The name of Giovanni Aurispa must not be omitted in connection with Ferrara. Born in 1369 at Noto in Sicily, he lived to a great age, and died in 1459. He too travelled in early youth to Constantinople, and returned, 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 than Filelfo; nor did he achieve the same professorial success as Guarino. In his school at Ferrara he enjoyed the calmer pleasures of a student's life, 'devoted,' as Filelfo phrased it, 'to the placid Muses.'[301]

To give an account of all the minor Courts, where humanism flourished under the patronage of petty princes, would be tedious and unprofitable. It is enough to notice that the universities, in this age of indefatigable energy, kept forming scholars, eager to make their way as secretaries and tutors, while the nobles competed for the honour and the profit to be derived from the service of illustrious wits and ready pens. The seeds of classic culture were thus sown in every little city that could boast its castle. Carpi, for example, was preparing the ground where Aldus and Musurus flourished. At Forli the Ordelaffi, doomed to extinction at no distant period, gave protection to Codrus Urceus.[302] 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 brother, Malatesta Novello, the tiny burgh of Cesena owed the foundation of a library, not only well supplied with books, but endowed with a yearly income of 300 golden florins for its maintenance. The money spent on scholarship at these minor Courts was gained, for the most part, in military service—the wealth of Florentine and Venetian citizens, of Milanese despots, and ambitious Popes flowing through the hands of professional war-captains into the pockets of booksellers and students. It consequently happened that the impulse given at this time to learning in the lesser cities was but temporary. With the fall of the Malatesti and the Sforza family, for instance, erudition died at Rimini and Pesaro.

This might have been the case at Urbino also, if the House of Montefeltro had not succeeded, by wise conduct and prudent marriages, in resisting the encroachments of the Church, and transmitting its duchy to the Della Rovere family. As it was, Urbino retained for three generations the stamp of culture and refinement impressed upon it by the good Duke Frederick. Of his famous library, Vespasiano, who was employed in its formation, has given us minute and interesting details.[304] During more than fourteen years the Duke kept thirty or forty copyists continually employed in transcribing Greek and Latin MSS. Not only the classics in both languages, but the ecclesiastical and mediæval authors, the Italian poets, and the works of contemporary humanists found a place in his collection. The cost of the whole was estimated at considerably over 30,000 ducats. Each volume was bound in crimson, with silver clasps; the leaves were of vellum, exquisitely adorned with miniatures; nor could you find a printed book in the whole library, 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 the third in secular costume. At a door, opening on a passage, stand servants and lesser courtiers. The whole company are listening attentively to a grey-haired, black-robed humanist, seated in a sort of pulpit opposite to the Duke and his son. A large book, bound in crimson, with silver clasps is open on the desk before him; and by the movement of his mouth it is clear that he is reading aloud passages from some classical or ecclesiastical author, and explaining them for the benefit of his illustrious audience. To identify the scholar and the three men behind Federigo would not be impossible, if the exact date of this curious work could be ascertained; for they are clearly portraits. I like to fancy that in the layman we may perhaps recognise the excellent Vespasiano. Such conjectures are, however, hazardous; meanwhile the picture has intrinsic value as the unique representation, so far as I know, of a scene of frequent occurrence in the Courts of Italy, where listening to lectures formed a part of every day's occupation.

This is the proper place to speak of Vespasiano da Bisticci, on whose 'Lives of Illustrious Men' I have had occasion to draw so copiously. Peculiar interest attaches to him as the last of mediæval scribes, and at the same time the first of modern booksellers.[307] Besides being the agent of Cosimo de' Medici, Nicholas V., and Frederick of Urbino, Vespasiano supplied the foreign markets, sending MSS. by order to Hungary, Portugal, Germany, and England. The extent of his trade rendered him the largest employer of copyists in Europe at the moment when this industry was about to be superseded, and when scholars were already inquiring for news about the art that saved expense and shortened the labour of the student.[308] Vespasiano, who was born in 1421 at Florence, lived until 1498; so that after having helped to form the three greatest collections of MSS. in Italy, he witnessed the triumph of printing, and might have even handled the Musæus 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 eagerness to honour men of letters and their patrons, he softened down harsh outlines and passed over all that is condemnable in silence. He was less anxious to paint character in the style of Tacitus or Guicciardini, than to relate what he knew about the progress of learning in his age. The ethical intention in his work is obvious. The qualities he loves to celebrate are piety, chastity, generosity, devotion to the cause of liberal culture, and high-souled patriotism. Of the vices that added a lurid lustre to the age in which he lived, of the political rancours that divided the cities into hostile parties, and of the imperfections in the characters of eminent men, we hear nothing from Vespasiano. It is pleasant to conclude this chapter with an expression of gratitude to a man so blameless in his life, so charitable in his judgments, and so trustworthy in his record of contemporary history.

CHAPTER VI
THIRD PERIOD OF HUMANISM

In the four preceding chapters I have sketched the rise and progress of Italian humanism with more minuteness than need be now employed upon the history of its further development. By the scholars of the first and second period the whole domain of ancient literature was reconquered; the classics were restored in their integrity to the modern world. Petrarch first inflamed the enthusiasm without which so great a work could not have been accomplished, his immediate successors mastered the Greek language, and explored every province of antiquity. Much still remained, however, to be achieved by a new generation of students: for as yet criticism was but in its cradle; the graces of style were but little understood; indiscriminate erudition passed for scholarship, and crude verbiage for eloquence. The humanists of the third age, still burning with the zeal that animated Petrarch, and profiting by the labours of their predecessors, ascended to a higher level of culture. It is their glory to have purified the coarse and tumid style of mediæval Latinists, to have introduced the methods of comparative and æsthetic criticism, and to have distinguished the characteristics of the authors and the periods they studied.

The salient features of this third age of humanism may be briefly stated. Having done their work by sowing the seeds of culture broadcast, the vagrant professors of the second period begin to disappear, and the republic of letters tends to crystallise round men of eminence in coteries and learned circles. This, therefore, is the age of the academies. Secondly, it is noticeable that Italian literature, almost totally abandoned in the first fervour of enthusiasm for antiquity, now receives nearly as much attention as the classics. Since the revival of Italian in the golden age of the Renaissance will form the subject of my final volume, the names of Lorenzo de' Medici and Poliziano at Florence, of Boiardo at Ferrara, and of Sannazzaro at Naples may here suffice to indicate the points of contact between scholarship and the national literature. A century had been employed in the acquisition of humanistic culture; when acquired, it bore fruit, not only in more elegant scholarship, but also in new forms of poetry and prose for the people. A third marked feature of the period is the establishment of the printing press. The energy wherewith in little more than fifty years the texts of the classic authors were rendered indestructible by accident or time, and placed within the reach of students throughout Europe, demands particular attention in this chapter.

Florence is still the capital of learning. The most brilliant humanists, gathered round the person of Lorenzo de' Medici, give laws to the rest of Italy, determining by their tastes and studies the tone of intellectual society. Lorenzo is himself in so deep and true a sense the master spirit of this circle, that to describe his position in the republic will hardly be considered a digression.

Before his death in 1464 Cosimo de' Medici had succeeded in rendering his family necessary to the State of Florence. Though thwarted by ambitious rivals and hampered by the intrigues of the party he had formed to rule the commonwealth, Cosimo contrived so to complicate the public finances with his own banking business, and so to bind the leading burghers to himself by various obligations, that, while he in no way affected the style of a despot, Florence belonged to his house more surely than Bologna to the Bentivogli. For the continuation of this authority, based on intrigue and cemented by corruption, it was absolutely needful that the spirit of Cosimo should survive in his successors. A single false move, by unmasking the tyranny so carefully veiled, by offending the republican vanities of the Florentines, or by employing force where everything had hitherto been gained by craft, would at this epoch have destroyed the prospects of the Medicean family. So true it is that the history of this age in Italy is not the history of commonwealths so much as the history of individualities, of men. The principles reduced to rule by Machiavelli in his essay on the Prince may be studied in the lives of fifteenth-century adventurers, who, like Cesare Borgia, discerned the necessity of using violence for special ends, or, like the Medici, perceived that sovereignty could be better grasped by a hand gloved with velvet than mailed in steel. The Medici of both branches displayed through eight successive generations, in their general line of policy, in the disasters that attended their divergence from it, and in the means they used to rehabilitate their influence, the action of what Balzac calls l'homme politique, with striking clearness to the philosophic student.

Both the son and grandson of Cosimo well understood the part they had to play, and played it so ably that even the errors of the younger Piero, the genius of Savonarola, and the failure of the elder Medicean line were insufficient to check the gradual subjugation of the commonwealth he had initiated. Lorenzo's father, Piero, called by the Florentines Il Gottoso, suffered much from ill-health, and was unable to take the lead in politics.[310] Yet the powers entrusted to his father were confirmed for him. The elections remained in the hands of the Medicean party, and the balia appointed in their favour continued to control the State. The dangerous conspiracy against Piero's life, engaged in by Luca Pitti and Diotisalvi Neroni, proved that his enemies regarded the chief of the Medici as the leader of the republic. It was due to the prudent action of the young Lorenzo that this conspiracy failed; and the Medici were even strengthened by the downfall of their foes. From the tone of the congratulations addressed on this occasion by the ruling powers of Italy to Piero and Lorenzo, we may conclude that they were already reckoned as princes outside Florence, though they still maintained a burgherlike simplicity of life within the city walls.

In the marriage of his son Lorenzo to Clarice degli Orsini, of the princely Roman house, Piero gave signs of a departure from the cautious policy of Cosimo. Foreign alliances were regarded with suspicion by the Florentines, and Pandolfini's advice to his sons, that they should avoid familiarity with territorial magnates, exactly represented the spirit of the republic.[311] In like manner, the education of both Lorenzo and Giuliano, their intercourse with royal guests, and the prominent places assigned them on occasions of ceremony, indicated an advance toward despotism. It was concordant with the manners of the age that one family should play the part of host for the republic. The discharge of this duty by the Medici aroused no jealousy among the burghers; yet it enabled the ambitious house to place themselves in an unique position, and, while seeming to remain mere citizens, to take a step in the direction of sovereignty.

On the death of Piero, in 1469, the chief men of the Medicean party waited upon Lorenzo, and, after offering their condolences, besought him to succeed his father in the presidency of the State. The feeling prevailed among the leaders of the city that it was impossible, under the existing conditions of Italian politics, to carry on the commonwealth without a titular head. Lorenzo, then in his twenty-second year, entered thus upon the political career in the course of which he not only maintained a balance of power in Italy, but also remodelled the internal government of Florence in the interests of his family, and further strengthened their position by establishing connections with the Papal See. While bending all the faculties of his powerful and subtle intellect to the one end of consolidating a tyranny, Lorenzo was far too wise to assume the bearing of a despot. He conversed familiarly with the citizens, encouraged artists and scholars to address him on terms of equality, and was careful to adopt no titles. His personal temperament made the task of being in effect a sovereign, while he acted like a citizen, comparatively easy, his chief difficulties arose from the necessity under which he laboured, like his grandfather Cosimo, of governing through a party composed of men distinguished by birth and ability, and powerful by wealth and connections. To keep this party in good temper, to flatter its members with the show of influence, and to gain their concurrence for the alterations he introduced into the State machinery of Florence, was the problem of his life. By creating a body of clients, bound to himself by diverse interests and obligations, he succeeded in bridling the Medicean party and excluding from offices of trust all dangerous and disaffected persons. The goodwill of the city at large was secured by the prosperity at home and peace abroad which marked the last fourteen years of his administration, while the splendour of his foreign alliances contributed in no small measure to his popularity. The Florentines were proud of a citizen who brought them into the first rank of Italian Powers, and who refrained from assuming the style of sovereign. Thus Lorenzo solved the most difficult of political problems—that of using a close oligarchy for the maintenance of despotism in a free and jealous commonwealth. None of his rivals retained power enough to withhold the sceptre from his sons when they should seek to grasp it.

The roots of the Medici clung to no one part of Florence in particular. They seemed superficial; yet they crept beneath the ground in all directions. Intertwined as they were with every interest both public and private in the city, to cut them out implied the excision of some vital member. This was the secret of their power in the next generation, when, banished and reduced to bastards, the Medici returned from two exiles, survived the perils of the siege and Alessandro's murder, and finally assumed the Ducal crown in the person of the last scion of their younger branch. The policy, so persistently pursued for generations, so powerfully applied by Lorenzo, might be compared to the attack of an octopus, which fastens on its victim by a multitude of tiny tentacles, and waits till he is drained of strength before it shoots its beak into a vital spot.

In one point Lorenzo was inferior to his grandfather. He had no commercial talent. After suffering the banking business of the Medici to fall into disorder, he became virtually bankrupt, while his personal expenditure kept continually increasing. In order to retrieve his fortunes it was necessary for him to gain complete disposal of the public purse. This was the real object of the constitutional revolution of 1480, whereby his Privy Council assumed the active functions of the State. Had Lorenzo been as great in finance as in the management of men, the way might have been smoothed for his son Piero in the disastrous year of 1494.

If Lorenzo neglected the pursuit of wealth, whereby Cosimo had raised himself from insignificance to the dictatorship of Florence, he surpassed his grandfather in the use he made of literary patronage. It is not paradoxical to affirm that in his policy we can trace the subordination of a genuine love of arts and letters to statecraft. The new culture was one of the instruments that helped to build his despotism. Through his thorough and enthusiastic participation in the intellectual interests of his age, he put himself into close sympathy with the Florentines, who were glad to acknowledge for their leader by far the ablest of the men of parts in Italy. According as we choose our point of view, we may regard him either as a tyrant, involving his country in debt and dangerous wars, corrupting the morals and enfeebling the spirit of the people, and systematically enslaving the Athens of the modern world for the sake of founding a petty principality; or else as the most liberal-minded noble of his epoch, born to play the first part in the Florentine republic, and careful to use his wealth and influence for the advancement of his fellow-citizens in culture, learning, arts, amenities of life. Savonarola and the Florentine historians adopt the former of these two opinions. Sismondi, in his passion for liberty, arrays against Lorenzo the political assassinations he permitted, the enervation of Florence, the national debt incurred by the republic, the exhausting wars with Sixtus carried on in his defence. His panegyrists, on the contrary, love to paint him as the pacificator of Italy, the restorer of Florentine poetry, the profound critic, and the generous patron. The truth lies in the combination of these two apparently contradictory judgments. Lorenzo was the representative man of his nation at a moment when political institutions were everywhere inclining to despotism, and when the spiritual life of the Italians found its noblest expression in art and literature. The principality of Florence was thrust upon him by the policy of Cosimo, by the vote of the chief citizens, and by the example of the sister republics, all of whom, with the exception of Venice, submitted to the sway of rulers. Had he wished, he might have found it difficult to preserve the commonwealth in its integrity. Few but doctrinaires believed in a governo misto; only aristocrats desired a governo stretto; all but democrats dreaded a governo largo. And yet a new constitution must have been framed after one of these types, and the Florentines must have been educated to use it with discretion, before Lorenzo could have resigned his office of dictator with any prospect of freedom for the city in his charge. Such unselfish patriotism, in the face of such overwhelming difficulties, and in antagonism to the whole tendency of the age, was not to be expected from an oligarch of the Renaissance, born in the purple, and used from infancy to intrigue.

Lorenzo was a man of marvellous variety and range of mental power. He possessed one of those rare natures, fitted to comprehend all knowledge and to sympathise with the most diverse forms of life. While he never for one moment relaxed his grasp on politics, among philosophers he passed for a sage, among men of letters for an original and graceful poet, among scholars for a Grecian sensitive to every nicety of Attic idiom, among artists for an amateur gifted with refined discernment and consummate taste. Pleasure-seekers knew in him the libertine, who jousted with the boldest, danced and masqueraded with the merriest, sought adventures in the streets at night, and joined the people in their May-day games and Carnival festivities. The pious extolled him as an author of devotional lauds and mystery plays, a profound theologian, a critic of sermons. He was no less famous for his jokes and repartees than for his pithy apophthegms and maxims, as good a judge of cattle as of statues, as much at home in the bosom of his family as in the riot of an orgy, as ready to discourse on Plato as to plan a campaign or to plot the death of a dangerous citizen. An apologist may always plead that Lorenzo was the epitome of his nation's most distinguished qualities, that the versatility of the Renaissance found in him its fullest incarnation. It was the duty of Italy in the fifteenth century not to establish religious or constitutional liberty, but to resuscitate culture. Before the disastrous wars of invasion had begun, it might well have seemed even to patriots as though Florence needed a Mæcenas more than a Camillus. Therefore the prince who in his own person combined all accomplishments, who knew by sympathy and counsel how to stimulate the genius of men superior to himself in special arts and sciences, who spent his fortune lavishly on works of public usefulness, whose palace formed the rallying-point of wit and learning, whose council chamber was the school of statesmen, who expressed his age in every word and every act, in his vices and his virtues, his crimes and generous deeds, cannot be fairly judged by an abstract standard of republican morality. It is nevertheless true that Lorenzo enfeebled and enslaved Florence. At his death he left her socially more dissolute, politically weaker, intellectually more like himself, than he had found her. He had not the greatness to rise above the spirit of his century, or to make himself the Pericles instead of the Pisistratus of his republic. In other words, he was adequate, not superior, to Renaissance Italy.

This, then, was the man round whom the greatest scholars of the third period assembled, at whose table sat Angelo Poliziano, Cristoforo Landino, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Leo Battista Alberti, Michael Angelo Buonarroti, Luigi Pulci. The mere enumeration of these names suffices to awake a crowd of memories in the mind of those to whom Italian art and poetry are dear. Lorenzo's villas, where this brilliant circle met for grave discourse or social converse, heightening the sober pleasures of Italian country life with all that wit and learning could produce of delicate and rare, have been so often sung by poets and celebrated by historians that Careggi, Caffagiolo, and Poggio a Cajano are no less familiar to us than the studious shades of Academe. 'In a villa overhanging the towers of Florence,' writes the austere Hallam, moved to more than usual eloquence by the spirit-stirring beauty of his theme, 'on the steep slope of that lofty hill crowned by the mother city, the ancient Fiesole, in gardens which Tully might have envied, with Ficino, Landino, and Politian at his side, he delighted his hours of leisure with the beautiful visions of Platonic philosophy, for which the summer stillness of an Italian sky appears the most congenial accompaniment.' As we climb the steep slope of Fiesole, or linger beneath the rose-trees that shed their petals from Careggi's garden walls, once more in our imagination 'the world's great age begins anew;' once more the blossoms of that marvellous spring unclose. While the sun goes down beneath the mountains of Carrara, and the Apennines grow purple-golden, and Florence sleeps beside the silvery Arno, and the large Italian stars come forth above, we remember how those mighty master spirits watched the sphering of new planets in the spiritual skies. Savonarola in his cell below once more sits brooding over the servility of Florence, the corruption of a godless Church. Michael Angelo, seated between Ficino and Poliziano, with the voices of the prophets vibrating in his memory, and with the music of Plato sounding in his ears, rests chin on hand and elbow upon knee, like his own Jeremiah, lost in contemplation, whereof the after-fruit shall be the Sistine Chapel and the Medicean tombs. Then, when the strain of thought, 'unsphering Plato from his skies,' begins to weary, Pulci breaks the silence with a brand-new canto of Morgante, or a singing boy is bidden to tune his mandoline to Messer Angelo's last-made ballata.

There is no difficulty in explaining Plato's power upon the thinkers of the fifteenth century. Among philosophers Plato shines like a morning star—οὔθ’ ἕσπερος οὔτε ἐῷος οὕτω θαυμαστός—an auroral luminary, charming and compelling the attention of the world when man is on the verge of new discoveries. That he should have enslaved the finest intellects at a time when the sense of beauty was so keenly stimulated, and when the stirrings of fresh life were so intense, is nothing more than natural. To philosophise and humanise the religious sentiments that had become the property of monks and pardon-mongers; to establish a concordat between the Paganism that entranced the world, and the Catholic faith whereof the world was not yet weary; to satisfy the new-born sense of a divine and hitherto unapprehended mystery in heaven and earth; to dignify with a semblance of truth the dreams of magic and astrology that passed for science—all this the men of the Renaissance passionately craved. Who could render better help than Plato and the Neoplatonists, whose charm of style and high-flown mysticism suited the ambitious immaturity of undeveloped thought? For the interpretation of Platonic doctrine a hierophant was needed. Marsilio Ficino had been set apart from earliest youth for this purpose—selected in the wisdom of Cosimo de' Medici, prepared by special processes of study, and consecrated to the service of the one philosopher.[312]

When Marsilio was a youth of eighteen, he entered the Medicean household, and began to learn Greek, in order that he might qualify himself for translating Plato into Latin. His health was delicate, his sensibilities acute; the temper of his intellect, inclined to mysticism and theology, fitted him for the arduous task of unifying religion with philosophy. It would be unfair to class him with the paganising humanists, who sought to justify their unbelief or want of morals by the authority of the classics. Ficino remained throughout his life an earnest Christian. At the age of forty, not without serious reflection and mature resolve, he took orders, and faithfully performed the duties of his cure. Antiquity he judged by the standard of the Christian creed. If he asserted that Socrates and Plato witnessed, together with the evangelists, to the truth of revelation, or that the same spirit inspired the laws of Moses and the Greek philosopher—this, as he conceived it, was in effect little else than extending the catena of authority backward from the Christian fathers to the sages of the ancient world. The Church, by admitting the sibyls into the company of the prophets, virtually sanctioned the canonisation of Plato; while the comprehensive survey of history as an uninterrupted whole, which since the days of Petrarch had distinguished the nobler type of humanism, rendered Ficino's philosophical religion not unacceptable even to the orthodox. The speculative mystics of the fifteenth century failed, however, to perceive that by recognising inspiration in the classic authors, they were silently denying the unique value of revelation; and that by seeking the religious tradition far and wide, they called in question the peculiar divinity of Christ. Savonarola saw this clearly; therefore he denounced the Platonists as heretics, who vainly babbled about things they did not understand. The permanent value of their speculations, crude and uncritical as they may now appear, consists in the large claim made for human reason as against bibliolatry and Church authority.

Ficino was forty-four years of age when he finished the translation of Plato's works into Latin. Five more years elapsed before the first edition was printed in 1482 at Filippo Valori's expense. It may here be mentioned incidentally that, by this help, the aristocracy of Florence materially contributed to the diffusion of culture. A genuine philosopher in his lack of ambition and his freedom from avarice, Ficino was too poor to publish his own works; and what is true of him, applies to many most distinguished authors of the age. Great literary undertakings involved in that century the substantial assistance of wealthy men, whose liberality was rewarded by a notice in the colophon or on the title-page.[313] When, for instance, the first edition of Homer was issued from the press by Lorenzo Alopa in 1488, two brothers of the Nerli family, Bernardo and Neri, defrayed the expense.[314] The Plato was soon followed by a Life of the philosopher, and a treatise on the 'Platonic Doctrine of Immortality.' The latter work is interesting as a repertory of the theories discussed by the Medicean circle at their festivals in honour of Plato's birthday. It has, however, no intrinsic value for the critic or philosopher, being in effect nothing better than a jumble of citations culled from antique mystics and combined with cruder modern guesses. In 1486 the translation of Plotinus was accomplished, and in 1491 a voluminous commentary had been added; both were published one month after Lorenzo's death in 1492. A version of Dionysius the Areopagite, whose treatise on the 'Hierarchies,' though rejected by Lorenzo Valla, was accepted as genuine by Ficino, closed the long list of his translations from the Greek. The importance of Ficino's contributions to philosophy consists in the impulse he communicated to Platonic studies. That he did not comprehend Plato, or distinguish his philosophy from that of the Alexandrian mystics, is clear in every sentence of his writings. The age was uncritical, nor had scholars learned the necessity of understanding an author's relation to the history of thought in general before they attempted to explain him. Thus they were satisfied to read Plato by the reflected light of Plotinus and Gemistos Plethon, and to assimilate such portions only of his teaching as accorded with their own theology. The doctrine of planetary influences, and the myths invented to express the nature of the soul—in other words, the consciously poetic thoughts of Plato—seemed of more value to Ficino than the theory of ideas, wherein the deepest problems are presented in a logical shape to the understanding. The Middle Ages had plied dialectic to satiety; the Renaissance dwelt with passion upon vague and misty thoughts that gave a scope to its imagination. No dreams of poet or of mystic could surpass reality in the age of Lionardo da Vinci and Christopher Columbus.

If Plato has been studied more exactly of late years, he has never been loved better or more devotedly worshipped than by the Florentine Academy. Who builds a shrine and burns a lamp before his statue now? Who crowns his bust with laurels, or celebrates his birthday and his deathday with solemn festivals and pompous panegyrics? Who meet at stated intervals to read his words, and probe his hidden meaning, feeding his altar-flame with frankincense of their most precious thoughts? It was by outward signs like these, then full of fair significance, now puerile and void of import, that the pageant-loving men of the Renaissance testified their debt of gratitude to Plato. Of one of these birthday feasts Ficino has given a lively picture in his letter to Jacopo Bracciolini ('Prolegomena ad Platonis Symposium'). After partaking of a banquet, the text of the 'Symposium' was delivered over to discussion. Giovanni Cavalcanti interpreted the speeches of Phædrus and Pausanias, Landino that of Aristophanes; Carlo Marsuppini undertook the part of Agathon, while Tommaso Benci explained the esoteric meaning of Diotima. Was there anyone, we wonder, to act Alcibiades; or did Lorenzo, perhaps, sit drinking till day flooded the meadows of Valdarno, passing round a two-handled goblet, and raising subtle questions about comedy and tragedy?

Among the academicians who frequented Lorenzo's palace at Florence there appeared, in 1484, a young man of princely birth and fascinating beauty. 'Nature,' wrote Poliziano, 'seemed to have showered on this man, or hero, all her gifts. He was tall and finely moulded; from his face a something of divinity shone forth. Acute, and gifted with prodigious memory, in his studies he was indefatigable, in his style perspicuous and eloquent. You could not say whether his talents or his moral qualities conferred on him the greater lustre. Familiar with all branches of philosophy, and the master of many languages, he stood on high above the reach of praise.' This was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, whose portrait in the Uffizzi Gallery, with its long brown hair and penetrating grey eyes, compels attention even from those who know not whom it is supposed to figure. He was little more than twenty when he came to Florence. His personal attractions, noble manners, splendid style of life, and varied accomplishments made him the idol of Florentine society; and for a time he gave himself, in part at least, to love and the amusements of his age.[315] But Pico was not born for pleasure. By no man was the sublime ideal of humanity, superior to physical enjoyments and dignified by intellectual energy, that triumph of the thought of the Renaissance, more completely realised.[316] There is even reason to regret that, together with the follies of youth, he put aside the collection of his Latin poems, which Poliziano praised, and took no pains to preserve those Italian verses, the loss whereof we deplore no less than that of Lionardo's. While Pico continued to live as became a Count of Mirandola, he personally inclined each year to graver and more abstruse studies and to greater austerity, until at last the prince was merged in the philosopher, the man of letters in the mystic.

Pico's abilities displayed themselves in earliest boyhood. His mother, a niece of the great Boiardo, noticed his rare aptitude for study, and sent him at the age of fourteen to Bologna. There he mastered not only the humanities, but also what was taught of mathematics, logic, philosophy, and Oriental languages. He afterwards continued his education at Paris, the headquarters of scholastic theology. Pico's powerful memory must have served him in good stead: it is recorded that a single reading fixed the language and the matter of the texts he studied, on his mind for ever. Nor was this faculty for retaining knowledge accompanied by any sluggishness of mental power. To what extent he relied upon his powers of debate as well as on his vast stores of erudition, was proved by the publication of the famous nine hundred theses at Rome in 1486. These questions seem to have been constructed in defence of the Platonic mysticism, which already had begun to absorb his attention. The philosophers and theologians who were challenged to contend with him in argument had the whole list offered to their choice. Pico was prepared to maintain each and all of his positions without further preparation. Ecclesiastical prudence, however, prevented the champions of orthodoxy from descending into the arena. They found it safer to prefer a charge of heresy against Pico, whose theses were condemned in a brief of Innocent VIII., dated August 5, 1486. It was not until June 18, 1493, that he was finally purged from the ban of heterodoxy by a brief of Alexander VI. During that long interval he suffered much uneasiness of mind, for even his robust intelligence quailed before the thought of dying under Papal interdiction. That a man so pure in his life and so earnest in his piety should have been stigmatised as a heretic, and then pardoned, by two such Popes, is one of the curious anomalies of that age.

To harmonise the Christian and classical tradition was a problem which Manetti had crudely attempted. Pico approached it in a more philosophical spirit, and resolved to devote his whole life to the task. The antagonism between sacred and profane literature appeared more glaring to Renaissance scholars than to us, inasmuch as they attached more serious value to the teaching of the latter as a rule of life. Yet Pico was not intent so much on merely reconciling hostile systems of thought, or on confuting the errors of the Jews and Gentiles. He had conceived the great idea of the unity of knowledge; and having acquired the omne scibile of his century, he sought to seize the soul of truth that animates all systems. Not the classics nor the Scriptures alone, but the writings of the schoolmen, the glosses of Arabic philosophers, and the more obscure products of Hebrew erudition had for him their solid value. Estimating authors at the worth of their matter, and despising the trivial questions raised by shallow wits among style-mongering students, he freed himself from the worst fault of humanism, and conceived of learning in a liberal spirit. The best proof of this wide acceptance of all literature conducive to sound thinking, is given in a letter to Ermolao Barbaro.[317] After courteously adverting to the Ciceronian elegance of his correspondent's style he continues, 'And that I meantime should have lost in the studies of Thomas Aquinas, John Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and Averrhoes the best years of my life—those long, laborious vigils wherein I might perchance have made myself of some avail in polite scholarship! The thought occurred to me, by way of consolation, if some of them could come to life again, whether men so powerful in argument might not find sound pleas for their own cause; whether one among them, more eloquent than Paul, might not defend, in terms as free as possible from barbarism, their barbarous style, speaking perchance after this fashion: We have lived illustrious, friend Ermolao, and to posterity shall live, not in the schools of the grammarians and teaching-places of young minds, but in the company of the philosophers, conclaves of sages, where the questions for debate are not concerning the mother of Andromache or the sons of Niobe and such light trifles, but of things human and divine; in the contemplation, investigation, and analysis whereof we have been so subtle, searching, and eager that we may sometimes have seemed to be too scrupulous and captious, if indeed it be possible to be too curious or fastidious in seeking after truth. Let him who accuses us of dulness, prove by experience whether we barbarians have not the god of eloquence in our hearts rather than on our lips; whether, if the faculty of ornamented speech be lacking, we have wanted wisdom: and to trick out wisdom with ornaments may be more a crime than to show it in uncultured rudeness.'

During the period of his Platonic studies at Florence chance brought Pico into contact with a Jew who had a copy of the Cabbala for sale. Into this jungle of abstruse learning Pico plunged with all the ardour of his powerful intellect. Asiatic fancies, Alexandrian myths, Christian doctrines, Hebrew traditions, are so wonderfully blended in that labyrinthine commentary that Pico believed he had discovered the key to his great problem, the quintessence of all truth. It seemed to him that the science of the Greek and the faith of the Christian could only be understood in the light of the Cabbala. He purchased the MS., devoted his whole attention to its study, and projected a mighty work to prove the harmony of philosophies in Christianity, and to explain the Christian doctrine by the esoteric teaching of the Jews.[318] Pico's view of the connection between philosophy, theology, and religion is plainly stated in the following sentence from a letter to Aldus Manutius (February 11, 1491):—'Philosophia veritatem quærit, theologia invenit, religio possidet' ('Philosophy seeks truth, theology discovers it, religion hath it'). Death overtook him before the book intended to demonstrate these positions, and by so doing to establish the concord of all earnest and truth-seeking systems, could be written. He died at the age of thirty-one, on the very day when Charles VIII. made his entry into Florence.

While accepting the Cabbala it was impossible for Pico to reject magic. He showed his good sense, however, by an energetic attack upon the so-called science of judicial astrology. Strictly speaking, the spirit of humanism was opposed to this folly. Petrarch had long ago condemned it, together with the charlatans who used its jargon to impose upon the world; yet, in spite of humanism, the folly not only persisted, but seemed to increase with the spread of rational knowledge. The universities founded Chairs of Astrology, Popes consulted the stars on occasions of importance, nor did the Despots dare to act without the advice of their soothsayers. These men not unfrequently accompanied the greatest generals on their campaigns. Their services were bought by the republics; citizens employed them for the casting of horoscopes, the building of houses, the position of shops, the fit moment for journeys, the reception of guests into their families, and the date of weddings. To take a serious step in life without the approval of an astrologer had come to be regarded as perilous. Even Ficino believed in horoscopes and planetary influences; so did Cardan at a later date. It may be remembered that Catherine de' Medici allowed the Florentine Ruggieri to share her secret counsels during the reigns of three kings, and that Paul III. always obtained the sanction of his star-gazer before he held a consistory. In proportion as religion grew less real, and the complex dangers of a corrupt society increased, astrology gained in importance. It was not, therefore, a waste of eloquence, as Poliziano complained, when Pico directed his attack against this delusion, accusing it of debasing the intellect and opening the way for immorality of all kinds.[319]

Since Pico's keen intellect discerned the shallowness of astrological pretensions, it is the more to be deplored that he fell a victim to the hybrid mysticism and magical nonsense of the Cabbala. We have here another proof that criticism was as yet in its infancy. It was easier for men of genius in the Renaissance to win lofty vantage-ground for contemplation, to divine the unity of human achievements, and to comprehend the greatness of the destiny of man, than to accept the learning of the past at a simple historical valuation. What fascinated their imagination passed with them too easily for true and proved. Yet all they needed was time for the digestion and assimilation of the stores of knowledge they had gained. If the Counter-Reformation had not checked the further growth of Italian science, the spirit that lived in Pico would certainly have produced a school of philosophy second to none that Europe has brought forth. Of this Pico's own short treatise on the 'Dignity of Man,' as I have said already, is sufficient warrant.

As Pico was the youngest so was Cristoforo Landino the oldest member of the Medicean circle. He was born at Florence in 1424, nine years before Ficino, with whom he shared the duties of instructing Lorenzo in his boyhood. Landino obtained the Chair of Rhetoric and Poetry in 1457, and continued till his death in 1504 to profess Latin literature at Florence. While Ficino and Pico represented the study of philosophy, he devoted himself exclusively to scholarship, annotating Horace and Virgil, and translating Pliny's 'Natural Histories.' A marked feature in Landino's professorial labours was the attention he paid to the Italian poets. In 1460 he began to lecture on Petrarch, and in 1481 he published an edition of Dante with voluminous commentaries. The copy of this work, printed upon parchment, splendidly bound, and fastened with niello clasps, which Landino presented with a set oration to the Signory of Florence, may still be seen in the Magliabecchian library. The author was rewarded with a house in Borgo alla Collina, the ancient residence of his family.

Though the name of Cristoforo Landino is now best known in connection with his Dantesque studies, one of his Latin works, the 'Camaldolese Discussions,'[320] will always retain peculiar interest for the student of Florentine humanism. This treatise is composed in imitation of the Ciceronian rather than the Platonic dialogues; the 'Tusculans' may be said to have furnished Landino with his model. He begins by telling how he left his villa in the Casentino, accompanied by his brother, to pay a visit to the hill-set sanctuary of S. Romualdo.[321] There he met with Lorenzo and Giuliano de' Medici, attended by noble youths of Florence—Piero and Donato Acciaiuoli, Alamanno Rinuccini, Marco Parenti, and Antonio Canigiani—all of whom had quitted Florence to enjoy the rest of summer coolness among the firs and chestnuts of the Apennines. The party thus formed was completed by the arrival of Leo Battista Alberti and Marsilio Ficino. The conversation maintained from day to day by these close friends and ardent scholars forms the substance of the dialogue. Seated on the turf beside a fountain, near the spot where Romualdo was bidden in his trance to exchange the black robes of the Benedictine Order for the snow-white livery of angels, they not unnaturally began to compare the active life that they had left at Florence with the contemplative life of philosophers and saints. Alberti led the conversation by a panegyric of the βίος θεωρητικός, maintaining the Platonic thesis with a wealth of illustration and a charm of eloquence peculiar to himself. Lorenzo took up the argument in favour of the βίος πρακτικός. If Alberti proved that solitude and meditation are the nurses of great spirits, that man by communing with nature enters into full possession of his mental kingdom, Lorenzo pointed out that this completion of self-culture only finds its use and value in the commerce of the world. The philosopher must descend from his altitude and mix with men, in order to exercise the faculties matured by contemplation. Thus far the artist and the statesman are supposed to hold debate on Goethe's celebrated distich—

The audience decided, in the spirit of the German poet, that a fully-formed man, the possessor of both character and talent, must submit himself to each method of training. Thus ended the first day's discussion. During the three following days Alberti led the conversation to Virgil's poetry, demonstrating its allegorical significance, and connecting its hidden philosophy with that of Plato. It is clear that in this part of his work Landino was presenting the substance of his own Virgilian studies. The whole book, like Castiglione's 'Courtier,' supplies a fair sample of the topics on which social conversation turned among refined and cultivated men. The tincture of Platonism is specially characteristic of the Medicean circle.

The distinguished place allotted in this dialogue to Leo Battista Alberti proves the singular regard in which this most remarkable man was held at Florence, where, however, he but seldom resided. His name will always be coupled with that of Lionardo da Vinci; for though Lionardo, arriving at a happier moment, has eclipsed Alberti's fame, yet both of them were cast in the same mould. Alberti, indeed, might serve as the very type of those many-sided, precocious, and comprehensive men of genius who only existed in the age of the Renaissance. Physical strength and dexterity were given to him at birth in measure equal to his mental faculties. It is recorded that he could jump standing over an upright man, pierce the strongest armour with his arrows, and so deftly fling a coin that it touched the highest point of a church or palace roof. The wildest horses are said to have trembled under him, as though brutes felt, like men, the magnetism of his personality. His insight into every branch of knowledge seemed intuitive, and his command of the arts was innate. At the age of twenty he composed the comedy of 'Philodoxius,' which passed for an antique, and was published by the Aldi as the work of Lepidus Comicus in 1588. Of music, though he had not made it a special study, he was a thorough master, composing melodies that gave delight to scientific judges. He painted pictures, and wrote three books on painting; practised architecture and compiled ten books on building. Of his books, chiefly portraits, nothing remains; but the Church of S. Andrea at Mantua, the Palazzo Rucellai at Florence, and the remodelled Church of S. Francesco at Rimini attest his greatness as an architect. The façade of the latter building is more thoroughly classical than any other monument of the earlier Renaissance. As a transcript from Roman antiquity it ranks with the Palazzo della Ragione of Palladio at Vincenza. While still a young man, Alberti, overtaxed, in all probability, by the prodigious activity of his mental and bodily forces, suffered from an illness that resulted in a partial loss of memory. The humanistic and legal studies on which he was engaged had to be abandoned; yet, nothing daunted, he now turned his plastic genius to philosophy and mathematics, rightly judging that they make less demand upon the passive than the active vigour of the mind. It is believed that he anticipated some modern discoveries in optics, and he certainly advanced the science of perspective. Like his compeer Lionardo, he devoted attention to mechanics, and devised machinery for raising sunken ships. Like Lionardo, again, he was never tired of interrogating nature, conducting curious experiments, and watching her more secret operations. As a physiognomist and diviner, he acquired a reputation bordering on wizardry. It was as though his exquisite sensibilities and keenness of attention had gifted him with second sight. The depth of his sympathy with the outer world is proved by an assertion of his anonymous biographer that, when he saw the cornfields and vineyards of autumn, tears gathered to his eyes. All living creatures that had beauty won his love, and even in old persons he discovered a charm appropriate to old age. Foreigners, travellers, and workmen skilled in various crafts formed his favourite company, for in the acquisition of varied knowledge he was indefatigable. In general society his wisdom and his wit, the eloquence of his discourse and the brilliance of his improvisation, rendered him most fascinating. Collections of maxims culled from his table talk were made, whereof the anonymous biography contains a fair selection. At the same time we are told that, in the midst of sparkling sallies or close arguments, he would suddenly subside into reverie, and sit at table lost in silent contemplation. Alberti was one of the earliest writers of pure Italian prose at the period of its revival; but this part of his intellectual activity belongs to the history of Italian literature, and need not be touched on here. It is enough to have glanced thus briefly at one of the most attractive, sympathy-compelling figures of the fifteenth century.

In order to complete the picture of the Florentine circle, we have in the last place to notice two men raised by the Medici from the ranks of the people. 'I came to the republic, bare of all things, a mere beggar, of the lowest birth, without money, rank, connections, or kindred. Cosimo, the father of his country, raised me up, by receiving me into his family.' So wrote Bartolommeo Scala,[322] the miller's son, who lived to be the Chancellor of Florence. The splendour of that office had been considerably diminished since the days when Bruni, Marsuppini, and Poggio held it; nor could Scala, as a student, bear comparison with those men. His Latin history of the first crusade was rather a large than a great work, of which no notice would be taken if Tasso had not used it in the composition of his epic. Honours and riches, however, were accumulated on the Chancellor in such profusion that he grew arrogant, and taunted the great Poliziano with inferiority. The feud between these men was not confined to literature. Scala's daughter, a far better scholar than himself, attracted Poliziano's notice, and Greek epigrams were exchanged between them. The dictator of Italian letters now sought the hand of the fair Alessandra, who was rich not only in learning but in world's gear also. When she gave herself to Michael Marullus Tarcagnota, a Greek, his anger knew no bounds; instead of penning amatory he now composed satiric epigrams, abusing Marullus in Latin no less than he had praised Alessandra in Greek.[323]

Angelo Poliziano was born in 1454. His name, so famous in Italian literature, is a Latinised version of his birthplace, Montepulciano. His father, Benedetto Ambrogini, was a man of some consequence, but of small means, who fell a victim to the enmity of private foes among his fellow-citizens, leaving his widow and five young children almost wholly unprovided for.[324] This accounts for the obscurity that long enveloped the history of Poliziano's childhood, and also for the doubts expressed about the surname of his family. At the age of ten he came to study in the University of Florence, where he profited by the teaching of Landino, Argyropoulos, Andronicos Kallistos, and Ficino. The precocity of his genius displayed itself in Latin poems and Greek epigrams composed while he was yet a boy. At thirteen years of age he published Latin letters; at seventeen he distributed Greek poems among the learned men of Florence; at eighteen he edited Catullus, with the boast that he had shown more zeal than any other student in the correction and illustration of the ancients. As early as the year 1470 he had not only conceived the ambitious determination to translate Homer into Latin verse, but had already begun upon the second Iliad. The first book was known to scholars in Marsuppini's Latin version. Poliziano carried his own translation as far as the end of the fifth book, gaining for himself the proud title of Homericus juvenis; further than this, for reasons unexplained, he never advanced, so that the last wish of Nicholas V., the chief desire of fifteenth-century scholarship—a Latin Iliad in hexameters—remained still unaccomplished.

The fame of this great undertaking attracted universal attention to Poliziano. It is probable that Ficino first introduced him to Lorenzo de' Medici, who received the young student into his own household, and made himself responsible for his future fortunes. 'The liberality of Lorenzo de' Medici, that great and wise man,' wrote Poliziano in after years, 'raised me from the obscure and humble station where my birth had placed me, to that degree of dignity and distinction I now enjoy, with no other recommendation than my literary abilities.' Before he had reached the age of thirty, Poliziano professed the Greek and Latin literatures in the University of Florence, and received the care of Lorenzo's children. If Lorenzo represents the statecraft of his age, Poliziano is no less emphatically the representative of its highest achievements in scholarship. He was the first Italian to combine perfect mastery over Latin and a correct sense of Greek with a splendid genius for his native literature. Filelfo boasted that he could write both classic languages with equal ease, and exercised his prosy muse in terza rima. But Filelfo had no fire of poetry, no sense of style. Poliziano, on the contrary, was a born poet, a sacer vates in the truest sense of the word. I shall have to speak elsewhere of his Italian verses: those who have studied them know that the 'Orfeo,' the 'Stanze,' and the 'Rime' justify Poliziano's claim to the middle place of honour between Petrarch and Ariosto. Italian poetry took a new direction from his genius, and everything he penned was fruitful of results for the succeeding generation. Of his Latin poetry, in like manner, I propose to treat at greater length in the following chapter.

The spirit of Roman literature lived again in Poliziano. If he cannot be compared with the Augustan authors, he will pass muster at least with the poets of the silver age. Neither Statius nor Ausonius produced more musical hexameters, or expressed their feeling for natural beauty in phrases marked with more spontaneous grace. Of his Greek elegiacs only a few specimens survive. These, in spite of certain licenses not justified by pure Greek prosody, might claim a place in the 'Anthology,' among the epigrams of Agathias and Paulus Silentiarius.[325] The Doric couplets on two beautiful boys, and the love sonnet to the youth Chrysocomus, read like extracts from the Μοῦσα παιδική.[326] What is remarkable about the Greek and Latin poetry of Poliziano is that the flavour of the author's Italian style transpires in them. They are no mere imitations of the classics. The 'roseate fluency' of the 'Rime' reappears in these prolusiones, making it manifest that the three languages were used with equal facility, and that on each of them the poet set the seal of his own genius.

What has been said about his verse, applies with no less force to his prose composition. Poliziano wrote Latin, as though it were a living language, not culling phrases from Cicero or reproducing the periods of Livy, but trusting to his instinct and his ear, with the facility of conscious power. The humanism of the first and second periods attained to the freedom of fine art in Poliziano. Through him, as through a lens, the rays of previous culture were transmitted in a column of pure light. He realised what the Italians had been striving after—the new birth of antiquity in a living man of the modern world. By way of modifying this high panegyric, it may be conceded that Poliziano had the defects of his qualities. Using Latin with the freedom of a master, he was not careful to purge his style of obsolete words and far-fetched phrases, or to maintain the diction of one period in each composition. His fluency betrayed him into verbiage, and his descriptions are often more diffuse than vigorous. Nor will he bear comparison with some more modern scholars on the point of accuracy. The merit, however, remains to him of having been the most copious and least slavish interpreter of the ancient to the modern world. His very imperfections, when judged by the standard of Bembo, place him above the purists, inasmuch as he possessed the power and courage to express himself in his own idiom, instead of treading cautiously in none but Ciceronian or Virgilian footprints.

As a professor, none of the humanists achieved more brilliant successes than Poliziano. Among his pupils could be numbered the chief students of Europe. Not to mention Italians, it will suffice to record the names of Reuchlin, Grocin, Linacre, and the Portuguese Tessiras, who carried each to his own country the culture they had gained in Florence. The first appearance of Poliziano in the lecture-room was not calculated to win admiration. Ill-formed, with eyes that had something of a squint in them, and a nose of disproportionate size, he seemed more fit to be a solitary scholar than the Orpheus of the classic literature.[327] Yet no sooner had he opened his lips and begun to speak, with the exquisite and varied intonations of a singularly beautiful voice, than his listeners were chained to their seats. The ungainliness of the teacher was forgotten; charmed through their ears and their intellect, they eagerly drank in his eloquence, applauding the improvisations wherewith he illustrated the spirit and intention of his authors, and silently absorbing the vast and well-ordered stores of knowledge he so prodigally scattered. It would not be profitable to narrate here at any length what is known about the topics of these lectures. Poliziano not only covered the whole ground of classic literature during the years of his professorship, but also published the notes of courses upon Ovid, Suetonius, Statius, the younger Pliny, the writers of Augustan histories, and Quintilian. Some of his best Latin poems were written by way of preface to the authors he explained in public. Virgil was celebrated in the 'Manto,' and Homer in the 'Ambra;' the 'Rusticus' served as prelude to the 'Georgics,' while the 'Nutricia' formed an introduction to the study of ancient and modern poetry. Nor did he confine his attention to fine literature. The curious prælection in prose called 'Lamia' was intended as a prelude to the prior 'Analytics' of Aristotle. Among his translations must be mentioned Epictetus, Herodian, Hippocrates, Galen, Plutarch's 'Eroticus,' and the 'Charmides' of Plato. His greatest achievement, however, was the edition of the 'Pandects' of Justinian from the famous MS. of which Florence had robbed Pisa, as the Pisans had previously taken it from Amalfi. It must not be forgotten that all these undertakings involved severe labours of correction and criticism. MSS. had to be compared and texts settled, when as yet the apparatus for this higher form of scholarship was miserably scanty. Though students before Poliziano had understood the necessity of collating codices, determining their relative ages, and tracing them, if possible, to their authoritative sources, he was the first to do this systematically and with judgment. To emendation he only had recourse when the text seemed hopeless. His work upon the 'Pandects' alone implies the expenditure of enormous toil.

The results of Poliziano's more fugitive studies, and some notes of conversations on literary topics with Lorenzo, were published in 1489 under the title of 'Miscellanea.'[328] The form was borrowed from the 'Noctes Atticæ' of Aulus Gellius; in matter this collection anticipated the genial criticisms of Erasmus. The excitement caused by its appearance is vividly depicted in the following letter of Jacopus Antiquarius, secretary to the Duke of Milan:[329]—'Going lately, according to my custom, into one of the public offices, I found a number of the young clerks neglecting their prince's business, and lost in the study of a book which had been distributed in sheets among them. When I asked what new book had appeared, they answered, Politian's "Miscellanies." I mounted their desk, sat down among them, and began to read with equal eagerness. But, as I could not spend much time there, I sent at once to the bookseller's stall for a copy of the work.' By this time Poliziano's fame had eclipsed that of all his contemporaries. He corresponded familiarly with native and foreign princes, and held a kind of court at Florence among men of learning who came from all parts of Italy to converse with him. This popularity grew even burdensome, or at any rate he affected to find it so. 'Does a man want a motto for his sword's hilt or a posy for a ring,' he writes,[330] 'an inscription for his bedroom or a device for his plate, or even for his pots and pans, he runs like all the world to Politian. There is hardly a wall I have not besmeared, like a snail, with the effusions of my brain. One teazes me for catches and drinking-songs, another for a grave discourse, a third for a serenade, a fourth for a Carnival ballad.' In executing these commissions he is said to have shown great courtesy; nor did they probably cost him much trouble, for in all his work he was no less rapid than elegant. He boasted that he had dictated the translation of Herodian while walking up and down his room, within the space of a day or two; and the chief fault of his verses is their fluency.

It still remains to speak of Poliziano's personal relations to the Medicean family. When he first entered the household of Lorenzo, he undertook the tuition of his patron's sons, and continued to superintend their education until their mother Clarice saw reason to mistrust his personal influence. There were, no doubt, many points in the great scholar's character that justified her thinking him unfit to be the constant companion of young men. Whatever may be the truth about the cause of his last illness, enough remains of his Greek and Italian verses to prove that his morality was lax, and his conception of life rather Pagan than Christian.[331] Clarice contrived that he should not remain under the same roof with her children; and though his friendly intercourse with the Medicean family continued uninterrupted, it would seem that after 1480 he only gave lessons in the classics to his former pupils.

Poliziano, proud as he was of his attainments, lacked the nobler quality of self-respect. He condescended to flatter Lorenzo, and to beg for presents, in phrases that remind us of Filelfo's prosiest epigrams.[332] That a scholar should vaunt his own achievements[333] and extol his patron to the skies, that he should ask for money and set off his panegyrics against payment, seemed not derogatory to a man of genius in the fifteenth century. Yet these habits of literary mendicancy and toad-eating proved a most pernicious influence. Italian literature never lost the superlatives and exaggerations imported by the humanists, and Pietro Aretino may be called the lineal descendant of Filelfo and Poliziano.