Pannonian dunces were as diligent for two whole centuries (568-774) in demolishing monasteries and destroying books as in levelling fortresses and ravaging cities. For six centuries after, a confused a.s.semblage of different races of boors, Franks, Normans and Saracens, occupied Italy; they cared not a fig for knowledge; they did not know what a book was, for they did not know the alphabet, engaged as they were, like those kindred spirits in after ages, the Ioways, Mohicans and Ojibbeways, in perpetual wars and bloodshed: all this time the light of literature never once broke in upon the scene: at length traces of it were discerned in the revival of learning during the age of Petrarch and the Father of modern Italian prose, Boccaccio, in the middle of the fourteenth century. Thus for eight hundred years there was a moral eclipse of all that was excellent in human knowledge in Italy and the whole West of Europe.

Fortunately there was no such middle age of darkness in Greece: there the light of science and literature remained unextinguished: the knowledge of the works of antiquity was cultivated in the East with enthusiasm; and while we may be confident that we possess the works of all those high and gifted spirits who adorned that bright period which extends from Homer and Hesiod to Plato and Aristotle, and again the works of all those Greeks who flourished from the death of Alexander the Great to the death of Augustus Caesar, the brightest of whom were Menander, Theocritus, Polybius, Strabo, and a gorgeous array of philosophers, sophists and rhetoricians, we can be by no means sure that we have the real works of the Roman cla.s.sics; there must even be the gravest doubt as to the probability; for, though during the close of the fourteenth century, throughout the fifteenth, and at the commencement of the sixteenth, books purporting to be of their writing were constantly being recovered, it was invariably under distressingly suspicious circ.u.mstances; exactly the Roman author that was wanted turned up; and always for a certainty that Roman author for whom the highest price had been offered; the monastery was rarely famous, seldom in Italy, but obscure and situated in a barbarous country; the discoverer, too, was not, as is generally supposed, an ignorant, unlettered monk or friar, who could not read what he found, and who could not, therefore be suspected of having forged what he stated he had discovered; it was invariably a most cultured scholar, nay, a man of the very highest literary attainments, an exquisitely accomplished writer, to boot; a "Grammaticus,"

forsooth, who possessed a masterly and critical knowledge of the Latin language.

II. The unlettered gloom in which Italy had been immersed for ages was effectually dissipated by the great number of learned and ill.u.s.trious Greeks who took refuge in the West of Europe, in order to escape from Ottoman Power long before the fall of Constantinople. On account of their enlightenment, literature revived in Florence, Venice and Rome; it speedily spread from the Cities of the Great Merchants and of the Popes into the provincial and inferior towns; thus Italy was the first country in the West where good taste, enlightened views, and generous emulation in the sciences and the fine arts took the place of the ignorance, the avarice and the venality which for centuries had held sole sway in that civilized portion of the world. Princes and n.o.bles vied with Popes and Cardinals in the restoration of letters; and now the best way for a man to advance himself was to show a desire for the promotion of letters; above all, for the discovery of ma.n.u.scripts of the ancient cla.s.sics, which, when long looked for, and not found, were usually,--from the too tempting reward, which was a fortune,--forged by some unscrupulous "Grammaticus," or writer of Latin.

III. At the commencement of the fifteenth century, a little band of men lived in Rome: some were Apostolic Secretaries; all were famous for their abilities; five were scholars endowed with sterling talents, Antonio Lusco Cincio de Rustici, Leonardo Bruni, and two others from Florence, Bracciolini, and Dominici, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of Ragusa. (Pog. Vita p. 180 from Joannes Baptista Poggius in Orat. Card. Capranicae (Miscell. Ballutii Tom. 3.) They were all friends; and their delight was, like their masters, the Popes, to retire in summer from the heat of Rome into the cool air of the Campagna; there, after a frugal repast, they held discourse daily, like men of mind, on a variety of engaging topics: "sumus saepius una confabulantes variis de rebus," says Bracciolini in a letter to Francesco Marescalcho of Ferrara (Op. Pog. 307), and continues: "incidit inter nos sermo de viris doctis et eloquentibus." Thus

"Oft unwearied did they spend the nights, Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love, Wondered at them from above-- They spent them not in toys, or l.u.s.t, or wine; But search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence, and poetry, Arts which they loved."

Of these men, the most extraordinary for superlative qualifications, and, apparently that inseparable companion of the highest order of genius, indefatigable energy, was Bracciolini. Muratori, in his "Annali d'Italia" (anno 1459) speaks of him as "letterato insigne di questi tempi," and, as leaving behind him when he died on the 30th of October, 1459, "molte opere e gran nome" (Vol. XIII. 481).

When Bracciolini first joined the Papal Court, Guarino of Verona, Aurispa and Filelfo were making continuous voyages to Greece in order to fetch home ma.n.u.scripts of Greek authors yet unknown in Italy; at this time were found and first brought to the West of Europe the poems of Callimachus, Pindar, Oppian and Orpheus; the Commentaries of Aristarchus on the Iliad; the works of Plato, Proclus, Plotinus, Xenophon and Lucian; the Histories of Arrian, Ca.s.sius Dio, and Diodorus Siculus; the Geography of Strabo; Procopius and some of the Byzantine historians; Gregory of n.a.z.ianzen, Chrysostom, and other Greek Fathers of the Church. In emulation of these men Bracciolini and a band of bookfinders, a.s.sisted and rewarded by the wealth of Princes and Popes, went up and down the countries of Europe to find ma.n.u.scripts of the ancient works of the Romans that were supposed to be lost; and it is generally believed that the republic of letters is more indebted to him than to anybody else of his ma.n.u.script finding age for the numerous books that were found, and which without such timely recovery we are given to understand, from the decaying state of the ma.n.u.script and the pernicious place where it was lighted on, would very soon, in almost every instance, have been irrecoverably lost.

When Bracciolini accompanied the Papal Court in the capacity of Secretary to the Council of Constance in 1414, he, one day, went with two friends, Cincio, the Roman gentleman and scholar of fortune, of the family de Rustici, and the eminent schoolman and finished writer Bartolommeo de Montepulciano to the monastery of St. Gall about twenty miles distant from Constance for the purpose of finding new ma.n.u.scripts; his companions found Lactantius, "De Utroque Homine," Vitruvius on Architecture and the Grammar of Priscian, while he himself found, in addition to the Commentaries of Asconius Pedia.n.u.s on eight of Cicero's Orations,--the three first books, and half of the fourth of the Argonauticon of Valerius Flaccus. On this discovery being communicated to Frances...o...b..rbaro, the latter in his reply spoke of other discoveries of Bracciolini's, of some of which we have no account as to where they were found, nor when, except before 1414: Tertullian, Lucretius, Silius Italicus, Ammia.n.u.s Marcelinus, Manilius (his unfinished poem on "Astronomy," clearly a forgery), Lucius Septimius Caper, Eutychius and Probus; and, adds Barbaro, "many others,"--"complures alios," among which Aulus Gellius may be included. All these were found not by Bracciolini alone, but always in the company of very remarkable characters, and more frequently than any other, Bartolommeo de Montepulciano, of whom nothing is known, except that he was a splendid scholar, and great bookfinder, or forger (the terms are synonymous), and that he resided in Rome in a pleasant villa situated near the Lateran Church (Pog. Op. p. 2).

In the oration which he delivered over the remains of his friend Niccoli (Op. 272) Bracciolini says that he found in French and German monasteries, besides Quintilian, Silius Italicus, and part of the poem of Lucretius, some orations of Cicero and Nonius Marcellus. In his Treatise "de Infelicitate Principum" (p. 394), and in one of his Letters (II. 7), he mentions having found Cicero's Orations along with Columella in the Monastery of Cluny in the Maconnois district of Burgundy; he gives the number of the Orations of Cicero, which were eight (Ep. IV. 2), and which are generally supposed to have been those for Caecina, Rubirius and Roscius, against Rullus and Lucius Piso, and those relating to the Agrarian Laws. He also found Cicero's two treatises De Legibus and De Finibus. In his Descriptio Ruinarum Urbis Romae he states that he found in the Monastery of Monte Casino, near Naples, Frontinus on the Aqueducts of Rome, and it was, as we know from one of his letters (III. 37), in July 1429. The Abbe Mehus, in the preface to his edition of the works of Traversari, adds that he found the eight books of the Mathematics of Firmicus, which is confirmed by himself (Ep. III. 37). While in England he recovered the poems of Julius Calpurnicus who wrote pastorals in the reign of the Emperor Carus; he also lighted in the monasteries on part of Petronius Arbiter (Ep. IV. 3), also part of Statius, and book XV. in Cologne in 1423 (ib.); six years after he found the following twelve plays of Plautus: Bacchides, Mostellaria, Mercator, Miles Gloriosus, Pseudolus, Poenulus, Persa, Rudens, Stichus, Trinummus and Truculentus. In fact, he was occupied nearly all his days, as long as he was in the vigour of life, in traversing Germany and other lands in search of ancient ma.n.u.scripts, which he recovered in monasteries at different times and in different places; nor was he to be deterred from these toils, which have been likened to the labours of Hercules, by any stress of weather, length of journey or badness of roads.

IV.--The account which he gives in his Dialogue "De Infelicitate Principum," while dwelling upon a custom of his of going from one country to another in far distant and barbarous parts for Latin books, opens our eyes to a very strange state of belief which obtained at the beginning of the fifteenth century with respect to the refined works of the ancients;--that, because a number of these ma.n.u.scripts were discovered by him, and his band of bookfinders, in obscure monasteries in barbarous countries, there was to be deduced therefrom a definite conclusion that many more were to be discovered in that way; and that this conclusion was so firmly lodged in the minds of men it prevented Popes and Princes from continuing to offer that pecuniary aid and those other rewards which they had been for a long time in the habit of tendering for the recovery of such ma.n.u.scripts:--"When these,"

says he in the above-mentioned treatise, "had been brought to light by him, and when the very sanguine and certain hope was held forth of more being found, never after that did either a Pope or a Prince give the slightest attention or a.s.sistance to the recovery of those most ill.u.s.trious men out of the convents of barbarians:"-- "haec c.u.m ab eo fuissent in lucem edita, c.u.mque uberior et certa spes proposita esset ampliora inveniendi, nunquam postea aut pontifex aut princeps vel minimum operae aut auxilii adhibuit ad liberandos praeclarissimos illos viros ex ergastulis barbarorum"

(p. 393). This statement is so remarkably curious that it requires a little consideration.

We can easily understand how the valuable works of the Greeks and Romans, from the importance attached to them and the appreciation in which they were held, were safest and longest preserved in their respective countries, and that, therefore, they could have been found, sooner than elsewhere, in Greece and Italy; but after those countries had been thoroughly ransacked, it is not so clear to comprehend how it should follow that their works were to be just as rapidly and easily found in other, and those barbarous countries, nay, indeed, more rapidly and more easily. To put this forth was to endeavour to prepare people's minds for the numbers of discoveries that were made, or, perhaps, more properly, pretended to be made in foreign parts. It was, in fact, to pursue this course of reasoning:--If those works had remained in civilized hands, centuries would not have elapsed without the world being cognizant of their existence; the learned could not have lost sight of them; the select few would have transmitted copies from generation to generation; but when they pa.s.sed into the possession of unlettered men living in barbarous countries, they would then be altogether hidden from view; such people would treat them as swine treat pearls; spurn them; not keep them in libraries, but throw them away as useless lumber into cellars, pits, dark holes, dirty pa.s.sages, dry wells; fling them away as refuse into dustbins or upon dungheaps. Nearly as much says Bracciolini by these shadowy phrases: "in darkness"; "in a blind dungeon"; "in a dirty dungeon;" "in dismal dungeons," and "in many dens," as for instance, "for the sake of finding books that were kept by them in their convents shut up _in darkness_ and _in a blind dungeon_" (Op. 393)--"He had rescued renowned authors out of _the dismal dungeons_ in which, against their will and without being used, they had been kept concealed (for they were shut up in _many a den_ and _foul dungeon_" (ib.):-- "in tenebris"; "carcere caeco"; "foedo carcere"; "diris carceribus," and "multis vinculis," e.g.:--"librorum perquirendorum gratia, qui in ergastulis apud illos reclusi detinentur _in tenebris_, et _carcere caeco_" (Op. 393)-- "Autores praeclaros ... _ex diris carceribus_ quibus inviti obsoletique opprimuntur eruisset (sunt enim _multis vinculis_ et _foedo carcere_ abstrusi" (ib.). Books thrown away in such places must be regarded, when recovered, as found by the purest accident; hence it was at once comprehensible how they had remained unknown to the world for hundreds of years; for who would think of looking for books in such places?

Yet it was precisely in such places that Bracciolini and his companions looked for the books that they wanted; what is still stranger, they always found in such queer places the exact books they were in search of. It was so, for example, when they recovered the books in the monastery of St. Gall; the books were not found where, Bracciolini admits, they ought to have been, on account of their excellence, on the shelves of the library, but where slugs and toads are more frequently looked for and found than books and ma.n.u.scripts, in an exceedingly dirty and dark dungeon at the bottom of a tower and one of these books, Quintilian, though described as "sound and safe," is also described as being "saturated with moisture and begrimed with mire," as if it had been made dirty expressly for the occasion of the recovery: "Quintilianum comperimus, adhuc salvum et incolumem, plenum tamen situ et pulvere squalentem. Erant non in bibliotheca libri illi, ut eorum dignitas postulabat, sed in teterrimo quodam et obscuro carcere, fundo scilicet unius turris." (From a letter of Bracciolini to Guarino of Verona, preserved in St. Paul's Library, Leipzic--printed at the end of Poggiana, and dated Jan. 1, 1417).

V. This kind of reasoning, when admitted, throws the door open to fraud and forgery; but it cannot be admitted, because it is fallacious in reality, sound in appearance only, as will be seen by only putting a few natural questions:--How came these books into such places? Who took them from Italy, Greece, or other enlightened parts of the globe? If some learned monk, made abbot or prior of a convent of Germany or Hungary? or some equally learned priest sent as bishop to christianize the heathen in still more barbarous lands in the North in a far distant age, why should succeeding monks, fonder, be it granted, of ploughing and reaping than reading and writing, treat as refuse books which, though not deemed by them of any value, as far as their own tastes and inclinations were concerned, they, nevertheless, knew were held in the very highest esteem by the studious in more civilized parts; and that these studious people, understanding the language in which they were written, and considering their contents most precious, would willingly give in exchange for them at any time not large, but enormous sums of money?

These are questions that cannot be answered with satisfaction: they seem to give the highest colouring of truth to what has been suggested, that there was a wholesale forgery of these books; and one is almost inclined to give Father Hardouin credit, for being quite right, when he expressed as his belief that, perhaps, not more than two or three of the ancient Latin cla.s.sics were really written by the old Romans. [Endnote 208]

VI. The clause in the pa.s.sage just quoted from the "De Infelicitate Principum":--"never after" (Bracciolini had found a great many books abroad, in Germany and elsewhere) "did either a Pope or a Prince give the slightest attention or a.s.sistance towards the recovery of those most ill.u.s.trious men out of the convents of barbarians."--"nunquam postea aut Pontifex aut Princeps vel minimum operae aut auxilii adhibuit ad liberandos praeclarissimos illos viros ex ergastulis barbarorum," shows that before the time of Bracciolini the custom prevailed of valuable a.s.sistance and large money rewards being given by Popes and Princes for the recovery of ancient cla.s.sics; and therefore confirms what was stated in the first portion of this inquiry that the custom was not confined to the age of Leo X., but ranged back to, at least, a hundred, if not, half as many more years. In that way men, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, made large fortunes. In that way Bracciolini made his.

The finding of any ancient Latin MSS. was a distinct profession in those days, and Bracciolini may be said to have studied the art, of which he was one of the greatest experts, so carefully, and to have practised it with such ability and diligence as to have elevated it into a science. Many enterprising scholars before him had devoted themselves with indefatigable perseverance to traversing, sometimes singly, but more frequently in bands of two, three, or more, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the more civilized countries of Europe for the purpose of ransacking,--or pretending to ransack,--the shelves of convent libraries of their treasures.

As scarcely anything was more profitable than searching for MSS.,-- particularly when it was certain that, after the looking for, they would be found, if not of the particular authors wanted, yet of others that would repay for the searching;--and as Emperors and Popes, Kings, Princes, Cardinals, Ministers and Bishops paid fabulous prices for the literary treasures of ancient Rome, Bracciolini improved upon this plan by extending the area of search into the woods of Germany, the wildernesses of Bohemia and Hungary, and the not then over civilized fastnesses and forests of England and marshes and bogs of France: the great thing with him and his companions was, when they could not find, to forge; all they had to ascertain was simply which ancient Roman was particularly wanted and would fetch the highest price; and as the band consisted of men of genius of different tastes or faculties,-- poetical, historical or narrative, philosophical, grammatical or critical, and scientific or mathematical, if the reward was sufficiently munificent to pay for the time and labour, the highly valued work that was wanted, no matter to what department of literature or science it belonged, was sure to turn up, sooner or later; and if the man who was to forge was not in the proper mood of inspiration for the business, some other fabricated writer was put forward on the ground that he was quite equivalent in merit to the author that was desiderated, as when a thief or other vagabond is wanted by a London Detective, he is certain to turn up in due time, and if not the actual delinquent, at any rate somebody else as bad, who serves equally well for the culprit.

VII. Bracciolini now engaged in forging an addition to the History of Tacitus, impelled to it from his intolerable and restless pa.s.sion for the acquisition of a fortune, greater even than his constantly increasing avidity for knowledge, soon saw that it was a task beset by enormous difficulties; nay, difficulties of an apparently insuperable nature. We have no record that he was aware of this; but we require no record to know it; his proceedings pointed to it: We have already speculated as to the reasons which must have induced him to forge the Annals so strangely as he did, but before those reasons could have entered his mind, they must have been preceded by others: it is to be presumed that he endeavoured, in the first instance, to continue the History of Tacitus, as Tacitus himself would have continued it, by following up the history of Domitian with that of Nerva; but the few materials that were left rendered it impossible for him to record the events in that Emperor's reign on the broad and expansive plan adopted by Tacitus, which was to spread out the events of one year so that they should fill four lengthy books. He therefore gave up the notion as utterly impracticable; but in trying to get out of the forgery of the Annals he suggested another scheme of fabrication just as audacious, and which he seems to have imagined would have been just as remunerative.

Two months after he had written for Ptolemy's maps, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Suetonius and other historians of the first Roman Emperors, he addressed another letter to his Florentine friend, Niccoli, dated the 8th of January, 1424, in which he hinted at no less a forgery than the whole of Livy's History, and if circ.u.mstances had been favourable to it, we should have, doubtless, had a composition so like the original,--even so much more like than even what was afterwards honourably and admirably done by Freinshemius,--as to have defied detection. His statement was that a learned Goth, who had been a great traveller, had told him he had seen the Ten Decades of Livy's History in the Cistercian Abbey of Sora, near Roschild, about a day's journey from Lubeck. He wrote in the highest spirits, as gay as a b.u.t.terfly, as playful as a kitten, and as light as a balloon; he implored his friend to lose no time in seeking out Cosmo de Medici and get his consent for the finding of these volumes, which he described as written in two large, oblong volumes in Lombard characters. He added that the man who had brought the news was not to be relied upon, yet he wished to believe him in a matter "out of which coin could be made to such an amount as to be absolutely incredible,"--"ex qua tantum lucrum fieri posset, quam esse omnino incredulus" (Ep. II. 9).

He wished it to be further communicated to Leonardo Bruni who had just been appointed Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, in hopes, no doubt, that Bruni would further the scheme by money a.s.sistance; he also wrote about it to Leonello d'Este;--all which eagerness on his part with respect to forging the lost books of Livy can be easily accounted for, when, in exchange for a mere copy of Livy's imperfect history he got from Beccadelli of Bologna, the minister of King Alphonso I. of Arragon, a sum sufficient wherewith to purchase a landed estate:--"Poggio vendette un codice di t.i.to Livio per acquistarsi un podere, e il Panormita vendette un podere per acquistare il codice di t.i.to Livio" (Corniani, tom. II. p. 122). Although, for the purpose of making a statement with a telling or striking effect, these are the words of Count Corniani in his "I Secoli della Letteratura Italiana," it was not exactly "a farm" that was taken and given by the accepter and disposer of a ma.n.u.script copy of Livy; Count Corniani himself is immediately his own contradicter by quoting in a note a pa.s.sage from one of Beccadelli's Letters (Lib. V.), to the effect that the "farm" in Bracciolini's case was a "villa at Florence," as Beccadelli thus wrote to King Alphonso: "But I also want to know who in your judgment acted wiser, Poggio or myself; he, that he might buy a _villa at Florence_, sold a Livy which he had written with his own hand and was a most beautiful copy; I, that I might buy a Livy, sold a farm by auction":--"Sed et illud a prudentia tua scire desidero, uter ego an Poggius melius fecerit: is ut _Villam Florentiae_ emerit, Livium vendidit, quem sua manu pulcherrimus scripserat; ego ut Livium emam, fundum proscripsi." If Bracciolini could get so much for an incomplete copy of Livy's History, what might he not hope to get for a complete one? Imagination wanders into the realms of fairy.

I am confident that if he had received the requisite encouragement from Niccolo Niccoli, or Leonardo Bruni, or Cosmo de Medici, or that munificent patron of letters, Leonello d' Este, afterwards that enormously wealthy prince, the Marquis of Ferrara, and had undertaken the task, he would have been more successful as an imitator of Livy than he proved himself to be (marvellous though he was) as an imitator of Tacitus. The genius of Livy, and also of Sall.u.s.t, was more in accord with his own than the staid majestic coldness and the solemn curt sententiousness of Tacitus. Indeed, he was such a devoted admirer of Livy and Sall.u.s.t, that he reminds the reader of them throughout his History of Florence; in the Annals, too, he goes out of his way to lavish praises upon them, and upon them only of all the Roman historians: he speaks of Sall.u.s.t as the "finest writer of Roman history": and of Livy, as "famous, above others, for eloquence and fidelity":--"Caius Sall.u.s.tius, rerum Romanarum florentissimus auctor" (III. 30):-- "t.i.tus Livius, eloquentiae ac fidei praeclarus in primis" (IV.

34). Tacitus nowhere expresses such very lofty opinions of his, two fellow and rival historians; on the contrary, he does not seem to have so thoroughly approved their style and manner; at any rate, he carefully avoided their mode of treating history. It is true that in his Agricola he speaks well of Livy, but at the same time he places Fabius Rusticus exactly upon the same level with him:--for he says "that Livy among the ancients, and Fabius Rusticus among the modern authors were the most eloquent": "Livius veterum, Fabius Rusticus recentium, eloquentissimi auctores" (10); he, therefore, never could have spoken of Livy, as Bracciolini speaks of him in the Annals, as "famous, _above others,_"-- "praeclarus _in primis_." This is another of those little slips of Bracciolini's, which, without question, at once, bring his forgery to light.

VIII. After these remarks, it cannot but be highly interesting to the reader if I now place before him the whole of the very remarkable, and what should be ever-memorable letter about the contemplated forgery of Livy, not only for the subject on which it touches, but as exhibiting Bracciolini in his most playful, and, it may also be added, most roguish mood:--

"A learned man who is a Goth in race, and has travelled over a great part of the world, has been here; he is a man of a good understanding, but unreliable. He said that he had seen the X.

Decades of Livy, in two big and oblong volumes written in Lombard characters, and there was on the t.i.tle page of one volume a note that the codex contained the ten decades of t.i.tus Livy, and that he had read some parts of these volumes. This he a.s.serts with an air of truth that commands belief; he told the same tale to Cardinal Orsini, and to many more, and to all in the very same words, so that I think this is no fib of his. What more do you want? This statement of his, and his serious countenance, cause me to give some credence to him. For it is a very good thing to be misled in a matter of this kind, out of which coin can be made to such an amount as to be absolutely incredible. Therefore I have wanted to write to you about this, that you may talk over it with Cosmo, and anxiously set to work for these volumes to be searched for; it will be an easy job for you. The books are in the Monastery at Sora that belongs to the Cistercian Order, about two German miles from Roschild, that is, a little more than a day's journey from Lubeek. p.r.i.c.k up your ears, Pamphilus. Two volumes big, oblong, in Lombard characters, are in the monastery at Sora that belongs to the Cistercian Order, about two German miles from Roschild, and to be reached from Lubeek in two days or so. See then that Cosmo writes as soon as possible to Gherard de Bueri, for him to betake himself there when he has the opportunity,--aye, betake himself at once to the Monastery. For if this is true, it will be a triumph over the Dacians. The Cardinal will send somebody there, or commission a person to start post-haste. I don't want such a big pill as this to slip out of our own throats; therefore, be on the stir, look alive, and don't sleep over it.

For this is just what the man has stated, and though he might seem to talk too fast, yet there is no reason why he should tell an impudent lie, especially as he can gain nothing by telling lies.

Therefore, I, who am such a sort of man as scarcely to believe what I see, am induced to think that this is not entirely false, and in a matter of this kind it is a proper thing to be deceived.

Run then to Cosmo,--press him,--importune him to make an advance for these books to be brought to you safe and sharp. Adieu. Rome, the 8th of January, 1424. What you do, mind you let me know. In haste. Tell this to our Chancellor, Leonardo. In that monastery nearly all the kings of the Dacians are buried:"--

"Venit huc quidam doctus h.o.m.o natione Gothus, qui peragravit magnam partem orbis; h.o.m.o quidem est ingenio acuto, sed inconstans. Idem retulit se vidisse X. decades Livii, duobus voluminibus magnis, et oblongis, scriptas litteris Longobardis, et in t.i.tulo esse unius voluminis, in eo contineri decem decades t.i.ti Livii, seque legisse nonnulla in iis voluminibus. Hoc ita verum esse a.s.serit, ut credi possit; retulit hoc Cardinali de Ursinis, multisque praeterea, et omnibus eisdem verbis, ut opinor, non esse haec ab eo conficta. Quid quaeris? Facit a.s.sertio sua, et constans vultus, ut credam aliquid. Melius est enim peccare in hanc partem, ex qua tantum lucrum fieri posset, quam esse omnino incredulus.

Itaque volui hoc ad te scribere, ut loquaris c.u.m Cosmo, desque solicite operam, ut haec volumina quaerantur; nam facile erit vobis. Libri sunt in Monasterio de Sora, ordinis Cisterciensium, prope Roschild ad duo milliaria theutonica, hoc est, prope Lubich paulo amplius quam est iter diei unius. Arrige aures, Pamphile.

Duo sunt volumina, magna, oblonga, litteris Longobardis, in Monasterio de Sora, ordinis Cisterciensium, prope Roschild, ad duo milliaria theutonica, quo adiri potest a Lubich biduo amplius.

Cura ergo, ut Cosmus scribat quam primum diligenter ad Gherardum de Bueris, ut, si opus sit, ipse eo se conferat; imo omnino se conferat ad Monasterium. Nam si hoc verum est, triumphandum erit de Dacis. Cardinalis mittet illuc nescio quem, aut committet uni propediem discessuro. Nollem hunc tantum bolum de faucibus nostris cadere; itaque matura, ac diligenter; ne dormias. Nam haec vir ille ita affirmavit, ut quamvis verbosior videretur, tamen nulla esset causa, cur ita impudenter mentiretur, praesertim nullo proposito mentiendi praemio. Ego igitur ille, qui vix credo quae video, adducor, ut hoc non omnino esse falsum putem, et hac una in re honestum est falli. Tu igitur curre, insta, preme Cosmum, ut aliquid expendat, quo litterae cito tutae deferantur. Vale. Romae die VIII. Januarii 1424. Quid autem egeritis, cura, ut sciam. Manu veloci. Dicas haec Leonardo nostro Cancellario. In eo monasterio omnes fere Dacorum reges sepeliuntur." (Lib. II. Ep. 9.)

I cannot pa.s.s away from this singular letter without some comment.

It is very certain that there never was known to have been any such copy of Livy in the Monastery of Sora, though Tiraboschi, who is simple enough to believe in the sincerity of Bracciolini, speaks of these volumes as having shared the same fate as other ma.n.u.scripts, that is, being lost:--"questo si raro codice ha avuta la stessa sorte degli altri" (Vol. I. p. 452 n.). We may be a.s.sured that the "two big, oblong volumes" never had an existence:--the two volumes, like Sir John Falstaff's men in buckram, increase in number in the telling, for in a subsequent letter addressed by Bracciolini to Leonello d'Este, the "two"

become "THREE": what is more, the learned Goth's "serious statement" is "a sacred oath"; the "Lombard characters" are intermixed with some "Gothic" ones, and "another person" is found who declares that he has also seen the whole of the Decades of Livy:--"Nicolaus quidam, natione Gothus ... _sancte juravit_ esse ... TRIA praegrandia volumina, et oblonga, conscripta literis Longobardis et nonnullis praeterea _Gothicis_ intermixtis ...

nunc quoque _alius testis_ horum librorum reperiatur, qui se quoque decades omnes vidisse a.s.severet" (Pog. Ep. x.x.x., post lib.

De Variet. Fortun.). After this one is almost inclined to exclaim with Shakespeare's Prince Hal: "Prithee, let him alone: we shall have more anon." Where there is such inconsistency in the putting of a statement, the account looks uncommonly like a figment. We may be equally sure that the learned Goth never had an existence, any more than the "two" volumes, or the "three" volumes; (for, with the different statements, it is difficult to determine their number), nor, consequently, can there be any truth about the communication made by the Goth to Cardinal Orsini, and many others.

It will have been observed also that Bracciolini himself insists on the probable myth of the whole tale; the learned Goth is "unreliable"; he maintains that he is "telling no fib"; Bracciolini doubts himself whether what he hears is "true," but he can "see no reason why the man should lie": thus repeatedly in a very short letter he strongly suspects the veracity of the story-- he only believes it because he wishes to believe it.

The whole thing was trumped up by himself for a very obvious reason: he wanted to ascertain whether Cosmo de' Medici (or any other rich man) would give money (in fact, a fortune,) for the recovered portion of the whole History of Livy: that being ascertained, he had his own scheme of further procedure; he kept that to himself; it has died with him, and, never having been revealed, it can only be divined:--my conjecture (looking at the character of Bracciolini) is that he would have played upon the credulity of Cosmo de' Medici, Leonardo Bruni, Leonello d'Este (or any other man whom he could have duped) till he had had time, which would have been years, to forge what he would have continued to a.s.sert, until the completion of the forgery, was in existence somewhere in Germany, a mistake only having been made by the "learned Goth" as to the name and site of the monastery. Hence his speaking of that imaginary individual as "unreliable,"--or whatever else he may mean by "inconstans,"--a word that he uses to denote a man who might fall into mistakes, as, for example, in not recollecting the exact name or precise situation of a monastery, but who could not possibly err as to the nature of a book which he had seen, handled, opened and read, and had learning to understand what he read.

IX. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm and energy, as well as the craft and force, with which he laid the foundation for its acceptance, nothing came of this grand determination--this indirect proposal of his to produce by imposture the whole lost portion of the history of Livy; so whether he liked it or not, if he wanted to get a sum equivalent in these days to a little fortune of 10,000 at the least, he had to return to the fabrication of the Annals of Tacitus; and get through the ungrateful task as best he could. So, "hanging down his ears," as Horace says,

"ut iniquae mentis asellus, c.u.m gravius dorso subiit onus,"

he steadily set to work in the January of 1424, with a patient soul and an iron will to the completion of the dolorous drudgery from which he had ascertained to his sorrow there was no escape.