View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages Part 33

This great poem was received in Italy with that enthusiastic admiration which attaches itself to works of genius only in ages too rude to listen to the envy of compet.i.tors, or the fastidiousness of critics. Almost every library in that country contains ma.n.u.script copies of the Divine Comedy, and an account of those who have abridged or commented upon it would swell to a volume. It was thrice printed in the year 1472, and at least nine times within the fifteenth century. The city of Florence in 1373, with a magnanimity which almost redeems her original injustice, appointed a public professor to read lectures upon Dante; and it was hardly less honourable to the poet's memory that the first person selected for this office was Boccaccio. The universities of Pisa and Piacenza imitated this example; but it is probable that Dante's abstruse philosophy was often more regarded in their chairs than his higher excellences.[881] Italy indeed, and all Europe, had reason to be proud of such a master. Since Claudian, there had been seen for nine hundred years no considerable body of poetry, except the Spanish poem of the Cid, of which no one had heard beyond the peninsula, that could be said to pa.s.s mediocrity; and we must go much further back than Claudian to find any one capable of being compared with Dante. His appearance made an epoch in the intellectual history of modern nations, and banished the discouraging suspicion which long ages of lethargy tended to excite, that nature had exhausted her fertility in the great poets of Greece and Rome. It was as if, at some of the ancient games, a stranger had appeared upon the plain, and thrown his quoit among the marks of former casts which tradition had ascribed to the demiG.o.ds. But the admiration of Dante, though it gave a general impulse to the human mind, did not produce imitators. I am unaware at least of any writer, in whatever language, who can be said to have followed the steps of Dante: I mean not so much in his subject as in the character of his genius and style.

His...o...b..t is still all his own, and the track of his wheels can never be confounded with that of a rival.[882]

[Sidenote: Petrarch.]

In the same year that Dante was expelled from Florence, a notary, by name Petracco, was involved in a similar banishment. Retired to Arezzo, he there became the father of Francis Petrarch. This great man shared of course, during his early years, in the adverse fortune of his family, which he was invincibly reluctant to restore, according to his father's wish, by the profession of jurisprudence. The strong bias of nature determined him to polite letters and poetry. These are seldom the fountains of wealth; yet they would perhaps have been such to Petrarch, if his temper could have borne the sacrifice of liberty for any worldly acquisitions. At the city of Avignon, where his parents had latterly resided, his graceful appearance and the reputation of his talents attracted one of the Colonna family, then bishop of Lombes in Gascony.

In him, and in other members of that great house, never so ill.u.s.trious as in the fourteenth century, he experienced the union of patronage and friendship. This, however, was not confined to the Colonnas. Unlike Dante, no poet was ever so liberally and sincerely encouraged by the great; nor did any perhaps ever carry to that perilous intercourse a spirit more irritably independent, or more free from interested adulation. He praised his friends lavishly because he loved them ardently; but his temper was easily susceptible of offence, and there must have been much to tolerate in that restlessness and jealousy of reputation which is perhaps the inevitable failing of a poet.[883] But every thing was forgiven to a man who was the acknowledged boast of his age and country. Clement VI. conferred one or two sinecure benefices upon Petrarch, and would probably have raised him to a bishopric if he had chosen to adopt the ecclesiastical profession. But he never took orders, the clerical tonsure being a sufficient qualification for holding canonries. The same pope even afforded him the post of apostolical secretary, and this was repeated by Innocent VI. I know not whether we should ascribe to magnanimity or to a politic motive the behaviour of Clement VI. towards Petrarch, who had pursued a course as vexatious as possible to the Holy See. For not only he made the residence of the supreme pontiffs at Avignon, and the vices of their court, the topic of invectives, too well founded to be despised, but he had ostentatiously put himself forward as the supporter of Nicola di Rienzi in a project which could evidently have no other aim than to wrest the city of Rome from the temporal sovereignty of its bishop. Nor was the friendship and society of Petrarch less courted by the most respectable Italian princes; by Robert king of Naples, by the Visconti, the Correggi of Parma, the famous doge of Venice, Andrew Dandolo, and the Carrara family of Padua, under whose protection he spent the latter years of his life. Stories are related of the respect shown to him by men in humbler stations which are perhaps still more satisfactory.[884]

But the most conspicuous testimony of public esteem was bestowed by the city of Rome, in his solemn coronation as laureat poet in the Capitol.

This ceremony took place in 1341; and it is remarkable that Petrarch had at that time composed no works which could, in our estimation, give him pretensions to so singular an honour.

The moral character of Petrarch was formed of dispositions peculiarly calculated for a poet. An enthusiast in the emotions of love and friendship, of glory, of patriotism, of religion, he gave the rein to all their impulses; and there is not perhaps a page in his Italian writing which does not bear the trace of one or other of these affections. By far the most predominant, and that which has given the greatest celebrity to his name, is his pa.s.sion for Laura. Twenty years of unrequited and almost unaspiring love were lightened by song; and the attachment, which, having long survived the beauty of its object,[885]

seems to have at one time nearly pa.s.sed from the heart to the fancy, was changed to an intenser feeling, and to a sort of celestial adoration, by her death. Laura, before the time of Petrarch's first accidental meeting with her, was united in marriage with another; a fact which, besides some more particular evidence, appears to me deducible from the whole tenor of his poetry.[886] Such a pa.s.sion is undoubtedly not capable of a moral defence; nor would I seek its palliation so much in the prevalent manners of his age, by which however the conduct of even good men is generally not a little influenced, as in the infirmity of Petrarch's character, which induced him both to obey and to justify the emotions of his heart. The lady too, whose virtue and prudence we are not to question, seems to have tempered the light and shadow of her countenance so as to preserve her admirer from despair, and consequently to prolong his sufferings and servitude.

The general excellences of Petrarch, are his command over the music of his native language, his correctness of style, scarcely two or three words that he has used having been rejected by later writers, his exquisite elegance of diction, improved by the perpetual study of Virgil; but, far above all, that tone of pure and melancholy sentiment which has something in it unearthly, and forms a strong contrast to the amatory poems of antiquity. Most of these are either licentious or uninteresting; and those of Catullus, a man endowed by nature with deep and serious sensibility, and a poet, in my opinion, of greater and more varied genius than Petrarch, are contaminated above all the rest with the most degrading grossness. Of this there is not a single instance in the poet of Vaucluse; and his strains, diffused and admired as they have been, may have conferred a benefit that criticism cannot estimate, in giving elevation and refinement to the imaginations of youth. The great defect of Petrarch was his want of strong original conception, which prevented him from throwing off the affected and overstrained manner of the Provencal troubadours, and of the earlier Italian poets. Among his poems the Triumphs are perhaps superior to the Odes, as the latter are to the Sonnets; and of the latter, those written subsequently to the death of Laura are in general the best. But that constrained and laborious measure cannot equal the graceful flow of the canzone, or the vigorous compression of the terza rima. The Triumphs have also a claim to superiority, as the only poetical composition of Petrarch that extends to any considerable length. They are in some degree perhaps an imitation of the dramatic Mysteries, and form at least the earliest specimens of a kind of poetry not uncommon in later times, wherein real and allegorical personages are intermingled in a masque or scenic representation.[887]

[Sidenote: English language.]

None of the princ.i.p.al modern languages was so late in its formation, or in its application to the purposes of literature, as the English. This arose, as is well known, out of the Saxon branch of the Great Teutonic stock spoken in England till after the Conquest. From this mother dialect our English differs less in respect of etymology, than of syntax, idiom, and flexion. In so gradual a transition as probably took place, and one so sparingly marked by any existing evidence, we cannot well a.s.sign a definite origin to our present language. The question of ident.i.ty is almost as perplexing in languages as in individuals. But, in the reign of Henry II., a version of Wace's poem of Brut, by one Layamon, a priest of Ernly-upon-Severn, exhibits as it were the chrysalis of the English language, in a very corrupt modification of the Anglo-Saxon.[888] Very soon afterwards the new formation was better developed; and some metrical pieces, referred by critics to the earlier part of the thirteenth century, differ but little from our legitimate grammar.[889] About the beginning of Edward I.'s reign, Robert, a monk of Gloucester, composed a metrical chronicle from the history of Geoffrey of Monmouth, which he continued to his own time. This work, with a similar chronicle of Robert Manning, a monk of Brunne (Bourne) in Lincolnshire, nearly thirty years later, stand at the head of our English poetry. The romance of Sir Tristrem, ascribed to Thomas of Erceldoune, surnamed the Rhymer, a Scottish minstrel, has recently laid claim to somewhat higher antiquity.[890] In the fourteenth century a great number of metrical romances were translated from the French. It requires no small portion of indulgence to speak favourably of any of these early English productions. A poetical line may no doubt occasionally be found; but in general the narration is as heavy and prolix as the versification is unmusical.[891] The first English writer who can be read with approbation is William Langland, the author of Piers Plowman's Vision, a severe satire upon the clergy. Though his measure is more uncouth than that of his predecessors, there is real energy in his conceptions, which he caught not from the chimeras of knight-errantry, but the actual manners and opinions of his time.

[Sidenote: Cause of its slow progress.]

The very slow progress of the English language, as an instrument of literature, is chiefly to be ascribed to the effects of the Norman conquest, in degrading the native inhabitants and transferring all power and riches to foreigners. The barons, without perhaps one exception, and a large proportion of the gentry, were of French descent, and preserved among themselves the speech of their fathers. This continued much longer than we should naturally have expected; even after the loss of Normandy had snapped the thread of French connexions, and they began to pride themselves in the name of Englishmen, and in the inheritance of traditionary English privileges. Robert of Gloucester has a remarkable pa.s.sage, which proves that in his time, somewhere about 1290, the superior ranks continued to use the French language.[892] Ralph Higden, about the early part of Edward III.'s reign, though his expressions do not go the same length, a.s.serts, that "gentlemen's children are taught to speak French, from the time they are rocked in their cradle; and uplandish (country) or inferior men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and learn with great business for to speak French, for to be the more told of." Notwithstanding, however, this predominance of French among the higher cla.s.s, I do not think that some modern critics are warranted in concluding that they were in general ignorant of the English tongue.

Men living upon their estates among their tenantry, whom they welcomed in their halls, and whose a.s.sistance they were perpetually needing in war and civil frays, would hardly have permitted such a barrier to obstruct their intercourse. For we cannot, at the utmost, presume that French was so well known to the English commonalty in the thirteenth century as English is at present to the same cla.s.s in Wales and the Scottish Highlands. It may be remarked also, that the inst.i.tution of trial by jury must have rendered a knowledge of English almost indispensable to those who administered justice. There is a proclamation of Edward I. in Rymer, where he endeavours to excite his subjects against the king of France by imputing to him the intention of conquering the country and abolishing the English language (linguam delere Anglicanam), and this is frequently repeated in the proclamations of Edward III.[893] In his time, or perhaps a little before, the native language had become more familiar than French in common use, even with the court and n.o.bility. Hence the numerous translations of metrical romances, which are chiefly referred to his reign. An important change was effected in 1362 by a statute, which enacts that all pleas in courts of justice shall be pleaded, debated, and judged in English. But Latin was by this act to be employed in drawing the record; for there seems to have still continued a sort of prejudice against the use of English as a written language. The earliest English instrument known to exist is said to bear the date of 1343.[894] And there are but few entries in our own tongue upon the rolls of parliament before the reign of Henry VI., after whose accession its use becomes very common.[895] Sir John Mandevile, about 1356, may pa.s.s for the father of English prose, no original work being so ancient as his Travels. But the translation of the Bible and other writings by Wicliffe, nearly thirty years afterwards, taught us the copiousness and energy of which our native dialect was capable; and it was employed in the fifteenth century by two writers of distinguished merit, Bishop Pec.o.c.k and Sir John Fortescue.

[Sidenote: Chaucer.]

But the princ.i.p.al ornament of our English literature was Geoffrey Chaucer, who, with Dante and Petrarch, fills up the triumvirate of great poets in the middle ages. Chaucer was born in 1328, and his life extended to the last year of the fourteenth century. That rude and ignorant generation was not likely to feel the admiration of native genius as warmly as the compatriots of Petrarch; but he enjoyed the favour of Edward III., and still more conspicuously of John duke of Lancaster; his fortunes were far more prosperous than have usually been the lot of poets; and a reputation was established beyond compet.i.tion in his lifetime, from which no succeeding generation has withheld its sanction. I cannot, in my own taste, go completely along with the eulogies that some have bestowed upon Chaucer, who seems to me to have wanted grandeur, where he is original, both in conception and in language. But in vivacity of imagination and ease of expression, he is above all poets of the middle time, and comparable perhaps to the greatest of those who have followed. He invented, or rather introduced from France, and employed with facility the regular iambic couplet; and though it was not to be expected that he should perceive the capacities latent in that measure, his versification, to which he accommodated a very licentious and arbitrary p.r.o.nunciation, is uniform and harmonious.[896] It is chiefly, indeed, as a comic poet, and a minute observer of manners and circ.u.mstances, that Chaucer excels. In serious and moral poetry he is frequently languid and diffuse; but he springs like Antaeus from the earth, when his subject changes to coa.r.s.e satire, or merry narrative. Among his more elevated compositions, the Knight's Tale is abundantly sufficient to immortalize Chaucer, since it would be difficult to find any where a story better conducted, or told with more animation and strength of fancy. The second place may be given to his Troilus and Creseide, a beautiful and interesting poem, though enfeebled by expansion. But perhaps the most eminent, or at any rate the most characteristic testimony to his genius will be found in the prologue to his Canterbury Tales; a work entirely and exclusively his own, which can seldom be said of his poetry, and the vivid delineations of which perhaps very few writers but Shakspeare could have equalled. As the first original English poet, if we except Langland, as the inventor of our most approved measure, as an improver, though with too much innovation, of our language, and as a faithful witness to the manners of his age, Chaucer would deserve our reverence, if he had not also intrinsic claims for excellences, which do not depend upon any collateral considerations.

[Sidenote: Revival of ancient learning.]

[Sidenote: In the twelfth century;]

The last circ.u.mstance which I shall mention, as having contributed to restore society from the intellectual degradation into which it had fallen during the dark ages, is the revival of cla.s.sical learning. The Latin language indeed, in which all legal instruments were drawn up, and of which all ecclesiastics availed themselves in their epistolary intercourse, as well as in their more solemn proceedings, had never ceased to be familiar. Though many solecisms and barbarous words occur in the writings of what were called learned men, they possessed a fluency of expression in Latin which does not often occur at present.

During the dark ages, however, properly so called, or the period from the sixth to the eleventh century, we chiefly meet with quotations from the Vulgate or from theological writers. Nevertheless, quotations from the Latin poets are hardly to be called unusual. Virgil, Ovid, Statius, and Horace, are brought forward by those who aspired to some literary reputation, especially during the better periods of that long twilight, the reigns of Charlemagne and his son in France, part of the tenth century in Germany, and the eleventh in both. The prose writers of Rome are not so familiar, but in quotations we are apt to find the poets preferred; and it is certain that a few could be named who were not ignorant of Cicero, Sall.u.s.t, and Livy. A considerable change took place in the course of the twelfth century. The polite literature, as well as the abstruser science of antiquity, became the subject of cultivation.

Several writers of that age, in different parts of Europe, are distinguished more or less for elegance, though not absolute purity of Latin style; and for their acquaintance with those ancients, who are its princ.i.p.al models. Such were John of Salisbury, the acute and learned author of the Polycraticon, William of Malmsbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, Roger Hoveden, in England; and in foreign countries, Otho of Frisingen, Saxo Grammaticus, and the best perhaps of all I have named as to style, Falcandus, the historian of Sicily. In these we meet with frequent quotations from Livy, Cicero, Pliny, and other considerable writers of antiquity. The poets were now admired and even imitated. All metrical Latin before the latter part of the twelfth century, so far as I have seen, is of little value; but at this time, and early in the succeeding age, there appeared several versifiers who aspired to the renown of following the steps of Virgil and Statius in epic poetry. Joseph Isca.n.u.s, an Englishman, seems to have been the earliest of these; his poem on the Trojan war containing an address to Henry II. He wrote another, ent.i.tled Antiocheis, on the third crusade, most of which has perished. The wars of Frederic Barbarossa were celebrated by Gunther in his Ligurinus; and not long afterwards, Guillelmus Brito wrote the Philippis, in honour of Philip Augustus, and Walter de Chatillon the Alexandreis, taken from the popular romance of Alexander. None of these poems, I believe, have much intrinsic merit; but their existence is a proof of taste that could relish, though not of genius that could emulate antiquity.[897]

[Sidenote: much more the fourteenth.]

[Sidenote: Invention of linen paper.]

[Sidenote: Libraries.]

In the thirteenth century there seems to have been some decline of cla.s.sical literature, in consequence probably of the scholastic philosophy, which was then in its greatest vigour; at least we do not find so many good writers as in the preceding age. But about the middle of the fourteenth, or perhaps a little sooner, an ardent zeal for the restoration of ancient learning began to display itself. The copying of books, for some ages slowly and sparingly performed in monasteries, had already become a branch of trade;[898] and their price was consequently reduced. Tiraboschi denies that the invention of making paper from linen rags is older than the middle of that century; and although doubts may be justly entertained as to the accuracy of this position, yet the confidence with which so eminent a scholar advances it is at least a proof that paper ma.n.u.scripts of an earlier date are very rare.[899]

Princes became far more attentive to literature when it was no longer confined to metaphysical theology and canon law. I have already mentioned the translations from cla.s.sical authors, made by command of John and Charles V. of France. These French translations diffused some acquaintance with ancient history and learning among our own countrymen.[900] The public libraries a.s.sumed a more respectable appearance. Louis IX. had formed one at Paris, in which it does not appear that any work of elegant literature was found.[901] At the beginning of the fourteenth century, only four cla.s.sical ma.n.u.scripts existed in this collection; of Cicero, Ovid, Lucan, and Boethius.[902]

The academical library of Oxford, in 1300, consisted of a few tracts kept in chests under St Mary's church. That of Glas...o...b..ry Abbey, in 1240, contained four hundred volumes, among which were Livy, Sall.u.s.t, Lucan, Virgil, Claudian, and other ancient writers.[903] But no other, probably, of that age was so numerous or so valuable. Richard of Bury, chancellor of England, and Edward III., spared no expense in collecting a library, the first perhaps that any private man had formed. But the scarcity of valuable books was still so great, that he gave the abbot of St. Albans fifty pounds weight of silver for between thirty and forty volumes.[904] Charles V. increased the royal library at Paris to nine hundred volumes, which the duke of Bedford purchased and transported to London.[905] His brother Humphrey duke of Gloucester presented the university of Oxford with six hundred books, which seem to have been of extraordinary value, one hundred and twenty of them having been estimated at one thousand pounds. This indeed was in 1440, at which time such a library would not have been thought remarkably numerous beyond the Alps,[906] but England had made comparatively little progress in learning. Germany, however, was probably still less advanced. Louis, Elector Palatine, bequeathed in 1421 his library to the university of Heidelberg, consisting of one hundred and fifty-two volumes. Eighty-nine of these related to theology, twelve to canon and civil law, forty-five to medicine, and six to philosophy.[907]

[Sidenote: Transcription of ma.n.u.scripts.]

Those who first undertook to lay open the stores of ancient learning found incredible difficulties from the scarcity of ma.n.u.scripts. So gross and supine was the ignorance of the monks, within whose walls these treasures were concealed, that it was impossible to ascertain, except by indefatigable researches, the extent of what had been saved out of the great shipwreck of antiquity. To this inquiry Petrarch devoted continual attention. He spared no means to preserve the remains of authors, who were perishing from neglect and time. This danger was by no means pa.s.sed in the fourteenth century. A treatise of Cicero upon Glory, which had been in his possession, was afterwards irretrievably lost.[908] He declares that he had seen in his youth the works of Varro; but all his endeavours to recover these and the second Decad of Livy were fruitless.

He found, however, Quintilian, in 1350, of which there was no copy in Italy.[909] Boccaccio, and a man of less general fame, Colluccio Salutato, were distinguished in the same honourable task. The diligence of these scholars was not confined to searching for ma.n.u.scripts.

Transcribed by slovenly monks, or by ignorant persons who made copies for sale, they required the continual emendation of accurate critics.[910] Though much certainly was left for the more enlightened sagacity of later times, we owe the first intelligible text of the Latin cla.s.sics to Petrarch, Poggio, and their contemporary labourers in this vineyard for a hundred years before the invention of printing.

[Sidenote: Industry of the fifteenth century.]

[Sidenote: Poggio.]

What Petrarch began in the fourteenth century was carried on by a new generation with unabating industry. The whole lives of Italian scholars in the fifteenth century were devoted to the recovery of ma.n.u.scripts and the revival of philology. For this they sacrificed their native language, which had made such surprising shoots in the preceding age, and were content to trace, in humble reverence, the footsteps of antiquity. For this too they lost the hope of permanent glory, which can never remain with imitators, or such as trim the lamp of ancient sepulchres. No writer perhaps of the fifteenth century, except Politian, can aspire at present even to the second cla.s.s, in a just marshalling of literary reputation. But we owe them our respect and grat.i.tude for their taste and diligence. The discovery of an unknown ma.n.u.script, says Tiraboschi, was regarded almost as the conquest of a kingdom. The cla.s.sical writers, he adds, were chiefly either found in Italy, or at least by Italians; they were first amended and first printed in Italy, and in Italy they were first collected in public libraries.[911] This is subject to some exception, when fairly considered; several ancient authors were never lost, and therefore cannot be said to have been discovered; and we know that Italy did not always antic.i.p.ate other countries in cla.s.sical printing. But her superior merit is incontestable. Poggio Bracciolini, who stands perhaps at the head of the restorers of learning, in the earlier part of the fifteenth century, discovered in the monastery of St. Gall, among dirt and rubbish in a dungeon scarcely fit for condemned criminals, as he describes it, an entire copy of Quintilian, and part of Valerius Flaccus. This was in 1414; and soon afterwards, he rescued the poem of Silius Italicus, and twelve comedies of Plautus, in addition to eight that were previously known: besides Lucretius, Columella, Tertullian, Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus, and other writers of inferior note.[912] A bishop of Lodi brought to light the rhetorical treatises of Cicero. Not that we must suppose these books to have been universally unknown before; Quintilian, at least, is quoted by English writers much earlier. But so little intercourse prevailed among different countries, and the monks had so little acquaintance with the riches of their conventual libraries, that an author might pa.s.s for lost in Italy, who was familiar to a few learned men in other parts of Europe. To the name of Poggio we may add a number of others, distinguished in this memorable resurrection of ancient literature, and united, not always indeed by friendship, for their bitter animosities disgrace their profession, but by a sort of common sympathy in the cause of learning; Filelfo, Laurentius Valla, Niccolo Niccoli, Ambrogio Traversari, more commonly called Il Camaldolense, and Leonardo Aretino.

[Sidenote: Greek language unknown in the West.]

From the subversion of the Western Empire, or at least from the time when Rome ceased to pay obedience to the exarchs of Ravenna, the Greek language and literature had been almost entirely forgotten within the pale of the Latin church. A very few exceptions might be found, especially in the earlier period of the middle ages, while the eastern emperors retained their dominion over part of Italy.[913] Thus Charlemagne is said to have established a school for Greek at Osnaburg.[914] John Scotus seems to have been well acquainted with the language. And Greek characters may occasionally, though very seldom, be found in the writings of learned men; such as Lanfranc or William of Malmsbury.[915] It is said that Roger Bacon understood Greek; and that his eminent contemporary, Robert Grostete, bishop of Lincoln, had a sufficient intimacy with it to translate a part of Suidas. Since Greek was spoken with considerable purity by the n.o.ble and well educated natives of Constantinople, we may wonder that, even as a living language, it was not better known by the western nations, and especially in so neighbouring a nation as Italy. Yet here the ignorance was perhaps even more complete than in France or England. In some parts indeed of Calabria, which had been subject to the eastern empire till near the year 1100, the liturgy was still performed in Greek; and a considerable acquaintance with the language was of course preserved. But for the scholars of Italy, Boccaccio positively a.s.serts, that no one understood so much as the Greek characters.[916] Nor is there probably a single line quoted from any poet in that language from the sixth to the fourteenth century.

[Sidenote: Its study revives in the fourteenth century.]

The first to lead the way in restoring Grecian learning in Europe were the same men who had revived the kindred muses of Latium, Petrarch and Boccaccio. Barlaam, a Calabrian by birth, during an emba.s.sy from the court of Constantinople in 1335, was persuaded to become the preceptor of the former, with whom he read the works of Plato.[917] Leontius Pilatus, a native of Thessalonica, was encouraged some years afterwards by Boccaccio to give public lectures upon Homer at Florence.[918]

Whatever might be the share of general attention that he excited, he had the honour of instructing both these great Italians in his native language. Neither of them perhaps reached an advanced degree of proficiency; but they bathed their lips in the fountain, and enjoyed the pride of being the first who paid the homage of a new posterity to the father of poetry. For some time little fruit apparently resulted from their example; but Italy had imbibed the desire of acquisitions in a new sphere of knowledge, which, after some interval, she was abundantly able to realize. A few years before the termination of the fourteenth century, Emanuel Chrysoloras, whom the emperor John Palaeologus had previously sent into Italy, and even as far as England, upon one of those unavailing emba.s.sies, by which the Byzantine court strove to obtain sympathy and succour from Europe, returned to Florence as a public teacher of Grecian literature.[919] His school was afterwards removed successively to Pavia, Venice, and Rome; and during nearly twenty years that he taught in Italy, most of those eminent scholars whom I have already named, and who distinguish the first half of that century, derived from his instruction their knowledge of the Greek tongue. Some, not content with being the disciples of Chrysoloras, betook themselves to the source of that literature at Constantinople; and returned to Italy, not only with a more accurate insight into the Greek idiom than they could have attained at home, but with copious treasures of ma.n.u.scripts, few, if any, of which probably existed previously in Italy, where none had ability to read or value them; so that the princ.i.p.al authors of Grecian antiquity may be considered as brought to light by these inquirers, the most celebrated of whom are Guarino of Verona, Aurispa, and Filelfo. The second of these brought home to Venice in 1423 not less than two hundred and thirty-eight volumes.[920]

[Sidenote: State of learning in Greece.]

The fall of that eastern empire, which had so long outlived all other pretensions to respect that it scarcely retained that founded upon its antiquity, seems to have been providentially delayed till Italy was ripe to nourish the scattered seeds of literature that would have perished a few ages earlier in the common catastrophe. From the commencement of the fifteenth century even the national pride of Greece could not blind her to the signs of approaching ruin. It was no longer possible to inspire the European republic, distracted by wars and restrained by calculating policy, with the generous fanaticism of the crusades; and at the council of Florence, in 1439, the court and church of Constantinople had the mortification of sacrificing their long-cherished faith, without experiencing any sensible return of protection or security. The learned Greeks were perhaps the first to antic.i.p.ate, and certainly not the last to avoid, their country's destruction. The council of Florence brought many of them into Italian connexions, and held out at least a temporary accommodation of their conflicting opinions. Though the Roman pontiffs did nothing, and probably could have done nothing effectual, for the empire of Constantinople, they were very ready to protect and reward the learning of individuals. To Eugenius IV., to Nicolas V., to Pius II., and some other popes of this age, the Greek exiles were indebted for a patronage which they repaid by splendid services in the restoration of their native literature throughout Italy. Bessarion, a disputant on the Greek side in the council of Florence, was well content to renounce the doctrine of single procession for a cardinal's hat--a dignity which he deserved for his learning, if not for his pliancy. Theodore Gaza, George of Trebizond, and Gemistus Pletho, might equal Bessarion in merit, though not in honours. They all, however, experienced the patronage of those admirable protectors of letters, Nicolas V., Cosmo de' Medici, or Alfonso king of Naples. These men emigrated before the final destruction of the Greek empire; Lascaris and Musurus, whose arrival in Italy was posterior to that event, may be deemed perhaps still more conspicuous; but as the study of the Greek language was already restored, it is unnecessary to pursue the subject any further.

The Greeks had preserved, through the course of the middle ages, their share of ancient learning with more fidelity and attention than was shown in the west of Europe. Genius indeed, or any original excellence, could not well exist along with their cowardly despotism, and their contemptible theology, more corrupted by frivolous subtleties than that of the Latin church. The spirit of persecution, naturally allied to despotism and bigotry, had nearly, during one period, extinguished the lamp, or at least reduced the Greeks to a level with the most ignorant nations of the West. In the age of Justinian, who expelled the last Platonic philosophers, learning began rapidly to decline; in that of Heraclius it had reached a much lower point of degradation; and for two centuries, especially while the worshippers of images were persecuted with unrelenting intolerance, there is almost a blank in the annals of Grecian literature.[921] But about the middle of the ninth century it revived pretty suddenly, and with considerable success.[922] Though, as I have observed, we find in very few instances any original talent, yet it was hardly less important to have had compilers of such erudition as Photius, Suidas, Eustathius, and Tzetzes. With these certainly the Latins of the middle ages could not place any names in comparison. They possessed, to an extent which we cannot precisely appreciate, many of those poets, historians, and orators of ancient Greece, whose loss we have long regretted and must continue to deem irretrievable. Great havoc, however, was made in the libraries of Constantinople at its capture by the Latins--an epoch from which a rapid decline is to be traced in the literature of the eastern empire. Solecisms and barbarous terms, which sometimes occur in the old Byzantine writers, are said to deform the style of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.[923] The Turkish ravages and destruction of monasteries ensued; and in the cheerless intervals of immediate terror there was no longer any encouragement to preserve the monuments of an expiring language, and of a name that was to lose its place among nations.[924]

[Sidenote: Literature not much improved beyond Italy.]

That ardour for the restoration of cla.s.sical literature which animated Italy in the first part of the fifteenth century, was by no means common to the rest of Europe. Neither England, nor France, nor Germany, seemed aware of the approaching change. We are told that learning, by which I believe is only meant the scholastic ontology, had begun to decline at Oxford from the time of Edward III.[925] And the fifteenth century, from whatever cause, is particularly barren of writers in the Latin language.

The study of Greek was only introduced by Grocyn and Linacer under Henry VII., and met with violent opposition in the university of Oxford, where the unlearned party styled themselves Trojans, as a pretext for abusing and insulting the scholars.[926] Nor did any cla.s.sical work proceed from the respectable press of Caxton. France, at the beginning of the fifteenth age, had several eminent theologians; but the reigns of Charles VII. and Louis XI. contributed far more to her political than her literary renown. A Greek professor was first appointed at Paris in 1458, before which time the language had not been publicly taught, and was little understood.[927] Much less had Germany thrown off her ancient rudeness. aeneas Sylvius, indeed, a deliberate flatterer, extols every circ.u.mstance in the social state of that country; but Campano, the papal legate at Ratisbon in 1471, exclaims against the barbarism of a nation, where very few possessed any learning, none any elegance.[928] Yet the progress of intellectual cultivation, at least in the two former countries, was uniform, though silent; libraries became more numerous, and books, after the happy invention of paper, though still very scarce, might be copied at less expense. Many colleges were founded in the English as well as foreign universities during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Nor can I pa.s.s over inst.i.tutions that have so eminently contributed to the literary reputation of this country, and that still continue to exercise so conspicuous an influence over her taste and knowledge, as the two great schools of grammatical learning, Winchester and Eton--the one founded by William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, in 1373; the other in 1432, by King Henry the Sixth.[929]

[Sidenote: Invention of printing.]

But while the learned of Italy were eagerly exploring their recent acquisitions of ma.n.u.scripts, decyphered with difficulty and slowly circulated from hand to hand, a few obscure Germans had gradually perfected the most important discovery recorded in the annals of mankind. The invention of printing, so far from being the result of philosophical sagacity, does not appear to have been suggested by any regard to the higher branches of literature, or to bear any other relation than that of coincidence to their revival in Italy. The question why it was struck out at that particular time must be referred to that disposition of unknown causes which we call accident. Two or three centuries earlier, we cannot but acknowledge the discovery would have been almost equally acceptable. But the invention of paper seems to have naturally preceded those of engraving and printing. It is generally agreed that playing cards, which have been traced far back in the fourteenth century, gave the first notion of taking off impressions from engraved figures upon wood. The second stage, or rather second application of this art, was the representation of saints and other religious devices, several instances of which are still extant. Some of these are accompanied with an entire page of ill.u.s.trative text, cut into the same wooden block. This process is indeed far removed from the invention that has given immortality to the names of Fust, Schoeffer, and Gutenburg, yet it probably led to the consideration of means whereby it might be rendered less operose and inconvenient. Whether moveable wooden characters were ever employed in any entire work is very questionable--the opinion that referred their use to Laurence Coster, of Haarlem, not having stood the test of more accurate investigation. They appear, however, in the capital letters of some early printed books. But no expedient of this kind could have fulfilled the great purposes of this invention, until it was perfected by founding metal types in a matrix or mould, the essential characteristic of printing, as distinguished from other arts that bear some a.n.a.logy to it.

The first book that issued from the presses of Fust and his a.s.sociates at Mentz was an edition of the Vulgate, commonly called the Mazarine Bible, a copy having been discovered in the library that owes its name to Cardinal Mazarin at Paris. This is supposed to have been printed between the years 1450 and 1455.[930] In 1457 an edition of the Psalter appeared, and in this the invention was announced to the world in a boasting colophon, though certainly not unreasonably bold.[931] Another edition of the Psalter, one of an ecclesiastical book, Durand's account of liturgical offices, one of the Const.i.tutions of Pope Clement V., and one of a popular treatise on general science, called the Catholicon, filled up the interval till 1462, when the second Mentz Bible proceeded from the same printers.[932] This, in the opinion of some, is the earliest book in which cast types were employed--those of the Mazarine Bible having been cut with the hand. But this is a controverted point.

In 1465 Fust and Schoeffer published an edition of Cicero's Offices, the first tribute of the new art to polite literature. Two pupils of their school, Sweynheim and Pannartz, migrated the same year into Italy, and printed Donatus's grammar and the works of Lactantius at the monastery of Subiaco, in the neighbourhood of Rome.[933] Venice had the honour of extending her patronage to John of Spira, the first who applied the art on an extensive scale to the publication of cla.s.sical writers.[934] Several Latin authors came forth from his press in 1470; and during the next ten years a mult.i.tude of editions were published in various parts of Italy. Though, as we may judge from their present scarcity, these editions were by no means numerous in respect of impressions, yet, contrasted with the dilatory process of copying ma.n.u.scripts, they were like a new mechanical power in machinery, and gave a wonderfully accelerated impulse to the intellectual cultivation of mankind. From the era of these first editions proceeding from the Spiras, Zarot, Janson, or Sweynheim and Pannartz, literature must be deemed to have altogether revived in Italy. The sun was now fully above the horizon, though countries less fortunately circ.u.mstanced did not immediately catch his beams; and the restoration of ancient learning in France and England cannot be considered as by any means effectual even at the expiration of the fifteenth century. At this point, however, I close the present chapter. The last twenty years of the middle ages, according to the date which I have fixed for their termination in treating of political history, might well invite me by their brilliancy to dwell upon that golden morning of Italian literature. But, in the history of letters, they rather appertain to the modern than the middle period; nor would it become me to trespa.s.s upon the exhausted patience of my readers by repeating what has been so often and so recently told, the story of art and learning, that has employed the comprehensive research of a Tiraboschi, a Ginguene, and a Roscoe.

FOOTNOTES:

[571] Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i. p. 270. Meyer ascribes the origin of Flemish trade to Baldwin count of Flanders in 958, who established markets at Bruges and other cities. Exchanges were in that age, he says, chiefly effected by barter, little money circulating in Flanders. Annales Flandrici, fol. 18 (edit. 1561).

[572] Matthew Westmonast, apud Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. i.

p. 415.

[573] Such regulations scared away those Flemish weavers who brought their art into England under Edward III. Macpherson, p. 467, 494, 546.

Several years later the magistrates of Ghent are said by Meyer (Annales Flandrici, fol. 156) to have imposed a tax on every loom. Though the seditious spirit of the Weavers' Company had perhaps justly provoked them, such a tax on their staple manufacture was a piece of madness, when English goods were just coming into compet.i.tion.

[574] Terra marique mercatura, rerumque commercia et quaestus peribant.

Non solum totius Europae mercatores, verum etiam ipsi Turcae aliaeque sepositae nationes ob bellum istud Flandriae magno afficiebantur dolore.

Erat nempe Flandria totius prope orbis stabile mercatoribus emporium.

Septemdecim regnorum negotiatores tum Brugis sua certa habuere domicilia ac sedes, praeter complures incognitas paene gentes quae undique confluebant. Meyer, fol. 205, ad ann. 1385.