Volume 6 Part 25 (1/2)
Humphrey Hody, (de Graecis Ill.u.s.tribus, Linguae Graecae Literarumque humaniorum Instauratoribus; Londini, 1742, in large octavo,) and Tiraboschi, (Istoria della Letteratura Italiana, tom. v. p. 364--377, tom. vii. p. 112--143.) The Oxford professor is a laborious scholar, but the librarian of Modena enjoys the superiority of a modern and national historian.]
[Footnote 86: In Calabria quae olim magna Graecia dicebatur, coloniis Graecis repleta, remansit quaedam linguae veteris, cognitio, (Hodius, p.
2.) If it were eradicated by the Romans, it was revived and perpetuated by the monks of St. Basil, who possessed seven convents at Rossano alone, (Giannone, Istoria di Napoli, tom. i. p. 520.)]
[Footnote 87: Ii Barbari (says Petrarch, the French and Germans) vix, non dicam libros sed nomen Homeri audiverunt. Perhaps, in that respect, the xiiith century was less happy than the age of Charlemagne.]
[Footnote 88: See the character of Barlaam, in Boccace de Genealog.
Deorum, l. xv. c. 6.]
[Footnote 89: Cantacuzen. l. ii. c. 36.]
[Footnote 90: For the connection of Petrarch and Barlaam, and the two interviews at Avignon in 1339, and at Naples in 1342, see the excellent Memoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. i. p. 406--410, tom. ii. p.
74--77.]
[Footnote 91: The bishopric to which Barlaam retired, was the old Locri, in the middle ages. Scta. Cyriaca, and by corruption Hieracium, Gerace, (Dissert. Chorographica Italiae Medii aevi, p. 312.) The dives opum of the Norman times soon lapsed into poverty, since even the church was poor: yet the town still contains 3000 inhabitants, (Swinburne, p. 340.)]
[Footnote 92: I will transcribe a pa.s.sage from this epistle of Petrarch, (Famil. ix. 2;) Donasti Homerum non in alienum sermonem violento alvea??
derivatum, sed ex ipsis Graeci eloquii scatebris, et qualis divino illi profluxit ingenio.... Sine tua voce Homerus tuus apud me mutus, immo vero ego apud illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel adspectu solo, ac saepe illum amplexus atque suspirans dico, O magne vir, &c.]
The prize which eluded the efforts of Petrarch, was obtained by the fortune and industry of his friend Boccace, [93] the father of the Tuscan prose. That popular writer, who derives his reputation from the Decameron, a hundred novels of pleasantry and love, may aspire to the more serious praise of restoring in Italy the study of the Greek language. In the year one thousand three hundred and sixty, a disciple of Barlaam, whose name was Leo, or Leontius Pilatus, was detained in his way to Avignon by the advice and hospitality of Boccace, who lodged the stranger in his house, prevailed on the republic of Florence to allow him an annual stipend, and devoted his leisure to the first Greek professor, who taught that language in the Western countries of Europe.
The appearance of Leo might disgust the most eager disciple, he was clothed in the mantle of a philosopher, or a mendicant; his countenance was hideous; his face was overshadowed with black hair; his beard long an uncombed; his deportment rustic; his temper gloomy and inconstant; nor could he grace his discourse with the ornaments, or even the perspicuity, of Latin elocution. But his mind was stored with a treasure of Greek learning: history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike at his command; and he read the poems of Homer in the schools of Florence. It was from his explanation that Boccace composed [* and transcribed a literal prose version of the Iliad and Odyssey, which satisfied the thirst of his friend Petrarch, and which, perhaps, in the succeeding century, was clandestinely used by Laurentius Valla, the Latin interpreter. It was from his narratives that the same Boccace collected the materials for his treatise on the genealogy of the heathen G.o.ds, a work, in that age, of stupendous erudition, and which he ostentatiously sprinkled with Greek characters and pa.s.sages, to excite the wonder and applause of his more ignorant readers. [94] The first steps of learning are slow and laborious; no more than ten votaries of Homer could be enumerated in all Italy; and neither Rome, nor Venice, nor Naples, could add a single name to this studious catalogue. But their numbers would have multiplied, their progress would have been accelerated, if the inconstant Leo, at the end of three years, had not relinquished an honorable and beneficial station. In his pa.s.sage, Petrarch entertained him at Padua a short time: he enjoyed the scholar, but was justly offended with the gloomy and unsocial temper of the man. Discontented with the world and with himself, Leo depreciated his present enjoyments, while absent persons and objects were dear to his imagination. In Italy he was a Thessalian, in Greece a native of Calabria: in the company of the Latins he disdained their language, religion, and manners: no sooner was he landed at Constantinople, than he again sighed for the wealth of Venice and the elegance of Florence.
His Italian friends were deaf to his importunity: he depended on their curiosity and indulgence, and embarked on a second voyage; but on his entrance into the Adriatic, the s.h.i.+p was a.s.sailed by a tempest, and the unfortunate teacher, who like Ulysses had fastened himself to the mast, was struck dead by a flash of lightning. The humane Petrarch dropped a tear on his disaster; but he was most anxious to learn whether some copy of Euripides or Sophocles might not be saved from the hands of the mariners. [95]
[Footnote 93: For the life and writings of Boccace, who was born in 1313, and died in 1375, Fabricius (Bibliot. Latin. Medii aevi, tom. i. p.
248, &c.) and Tiraboschi (tom. v. p. 83, 439--451) may be consulted. The editions, versions, imitations of his novels, are innumerable. Yet he was ashamed to communicate that trifling, and perhaps scandalous, work to Petrarch, his respectable friend, in whose letters and memoirs he conspicuously appears.]
[Footnote *: This translation of Homer was by Pilatus, not by Boccacio.
See Hallam, Hist. of Lit. vol. i. p. 132.--M.]
[Footnote 94: Boccace indulges an honest vanity: Ostentationis causa Graeca carmina adscripsi.... jure utor meo; meum est hoc decus, mea gloria scilicet inter Etruscos Graecis uti carminibus. Nonne ego fui qui Leontium Pilatum, &c., (de Genealogia Deorum, l. xv. c. 7, a work which, though now forgotten, has run through thirteen or fourteen editions.)]
[Footnote 95: Leontius, or Leo Pilatus, is sufficiently made known by Hody, (p. 2--11,) and the abbe de Sade, (Vie de Petrarque, tom. iii. p.
625--634, 670--673,) who has very happily caught the lively and dramatic manner of his original.]
But the faint rudiments of Greek learning, which Petrarch had encouraged and Boccace had planted, soon withered and expired. The succeeding generation was content for a while with the improvement of Latin eloquence; nor was it before the end of the fourteenth century that a new and perpetual flame was rekindled in Italy. [96] Previous to his own journey the emperor Manuel despatched his envoys and orators to implore the compa.s.sion of the Western princes. Of these envoys, the most conspicuous, or the most learned, was Manuel Chrysoloras, [97] of n.o.ble birth, and whose Roman ancestors are supposed to have migrated with the great Constantine. After visiting the courts of France and England, where he obtained some contributions and more promises, the envoy was invited to a.s.sume the office of a professor; and Florence had again the honor of this second invitation. By his knowledge, not only of the Greek, but of the Latin tongue, Chrysoloras deserved the stipend, and surpa.s.sed the expectation, of the republic. His school was frequented by a crowd of disciples of every rank and age; and one of these, in a general history, has described his motives and his success. ”At that time,” says Leonard Aretin, [98] ”I was a student of the civil law; but my soul was inflamed with the love of letters; and I bestowed some application on the sciences of logic and rhetoric. On the arrival of Manuel, I hesitated whether I should desert my legal studies, or relinquish this golden opportunity; and thus, in the ardor of youth, I communed with my own mind--Wilt thou be wanting to thyself and thy fortune? Wilt thou refuse to be introduced to a familiar converse with Homer, Plato, and Demosthenes; with those poets, philosophers, and orators, of whom such wonders are related, and who are celebrated by every age as the great masters of human science? Of professors and scholars in civil law, a sufficient supply will always be found in our universities; but a teacher, and such a teacher, of the Greek language, if he once be suffered to escape, may never afterwards be retrieved.
Convinced by these reasons, I gave myself to Chrysoloras; and so strong was my pa.s.sion, that the lessons which I had imbibed in the day were the constant object of my nightly dreams.” [99] At the same time and place, the Latin cla.s.sics were explained by John of Ravenna, the domestic pupil of Petrarch; [100] the Italians, who ill.u.s.trated their age and country, were formed in this double school; and Florence became the fruitful seminary of Greek and Roman erudition. [101] The presence of the emperor recalled Chrysoloras from the college to the court; but he afterwards taught at Pavia and Rome with equal industry and applause. The remainder of his life, about fifteen years, was divided between Italy and Constantinople, between emba.s.sies and lessons. In the n.o.ble office of enlightening a foreign nation, the grammarian was not unmindful of a more sacred duty to his prince and country; and Emanuel Chrysoloras died at Constance on a public mission from the emperor to the council.
[Footnote 96: Dr. Hody (p. 54) is angry with Leonard Aretin, Guarinus, Paulus Jovius, &c., for affirming, that the Greek letters were restored in Italy _post septingentos annos_; as if, says he, they had flourished till the end of the viith century. These writers most probably reckoned from the last period of the exarchate; and the presence of the Greek magistrates and troops at Ravenna and Rome must have preserved, in some degree, the use of their native tongue.]
[Footnote 97: See the article of Emanuel, or Manuel Chrysoloras, in Hody (p 12--54) and Tiraboschi, (tom. vii. p. 113--118.) The precise date of his arrival floats between the years 1390 and 1400, and is only confined by the reign of Boniface IX.]
[Footnote 98: The name of _Aretinus_ has been a.s.sumed by five or six natives of _Arezzo_ in Tuscany, of whom the most famous and the most worthless lived in the xvith century. Leonardus Brunus Aretinus, the disciple of Chrysoloras, was a linguist, an orator, and an historian, the secretary of four successive popes, and the chancellor of the republic of Florence, where he died A.D. 1444, at the age of seventy-five, (Fabric. Bibliot. Medii aevi, tom. i. p. 190 &c.
Tiraboschi, tom. vii. p. 33--38.)]
[Footnote 99: See the pa.s.sage in Aretin. Commentario Rerum suo Tempore in Italia gestarum, apud Hodium, p. 28--30.]
[Footnote 100: In this domestic discipline, Petrarch, who loved the youth, often complains of the eager curiosity, restless temper, and proud feelings, which announce the genius and glory of a riper age, (Memoires sur Petrarque, tom. iii. p. 700--709.)]
[Footnote 101: Hinc Graecae Latinaeque scholae exortae sunt, Guarino Philelpho, Leonardo Aretino, Caroloque, ac plerisque aliis tanquam ex equo Trojano prodeuntibus, quorum emulatione multa ingenia deinceps ad laudem excitata sunt, (Platina in Bonifacio IX.) Another Italian writer adds the names of Paulus Petrus Vergerius, Omnibonus Vincentius, Poggius, Franciscus Barbarus, &c. But I question whether a rigid chronology would allow Chrysoloras _all_ these eminent scholars, (Hodius, p. 25--27, &c.)]