The better of the late Byzantine Emperors, particularly some of the Palæologi, had cultivated the sciences, and, by their love and encouragement of learning, had given a new life to literature. Even in the period immediately
preceding the fall and conquest of Constantinople, many Greeks had taken refuge in Italy, particularly during the various attempts made to bring about the re-union of the Greek with the Roman church;—attempts, however, which with the exception of a small number of individuals who went over to the Catholic church, were not attended with any general success. In Italy the Greek fugitives established schools for their own language and literature, and founded libraries; and if in the time of Petrarch few Italians could be named that were conversant with that language and literature, (and among these zealous promoters of Greek learning, Boccaccio must be included with himself,) Florence now under the Medici, the first Cosmo, and Lorenzo the Great, became a flourishing seminary of Grecian letters and erudition; and at Rome also, the house of Cardinal Bessarion was a true Platonic academy of science. Even the study of the ancient Roman writers received a new stimulus, and was prosecuted with a more classical taste and spirit. Courtly literati, and Latin poets formed on the old classical models—political writers in the Latin tongue, which was still the language of diplomacy—statesmen and politicians of the greatest influence, trained up in the school of Greek and Roman history and politics—and polite dilettanti of Pagan antiquity,—all now gave the tone to this new and second epoch in the intellectual culture of Europe. But the ruling spirit and tone of the
age proceeded mainly from the revival of the ancient literature and learning of the Greeks. Natural philosophy, whatever extension it may have received from the improvements in astronomy, and a more comprehensive knowledge of the globe obtained by the discovery of the New World, had not yet been wrought into a scientific form, capable of exerting, as it did afterwards, an effective influence on the European mind, or of giving it a new direction. In this period of the restoration of science, some individuals, like Picus Mirandola, and above all, the German Reuchlin, followed a Platonic track in search of a more profound philosophy; or, like Bessarion, Marsilius Ficinus and others, illustrated and diffused the philosophy of Plato. But these were partial exceptions, and these first attempts were not always faultless. Yet it must ever be a matter of regret that the beginning then made towards a better and more profound philosophy should have been left unfinished. To this the old scholastic philosophy was then a powerful obstacle, and the spirit of anarchy, which the religious contests of the following age called into existence, struck at the root of all lofty speculation; and even in the flourishing age of the Medici, it was the æsthetic part of ancient literature, and the political application of classical knowledge, which formed the main and almost exclusive object of pursuit.
Thus this regeneration, as it was called,
was very imperfect and incomplete; and, in a general sense, was really not such;—even in science itself, the advantages which mankind had obtained, and which they were so eager to display, were more like a passing blossom, than a sound and vigorous root. Many of those classical spirits were more conversant and more at home in ancient Rome and Athens, in the manners, history, politics of antiquity, or even in its mythology (then investigated with peculiar fondness and enthusiasm), than in their own age, in the existing relations of society, or in the doctrines and principles of Christianity.
The prevailing character of this new epoch of intellectual cultivation, which succeeded to the scholastico-romantic period of European art and science, was by those modes of thinking and those modes of life, which, with more or less modification and variety, it diffused over all the European countries; at the best a very partial enthusiasm for Pagan antiquity, not merely in the department of art, but in the whole compass of literature, nay even in history, politics, and morals also. If we compare with the fearful commotions of the following age this classical enthusiasm, often so ill suited to the existing relations of society; its influence on the world will appear like an enchanting draught, which intoxicated for a while the European nations, drew them after objects totally foreign, made
them forget themselves in an illusive consciousness of their intellectual refinement, and lulling them into a false security, blinded them to their own corruption, and the greatness of the impending danger—the yawning abyss on whose verge they then stood.