132 THE NORTHERN NATIONS. [CENT. XVI. cannot forget his edition of the Greek Testament (1516). In the preface to that work, the scholar, who had done so much for secular as well as for sacred learning, points the contrast between those two branches of scholarship in the words: ' aliorum litterae sunt eiusmodi ut non parum multos paenituerit insumptae in illis operae...at felix ille quem in hisce litteris meditantem mors occupat11. Even as Petrarch marks the transition from the Middle Ages to the Revival of Learning, so, in the early history of learning, Erasmus marks the transition from Italy to the northern nations of Europe. 'I used my best endeavour' (he declared) 'to deliver the rising generation from the depths of ignorance and to inspire them with a taste for better studies. Germany and the Netherlands". nations, we propose to trace the in the age that immediately succeeded the Revival of Learning. I wrote, not for Italy, but for 1 The following is a small part of the literature on Erasmus. Opera, ed. J. Clericus (Leyden) in eleven folio vols. (1703-6); Life etc. by Jortin (1758-60); De Laur (1872); R. B. Drummond (1873); Fougère (1874); Nisard (1876); Froude (1894); Emerton (1899); Mark Pattison in Enc. Brit. ed. ix, and Capey, with brief bibliography (1902); also Bursian, Gesch. d. cl. Philol. in Deutschland, i 142–9; Geiger's Renaissance, 526–548, Mullinger's Cambridge, i 472—520; Jebb's Erasmus (1890) and in Camb. Mod. Hist. i 569-571; F. M. Nichols, The Epistles of Erasmus (1901-4); Woodward, Erasmus on Education (1904), with bibliography, Renaissance Education (1906), 104—126, and Brunetière, Hist. de la Litt. Française classique (1904), i 34-50; and, lastly, Briefe an Erasmus, ed. Enthoven (Strassburg, 1906), and esp. Erasmi Epistolae, vol. i, 1484-1514, ed. P. S. Allen (Oxford, 1906). Of the portraits by Holbein there are three types: (1) the profile-portraits, (a) once in the possession of Charles I, and now in the salon carré of the Louvre (reproduced on p. 126); (b) at Basel, with a simpler background, and with the words on the paper clearly legible :-In Evangelium Marci paraphrasis followed by the author's name..., Cunctis mortalibus ins(itum est) (reproduced in Geiger's Humanismus, 531); (2) the three-quarter-face portrait at Longford Castle, near Salisbury; (3) the small circular threequarter-face portrait at Basel, representing a somewhat older man. (1) and (2) belong to 1523 (Woltmann's Holbein, 182–9). 2 Jebb's Erasmus, 41f; Erasmus, Opera (Basel, 1540), ix 1440, 'me adolescente in nostrate Germania regnabat impune crassa barbaries, literas Graecas attigisse haeresis erat. Itaque pro mea quantulacunque portione conatus sum iuventutem ab inscitiae coeno ad puriora studia excitare. Neque enim illa scripsi Italis, sed Hollandis, Brabantis, ac Flandris. Nec omnino male cessit conatus meus' (1535). CHAPTER XI. ITALY FROM 1527 TO 1600. Literary Vida Influence of Poetic THE Sack of Rome in the month of May, 1527, marks the end of the Revival of Learning in Italy, but not the end of the History of Scholarship in that country. In Criticism. the month immediately preceding that appalling event, a work composed by Vida before 1520 was printed in Rome in the form of a didactic poem De Arte Poetica, the first of a long series of volumes on the theory of poetry published in Italy during the sixteenth century. Vida's treatise accepts as the text-book of literary criticism the Ars Poëtica of Horace, while it finds the true model of epic verse in the Aeneid of Virgil'. Meanwhile, in 1498, another of the great classical text-books of literary criticism, the treatise of Aristotle's Aristotle on the Art of Poetry, had been imperfectly translated into Latin by Giorgio Valla of Piacenza (c. 1430-99), probably a cousin of Laurentius Valla; and it was in this form that Aristotle's treatise was first known in the Revival of Learning. The Greek text was afterwards printed for the first time in the Aldine edition of the Rhetores Graeci (1508); but the modern influence of this famous work dates from the memorable year 15362. It was the year that saw the Greek text separately published by Trincaveli, a revised Latin translation published by Pazzi, and the teaching of Aristotle applied for the first time to the theory of tragedy by Daniello. In 1536 Ramus obtained his doctor's degree in Paris by maintaining that all the doctrines 1 On Vida, see p. 117 supra; and cp. Saintsbury, History of Criticism, ii 29-37; Spingarn, Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, 127, 131-3. 2 Spingarn, 17. 3 Spingarn, 137; also 28, 41, 81 f. of Aristotle were false, thus marking the decline of Aristotle's teaching in philosophy; but, in the very same year, the dedicator of Pazzi's posthumous work declares that, in the treatise on Poetry, 'the precepts of poetic art are treated by Aristotle as divinely as he has treated every other form of knowledge',—thus marking the beginning of Aristotle's influence in literature'. Between 1536 and 1550 the critics and poets of Italy had assimilated the teaching of Aristotle's treatise on Poetry. In 1543 Giraldi Cintio tells us that it was already in use as a dramatic text-book. In 1548 the first critical edition, with a Latin translation and a learned commentary, was produced by Robortelli, then professor at Pisa3. In the following year the first Italian translation was published by Bernardo Segni, and before April in that year, Ferrara was the scene of its first public exposition by Maggi, whose edition appeared in 15501. The great edition by Victorius was produced in 1560, and in 1563 we find Trissino adding to his earlier work (1529) two new parts, which are entirely founded on Aristotle. Next follow the Italian commentaries of Castelvetro (1570) and Piccolomini (1575). The former is regarded by Tasso as supreme in erudition, and the latter in maturity of judgement. The Unity of Time, which had made its first appearance in Giraldi Cintio (1543)', is now followed by the Unity of Place, which presents itself in Castelvetro (1570), whose commentary is lauded by Milton", and described by Bentley as sold for its weight in silver in most countries of Europe '10. Aristotle's treatise was even expounded in Latin verse by Baldini in 1576, and, ten years later, it was paraphrased and explained in Italian prose by Salviati (1586), who briefly reviews the works of his precursors". It was made into a practical manual for poets and playwrights by Riccoboni (1591)1o, 1 Spingarn, 137. 2 Discorso sulle Comedie e sulle Tragedie, ii 6 (Spingarn, 62). 7 Discorso sulle Comedie e sulle Tragedie, ii 10 f; Spingarn, 91. 8 Poëtica, 534; Spingarn, 98 f. 9 Of Education (iv 389, ed. 1863). 10 Phalaris, 63, Wagner. 11 Printed from MS in Florence by Spingarn, 314-6. 12 Spingarn, 140. defended against all detractors by Buonamici (1597)', and finally expounded on a large scale by Beni (1613). Meanwhile, a series of treatises on the Art of Poetry had been produced in Italy by Daniello (1536), Muzio (1551), Varchi (1553), Giraldi Cintio (1554), Fracastoro (1555), Minturno (1559), and Partenio (1560)3. All these culminated in a work by a more famous scholar of Italian birth, Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558), who in 1529 had left the banks of the Lago di Garda for Agen on the Garonne. In his treatise on poetry, posthumously published at Geneva in 1561, he describes Aristotle as 'imperator noster, omnium bonarum artium dictator perpetuus". The elder Scaliger belongs to the history of scholarship in France, the land of his adoption, but we must here notice two eminent Italian scholars, whose studies were closely connected with the Ars Poëtica of Aristotle, though far from being confined to it. Victorius Piero Vettori, whose name is more familiar in the Latin form of Petrus Victorius (1499—1585), may be regarded as possibly the greatest Greek scholar of Italy, as certainly the foremost representative of classical scholarship in that country during the sixteenth century, which, for Italy at least, may well be called the saeculum Victorianum. Descended on both sides from families of distinction in Florence, he owed much to the intellectual ability of his mother. He learnt his Greek from Marcello Hadriano, and Andrea Dazzi3, and from the 1 Discorsi Poetici in difesa d' Aristotele. 2 p. 118 supra. 3 See Index to Spingarn and Saintsbury. Poëtices libri septem, VII ii 1, p. 932 (ed. 1586). Cp. Saintsbury, ii 69-80. Scaliger's treatise was succeeded by a second work by Minturno (1564), and by those of Viperano (1579), Patrizzi (1586), Tasso (1587), Denores (1588), Buonamici (1597) and Summo (1600). 5 Andrea Dazzi (1475—1548), a pupil of the Latin secretary of Florence, and editor of Dioscorides (1518), Marcellus Virgilius Adrianus (1464—1521), whom he succeeded as professor. In his Latin poem on the ‘Battle of the Cats and Mice' he imitated Virgil, Ovid, and Silius Italicus. He also wrote minor hexameter poems, Silvae, and Greek and Latin Epigrams (W. Rüdiger, Marcellus Virgilius Adrianus, 65 pp., and Andreas Dactius aus Florenz, 70 pp., Halle, 1897). |