Summary of its acquisitions. 139. If we come to inquire, what acquisitions had been made between the years 1400 and 1500, we shall find that, in Italy, the Latin language was now written by some with elegance, and by most with tolerable exactness and fluency; while, out of Italy, there had been, perhaps, a corresponding improvement, relatively to the point from which they started; the flagrant barbarisms of the fourteenth century having yielded before the close of the next to a more respectable, though not an elegant or exact kind of style. Many Italians had now some acquaintance with Greek, which in 1400 had been hardly the case with any one; and the knowledge of it was of late beginning to make a little progress in cisalpine Europe. The French and English languages were become what we call more polished, though the difference in the former seems not to be very considerable. In mathematical science, and in natural history, the ancient writers had been more brought to light, and a certain progress had been made by diligent, if not very inventive philosophers. We cannot say that metaphysical or moral philosophy stood higher than it had done in the time of the schoolmen. The history of Greece and Rome, and the antiquities of the latter, were, of course, more distinctly known after so many years of attentive study bestowed on their principal authors; yet the acquaintance of the learned with those subjects was by no means exact or critical enough to save them from gross errors, or from becoming the dupes of any forgery. A proof of this was furnished by the impostures of Annius of Viterbo, who, having published large fragments of Megasthenes, Berosus, Manetho, and a great many more lost historians, as having been discovered by himself, obtained full credence at the time, which was not generally withheld for too long a period afterwards, though the forgeries were palpable to those who had made themselves masters of genuine history.[497]
[497] Annius of Viterbo did not cease to have believers after this time. See Blount, Niceron, vol. ii. ii., Corniani, iii. 131, and his article in Biographie Universelle. Apostolo Zeno and Tiraboschi have imputed less fraud than credulity to Annius, but most have been of another opinion; and it is unimportant for the purpose of the text.
Their imperfection. 140. We should, therefore, if we mean to judge accurately, not over-value the fifteenth century, as one in which the human mind advanced with giant strides in the kingdom of knowledge. General historians of literature are apt to speak rather hyperbolically in respect of men who rose above their contemporaries; language frequently just, in relation to the vigorous intellects and ardent industry of such men, but tending to produce an exaggerated estimate of their absolute qualities. But the question is at present not so much of men, as of the average or general proficiency of nations. The catalogues of printed books in the common bibliographical collections afford, not quite a gauge of the learning of any particular period, but a reasonable presumption, which it requires contrary evidence to rebut. If these present us very few and imperfect editions of books necessary to the progress of knowledge, if the works most in request appear to have been trifling and ignorant productions, it seems as reasonable to draw an inference one way from these scanty and discreditable lists, as on the other hand we hail the progressive state of any branch of knowledge from the redoubled labours of the press, and the multiplication of useful editions. It is true that the deficiency of one country might be supplied by importation from another; and some cities, especially Paris, had acquired a typographical reputation somewhat disproportioned to the local demand for books; a considerable increase of readers would but naturally have created a press, or multiplied its operations, in any country of Europe.
Number of books printed. 141. The bibliographies, indeed, even the best and latest, are always imperfect; but the omissions, after the immense pains bestowed on the subject, can hardly be such as to affect our general conclusions. We will therefore illustrate the literary history of the fifteenth century by a few numbers taken from the typographical annals of Panzer, which might be corrected in two ways; first, by adding editions since brought to light, or secondly, by striking out some inserted on defective authority; a kind of mistake which tends to compensate the former. The books printed at Florence down to 1500 are 300; at Milan, 629; at Bologna, 298; at Rome, 925; at Venice, 2835; fifty other Italian cities had printing presses in the fifteenth century.[498] At Paris, the number of books is 751; at Cologne, 530; at Nuremberg, 382; at Leipsic, 351; at Basle, 320; at Strasburg, 526; at Augsburg, 256; at Louvain, 116; at Mentz, 134; at Deventer, 169. The whole number printed in England appears to be 141; whereof 130 at London and Westminster; seven at Oxford; four at St. Albans. Cicero’s works were first printed entire by Minutianus, at Milan, in 1498; but no less than 291 editions of different portions appeared in the century. Thirty-seven of these bear date on this side of the Alps; and forty-five have no place named. Of ninety-five editions of Virgil, seventy are complete; twenty-seven are cisalpine, and four bear no date. On the other hand, only eleven out of fifty-seven editions of Horace contain all his works. It has been already shown, that most editions of classics printed in France and Germany are in the last decennium of the century.
[498] I find this in Heeren, p. 127, for I have not counted the number of cities in Panzer.
142. The editions of the vulgate registered in Panzer are ninety-one, exclusive of some spurious or suspected. Next to theology, no science furnished so much occupation to the press as the civil and canon laws. The editions of the digest and decretals, or other parts of those systems of jurisprudence, must amount to some hundreds.
Advantages already reaped from printing. 143. But while we avoid, for the sake of truth, any undue exaggeration of the literary state of Europe at the close of the fifteenth century, we must even more earnestly deprecate the hasty prejudice, that no good had been already done by the culture of classical learning, and by the invention of printing. Both were of inestimable value, even where their immediate fruits were not clustering in ripe abundance. It is certain that much more than ten thousand editions of books or pamphlets (a late writer says fifteen thousand)[499] were printed from 1470 to 1500. More than half the number appeared in Italy. All the Latin authors, hitherto painfully copied by the scholar, or purchased by him at inconvenient cost, or borrowed for a time from friends, became readily accessible, and were printed, for the most part, if not correctly, according to our improved criticism, yet without the gross blunders of the ordinary manuscripts. The saving of time which the art of printing has occasioned, can hardly be too highly appreciated. Nor was the cisalpine press unserviceable in this century, though it did not pour forth so much from the stores of ancient learning. It gave useful food, and such as the reader could better relish and digest. The historical records of his own nation, the precepts of moral wisdom, the regular metre, that pleased the ear and supplied the memory, the fictions that warmed the imagination, and sometimes ennobled or purified the heart, the repertories of natural phenomena, mingled as truth was on these subjects, and on all the rest, with error, the rules of civil and canon law, that guided the determinations of private right, the subtle philosophy of the scholastics, were laid open to his choice; while his religious feelings might find their gratification in many a treatise of learned doctrine, according to the received creed of the church, in many a legend on which a pious credulity delighted to rely, in the devout aspirations of holy ascetic men; but, above all, in the Scriptures themselves, either in the Vulgate Latin, which had by use acquired the authority of an original text, or in most of the living languages of Europe.
[499] Santander, Dict. Bibliogr. du 15me siècle. I do not think so many would be found in Panzer. I have read somewhere that the library of Munich claims to possess 20,000 Incunabula, or books of the fifteenth century: a word lately so applied in Germany. But unless this comprehends many duplicates, it seems a little questionable. Books were not in general so voluminous in that age as at present.
Trade of bookselling. 144. We shall conclude this portion of literary history with a few illustrations of what a German writer calls “the exterior being of books,”[500] for which I do not find an equivalent in English idiom. The trade of bookselling seems to have been established at Paris and at Bologna in the twelfth century; the lawyers and universities called it into life.[501] It is very improbable that it existed in what we properly call the dark ages. Peter of Blois mentions a book which he had bought of a public dealer (a quodam publico mangone librorum). But we do not find, I believe, many distinct accounts of them till the next age. These dealers were denominated Stationarii, perhaps from the open stalls at which they carried on their business, though statio is a general word for a shop, in low Latin.[502] They appear, by the old statutes of the university of Paris, and by those of Bologna, to have sold books upon commission; and are sometimes, though not uniformly, distinguished from the Librarii; a word which, having originally been confined to the copyists of books, was afterwards applied to those who traded in them.[503] They sold parchment and other materials of writing, which, with us, though, as far I know, nowhere else, have retained the name of stationery, and naturally exercised the kindred occupations of binding and decorating. They probably employed transcribers: we find at least that there was a profession of copyists in the universities and in large cities; and by means of these, before the invention of printing, the necessary books of grammar, law, and theology were multiplied to a great extent for the use of students; but with much incorrectness, and far more expense than afterwards. That invention put a sudden stop to their honest occupation. But whatever hatred they might feel towards the new art, it was in vain to oppose its reception: no party could be raised in the public against so manifest and unalloyed a benefit; and the copyists, grown by habit fond of books, frequently employed themselves in the somewhat kindred labour of pressmen.[504]