A romantic interest has always attached to the library at Urbino. The best scholars in Europe used to assemble at the palace, where Duke Federigo made such a gathering of books 'as had not been seen for a thousand years,' in the hall where Emilia and the pale Duke Guidubaldo led the pleasant debates described in the 'Cortegiano.' Federigo, the most successful general in the Italian wars, had built a palace of delight in his rude Urbino, in which he hoped to set a copy of every book in the world. His book-room was adorned with ideal portraits by Piero della Francesca and Melozzo: it was very large and lofty, 'with windows set high against the Northern sky.' The catalogue of the books is still preserved in the Vatican. It shows the names of all the classics, the Fathers, and the mediæval schoolmen, many works upon Art, and almost all the Greek and Hebrew works that were known to exist. Among the more modern writers we find those whose works we have discussed, Petrarch and his friends, Guarini and Perotti, and Valla with his enemy Poggio; among the others we notice Alexander ab Alexandro, a most learned antiquarian from Naples, of whom Erasmus once said: 'He seems to have known everybody, but nobody knows who he is.' The chief treasure of the place was a Bible, illuminated in 1478 by a Florentine artist, which the Duke caused to be bound 'in gold brocade most richly adorned with silver.' 'Shortly before he went to the siege of Ferrara,' says his librarian, 'I compared his catalogue with those that he had procured from other places, such as the lists from the Vatican, Florence, Venice, and Pavia, down to the University of Oxford in England, and I found that all except his own were deficient or contained duplicate volumes.' His son, Duke Guidubaldo, was a celebrated Greek scholar; and the eulogies of Bembo and Castiglione on his Duchess, Elizabeth Gonzaga, attest the literary distinction of her Court. Francesco, the third Duke, lost his dominions to Leo x.; but he showed his good taste in stipulating that the books were to be reserved as his personal effects. Some of the early-printed books are still in the palace at Urbino; others are at Castel Durante, or in the College of the Sapienza at Rome; and the splendid mss. form one of the principal attractions of the Vatican.
Among private collectors the name of Cardinal Domenico Capranica should be commemorated. Though continually engaged in war and diplomacy, he found time to surround himself with books. On his death in 1458 he gave his palace and library towards the endowment of a new College at Rome, and his plans were carried out with some alterations by his brother Angelo Capranica. Two Greeks of the imperial House of Lascaris took important places in the history of the Italian renaissance. Constantine had found a refuge at Milan after the conquest of his country, and here he became tutor to the Lady Hippolyta Sforza, and published a grammar which was the first book printed in Greek. He afterwards lectured at Messina, where he formed a large collection of mss., which he bequeathed to the citizens. In a later age it was taken to Spain by Philip ii. and placed on the shelves of the Escorial. John Lascaris belonged to a younger generation. He was protected by Leo x., and may be regarded as the true founder of the Greek College at Rome. In matters of literature he was the ambassador of Lorenzo de' Médici, and was twice sent to the Turkish Court in search of books. After the expulsion of the Médici, John Lascaris went to reside in Paris, where he gave lectures on poetry, and employed himself in securing Greek lecturers for a new College; and he was also engaged to help Budæus, who had been his pupil, in arranging the books at Fontainebleau.
Matthias Corvinus, King of Hungary, had the largest library in Europe. It was credited with containing the impossible number of 50,000 volumes; its destruction during the Turkish wars is allowed to have been one of the chief misfortunes of literature. Matthias began his long reign of forty-two years in 1458, and during all that time he was adding to his collections at Buda. Some have derided Corvinus as a mere gormandiser with an appetite for all kinds of books. Some have blamed him for risking such inestimable treasures upon a dangerous frontier. It is admitted that he worked hard to dispel the thick darkness that surrounded the Hungarian people. He kept thirty scribes continually employed at Buda, besides four permitted to work at Florence by the courtesy of Lorenzo de' Médici. The whole library may be regarded as in some sense a Florentine colony. Fontius, the king's chief agent in the Levant, had been a well-known author in Florence: his Commentary upon Persius, once presented to Corvinus himself, is now in the library at Wolfenbüttel. Attavante, the pupil of Frà Angelico, was employed to illuminate the mss. A good specimen of his work is the Breviary of St. Jerome at Paris, which came out of the palace at Buda and was acquired by the nation from the Duc de la Vallière. A traveller named Brassicanus visited Hungary in the reign of King Louis. He was enraptured with the grand palace by the river, the tall library buildings and their stately porticoes. He passes the galleries under review, and tells us of the huge gold and silver globes, the instruments of science on the walls, and an innumerable crowd of well-favoured and well-clad books. He felt, he assures us, as if he were in 'Jupiter's bosom,' looking down upon that 'heavenly scene.' He wished that he had brought away some picture or minute record; but we have his account of the books which he handled, the Greek orations that are now lost for ever, the history of Salvian saved by the King's good nature in presenting the book to his admiring visitor. The palace and library were destroyed when Buda was taken by the Turks. The Pasha in command refused an enormous sum subscribed for the rescue of the books. The janissaries tore off the metal coverings from the rarer mss., and tossed the others aside; the only known copy of Heliodorus, from which all our editions of the tale of Chariclea are derived, was found in an open gutter. Some books were burned and others hacked and maimed, or trodden under foot; many were carried away into the neighbouring villages. About four hundred were piled up in a deserted tower, and were protected against all intrusion by the seal of the Grand Vizier. There were adventures still in store for the captives. Through the scattered villages Dr. Sambucus went up and down, recovering the strayed Corvinian books for the Emperor Rodolph, a strange Quixotic figure always riding alone, with swinging saddle-bags, and a great mastiff running on either side. Many a disappointed wayfarer was turned away from the lonely tower. At last Busbec the great traveller, because he was an ambassador from the Emperor, was allowed to enter a kind of charnel-house, and to see what had been the lovely gaily-painted vellums lying squalidly piled in heaps. To see them was a high favour; the visitor was not permitted to touch the remains; and it was not until 1686 that about forty of the maltreated volumes were rescued by force of arms and set in a a place of safety among the Emperor's books at Vienna.
It has always been a favourite exercise to track the Corvinian mss. into their scattered hiding-places. Some are in the Vatican, others at Ferrara, and some in their birth-place at Florence. It is said that some of them have never left their home in Hungary. Venice possesses a 'History of the House of Corvinus,' and Jena has a work by Guarini with the King's insignia 'most delicately painted on the title.' The portraits of the King and Queen are on one of the examples secured by Augustus of Brunswick for his library at Wolfenbüttel. Mary of Austria, the widow of King Louis, presented two of the Corvinian books to the Librairie de Bourgogne at Brussels; one was the Missal, full of Attavante's work, on which the Sovereigns of Brabant were sworn; the other was the 'Golden Gospels,' long the pride of the Escorial, but now restored to Belgium.
Other scattered volumes from the library of Corvinus have been traced to various cities in France and Germany. There has been much controversy on the question whether any of them are to be found in England. Some think that examples might be traced among the Arundel mss. in the British Museum. Thomas, Earl of Arundel, it is known, went on a book-hunting expedition to Heidelberg, where he bought some of the remnants of the Palatine collection. Passing on to Nuremberg he obtained about a hundred mss. that had belonged to Pirckheimer, the first great German bibliophile; and these, according to some authorities, came out of the treasure-house at Buda. The Duke of Norfolk was persuaded by John Evelyn to place them in the Gresham Library, under the care of the Royal Society, and they afterwards became the property of the nation. Oldys the antiquary distinctly stated that these 'were the remnants of the King of Hungary'; 'they afterwards fell into the hands of Bilibald Pirckheimer.' The Senator of Nuremberg made the books his own in a very emphatic way: 'there is to be seen his head graved by Albert Dürer, one of the first examples of sticking or pasting of heads, arms, or cyphers into volumes.' Pirckheimer died in 1530, three years after the sack of Buda, and had the opportunity of getting some of the books. We cannot tell to what extent he succeeded, or whether William Oldys was right on the facts before him; but we know from Pirckheimer's own letters that he was the actual owner of at least some mss. that 'came to him out of the spoils of Hungary.'
CHAPTER VIII.
GERMANY—FLANDERS—BURGUNDY—ENGLAND.
Almost immediately after the invention of printing in Germany there arose a vast public demand for all useful kinds of knowledge. The study of Greek was essential to those who would compete with the Italians in any of the higher departments of science, and great schools were established for the purpose by Dringeberg in a town of Alsace, and by Rudolf Lange at Münster. The Alsatian Academy had the credit of educating Rhenanus and Bilibald Pirckheimer. Lange filled his shelves with a quantity of excellent classics that he had purchased during a tour in Italy. Hermann Busch, the great critic, was taught in this school, and he used to say in after life that he often dreamed of Lange's house, and saw an altar of the Muses surrounded by the shadowy figures of ancient poets and orators. Busch was sent afterwards to Deventer, where he was the class-mate of Erasmus. Here one day, while the boys were at their themes, came Rudolf Agricola, the sturdy doctor from Friesland, who wanted to see a Germany 'more Latin than Latium,' and had vowed to abate the 'Italian insolence.' The visitor told Erasmus that he was sure to be a great man, and patted the young Hermann on the head, saying that he had the look of a poet; and he is, indeed, still faintly remembered for the lines in which he celebrated the triumph of Reuchlin.