APPENDIX.

The books written in the hand of the authors were probably not very legible, at least if we may judge of others by Cicero. His brother Quintus had complained that he could not read his letters, and Cicero says in reply: “Scribis te meas literas superiores vix legere potuisse; hoc facio semper ut quicumque calamus in manus meas venerit, eo sic utar tamquam bono492.”

But the works,—at least the prose works,—of the Romans were seldom written out in the hand of the author, and were generally dictated by him to some slave or freedman instructed in penmanship. It is well known that many of the orations of Cicero, Cato, and their great rhetorical contemporaries, were taken down by short-hand writers stationed in the Senate or Forum. But even the works most carefully prepared in the closet were notata, in a similar manner, by slaves and freedmen. There was no part of his learned compositions on which Cicero took more pains, or about which his thoughts were more occupied493, than the dedication of the Academica to Varro, and even this he dictated to his slave Spintharus, though he did so slowly, word by word, and not in whole sentences to Tiro, as was his practice in his other productions. “Male mihi sit,” says he in a letter to Atticus, “si umquam quidquam tam enitar. Ergo ne Tironi quidem dictavi, qui totas periochas persequi solet, sed Spintharo syllabatim494.”

This practice of authors dictating their works created a necessity, or at least a conveniency, of writing with rapidity, and of employing contractions, or conventional marks, in almost every word.

Accordingly, from the earliest periods of Roman literature, words were contracted, or were signified by notes, which sometimes stood for more than one letter, sometimes for syllables, and at other times for whole words. Funccius, who main[pg A-4]tains that Adam was the first short-hand writer495, has asserted, with more truth, that the Romans contracted their words from the remotest ages of the republic, and to a greater degree than any other ancient nation. Sometimes the abbreviations consisted merely in writing the initial letter instead of the whole word. Thus P. C. stood for Patres Conscripti; C. R., for Civis Romanus; S. N. L., for Socii Nominis Latini. This sort of contraction being employed in words frequently recurring, and which in one sense might be termed public, and being also universally recognized, would rarely produce any misapprehension or mistake. But frequently the abbreviations were much more complex, and the leading letters of words in less common use being notata, the contractions became of much more difficult and dubious interpretation. For example, Meit. expressed meminit; Acus., Acerbus; Quit., quærit; Ror., Rhetor.

For the sake, however, of yet greater expedition in writing, and perhaps, in some few instances for the purpose of secrecy, signs or marks, which could be currently made with one dash or scratch with the stylus, and without lifting or turning it, came to be employed, instead of those letters which were themselves the abbreviations of words. Some writers have supposed that these signs were entirely arbitrary496, whilst others have, with more probability, maintained that their forms can be resolved or analysed into the figures, or parts of the figures, of the letters themselves which they were intended to represent, though they have often departed far from the shape of the original characters497. Ennius is said to have invented 1100 of these signs498, which he no doubt employed in his multifarious compositions. Others came into gradual use in the manual operation of writing with rapidity to dictation. Tiro, the favourite freedman of Cicero, greatly increased the number, and brought this sort of tachygraphy to its greatest perfection among the Romans. In consequence of this fashion of authors dictating their works, expedition came to be considered of the utmost importance; it was regarded as the chief accomplishment of an amanuensis; and he alone was considered as perfect in his art, whose pen could equal the rapidity of utterance:

These lines were written by a poet of the age of Augustus, and it appears from Martial500, Ausonius501, and Prudentius, that this system of dictation by the author, and rapid notation by his amanuensis, continued in practice during the later ages of the empire.

Such was the mode in which most of the writings of the ancients came originally from their authors, and were delivered to those friends who were desirous to possess copies, or to the booksellers to be perscripta, or transcribed, for publication.

There exists sufficient proof of the high estimation in which accurate transcriptions of the works of their own writers were held by the Romans. The correctness of printing, however, could not be expected. In the original notation, some mistakes might probably be made from carelessness of pronunciation in the author who dictated, and haste in his amanuensis; but the great source of errors in MSS. was the blunders made by the librarius in copying out from the noted exemplar. There was the greatest ambiguity and doubt in the interpretation, both of words contracted in the ordinary character and in the artificial signs. Sometimes the same word was expressed by different letters; thus MR. MT. MTR. all expressed Mater. Sometimes, on the other hand, the same set of letters expressed different words; for instance, ACT. signified Actor, Auctoritas, and Hactenus. The collocation of the letters was often inverted from the order in which they stood in the word when fully expressed; and frequently one letter had not merely its own power, but that of several [pg A-5]others. Thus AMO. signified animo, because M had there not only its own force, but, as its shape in some measure announces, the power of ni also. Matters were still worse, when not only abbreviations, but signs had been resorted to. These were variously employed by different writers, and were also differently interpreted by transcribers. Some of these signs were extremely similar in form: it was scarcely possible to discriminate the sign which denoted the syllable ab from that which expressed the syllable um; and the signs of the syllables is and it were nearly undistinguishable; while ad and at were precisely the same. The mark which expressed the word talis, being a little more sloped or inclined, expressed qualis; and the difference in the Tironian signs which stood for the complete words Ager and Amicus, was scarcely perceptible502.

The ancient Latin writers also employed a number of marks to denote the accents of words, and the quantities of syllables. The oldest writers, as Livius Andronicus and Nævius, always placed two vowels when a syllable was to be pronounced long503. Attius, the great tragic author, was the first to relinquish this usage; and after his time, in conformity to the new practice which he had adopted, a certain mark was placed over the long vowels. When this custom also (which is stigmatised by Quintilian as ineptissimus504) fell into disuse, the mark was frequently misunderstood, and Funccius has given several examples of corruptions and false readings from the mistake of transcribers, who supposed that it was intended to express an m, an n, or other letters505.

In addition to all this, little attention was paid to the separation of words and sentences, and the art of punctuation was but imperfectly understood.

Finally, and above all, the orthography of Latin was extremely fluctuating and uncertain. We have seen, in an early part of this work, how it varied in the time of the republic, and it, in fact, never became fixed. Mai talks repeatedly, in his preface, of the strange inconsistencies of spelling in the Codex, which contained Cicero’s work De Republica; and Cassiodorus, who of all his contemporaries chiefly cultivated literature during the reign of the barbarians in Italy, often regrets that the ancient Romans had left their orthography encumbered with the utmost difficulties. “Orthographia,” says he, “apud Græcos plerumque sine ambiguitate probatur expressa; inter Latinos vero sub ardua difficultate relicta monstratur; unde etiam modo studium magnum lectoris inquiret.”

In consequence of this dictation to short-hand, and this uncertain orthography, we find that the corruption of the classics had begun at a very early period. The ninth Satire of Lucilius was directed against the ridiculous blunders of transcribers, and contained rules for greater correctness. Cicero, in his letters to his brother Quintus, bitterly complains of the errors of copyists,—“De Latinis vero, quo me vertam, nescio; ita mendose et scribuntur, et veneunt506.” Strabo says, that in his time booksellers employed ignorant transcribers, who neglected to compare what they wrote with the exemplar; which, he adds, has occurred in many works, copied for the purpose of being sold, both at Rome and Alexandria507. Martial, too, thus cautions his reader against the mistakes occasioned by the inaccuracy and haste of the venders of books, and the transcribers whom they employed:

Aulus Gellius repeatedly complains of the inaccuracy of copies in his time: We learn from him, that the writings of the greatest Classics were already corrupted and falsified, not only by the casual errors of copyists, but by the deliberate perversions of critics, who boldly altered everything that was too elegant or poetical for their own taste and understanding509. To the numerous corruptions in the text of Sallust he particularly refers510.

It seems also probable, that the destruction of the treasures of classical literature commenced at a very early period. Varro’s library, which was the most extensive private collection of books in Italy, was ruined and dispersed when his villa was occupied by Antony511; and some of his own treatises, as that addressed to Pompey on the duties of the Consulship, were irretrievably lost. Previous to the art of printing, books, in consequence of their great scarcity and value, were chiefly heaped up in public libraries. Several of these were consumed in the fire, by which so many temples were burned to the ground in the reign of Nero512, particularly the library in the temple of Apollo, on the Palatine Hill, which was founded by Augustus, and contained all the Roman poets and historians previous to his age. This literary establishment having been restored as far as was possible by Domitian, suffered a second time by the flames; and the extensive library of the Capitol perished in a fire during the reign of Commodus513. When it is considered, that at these periods the copies of Latin works were few, and chiefly confined within the walls of Rome, some notion may be formed of the extent of the loss sustained by these successive conflagrations.

From the portentous æra of the death of Pertinax, the brief reign of each succeeding emperor ended in assassination, civil war, and revolution. The imperial throne was filled by soldiers of fortune, who came like shadows, and like shadows departed. Rome at length ceased to be the fixed and habitual residence of her sovereigns, who were now generally employed at a distance in the field, in repelling foreign enemies, or repressing usurpers. While it is certain, that during this period many of the finest monuments of the arts were destroyed, and some of the most splendid works of architecture defaced, it can hardly be supposed that the frail texture of the parchment, or papyrus, should have resisted the stroke of sudden ruin, or the gradual mouldering of neglect.

But the chief destruction took place after the removal of the seat of empire by Constantine. The loss of so many classical works subsequently to that æra, has been attributed chiefly to the irruption of the northern barbarians; but it was fully as much owing to the blind zeal of the early Christians. Many of the public libraries were placed in temples, and hence were the more exposed to the fury of the proselytes to the new faith. This devastation began in Italy in the fourth century, before the barbarians had penetrated to the heart of the empire; and, in the same century, if Sulpicius Severus may be credited, Bishop Martin undertook a crusade against the temples of the Gauls514. St Augustine, St Jerome, and Lactantius, indeed, knew the classics well; but they considered them as a sort of forbidden fruit: and St Jerome, as he himself informs us, was whipped by an angel for perusing Plautus and Cicero515. The following or fifth century, was distinguished by the first capture of Rome, and its successive devastations by Alaric, Genseric, and Attila. In the latter part of the century, Milan, too, was plundered; which, next to Rome, was the chief repository of books in Italy.

Monachism, which, in its first institution, particularly in the east, had been so destructive of literary works, became, when more advanced in its progress, a chief cause of their preservation. When the monks were at length united, in a species of civil union, under the fixed rules of St Benedict, in the beginning of the sixth century, the institution contributed, if not to the diffusion of literature, at least to the preservation of literary works. There was no prohibition in the ordinances of St Benedict against the reading of classical writings, as in those of St Isidore: and the consequence was, that wherever any abbot, or even monk, had a taste for [pg A-7]letters, books were introduced into the convent. We have a remarkable example of this in the instance of Cassiodorus, whose genius, learning, and virtue, shed a lustre on one of the darkest periods of Italian history. After his pre-eminent services as minister of state during the reign of Theodoric, and regency of Amalasuntha, he retired, in the year 540, when he had reached the age of seventy, to the monastery of Monte Casino, situated in a most delightful spot, near the place of his birth, in Calabria. There he became as serviceable to literature as he had formerly been to the state; and the convent to which he betook himself deserves to be first mentioned in any future history of the preservation of the Classics. Before his entrance into it, he possessed an extensive library, with which he enriched the cloister516; and subsequently enlarged it by a collection of MSS., which he caused to be brought to him from various quarters of Italy. There is still extant his order to a monk to procure for him Albinus’ treatise on Music; which shows, that his collection was not entirely confined to theological treatises: while his work De Artibus ac Disciplinis liberalium Literarum, is an ample testimony of his classical learning, and of the value which he attached to it. His library contained, at least, Ennius, Terence, Lucretius, Varro, Cicero, and Sallust517. The monks of his convent were excited by him to the transcription of MSS.; and, in his work De Orthographia, he did not disdain to give minute directions for copying with facility and correctness.

Thus, in collecting an ample library—in diffusing copies of ancient MSS.—in verbal instructions, written lectures, and the composition of voluminous works—he closed, in the service of religion and learning, a long and meritorious life.

The example of Cassiodorus was followed in other convents. About half a century after his death, Columbanus founded a monastery of Benedictines at Bobbio, a town situated among the northern Apennines. This religious society, as Tiraboschi informs us, was remarkable, not only for the sanctity of its manners, but the cultivation of literature. It was fortunate that receptacles for books had now been thus provided, as otherwise the treasures of classical literature in Italy would, in all likelihood, have perished during the wars of Belisarius, and Narses, and the invasion of Totila. It is in the age of Cassiodorus,—that is, the beginning and middle of the sixth century,—that Tiraboschi places the serious and systematic commencement of the transcription of the classics518. He mentions the names of some of the most eminent copyists; but a fuller list had been previously furnished by Fabricius519.

In Gregory the Great, who was Pope at the end of the sixth and beginning of the seventh century, literature, according to popular belief, found an enemy in the west, as fatal to its interests as the Caliph Omar had been in the east. This pontiff was accused of burning a classical library, and also some valuable works, which had replaced those formerly consumed in the Palatine library. John of Salisbury is the sole authority for this charge; and even he, who lived six centuries after the age of Gregory, only mentions it as a tradition and report: “Fertur Beatus Gregorius bibliothecam combussisse gentilem, quo divinæ paginæ gratior esset locus, et major auctoritas, et diligentia studiosior520;” and again, “Ut traditur a majoribus, incendio dedit probatæ lectionis scripta, Palatinus quæcunque tenebat Apollo521.” Cardan informs us, that Gregory also caused the plays of Nævius, Ennius, and Afranius, to be burned. That he suppressed the works of Cicero, rests on the authority of a passage in an edict published by Louis XI., dated 1473, and quoted by Lyron in his Singularitéz Historiques522. St Antonius, who was Archbishop of Florence in the middle of the fifteenth century, is cited by Vossius as the most ancient author who has asserted that he burned the decades of Livy523. These charges have been strenuously supported by Brucker524, while Tiraboschi, on the other hand, has endeavoured to vindicate the memory of the pontiff from all such aspersions525. Bayle [pg A-8]has adopted a prudent neutrality526. Dendina527 and Ginguené528, the most recent authors who have touched on the subject, seem to consider the question, after all that has been written on it, as still doubtful, and not likely to receive any farther elucidation. It appears certain, that Gregory disliked classical, or profane literature, on account of the oracles, idolatry, and rites, with which it is associated, and that he prohibited its study by the clergy529;—whence may, perhaps, have originated the reports of his wilfully destroying the then surviving libraries and books of Rome.

During the course of the two centuries which followed the death of Gregory, Italy was divided between the Greeks and Lombards, and was torn by spiritual dissensions. The most numerous and barbarous swarm which had yet crossed the Alps was the Lombards, who descended on Italy, under their king, Alboinus, in 568, immediately after the death of Narses. It was no longer a tribe or army by which Italy was invaded; but a whole nation of old men, women, and children, covered its plains. This ignorant and ferocious race spread themselves from the Alps to Rome during the seventh and eighth centuries. And although Rome itself escaped the Lombard dominion, the horrors of a perpetual siege can alone convey an adequate idea of its distressed situation. The feuds of the Lombard chiefs, their wars with the Greeks, who still remained masters of Rome, and at length with the Franks, (all which contests were marked with fire and massacre,) made a desert of the Peninsular garden530. Hitherto the superstitious feelings of the northern hordes had inspired them with some degree of respect for the sacerdotal order which they found established in Italy. Reverence for the person of the priest had extended itself to the security of his property, and while the palace and castle were wrapt in flames, the convent escaped sacrilege. But the Lombards extended their fury to objects which their rude predecessors had generally respected; and learning was now attacked in her most vulnerable part. Amid the general destruction, the monasteries and their libraries were no longer spared; and with others, that of Monte Casino, one of the most valuable and extensive in Italy, was plundered by the Lombards531. Some books preserved in the sack of the libraries were carried back by these invaders to their native country, and a few were saved by monks, who sought refuge in other kingdoms, which accounts for the number of classical MSS. subsequently discovered in France and Germany532.

Amid the ruin of taste and letters in these ages, it is probable that but few new copies were made from the MSS. then extant. Some of the classics, however, were still spared, and remained in the monastic libraries. Anspert, who was Abbot of Beneventum, in the eighth century, declares that he had never studied Homer, Cicero, or Virgil, which implies, that they were still preserved, and accessible to his perusal533.

The division of Italy between the Lombards and Greeks continued till the end of the eighth century, when Charlemagne put an end to the kingdom of the former, and founded his empire. Whether this monarch himself had any pretensions to the character of a scholar, is more than doubtful; but whether he possessed learning or not, he was a generous patron of those who did. He assembled round his court such persons as were most distinguished for talents and erudition; he established schools and pensioned scholars; and he founded also a species of Academy, of which Alcuin was the head, and in which every one adopted a scriptural or classic appellation. This tended to multiply the MSS. of the classics, and many of them found a place in the imperial library mentioned by Eginhard. Charlemagne also established the monastery of Fulda, and, in consequence, copies of these MSS. found their way to Germany in the beginning of the ninth century534. The more recent Latin writers, as Boethius, Macrobius, and Capella, were chiefly popular in his age; but Virgil, [pg A-9]Cicero, and Livy, were not unknown. Alcuin’s poetical account of the library at York, founded by Archbishop Egbert, and of which he had been the first librarian, affords us some notion of the usual contents of the libraries at that time.—

But though there were libraries in other countries, Italy always contained the greatest number of classical MSS. In the ninth century, Lupus, who was educated at Fulda, and afterwards became Abbot of Ferrieres, a monastery in the Orleanois, requested Pope Benedict III. to send him Cicero de Oratore and Quintilian, of both of which he possessed parts, but had neither of them complete535; and in another letter he begs from Italy a copy of Suetonius536. The series of his letters gives us a favourable impression of the state of profane literature in his time. In his very first letter to Einhart, who had been his preceptor, he quotes Horace and the Tusculan Questions. Virgil is repeatedly cited in the course of his epistles, and the lines of Catullus are familiarly referred to as authorities for the proper quantities of syllables. Lupus did not confine his care to the mere transcription of MSS. He bestowed much pains on the rectification of the texts, as is evinced by his letter to Ansbald, Abbot of Prum, where he acknowledges having received from him a copy of the epistles of Cicero, which would enable him to correct the MSS. of them which he himself possessed537.

It was a rule in convents, that those who embraced the monasteric life should employ some hours each day in manual labour; but as all were not fit for those occupations which require much corporeal exertion, many of the monks fulfilled their tasks by copying MSS. Transcription thus became a favourite exercise in the ninth century, and was much encouraged by the Abbots538. In every great convent there was an apartment called the Scriptorium, in which writers were employed in transcribing such books as were deemed proper for the library. The heads of monasteries borrowed their classics from each other, and, having copied, returned them539.—By this means, books were wonderfully multiplied. Libraries became the constant appendages of cloisters, and in Italy existed nowhere else. We do not hear, during this period, of either royal or private libraries. There was little information among the priests or parochial clergy, and almost every man of learning was a member of a convent.

But while MSS. thus increased in the monasteries, there were, at the same time, during this century, many counteracting causes, which rendered them more scarce than they would otherwise have been. During the Norman invasion, the convents were the chief objects of plunder. From the time, too, of the conquest of Alexandria by the Saracens, in the seventh century, when the Egyptian papyrus almost ceased to be imported into Europe, till the close of the tenth, when the art of making paper from cotton rags seems to have been introduced, there were no materials for writing except parchment, a substance too expensive to be readily spared for mere purposes of literature540. The scarcity of paper, too, not only prevented the increase [pg A-10]of classical MSS., but occasioned the loss of some which were then in existence, from the characters having been deleted, in order to make way for a more favourite production. The monkish scribes were accustomed to peel off the surface of parchment MSS., or to obliterate the ink by a chemical process, for the purpose of fitting them to receive the works of some Christian author; so that, by a singular and fatal metamorphosis, a classic was frequently translated into a vapid homily or monastic legend. That many valuable works of antiquity perished in this way, is evinced by the number of MSS. which have been discovered, evidently written on erased parchments. Thus the fragments of Cicero’s Orations, lately found in the Ambrosian library, had been partly obliterated, to make room for the works of Sedulius, and the Acts of the Council of Chalcedon; and Cicero’s treatise de Republica had been effaced, in order to receive a commentary of St Augustine on the Psalms.

The tenth century has generally been accounted the age of deepest darkness in the west of Europe. During its course, Italy was united by Otho I. with the German empire, and was torn by civil dissensions. Muratori gives a detailed account of the plundering of Italian convents, which was the consequence of these commotions, and of the irruption of the Huns in 899541. Still, however, Italy continued to be the great depository of classical MSS.; and in that country they were occasionally sought with the utmost avidity. Gerbert, who became Pope in the last year of the tenth century, by name of Silvester II., spared neither pains nor expense in procuring transcriptions of MSS. This extraordinary man, impelled by a thirst of science, had left his home and country at an early period of life: He had visited various nations of Europe, but it was in Spain, then partly subject to the Arabs, that he had chiefly obtained an opportunity of gratifying his mathematical talent, and desire of general information. Being no less ready to communicate than eager to acquire learning, he founded a school on his return to Italy, and greatly increased the library at Bobbio, in Lombardy, to the abbacy of which he had been promoted. While Archbishop of Rheims, in France, that kingdom experienced the effects of his enlightened zeal. During his papacy, obtained for him by his pupil Otho III., he persevered in his love of learning. In his generosity to scholars, and his expenditure of wealth for the employment of copyists, as well as for exploring the repositories in which the mouldering relics of ancient learning were yet to be found, we trace a liberality, bordering on profusion.—“Nosti,” says he, in one of his epistles to the monk Rainaldo, “quanto studio librorum exemplaria undique conquiram; nosti quot scriptores in urbibus, aut in agris Italiæ passim habeantur. Age ergo, et te solo conscio, ex tuis sumptibus fac ut mihi scribantur Manilius de Astronomia, et Victorinus. Spondeo tibi, et certum teneo quod, quicquid erogaveris, cumulatim remittam542.” Having by this means exhausted Italy, Silvester directed his researches to countries beyond the Alps, as we perceive from his letter to Egbert, Abbot of Tours.—“Cui rei preparandæ bibliothecam assidue comparo; et sicut Romæ dudum, et in aliis partibus Italiæ, in Germanià quoque, et Belgicà, scriptores auctorumque exemplaria multitudine nummorum redemi; adjutus benevolentia et studio amicorum comprovincialium: sic identidem apud vos per vos fieri sinite ut exorem. Quos scribi velimus, in fine epistolæ designabimus543.” This list, however, is not printed in any of the editions of Gerbert’s Letters, which I have had an opportunity of consulting.

It thus appears that there were zealous researches for the classics, and successful discoveries of them, long before the age of Poggio, or even of Petrarch; but so little intercourse existed among different countries, and the monks had so little acquaintance with the treasures of their own libraries, that a classical author might be considered as lost in Italy, though familiar to a few learned men, and still lurking in many of the convents.

Gerbert, previous to his elevation to the Pontificate, had, as already mentioned, been Abbot of Bobbio; and the catalogue which Muratori has given of the library in that convent, may be taken as an example of the description and extent of the classical treasures contained in the best monastic libraries of the tenth century. While the collection, no doubt, chiefly consists of the works of the saints and fathers, we find Persius, Valerius Flaccus, and Juvenal, contained in one volume. [pg A-11]There are also enumerated in the list Cicero’s Topica, and his Catilinarian orations, Martial, parts of Ausonius and Pliny, the first book of Lucretius, four books of Claudian, the same number of Lucan, and two of Ovid544. The monastery of Monte Casino, which was the retreat, as we have seen, of Cassiodorus, was distinguished about the same period for its classical library.—“The monks of Casino, in Italy,” observes Warton, “were distinguished before the year 1000, not only for their knowledge of the sciences, but their attention to polite learning, and an acquaintance with the classics. Their learned Abbot, Desiderius, collected the best of the Roman writers. This fraternity not only composed learned treatises on music, logic, astronomy, and the Vitruvian architecture, but likewise employed a portion of their time in transcribing Tacitus, Jornandes, Ovid’s Fasti, Cicero, Seneca, Donatus the grammarian, Virgil, Theocritus, and Homer.”

During the eleventh century, the Benedictines having excited scandal by their opulence and luxury, the Carthusian and Cistertian orders attracted notice and admiration, by a self-denying austerity; but they valued themselves not less than the Benedictines, on the elegance of their classical transcriptions; and about the same period, translations from the Classics into the Lingua volgare, first commenced in Italy.

At the end of the eleventh century, the Crusades began; and during the whole course of the twelfth century, they occupied the public mind, to the exclusion of almost every other object or pursuit. Schools and convents were affected with this religious and military mania: All sedentary occupations were suspended, and a mark of reproach was affixed to every undertaking which did not promote the contagion of the times.

About the middle of the thirteenth century, and after the death of the Emperor Frederic II., Italy was for the first time divided into a number of petty sovereignties, unconnected by any system of general union, except the nominal allegiance still due to the Emperor. This separation, while it excited rivalry in arms, also created some degree of emulation in learning. Many Universities were established for the study of theology and the exercise of scholastic disputation; and though the classics were not publicly diffused, they existed within the walls of the convent, and were well known to the learned men of the period. Brunetto Latini, the teacher of Dante, and author of the Tesoro, translated into Italian several of Cicero’s orations, some parts of his rhetorical works, and considerable portions of Sallust545. Dante, in his Amoroso Convito, familiarly quotes Livy, Virgil, and Cicero de Officiis; and Mehus mentions various translations of Seneca, Ovid, and Virgil, which had been executed in the age of Dante, and which he had seen in MSS. in the different libraries of Italy546.

It was Petrarch, however, who, in the fourteenth century, led the way in drawing forth the classics from the dungeons where they had been hitherto immured, and holding up their light and glory to the eyes of men. While enjoying the reputation of having perfected the most melodious and poetical language of Europe, Petrarch has acquired a still higher title to fame, by his successful exertions in rousing his country from a slumber of ignorance which threatened to be eternal. In his earliest youth, instead of the dry and dismal works which at that time formed the general reading, he applied himself to the reading of Virgil and Cicero; and when he first commenced his epistolary correspondence, he strongly expressed his wish that their fame should prevail over the authority of Aristotle and his commentators; and declared his belief of the high advantages the world would enjoy if the monkish philosophy should give place to classical literature. Petrarch, as is evinced by his letters, was the most assiduous recoverer and restorer of ancient MSS. that had yet existed. He was an enthusiast in this as he was in every thing else that merited enthusiasm—love, friendship, glory, patriotism, and religion. He never passed an old convent without searching its library, or knew of a friend travelling into those quarters [pg A-12]where he supposed books to be concealed, without entreaties to procure for him some classical MS. It is evident that he came just in time to preserve from total ruin many of the mouldering remains of classical antiquity, and to excite among his countrymen a desire for the preservation of those treasures when its gratification was on the very eve of being rendered for ever impracticable. He had seen, in his youth, several of Cicero’s now lost treatises, and Varro’s great work Rerum Divinarum et Humanarum547, which has forever disappeared from the world; and it is probable that had not some one, endued with his ardent love of letters, and indefatigable research, arisen, many similar works which we now enjoy, would soon have sunk into a like oblivion.

About the same period, Boccaccio also collected several Latin MSS., and copied such as he could not purchase. He transcribed so many of the Latin poets, orators, and historians, that it would appear surprising had a copyist by profession performed so much. In a journey to Monte Casino, a place generally considered as remarkably rich in MSS., he was both astonished and afflicted to find the library exiled from the monastery into a barn, which was accessible only by a ladder. He opened many of the books, and found much of the writing effaced by damp. His grief was redoubled when the monks told him, that when they wanted money, they erased an ancient writing, wrote psalters and legends on the parchment, and sold the new MSS. to women and children548.

But though, in the fourteenth century, copies of the classics were multiplied and rendered more accessible to the world, and though a few were made by such hands as those of Petrarch and Boccaccio, the transcriptions in general were much less accurate than those of a former period. The Latin tongue, which had received more stability than could otherwise have been expected, from having been consecrated in the service of the church, had now at length become a dead language, and many of the transcribers did not understand what they wrote. Still more mistakes than those produced by ignorance, were occasioned by the presumption of pretenders to learning, who were often tempted to alter the text, in order to accommodate the sense to their own slender capacity and defective taste. Whilst a remedy has been readily found for the gross oversight or neglect of the ignorant and idle, in substituting one letter for another, or inserting a word without meaning, errors affecting the sense of the author, which were thus introduced, have been of the worst species, and have chiefly contributed to compose that mass of various readings, on which the sagacity of modern scholars has been so copiously exercised. In a passage of Coluccio Salutati’s treatise De Fato, published by the Abbé Mehus, the various modes in which MSS. were depraved by copyists are fully pointed out549. To such extent had these corruptions proceeded, that Petrarch, talking of the MSS. of his own time, and those immediately preceding it, asks, “Quis scriptorum inscitiæ medebitur, inertiæque corrumpenti omnia ac miscenti? Non quæro jam aut queror Orthographiam, quæ jam dudum interiit; qualitercunque utinam scriberent quod jubentur. An si redeat Cicero aut Livius, ante omnes Plinius Secundus, sua scripta religentes intelligent?” So sensible was Coluccio Salutati of the injury which had been done to letters by the ignorance or negligence of transcribers, that he proposed, as a check to the evil, that public libraries should be every where formed, the superintendence of which should be given to men of learning, who might carefully collate the MSS. intrusted to them, and ascertain the most correct readings550. To this labour, and to the detection of counterfeit works, of which many, from various motives, now began to be circulated, Coluccio devoted a considerable portion of his own time and studies. His plan for the institution of public libraries did not succeed; but he amassed a private one, which, in that age, was second only to the library of Petrarch. A considerable classical library, though consisting chiefly of the later classics, particularly Seneca, Macrobius, Apuleius, and Suetonius, was amassed by Tedaldo de Casa, whose books, with many remarks and emendations in his own hand, were inspected by the Abbé Mehus in the library of Santa-Croce at Florence551.

The path which had been opened up by Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Coluccio Salutati, in the fourteenth century, was followed out in the ensuing century with wonderful assiduity and success by Poggio Bracciolini, Filelfo, and Ambrosio Traver[pg A-13]sari, Abbott of Camaldoli, under the guidance and protection of the Medicean Family and Niccolo Niccoli.

Of all the learned men of his time, Poggio seems to have devoted himself with the greatest industry to the search for classical MSS. No difficulties in travelling, or indifference in the heads of convents to his literary inquiries, could damp his zeal. His ardour and exertions were fortunately crowned with most complete success. The number of MSS. discovered by him in different parts of Europe, during the space of nearly fifty years, will remain a lasting proof of his unceasing perseverance, and of his sagacity in these pursuits. Having spent his youth in travelling through different countries, he at length settled at Rome, where he continued as secretary, in the service of eight successive Pontiffs. In this capacity he, in the year 1414, accompanied Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, which was opened in that year. While residing at Constance, he made several expeditions, most interesting to letters, in intervals of relaxation during the prosecutions of Jean Hus and Jerome of Prague, of which he had the official charge. His chief excursion was to the monastery of St Gal, about twenty miles distance from Constance, where his information led him to expect that he might find some MSS. of the ancient Roman writers552. The earliest Abbots, and many of the first monks of St Gal, had been originally transferred to that monastery from the literary establishment founded by Charlemagne at Fulda. Werembert and Helperic, who were sent to St Gal from Fulda in the ninth century, introduced in their new residence a strong taste for letters, and the practice of transcribing the classics. In examining the Histoire Litteraire de la France, by the Benedictines, we find that no monastery in the middle ages produced so many distinguished scholars as St Gal. In this celebrated convent, which, (as Tenhove expresses it) had been so long the Dormitory of the Muses, Poggio discovered some of the most valuable classics,—not, however, in the library of the cloister, but covered with dust and filth, and rotting at the bottom of a dungeon, where, according to his own account, no criminal condemned to death would have been thrown553. This evinces that whatever care may at one time have been taken of classical MSS. by the monks, they had subsequently been shamefully neglected.

The services rendered to literature by Ambrosio of Camaldoli were inferior only to those of Poggio. Ambrosio was born at Forli in 1386, and was a disciple of Emanuel Chrysoloras. At the age of fourteen, he entered into the convent of Camaldoli at Florence, and thirty years afterwards became the Superior of his order. In the kind conciliatory disposition of Ambrosio, manifested by his maintaining an uninterrupted friendship with Niccolo Niccoli, Poggio, and Filelfo, and by moderating the quarrels of these irascible Literati—in his zeal for the sacred interests, discipline, and purity of his convent, to which his own moral conduct afforded a spotless example—and, finally, in his enthusiastic love of letters, in which he was second only to Petrarch, we behold the brightest specimen of the monastic character, of which the memory has descended to us from the middle ages. Though chiefly confined within the limits of a cloister, Ambrosio had perhaps the best pretensions of any man of his age, to the character of a polite scholar. The whole of the early part of his life, and the leisure of its close, were employed in collecting ancient MSS. from every quarter where they could be procured, and in maintaining a constant correspondence with the most distinguished men of his age. His letters which have been published in 1759, at Florence, with a long preface and life by the Abbé Mehus, contain the fullest information that can be any where found with regard to the recovery of ancient classical MSS. and the state of literature at Florence in the fifteenth century.

It would appear from these Epistles, that though the monks had been certainly instrumental in preserving the precious relics of classical antiquity, their avarice and bigotry now rather obstructed the prosecution of the researches undertaken for the purpose of bringing them to light. It was their interest to keep these treasures to themselves, because it was a maxim of their policy to impede the diffusion of knowledge, and because the transcription of MSS. was to them a source of considerable emolument. Hence they often threw obstacles in the way of the inquiries of the learned, who were obliged to have recourse to various artifices, in order to draw classical MSS. from the recesses of the cloister554.

Niccolo Niccoli, who was an humble citizen of Florence, devoted his whole time and fortune to the acquisition of ancient MSS. In this pursuit he had been eminently successful, having collected together 800 volumes, of which a great proportion contained Roman authors. Poggio, in his funeral oration of Niccolo, bears ample testimony to his liberality and zeal, and attributes the successful discovery of so many classical MSS. to the encouragement which he had afforded. “Quod autem,” says he, “egregiam laudem meretur, summam operam, curamque adhibuit ad pervestigandos auctores, qui culpâ temporum perierant. Quâ in re verè possum dicere, omnes libros fere, qui noviter tum ab aliis reperti sunt, tum a me ipso, qui integrum Quintilianum, Ciceronis nostri orationes, Silium Italicum, Marcellinum, Lucretii partem, multosque præterea e Germanorum Gallorumque ergastulis, meâ diligentiâ eripui, atque in lucem extuli, Nicholai suasu, impulsu, cohortatione, et pæne verborum molestiâ esse Latinis literis restitutos555.” Several of these classical works Niccolo copied with his own hand, and with great accuracy, after he had received them556. The MSS. in his hand-writing were long known and distinguished by the beauty and distinctness of the characters. Nor did he content himself with mere transcription: He diligently employed himself in correcting the errors of the MSS. which were transmitted to him, and arranging the text in its proper order. “Quum eos auctores,” says Mehus, “ex vetustissimis codicibus exscriberet, qui suo potissimum consilio, aliorum vero operâ inventi sunt, non solum mendis, quibus obsiti erant, expurgavit, sed etiam distinxit, capitibusque locupletavit557.” Such was the judgment of Niccolo, in this species of emendation, that Politian always placed the utmost reliance on his MS. copies558; and, indeed, from a complimentary poem addressed to him in his own time, it would seem that he had carefully collated different MSS. of the same work, before he transcribed his own copy—