Renaissance in Italy, Volume 2 (of 7)

taries-Apostolic Scribes-Ecclesiastical Sophists-Immorality and Artificiality of Scholarship in Rome-Pogg

cal Studies-Apology for Plato-The Greeks in Italy-Humanism at Naples-Want of Culture in Southern Italy-Learning an Exotic-Alfonso the Magnificent-Scholars in the Camp-Literary Dialogues at Naples-Antonio Beccadelli-'The Hermaphroditus'-Lorenzo Valla-The Epicurean-The Critic-The Opponent of the Church-Bartolommeo Fazio-Giannantonio Porcello-Court of Milan-Filippo Maria Visconti-Decembrio's Description of his Master-Francesco Filelfo-His Early Life-Visit to Constantinople-Place at Court-Marriage-Return to Italy-Venice-Bologna-His Pretensions as a Professor-Florence-Feuds with the Florentines-Immersion in

ved by the niggardliness of another; petted and caressed by Nicholas V., watched with jealous mistrust by Paul II.; thrust into the background by Alexander, and brought into the light by Leo-learning was subjected to rude vicissitudes at Rome. Very few of the scholars who shed lustre on the reigns of liberal

for their talents at the Court of Rome. They soon became a separate and influential class, divided from the nobility by their birth and foreign connections, and from the churchmen by their secular status and avowed impiety, yet mingling in society with both and trusting to their talents to support their dignity. At the Council of Basle the protonotaries even claimed to take precedence of the bishops on occasions of high ceremony, arguing, from the nature of their office and the rarity of their acquirements, that they had a better right than priests to approach the person of the Sovereign Pontiff. Poggio and Bruni, Losco, Aurispa, and Biondo raised their voices in this quarrel, which proved how indispensable the mundane needs of the Papacy had rendered these free-lances of literature. Through them the spirit of humanism, antagonistic to the spirit of the Church, possessed itself of the Eternal City; and much of the flagrant immorality which marked Rome during the Renaissance may be ascribed to the influence of paganising scholars, freed from the restrictions of family and local opinion, indifferent to religion, and less absorbed in study for its own sake than in the profits to be gained by t

tamp it never lost. Good Latinity became a sine qua non in the Papal Chancery; and when Gregory XII. named Antonio Losco of Verona one of his secretaries, it was natural that this distinguished scholar, following the Florentine example of Coluccio Salutato, should compose a book of forms in Ciceronian style for the use of his office.[187] During the insignificant pontificate of Martin V., while the Cur

clesiastical affairs in the Councils of Basle and Florence. Though he did not share the passion of his age for learning, the patronage which he extended to scholars was substantial and important. Giovanni Aurispa received from him the title of Apostolic Secretary, and was appointed interpreter between the Greeks and Italians at the Council of the two Churches. Even the paganising Carlo Marsuppini was enrolled upon the list of Papal secretaries, while Filelfo and Piero Candido Decembrio, who added lustre at this epoch to th

n estimating the value of Biondo's contributions to history, we must remember that he had no previous compilations whereon to base his own researches. The vast stores of knowledge he collected and digested were derived from original sources. He grasped the whole of Latin literature, both classical and medi?val, arranged the results of his comprehensive reading into sections, and furnished the learned world with tabulated materials for the study of Roman institutions in the State, the camp, the law courts, private life, and religious ceremonial. Obstinate indeed must have been the industry of the scholar, who, in addition to these classical researches, undertook to narrate the dissolution of antique society and to present a faithful picture of

use-tutor to his children for one year, at the expiration of which time he entered the service of Palla degli Strozzi in a similar capacity. The money thus obtained enabled him to return to Bologna, and to take his degree as Doctor of Theology at the age of twenty-two. He was now fully launched in life. The education he had received at Bologna qualified him for office in the church, while his two years' residence at Florence had rendered him familiar with men of polite learning and of gentle breeding. Niccolo degli Albergati, Archbishop of Bologna, became his patron, and appointed him controller of his household. Albergati was one of the cardinals of Eugenius IV., a man of considerable capacity, and alive to the intellectual interests of his age. When he followed the Papal Court to Florence, Tommaso attended him, and here began the period which was destined to influence his subsequent career. Inspired with a passionate devotion to books for their own sake, and gifted with ardent curiosity and all-embracing receptivity of intellect, the young scholar found himsel

ch he was fluent, and in disputation eager; but he never ranked among the ornate orators and stylists of the age. His wide acquaintance with all branches of literature, and his faculty for classification, rendered him useful to Cosimo de' Medici, who employed him on the catalogue of the Marcian Library. From Cosimo in return, Tommaso caught the spirit which sustained him in h

the Church enabled this little, ugly, bright-eyed, restless-minded scholar to creep into S. Peter's seat. Perhaps the simplest explanation is the best. The times were somewhat adverse to the Papacy, nor was the tiara quite as much an object of secular ambition as it afterwards became. Humanism meanwhile exercised strong fascination over every class in Italy, and it would seem that Tomm

, for he was always spending beyond his means.'[194] His revenues were devoted to maintaining a splendid Court, rebuilding the fortifications and palaces of Rome, and showering wealth on men of letters. In the protection extended by this Pope to literature we may notice that he did not attempt to restore the studio pubblico of Rome, and that he showed a decided preference for works of solid learning and translations. His tastes led him to delight in critical and grammati

[195] He employed the best scribes, and obtained the rarest books; nor was there anyone in Italy better qualified than himself to superintend the choice and arrangement of such a libra

be gathered from the following details. Lorenzo Valla obtained 500 scudi for his version of Thucydides; Guarino received the larger sum of 1,500 scudi for Strabo; Perotti 500 ducats for Polybius; while Manetti was pensioned at the rate of 600 scudi per annum to enable him to carry on his sacred studies. Nicholas delighted in Greek history. Accordingly, Appian was translated by Piero Candido Decembrio, Diodorus Siculus and the 'Cyrop?dia' of Xenophon by Poggio,[196] Herodotus by Valla. Valla and Decembrio were both engaged upon the 'Iliad' in Latin prose; but the dearest wish of Nicho

o Decembrio obtained the post of secretary and overseer of the Abbreviators.[198] Giovanni Tortello, of Arezzo, the author of a useful book on the orthography of Greek words, superintended the Pope's library. Piero da Noceto, whose tomb in the cathedral at Lucca is one of Matteo da Civitale's masterpi

ith the Florentine circle of scholars he maintained an unremitting correspondence, sending them notices of his discoveries in the convents of Switzerland and Germany, receiving from them literary gossip in return, joining in their disputes, and more than once engaging in fierce verbal duels to befriend his Medicean allies. His duties and his tastes alike made him a frequent traveller, and not the least of the benefits conferred by him upon posterity are his pictures of foreign manners. At the Council of Constance, for example, he saw and heard Jerome of Prague, in whom he admired the firmness and intrepid spirit of a Cato.[200] At Baden in Switzerland he noticed the custom, strange to Italian eyes, of men and women bathing together, eatin

sense, produced on his contemporaries. For us its finest flights of rhetoric have lost their charm, and its best turns of phrase their point. So impossible is it that the fashionable style of one age should retain its magic for posterity, unless it be truly classical in form, or weighted with sound thought, or animated with high inspiration. Just these qualities were missed by Poggio and his compeers. Setting no more serious aim before them than the imitation of Livy and Cicero, Seneca and C?sar, they fell far short of their originals; nor had they matter to make up for their defect of elegance. Poggio's treatises 'De Nobilitate,' 'De Varietate Fortun?,' 'De

on of grossly indecent and not always very witty stories-Poggio refers to the meetings with which he and his comrades entertained themselves after the serious business of the day was over.[203] Their place of resort was in the precincts of the Lateran, where they had established a club which took the name of 'Bugiale,' or Lie Factory.[204] Apostolic secretaries, writers to the Chancery, protonotaries, and Papal scribes here met together after laying down the pens they had employed in drafting Bulls and dispensations, encyclical letters and diplomatic missives. To make puns, tell scandalous stories, and invent amusing plots for novelettes was the chief amusement of these Roman wits. Their most stinging shafts of satire were reserved for monks and priests; but they spared no class or profession, and made free with the names of living persons.[205] Against the higher clergy it might not have been safe to utter even the truth, except in strictest privacy, seeing that preferment had to be expected from the Sacred College and the Holy Father. The mendicant orders and the country parsons, therefore, bore the brunt of their attack, while the whole tone of their discourse made it clear how little they respected the

expiated his temerity by the forfeit of his life.[206] Nicholas V., who appreciated the pungency of its satiric style, instead of resenting its free speech, directed his friend Poggio's pen against his rival Felix. Raised to the Papacy by the Council of Basle in 1439, Amadeus, the ex-Duke of Savoy, still persisted in his Papal title after the election of Nicholas; and though the Sovereign of the Vatican could well afford to scorn the hermit of Ripaille, he thought it prudent to discharge the heavy guns of humanistic eloquence against the Antipope. A ponderous invective was the result, wherein Poggio described the unfortunate Felix as 'a

,[211] accusing them of literary imbecility, and ascribing to them all the crimes and vices that disgrace humanity. Poggio girded up his loins for the combat, and, in reply to Filelfo's ponderous hexameters, discharged a bulky invective in prose against the common adversary. This was answered by more satires, Poggio replying with new invectives. The quarrel lasted over many years; when, having heaped upon each other all the insults it is possible for the most corrupt imagination to conceive, they joined hands and rested from the contest.[212] To sully these pages with translations of Poggio's rank abuse would be impossible. I must content myself with referring readers, who are anxious to gain a more detailed acquaintance with the literary warfare of that age, to the excerpts preserved by Shepherd and Rosmini.[213] Suffice it to say that he poured a torrent of the filthiest calumnies upon Filelfo's wife and mother, that he accused Filelfo himself of the basest vice in youth and the most flagrant debauchery in manhood, that he represented him as a public thief, a professed cut-purse, a blasphemous atheist, soiled with sordid immoralities of every kind, and driven

1435. Rome, however, was the theatre of his most celebrated exploits as a disputant. It chanced one day that he discovered a copy of his own epistles annotated by a Spanish nobleman who was a pupil of Lorenzo Valla.[217] Poggio's Latinity was not spared in the marginal strictures penned by the young student; and the fiery scholar, flying to the conclusion that the master, not the pupil, had dictated them, discharged his usual missile, a furious invective, against Valla. Thus attacked, the author of the 'Eleganti?' responded in a similar composition, entitled 'Antidotum in Poggium,' and dedicated to Nicholas V.[218] Poggio followed with another invective; nor did the quarrel end till he had added five of these disgusting compositi

s private incidents aroused their wrath, as in the curious rupture between Lionardo Bruni and Niccolo de' Niccoli at Florence. The story, since it is characteristic of the time, may be briefly told. Niccolo had stolen his brother's mistress Benvenuta, and made her his concubine.[221] His relatives, indignant at the domestic scandal, insulted Benvenuta in the street, and Niccolo bemoaned himself to all his friends.

f Poggio's translations from Diodorus and Xenophon really belonged to him, since he had done the work of them. Poggio shrieked out, 'You lie in your throat!' Georgios retorted with a box on Poggio's ears. Then Poggio came to close quarters, catching his adversary by the hair; and the two professors pommelled each other

capable. Science, as we know from the annals of our days, sets the upholders of antagonistic theories by the ears; and at times when politics have been dull, theology dormant, and science undemonstrative, even music has been found sufficient to excite a nation. In the fifteenth century scholarship was all-absorbing. It corresponded to science in our age

en living. His biographer, Shepherd, indulges in some sentimental reflections upon the pain this leave-taking must have cost him. Yet the impartial critic will hardly be brought to pity Poggio, seeing that he cancelled the brief whereby he had previously legitimised his natural children, and responded with raptures to the congratulations of friends upon his new engagement. He had already been admitted to the burghership of Florence, and exempted from its taxes in consideration of his literary services; so that, on the death of his friend Carlo Aretino, in 1453, no one was found more fitting for the post of Chancellor to the Republic. As an increase of dignity, Poggio fulfilled the office of Prior, and sat among the Signory. The 'H

68 he offered this collection to the Church of S. Mark at Venice. The Republic accepted his gift, but showed no alacrity to build the library. It was not until the next century that Bessarion's books were finally housed according to their dignity.[225] The Cardinal's own studies lay in the direction of theological philosophy. We have already seen that in his youth he was a pupil of Gemistos, and he now appears as the defender of Plato. Georgios Trapezuntios had published a treatise in the year 1458, in which, on the pretence of upholding Aristotle, he vilified Plato's moral character, accused him of having ruined Greece, and maintained that Mahomet was a far better legislator. Bessarion replied by the oration 'In Calumniatorem Platonis,' vindicating the morality of the philosopher and s

ffect he produced in the city of the Baglioni, that I will translate a portion of it. 'A Greek has just arrived, who has begun to teach me with great pains, and I to listen to his precepts with incredible pleasure, because he is a Greek, because he is Athenian, and because he is Demetrius. It seems to me that in him is figured all the wisdom, the civility, and the elegance of those so famous and illustrious ancients. Merely seeing him, you fancy you are looking on Plato; far more when you hear him speak.' It was a young man of twenty-three who wrote this,

Italian pupils carried on the work they had begun, with wider powers and nobler energy. All the great Grecians of the third age of humanism are Italians. Florence received learning from Byzan

ms of the Court and camp, to place their talents at the service of their patron's pleasure, to entertain him in his hours of idleness, to frame compliments and panegyrics, and to repay his bounty by the celebration of his deeds in histories and poems. Their footing was less

ation began to influence North Italy, and during the reign of Frederick II. Naples bade fair to become the city of illumination for the modern world. The failure of Frederick's attempt to restore life to arts and letters in the thirteenth century belongs to the history of his warfare with the Church. What his courtiers effected for the earliest poetry of the Italians is told by Dante in the treatise 'De Vulgari Eloquio.' For our present purpose it is enough to notice that the zeal for knowledge planted by the Arabs, tolerated by the Normans, and fostered b

ily readings to his master were not interrupted during the campaign of 1443, when Alfonso took the field against Francesco Sforza's armies in the March.[233] The Neapolitan captains might be seen gathered round their monarch, listening to the scholar's exposition of Livy, instead of wasting their leisure at games of hazard. Beccadelli himself professes to have cured an illness of Alfonso's in three days by reading aloud to him Curtius's Life of Alexander, while Lorenzo Valla describes the concourse of students to his table during the recitations of Virgil or of Terence.[234] Courtiers with no taste for scholarship were excluded from these literary meetings; but free access was given to poor youths who sought to profit by the learning of the lecturers. The king, meantime, sat at meat, now and then handing fruits or confectionery to refresh the reader when his voice seemed failing. His passion for the antique assumed the romantic character common in that age. When the Venetians s

of elegies than the frankness of their author, the free and liberal delight with which he dwells on shameless sensualities, and the pride with which he publishes his own name to the world. Dedicated to Cosimo de' Medici, welcomed with applause by the grey-headed Guarino da Verona,[238] extolled to the skies by Antonio Losco, eagerly sought after by Bartolommeo, Bishop of Milan-this book, which Strato and Martial might have blushed to own, passed from copyist to copyist, from hand to hand. Among the learned it found no serious adversaries. Poggio, indeed, gently reminded the poet that

ara.[241] Eugenius IV. proscribed the reading of it under penalty of excommunication. Dignitaries of the Church, who found it in the hands of their secretaries, did not scruple to tear it to pieces, as a book forbidden by the Pope and contrary to sound morality.[242] Yet all this made but little difference to Beccadelli's reputation.[243] He lectured with honour at Bologna and Pavia, received a stipend of 800 scudi from the Visconti, and in 1435 was summoned to the Court of Naples. Alfonso raised him to the rank of noble, and continually employed him near his person, enjoying his wit, and taking special delight in his readings of classic authors. As official historiographer, Becca

246] Valla showed the steady front of a deliberate critic, hostile at all points to the traditions and the morals of the Church. The parents of this remarkable man were natives of Piacenza, though, having probably been born at Rome, he assumed to himself the attribute of Roman.[247] Before he fixed his residence at Naples, he had already won distinction by a 'Dialogue on Pleasure,' in which

nd appearing as pure Paganism in Beccadelli's poems, now put on the sterner mask of common sense and criticism in Lorenzo Valla. The arms which he assumed in his first encounter with Church doctrine, he never l

nt public penance at the order of the Bishop. This, however, is just one of those stories on which the general character of the invectives that contain it, throws uncertainty. Far more to our purpose is the fact that at this period he became the supreme authority on points of Latin style in Italy by the publication of his 'Eleganti?.' True

stroyed the fabric of lies which had imposed upon the Christian world for centuries. The peroration ended with a menace. Worse chastisement was in store for a worldly and simoniacal priesthood, if the Popes refused to forego their usurped temporalities, and to confess the sham that criticism had unmasked. War to the death was thus declared between Valla and Rome. The storm his treatise excited, raged at first so wildly that Valla thought it prudent to take flight. He crossed the sea to Barcelona, and remained there a short while, until, being assured of Alfonso's protection, he once more returned to Naples. From beneath the shield of his royal patron, he now continued to shoot arrow after arrow at his enemies, affirming that the letter of Christ to A

as a monster of iniquity; and finally a Court of Inquisition was opened, at the bar of which he was summoned to attend. To the interrogatories of the inquisitors Valla replied that 'he believed as Mother Church believed: it was quite true that she knew nothing: yet he believed as

se that Nicholas was seeking to bribe a dangerous antagonist to silence. He simply wanted to attach an illustrious scholar to his Court, and to engage him in the labour of translation from the Greek. To heresy and scepticism he showed the indifference of a tolerant and enlightened spirit; with the friars who hated Valla the Pope in Rome had nothing wha

of Alfonso's into notice. Bartolommeo Fazio, a native of La Spezzia, occupied the position of historiographer at Naples. In addition to his annals of the life of Alfonso, he compiled a book on celebrated men, and won the reputation of being the neatest Latinist in prose of his age. Faz

is sine vindice

ultos post ob

prompted by the covert spite of Beccadelli. Scarcely less close to the person of Alfonso than the students with whom we have been occupied, stood Giannantonio Porcello, a native of Naples. He was distinguished by his command of versification: the fluency with which he poured fourth Latin elegiacs and hexameters approached that of an improvisatore of the Molo. Alfonso sent him to the

speculation and of morals marked society in Southern Italy, where the protection of a powerful monarch at war with the Church, and the license of a

sconti and the first Sforza, claims attention, owing to the accident of Filelfo's residence at the Ducal Court. Filippo Maria Visconti was one of the most repulsive tyrants who have ever disgraced a civilised country. Shut up within his palace walls among astrologers, minions, and monks, carefully protected from the public eye, and watched by double sets of mutually suspicious bodyguards, it was impossible that he should extend the free

ated, if we may trust his epitaph in S. Ambrogio, amounted to 127 books when he died in 1447. Contemporary with Decembrio, Gasparino da Barzizza, of whom mention has already been made,[253] occupied the place of Court orator and letter-writer. This office he transmitted to his son, Guiniforte, who was

e might choose to fix his residence. Of all the humanists he was the most restless in his humour and erratic in his movements. Still Milan, during a long

pointed Secretary to the Baily (Bailo, or Consul-General) of Constantinople through the interest of his friend Lionardo Giustiniani. Giustiniani having also provided him with money for his voyage, Filelfo set off in 1419 for the capital of Greek learning. Of the three Italian teachers-Guarino, Aurispa, and Filelfo-who made this journey for the express purpose of acquiring the Greek language and collecting Greek books, Filelfo was by far the most distinguished. The history, therefore, of his adventures may be taken as a specimen of what befell them all. The time spent at sea between Venice and Byzantium was five months; Filelfo did not arrive till the year 1420 was already well advanced.

impediment to marriage in the semi-Oriental society of the Greek capital. That she was connected by blood with the Imperial family made the alliance honourable to Filelfo; still there is no sufficient reason to conclude for certain that the match was so unequal as to justify the malignant suggest

of Homer and of Xenophon with equal versatility, was not altogether an empty vaunt.[257] We may indeed smile at his pretension to have surpassed Virgil because he was an orator, and Cicero because he was a poet, and both of them together because he could write Greek as well as Latin.[258] We know that his Latin hexameters are such as not only Virgil but Cicero would have scorned to own, that his Latin orations would have been hissed before the Roman rostra, and that his Greek style is at the same time tame and tumid. Neither he nor his contemporaries were sufficiently critical to comprehend the force of these objections. They only saw that he possessed the keys to all the learning of the ancient world, and that, besides unlocking those treasures for modern students, he was als

uments of Florence, and the enthusiasm he aroused by his stupendous learning in an audience of unprecedented variety and multitude, are expressed with almost childish emphasis in his correspondence. 'The whole State,' he writes,[260] 'is turned to look at me. All men love and honour me, and praise me to the skies. My name is on every lip. Not only the leaders of the city, but women also of the noblest birth make way for me, paying me so much respect that I am ashamed of their worship. My audience numbers every day four hundred persons, mostly men advanced in years and of the dignity of senators.' These were the halcyon days of Filelfo's residence at Florence,[261] when he was still enjoying the friendship of learned men, receiving new engagements from the University with augmentations of pay,[262] and whe

s; and when the political crisis, which for a time depressed the Medicean faction, was impending, he declared himself the public opponent of Cosimo. Already in the spring of 1433 he had been stabbed in the face while walking to the University one morning by Filippo, a cut-throat from Casale; nor does there seem any reason to doubt that, as Filelfo himself firmly believed, the man was paid to kill him by the Medici. When the same bravo afterwards followed him to Siena,[265] Filelfo hired a Greek, by name Antonio Maria, to retaliate upon his foes in Florence. It is not probable that a merely literary quarrel wou

on, always pleased with what is new, yet always grumbling when the taste of bitter mounted to his lips. The most honourable invitations now began to shower upon him. The Council of Basle, the Venetian Senate, the Emperor of the East, Eugenius IV., the Universities of Perugia and Bologna, and the Duke of Milan applied for his services. It was not, however, until the year 1439 that his love of change, combined with the allurements of higher pay, induced him to close with the offers of

there any doubt that his large professorial income was considerably increased by presents received from patrons and employers.[269] In addition to the labours of his chair, he engaged in various literary works. His Satires and Odes were gradually growing into ponderous volumes.[270] Other fugitive pieces in prose he put together under the title of 'Convivia Mediolanensia.' Meanwhile he carried on an active correspondence, both familiar and hortatory, with the scholars and the princes of his day.[271] There was no branch of letters with which, sustained by sublime self-appr

ilies. The best thing that can be said about Filelfo as a man is, that he was undoubtedly attached to his wives and to the numerous children they bore him.[272] This feeling did not, however, protect him from numerous infidelities, or save his fortune from the burden of illegitimate children.[273] It is even doubtful whether credence should not be accorded to suggestions of worse debauchery, repeated with every appearance of belief by his enemies, and on his side but imperfectly refuted. Filelfo was

set oration. He professed great admiration for the general who, by careful management and double-dealing, had placed himself at the head of the third state in the peninsula. Yet his correspondence at this period proves that his mind was uneasy, and that he desired a change. In an impudent letter addressed to Nicholas V., he solicited ecclesiastical preferment, suggesting that the promise of a bishop's mitre would secure his splendid talents for the service of the Papacy.[274] However desirous the Pope might be to engage Filelfo for his translation factory at Rome, the price demanded was too great. He could not recognise a vocati

more reptile menaces. Alessandro Sforza, Lodovico Gonzaga, and three Popes in succession may be mentioned among the more distinguished princes who suffered from this literary brigandage.[276] Not without strict justice did a contemporary describe him in the following severe terms:-'He is calumnious, envious, vain, and so greedy of gold that he metes out praise or blame according to the gifts he gets, both despicable as proceeding from a tainted source.'[277] Filelfo's rapacity is truly disgusting when we remember that he received far more than any equally distinguished student of his age. Not the illiberality of

ubbed him knight, and placed the poet's laurel on his brow with his own royal hands. As he passed through their capitals, the princes received him like an equal. At Ferrara he enjoyed the hospitalities of Duke Borso, at Mantua the friendship of the Marchese Lodovico Gonzaga; the terrible Gismondo Pandolfo Malatesta welcomed him in Rimini, and the General Jacopo Piccinin

ccession, had testified their regard for him, either by moderate presents, sufficient to excite his cupidity and check his slanderous temper, or by negotiations which came to not

urid colours to Sixtus.[281] Though his style and eloquence were always vulgar, the concentrated fury and impassioned hatred of these invectives cannot fail to impress the imagination. Such a picture of the dissolute and grasping treasurer, painted by Filelfo and sent to Sixtus, has a sinister humour which might recommend itself to the audience of an infernal comedy. It is only necessary to have some knowledge of the three men in order to perceive its force. Nor did Sixtus himself long continue in Filelfo's graces. Frequent journeys prove how unsettled he became; at last he left Rome in 1476, never to return. When the Pazzi Conjuration failed at Florence, Filelfo wrote to congratulate Lorenzo de' Medici on his escape, and undertook

e, near the person of Lorenzo de' Medici; and when an invitation to the Chair of Greek Literature arrived, it found him eager to set forth. He was so poor, however, that the Duke's secretary, Jacopo Antiquari, had to

gour and incessant mental activity, the vehemence with which he prosecuted his literary warfares and the restlessness that drove him from capital to capital in Italy, are themselves enough to mark him out as the representative hero of the second period of humanism. Not less characteristic were the quality and the form of his literary work-ridiculously over-valued then, and now perhaps too readily depreciated. There is something pathetic in

to redeem which the time has now come. His father's name was Bruto de' Rambaldoni; but having been

re he entered into friendship with Guarino da Verona, and having learned Greek, returned to his old university as professor of rhetoric.[288] The bias of Vittorino's genius inclined toward private teaching, and it is this by which he is distinguished among contemporary humanists. Accordingly we find that, as soon as he was settled in Padua, he opened a school for a fixed number of young men, selected without regard to rank or wealth. From the richer pupils he required fees proportioned to their means; from the poor he exacted nothing: thus the wealthy were made to support the needy, while the teacher obtained for himself the noble satisfaction of relieving aspirants after knowledge from the pressure of

hters to become thoroughly educated, not only in the humanities and mathematics, but also in the republican virtues of the ancients, which then formed the ideal of life in Italy, he must be willing to commit them wholly to the charge of their appointed governor. Vittorino, who would have undertaken the duty on no other condition, obtained full control of the young princes and their servants. An appointment of twenty sequins per month was assigned to him, together with a general order on the treasury of Mantua. A villa, called Casa Zojosa, which we may translate Joyous Gard, was allotted to the new household, and there Vittorino established himself as master in 1425. He had much to do before this dwelling could be converted from the pleasure house of a medi?val sovereign into the semi-monastic resort of earnest students. Through its open galleries and painted banquet chambers t

fundamental axiom of his method that a robust body could alone harbour a healthy mind. Boys who sat poring over books, or haunted solitary places, lost in dreaming, found no favour in his eyes. To exercises in the gymnasium or the riding-school he preferred games in the open air; hunting and fishing, wrestling and fencing, running and jumping, were practised by his pupils in the park outside their palace. To harden them against severities of heat and cold, to render them temperate in food and drink, to train their voices, and

rovided suitable lodgings near at hand. Many were the poor students who thus owed to his generosity participation in the most refined and scientific culture their century afforded.[291] While paying this tribute to Vittorino da Feltre, we must remember the honour that is also due to Gian Francesco Gonzaga. Had this prince not been endowed with true liberality of soul and freedom from petty prejudice,

inguish between different types of literary excellence, not confounding Cicero with Seneca or Virgil with Lucan, but striving to appreciate the special qualities of each. With a view to the acquisition of pure principles of taste, he confined them at first to Virgil and Homer, Cicero and Demosthenes. These four authors he regarded as the supreme masters of expression. Ovid was too luxuriant, Juvenal too coarse, to serve as guides for tiros. Horace and Persius among the satirists, Terence among the comic poets, might be safely studied. In spite of Seneca's weight as a philosophic essayist, Vittorino censured the affectation

in his presence. Swearing, obscene language, vulgar joking, and angry altercation were severely punished. Personal morality and the observance of religious exercises he exacted from his pupils. Lying was a

o, and Cecilia.[296] Wholly dedicated to the cares of teaching, and more anxious to survive in the good fame of his scholars than to secure the immortality of literature, Vittorino bequeathed no writings to posterity. He lived to a hale and hearty old age; and when he died, in 1446, it was found that the illustrious scholar, after enjoying for so many years the liberality of his princely patron, had not accumulated enough money to p

Este. What has already been said about Milan applies, however, in a less degree to Ferrara. The arts and letters, though they flourished with exceeding brilliance beneath the patrons of Boiardo,

agements-passing from Venice to Verona, from Trent to Padua, from Bologna to Florence, and everywhere acquiring that substantial reputation as a teacher to which he owed the invitation of Niccolo d'Este in 1429. He was now a man of nearly sixty, master of the two languages, and well acquainted with the method of instruction. The Marquis of Ferrara engaged him as tutor to his illegitimate son Lionello, heir apparent to his throne. For seven years Guarino devoted himself wholly to the education of this youth, who passed for one of the best scholars of his age. Granting that the reputation for learning was lightly conferred on princes by their literary parasites, it seems certain that Lionello derived more than a mere smattering in culture from

of Italy with his pupils. A sentence describing his manner of life in extreme old age might be used to illustrate the enthusiasm which sustained the vital energy of scholars in that generation:-'His memory is marvellous, and his habit of reading is so indefatigable, that he scarcely takes the time to eat, to sleep, or to go abroad; and yet his limbs and senses have the vigour of youth.[299] Guarino was one of the few humanists whose moral character won equal respect wi

ned, laden with MSS. and learning, to profess the humanities in Italy. His life forms, therefore, a close parallel with that of both Guarino and Filelfo. Aurispa, however, was gifted with a less unresting temper

Mirandola was growing fit to be the birthplace of the mighty Pico. Alessandro and Costanzo Sforza were adorning their lordship of Pesaro with a library that rivalled those of Rome and Florence.[303] In the fortress of Rimini, Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta conversed with men of learning whenever his intrigues and his military duties gave him leisure. The desperate and godless tyrant, whose passions bordered upon madness, and whose name was a byeword for all the vices that disgrace humanity, curbed his temper before petty witlings like Porcellio, and carved a record of his burning love for learning on the temple raised to celebrate his fame in Rimini. To the same passion for scholarship in his bro

for the Duke would have been ashamed to own one. Vespasiano's admiration for these delicately finished MSS. and the contempt he expresses for the new art of printing are highly characteristic.[305] Enough has been already said by me elsewhere about Federigo da Montefeltro and his patronage of learning.[306] The Queen's collection at Windsor contains a curious picture, attributed to Melozza da Forli, of which I may be allowed to speak in this place, since it possesses more than usual interest for the student of humanism at the Italian Courts. In a large rectangular hall, lighted from above by windows in a dome, the Duke of Urbino is seated, wearing the robes and badges of the Garter, and resting his left hand on a folio. His son Guidobaldo, a boy of about eleven years of age, or little more, stands at the Duke's knee, dressed in yellow damask trimmed with pearls. Behind them, on a raised bench with a desk before it, sit three men, one attired in the red suit of a prelate, the second in black ecclesiastical attire, and th

umph of printing, and might have even handled the Mus?us issued from the Aldine Press in 1493. Vespasiano was no mere tradesman. His knowledge of the books he sold was accurate; continual study enabled him to overlook the copyists, and to vouch for the exactitude of their transcripts.[309] At the same time his occupation brought him into close intimacy with the chief scholars of the age, so that the new culture reached him by conversation and familiar correspondence. As a biographer Vespasiano possessed rare merit. Personally acquainted with the men of whom he wrote, he drew their characters with praiseworthy succinctness and simplicity. There is no panegyrical emphasis, no calumnious innuendo, in his sketches. It may even be said that they suffer from reservation of opinion and suppression of facts. Vespasiano's hatred of vice and love of virtue were so genuine that, in his eagerne