Literature not much cultivated beyond Italy.

711 Though, as I have observed, we find in very few instances any original talent, yet it was hardly less important to have had compilers of such erudition as Photius, Suidas, Eustathius, and Tzetzes. With these certainly the Latins of the middle ages could not place any names in comparison. They possessed, to an extent which we cannot precisely appreciate, many of those poets, historians, and orators of ancient Greece, whose loss we have long regretted, and must continue to deem irretrievable. Great havoc, however, was made in the libraries of Constantinople at its capture by the Latins, an epoch from which a rapid decline is to be traced in the literature of the eastern empire. Solecisms and barbarous terms, which sometimes occur in the old Byzantine writers, are said to deform the style of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Turkish ravages and destruction of monasteries ensued; and in the cheerless intervals of immediate terror, there was no longer any encouragement to preserve the monuments of 2 expiring language, and of a name that was to lose its place among the nations.2

That ardour for the restoration of classical literature which animated Italy in the first part of the fifteenth century was by no means common to the rest of Europe. Neither England, nor France, nor Germany perhaps too rapidly over the Byzantine literature. In this, as in many other places, the masterly boldness and precision of his outline, which astonish those who have trodden parts of the same field, are apt to escape an uninformed reader.

Anna Commena quotes some popular lines, which seem to be the earliest specimen extant of the Romaic dialect, or something approaching it, as they observe no grammatical inflexion, and bear about the same resemblance to ancient Greek that the worst law-charters of the ninth and tenth centuries do to pure Latin. In fact, the Greek language seems to have declined much in the same manner as the Latin did, and almost at as early a period. In the sixth century, Damascius, a Platonic philosopher, mentions the old language as distinct from that which was vernacular, την αρχαίαν γλωτταν ύπερ την ιδιωτην μελετοῦσι. It is well known that the popular, or political, verses of Tzetzes, a writer of the twelfth century, are accentual-that is, are to be read, as the modern Greeks do, by treating every acute or circumflex syllable as long, without regard to its original quantity. This innovation, which must have produced still greater confusion of metrical rules than it did in Latin, is much older than the age of Tzetzes; if, at least, the editor of some notes subjoined to Meursius's edition of the Themata of Constantine Porphyrogenitus is right in ascribing certain political verses to that emperor, who died in 959. These verses are regular accentual trochaics. But I believe they have since been given to Constantine Manasses, a writer of the eleventh century.

According to the opinion of a modern traveller (Hobhouse's Travels in Albania), the chief corruptions which distinguish the Romaic from its parent stock, especially the auxiliary verbs, are not older than the capture of Constantinople by Mahomet II. But it seems difficult to obtain any satisfactory proof of this; and the auxiliary verb is so natural and convenient, that the ancient Greeks may probably, in some of their local idioms, have fallen into the use of it; as Mr H. admits they did with respect to the future auxiliary eλw. See some instances of this in Lesbonax Tepi σxnμaτwv, ad finem Ammonii, curâ Valckenaer.

2 Photius (I write on the authority of M. Heeren) quotes Theopompus, Arian's history of Alexander's successors, and of Parthia, Ctesias, Agatharcides, the whole of Diodorus Siculus, Polybius, and Dionysius of Halicarnassus, twenty lost orations of Demosthenes, almost two hundred of Lysias, sixty-four of Isæus, about fifty of Hyperides. Heeren ascribes the loss of these works altogether to the Latin capture of Constantinople, no writer subsequent to that time having quoted them. It is difficult, however, not to suppose that some part of the destruction was left for the Ottomans to perform. Æneas Sylvius bemoans, in his speech before the diet of Frankfort, the vast losses of literature by the recent subversion of the Greek empire. Quid de libris dicam, qui illic erant innumerabiles, nondum Latinis cogniti!. . . Nunc ergo, et Homero et Pindoro et Menandro et omnibus illustrioribus poetis, secunda mors erit. nothing can be inferred from this declamation except, perhaps, that he did not know whether Menander still existed or not. It is a remarkable proof, however, of the turn which Europe, and especially Italy, was taking, that a pope's legate should, on a solemn occasion, descant so seriously on the injury sustained by profane literature.

But

A useful summary of the lower Greek literature, taken chiefly from the Bibliotheca Greca of Fabricius, will be found in Berington's Literary History of the Middle Ages.

712

Invention of the Art of Printing.

seemed aware of the approaching change. We are told that learning by which I believe is only meant the scholastic ontology, had begun to decline at Oxford from the time of Edward III. And the fifteenth cen. tury, from whatever cause, is particularly barren of writers in the Latin language. The study of Greek was only introduced by Grocyn and Linacer under Henry VII., and met with violent opposition in the university of Oxford, where the unlearned party styled themselves Trojans, as a pretext for abusing and insulting the scholars. Nor did any classical work proceed from the respectable press of Caxton. France, at the beginning of the fifteenth age, had several eminent theologians; but the reigns of Charles VII. and Louis XI. contributed far more to her political than her literary renown. A Greek professor was first appointed at Paris in 1458, before which time the language had not been publicly taught, and was little understood. Much less had Germany thrown off her ancient rudeness. Æneas Sylvius, indeed, a deliberate flatterer, extols every circumstance in the social state of that country; but Campano, the papal legate at Ratisbon in 1471, exclaims against the barbarism of a nation, where very few possessed any learning, none any elegance. Yet the progress of intellectual cultivation, at least in the two former countries, was uniform, though silent; libraries became more numerous, and books, after the happy invention of paper, though still very scarce, might be copied at less expense. Many colleges were founded in the English as well as foreign universities during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Nor can I pass over institutions that have so eminently contributed to the literary reputation of this country, and that still continue to exercise so conspicuous an influence over her taste and knowledge, as the two great schools of grammatical learning, Winchester and Eton; the one founded by William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, in 1373; the other, in 1432, by King Henry the Sixth.

But while the learned of Italy were eagerly exploring their recent acquisitions of manuscripts, deciphered with difficulty, and slowly circulated from hand to hand, a few obscure Germans had gradually perfected the most important discovery recorded in the annals of mankind. The invention of printing, so far from being the result of philosophical sagacity, does not appear to have been suggested by any regard to the higher branches of literature, or to bear any other relation than that of coincidence to their revival in Italy. The question, why it was struck out at that particular time, must be referred to that disposition of unknown causes which we call accident. Two or three centuries earlier, we cannot but acknowledge, the discovery would have been almost

Incredibilis ingeniorum barbaries est; rarissimi literas nôrunt, nulli elegantiam Papiensis Epistole. Campano's notion of elegance was ridiculous enough. Nobody ever carried farther the pedantic affectation of avoiding modern terms in his latinity. Thus, in the life of Braccio da Montone, he renders his meaning almost unintelligible by excess of classical purity. Braccio boasts se nunquam deorum immortalium templa violasse. Troops committing outrages in a city are accused virgines vestales incestâsse. In the terms of treaties, he employs the old Roman forms: exercitum trajicito-oppida pontificis sunto, &c. And with a most absurd pedantry, the ecclesiastical state is called Romanum imperium.

A letter from Master William Paston at Eton proves that Latin versification was taught there as early as the beginning of Edward IV.'s reign. It is true that the specimen he rather proudly exhibits does not much differ from what we denominate nonsense verses. But a more material observation is, that the sons of country gentlemen living at a considerable dis tance were already sent to public snoen farge

ca sau ation.

The Classics first printed at Venice.

713

equally acceptable. But the invention of paper seems to have naturally preceded those of engraving and printing. It is generally agreed, that playing cards, which have been traced far back in the fourteenth century, gave the first notion of taking off impressions from engraved figures upon wood. The second stage, or rather second application of this art, was the representation of saints and other religious devices, several instances of which are still extant. Some of these are accompanied with an entire page of illustrative text, cut into the same wooden block. This process is indeed far removed from the invention that has given immortality to the names of Fust, Schoeffer, and Guttenburg, yet it probably led to the consideration of means whereby it might be rendered less operose and inconvenient. Whether movable wooden characters were ever employed in any entire work is very questionable; the opinion that referred their use to Laurence Coster of Haarlem not having stood the test of more accurate investigation. They appear, however, in the capital letters of some early printed books. But no expedient of this kind could have fulfilled the great purposes of this invention, until it was perfected by founding metal types in a matrix or mould, the essential characteristic of printing, as distinguished from other arts that bear some analogy to it.

The first book that issued from the presses of Fust and his associates at Mentz was an edition of the Vulgate, commonly called the Mazarine Bible, a copy having been discovered in the library that owes its name to Cardinal Mazarine at Paris. This is supposed to have been printed between the years 1450 and 1455. Several copies of this book have come to light since its discovery. In 1457 an edition of the Psalter appeared, and in this the invention was announced to the world in a boasting colophon, though certainly not unreasonably bold. Another edition of the Psalter, one of an ecclesiastical book, Durand's account of liturgical offices, one of the Constitutions of Pope Clement V., and one of a popular treatise on general science, called the Catholicon, fill up the interval till 1462, when the second Mentz Bible proceeded from the same printers. This, in the opinion of some, is the earliest book in which cast types were employed: those of the Mazarine Bible having been cut with the hand. But this is a controverted point. In 1465, Fust and Schoeffer published an edition of Cicero's Offices, the first tribute of the new art to polite literature. Two pupils of their school, Sweynheim and Pannartz, migrated the same year into Italy, and printed Donatus's grammar, and the works of Lactantius, at the monastery of Subiaco in the neighbourhood of Rome. Venice had the honour of extending her patronage to John of Spira, the first who applied the art on an extensive scale to the publication of classical writers.2 Several Latin authors came forth from his press in 1470: and during the next ten years, a multitude of editions were published in various parts of Italy. Though, as we may judge from their present scarcity, these editions were by no means numerous in respect of impressions, yet, contrasted with the dilatory process of copying manuscripts, they were like a new mecha.

་

1 Another edition of the Bible is supposed to have been printed by Pfister at Bamberg in 1459 Sanuto mentions an order of the senate in 1469, that John of Spira should print the epistles of Tully and Pliny for five years, and that no one else should do so.

714

Tiraboschi, Ginguené, Roscoe.

nical power in machinery, and gave a wonderfully accelerated impulse
to the intellectual cultivation of mankind. From the era of these first
editions proceeding from the Spiras, Zarat, Janson, or Sweynheim and
Pannartz, literature must be deemed to have altogether revived in Italy.
The sun was now fully above the horizon, though countries less for
tunately circumstanced did not immediately catch his beams, and the
restoration of ancient learning in France and England cannot be con-
sidered as by any means effectual even at the expiration of the fifteenth
century. At this point, however, I close the present chapter. The
last twenty years of the middle ages, according to the date which
I have fixed for their termination in treating of political history,
might well invite me by their brilliancy to dwell upon that golden
morning of Italian literature. But, in the history of letters, they rather
appertain to the modern than the middle period; nor would it become
me to trespass upon the exhausted patience of my readers by repeat-
ing what has been so often and so recently told, the story of art and
learning, that has employed the comprehensive research of a Tira
boschi, a Ginguené, and a Roscoe.

INDEX.

ABELARD (Peter), biographical notice of, 679.
Adventurers (military), companies of, 223.
Advocates of the church, their office, 103.
Agriculture, wretched state of, in the dark
ages, 611; in France and Italy, 643.
Aids (feudal), in what cases due, 111.
Alfred the Great, extent of his dominions, 407;
was not the inventor of trial by jury, 415.
Alienation of lands, fines on, 89.
Alienations in mortmain, restrained, 382.
Allodial lands, 72; tenures, 81.
Anglo-Saxons, historical sketch of, 407: influ-
ence of provincial governors, 409; distribu-
tion of the people into thanes and ceorls,
410; their wittenagemot-judicial power-
division into counties, hundreds, and tyth-
ings, 411; their county-court, and suits, 413;
trial by jury, 414; law of frankpledge, 416.
Appanages, the nature of, 61.

Appeals to the Roman see, established, 345.
Arabia at the appearance of Mohammed, 315.
Aragon (kingdom of), originally a sort of regal
aristocracy-privileges of the ricos hombres
or tarons, 275; of the lower nobility-of the
burgesses and peasantry, 275; liberties of
the Aragonese kingdom, 275.
Arbitration, determination of suits by, 336.
Archers (English), superior, 41; their pay, 55.
Architecture (civil), state of, in England-in
France, 632; in Italy, 636.

Aristotle, writings of, first known in Europe
through the Spanish Arabs, 682; irreligion

the consequence of the admiration of his
writings, €85.

Armorial bearings, the origin of, 97.
Army (English), in 14th century, 56, 144-
Army (French), first established, 145-
Assize, justices of, when instituted, 443-

BACON (ROGER), resemblance between him
and Lord Bacon-his philosophical spirit, 686.
Baltic trade, state of origin and progress of
the Hanseatic league, 618.

Banking, origin of, 627; Italian banks, 628.
Baronies (English), inquiry into the nature of,
456; theory of Selden-theory of Madox,
458.

Barons of France, right of private war exer-
cised by them, 107; legislative assemblies
occasionally held by them, 114.

Barrister, fees of, in fifteenth century, 648
Benefices (ecclesiastical), gross sale of, in the
eleventh century, 355: presentation to them,
in all cases, claimed by the popes, 374
Bills in parliament, power of originating
claimed by the House of Commons, 510.
Bocland-analogy between it and freehold
land-to what burthens subject, 420.
Books, scarcity of, in the dark ages, 596; ac
count of the principal collections of, 705:
notices of early printed books, 712.
Boroughs, cause of summoning deputies from
474; nature of prescriptive boroughs-power
of the sheriff to omit boroughs-reluctance

Index.