66 "the people, and infected by the multitude of strangers and merchants, who every day flock to the city and mingle with the "inhabitants. It is from the disciples of such a school that the "Latin language received the versions of Aristotle and Plato; so "obscure in sense, and in spirit so poor. But the Greeks who "have escaped the contagion, are those whom we follow; and they "alone are worthy of our imitation. In familiar discourse, they "still speak the tongue of Aristophanes and Euripides, of the "historians and philosophers of Athens; and the style of their writings is still more elaborate and correct. The persons who, "by their birth and offices, are attached to the Byzantine court, "are those who maintain, with the least alloy, the ancient "standard of elegance and purity; and the native graces of "language most conspicuously shine among the noble matrons, "who are excluded from all intercourse with foreigners. With "foreigners do I say? They live retired and sequestered from "the eyes of their fellow-citizens. Seldom are they seen in the "streets; and when they leave their houses, it is in the dusk of " evening, on visits to the churches and their nearest kindred. "On these occasions, they are on horseback, covered with a veil, "and encompassed by their parents, their husbands, or their "servants.” 82 Among the Greeks a numerous and opulent clergy was dedicated to the service of religion: their monks and bishops have ever been distinguished by the gravity and austerity of their manners; nor were they diverted, like the Latin priests, by the pursuits and pleasures of a secular, and even military, life. After a large deduction for the time and talents that were lost in the devotion, the laziness, and the discord, of the church and cloister, the more inquisitive and ambitious minds would explore the sacred and profane erudition of their native language. The ecclesiastics presided over the education of youth; the schools of philosophy and eloquence were perpetuated till the fall of the empire; and it may be affirmed, that more books and more knowledge were included within the walls of Constantinople, than could be dispersed over the extensive countries of the West.83 But Comparian important distinction has been already noticed: the son of the Greeks were stationary or retrograde, while the Latins Latins. were advancing with a rapid and progressive motion. The nations Greeks and s Philelphus, absurdly enough, derives this Greek or Oriental jealousy from the manners of ancient Rome. 89 See the state of learning in the xiiith and xivth centuries, in the learned and judicious Mosheim (Institut. Hist. Eccles. p. 434-440. 490-494.). were excited by the spirit of independence and emulation; and even the little world of the Italian states contained more people and industry than the decreasing circle of the Byzantine empire. In Europe, the lower ranks of society were relieved from the yoke of feudal servitude; and freedom is the first step to curiosity and knowledge. The use, however rude and corrupt, of the Latin tongue had been preserved by superstition; the universities, from Bologna to Oxford, were peopled with thousands of scholars; and their misguided ardour might be directed to more liberal and manly studies. In the resurrection of science, Italy was the first that cast away her shroud; and the eloquent Petrarch, by his lessons and his example, may justly be applauded as the first harbinger of day. A purer style of composition, a more generous and rational strain of sentiment, flowed from the study and imitation of the writers of ancient Rome; and the disciples of Cicero and Virgil approached, with reverence and love, the sanctuary of their Grecian masters. In the sack of Constantinople, the French, and even the Venetians, had despised and destroyed the works of Lysippus and Homer: the monuments of art may be annihilated by a single blow; but the immortal mind is renewed and multiplied by the copies of the pen; and such copies it was the ambition of Petrarch and his friends to possess and understand. The arms of the Turks undoubtedly pressed the flight of the Muses; yet we may tremble at the thought, that Greece might have been overwhelmed, with her schools and libraries, before Europe had emerged from the deluge of barbarism; that the seeds of science might have been scattered by the winds, before the Italian soil was prepared for their cultivation. Revival of learning in The most learned Italians of the fifteenth century have confessed and applauded the restoration of Greek literature, the Greek after a long oblivion of many hundred years.85 Yet in Italy. that country, and beyond the Alps, some names are quoted; some profound scholars, who in the darker ages were honourably distinguished by their knowledge of the Greek tongue; 84 At the end of the xvth century, there existed in Europe about fifty universities, and of these the foundation of ten or twelve is prior to the year 1300. They were crowded in proportion to their scarcity. Bologna contained 10,000 students, chiefly of the civil law. In the year 1357 the number at Oxford had decreased from 30,000 to 6000 scholars (Henry's History of Great Britain, vol. iv. p. 478.). Yet even this decrease is much superior to the present list of the members of the university. 95 Of those writers who professedly treat of the restoration of the Greek learning in Italy, the two principal are Hodius, Dr. Humphrey Hody (de Græcis Illustribus, Linguæ Græcæ 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. 88 Barlaam, and national vanity has been loud in the praise of such rare examples of erudition. Without scrutinising the merit of individuals, truth must observe, that their science is without a cause, and without an effect; that it was easy for them to satisfy themselves and their more ignorant contemporaries; and that the idiom, which they had so marvellously acquired, was transcribed in few manuscripts, and was not taught in any university of the West. In a corner of Italy, it faintly existed as the popular, or at least as the ecclesiastical, dialect.86 The first impression of the Doric and Ionic colonies has never been completely erased: the Cala brian churches were long attached to the throne of Constantinople; and the monks of St. Basil pursued their studies in Mount Athos and the schools of the East. Calabria was the native country of Barlaam, who has already appeared as a sectary and an ambassador; and Barlaam was the first who revived, beyond the Alps, the memory, or at least the writings of Homer 87. Lessons of He is described, by Petrarch and Boccace 58, as a man of A. D. 1339. a diminutive stature, though truly great in the measure of learning and genius; of a piercing discernment, though of a slow and painful elocution. For many ages (as they affirm) Greece had not produced his equal in the knowledge of history, grammar, and philosophy; and his merit was celebrated in the attestations of the princes and doctors of Constantinople. One of these attestations is still extant; and the emperor Cantacuzene, the protector of his adversaries, is forced to allow, that Euclid, Aristotle, and Plato, were familiar to that profound and subtle logician. 89 In the court of Avignon, he formed an intimate connection with Petrarch 90, the first of the Latin scholars; and the desire of mutual instruction was the principle of their literary commerce. The Tuscan applied himself with eager curiosity and assiduous diligence to the study of the Greek language; and in a laborious struggle with the dryness and difficulty of the first rudiments, he began to reach the sense, and to feel the spirit, of poets and philosophers, whose minds were congenial to his Studies of A. D. 1339-1374. 96 In Calabria quæ olim magna Græcia dicebatur, coloniis Græcis repleta, remansit quædam linguæ 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.). 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. 8 See the character of Barlaam, in Boccace de Genealog. Deorum, l. xv. c. 6. 99 Cantacuzen. 1. ii. c. 36. 90 For the connection of Petrarch and Barlaam, and the two interviews at Avignon in 1339, and at Naples in 1342, see the excellent Mémoires sur la Vie de Petrarque, tom. i. p. 406–410. tom. ii. p. 75—77. own. But he was soon deprived of the society and lessons of this useful assistant: Barlaam relinquished his fruitless embassy; and, on his return to Greece, he rashly provoked the swarms of fanatic monks, by attempting to substitute the light of reason to that of their navel. After a separation of three years, the two friends again met in the court of Naples: but the generous pupil renounced the fairest occasion of improvement; and by his recommendation Barlaam was finally settled in a small bishopric of his native Calabria.91 The manifold avocations of Petrarch, love and friendship, his various correspondence and frequent journeys, the Roman laurel, and his elaborate compositions in prose and verse, in Latin and Italian, diverted him from a foreign idiom; and as he advanced in life, the attainment of the Greek language was the object of his wishes rather than of his hopes. When he was about fifty years of age, a Byzantine ambassador, his friend, and a master of both tongues, presented him with a copy of Homer; and the answer of Petrarch is at once expressive of his eloquence, gratitude, and regret. After celebrating the generosity of the donor, and the value of a gift more precious in his estimation than gold or rubies, he thus proceeds: -"Your present of the genuine " and original text of the divine poet, the fountain of all invention, "is worthy of yourself and of me: you have fulfilled your promise, and satisfied my desires. Yet your liberality is still imper"fect with Homer you should have given me yourself; a guide, "who could lead me into the fields of light, and disclose to my wondering eyes the specious miracles of the Iliad and Odyssey. "But, alas! Homer is dumb, or I am deaf; nor is it in my power "to enjoy the beauty which I possess. I have seated him by the "side of Plato, the prince of poets near the prince of philosophers; "and I glory in the sight of my illustrious guests. Of their "immortal writings, whatever had been translated into the Latin "idiom, I had already acquired; but, if there be no profit, there "is some pleasure, in beholding these venerable Greeks in their "proper and national habit. I am delighted with the aspect of "Homer; and as often as I embrace the silent volume, I exclaim "with a sigh, Illustrious bard! with what pleasure should I listen "to thy song, if my sense of hearing were not obstructed and lost "by the death of one friend, and in the much-lamented absence of 91 The bishopric to which Barlaam retired, was the old Locri, in the middle ages Scta. Cyriaca, and by corruption Hieracium, Gerace (Dissert. Chorographica Italiæ medii Ævi, 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.). 66 "another. Nor do I yet despair; and the example of Cato suggests some comfort and hope, since it was in the last period "of age that he attained the knowledge of the Greek letters." 92 A. D. 1360, Leo Pila. tus, first fessor at The prize which eluded the efforts of Petrarch, was of Boccace, obtained by the fortune and industry of his friend Boc- &c. cace 93, the father of the Tuscan prose. That popular writer, who derives his reputation from the Decameron, an 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 and uncombed; his deportment rustic; his temper 1360-1363. 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 gods, a work, in that age, of stupendous erudition, and which he osten * and in the West, A. D. ** I will transcribe a passage from this epistle of Petrarch (Famil. ix. 2.); Donasti Homerum non in alienum sermonem violento alveo derivatum, sed ex ipsis Græci eloquii scatebris, et qualis divino illi profluxit ingenio . . . . Sine tuâ voce Homerus tuus apud me mutus, immo vero ego apud illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel ad spectû solo, ac sæpe illum amplexus atque suspirans dico, O magne vir, &c. 93 For the life and writings of Boccace, who was born in 1313, and died in 1375, Fabricius (Bibliot. Latin. medii Ævi, 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. This translation of Homer was by Pilatus, not by Boccacio. See Hallam, Hist. of Lit. vol. i. p. 132.-M. |
