Pomponatius, or Peretto, as he was sometimes called, on account of his diminutive stature, which he had in common with his predecessor in philosophy, Marsilius Ficinus, was ignorant of Greek, though he read lectures on Aristotle. In one of Sperone’s dialogues (p. 120 edit. 1596) he is made to argue, that if all books were read in translations, the time now consumed in learning languages might be better employed.
Raymond Lully. 79. We may enumerate among the philosophical writings of this period, as being first published in 1516, a treatise full two hundred years older, by Raymond Lully, a native of Majorca; one of those innovators in philosophy, who, by much boasting of their original discoveries in the secrets of truth, are taken by many at their word, and gain credit for systems of science, which those who believe in them seldom trouble themselves to examine, or even understand. Lully’s principal treatise is his Ars Magna, being, as it professes, a new method of reasoning on all subjects. |His method.| But this method appears to be only an artificial disposition, readily obvious to the eye, of subjects and predicables, according to certain distinctions; which, if it were meant for anything more than a topical arrangement, such as the ancient orators employed to aid their invention, could only be compared to the similar scheme of using machinery instead of mental labour, devised by the philosophers of Laputa. Leibnitz is of opinion that the method might be convenient in extemporary speaking; which is the utmost limit that can be assigned to its usefulness. Lord Bacon has truly said of this, and of such idle or fraudulent attempts to substitute trick for science, that they are “not a lawful method, but a method of imposture, which is to deliver knowledges in such manner, as men may speedily come to make a show of learning, who have it not;” and that they are “nothing but a mass of words of all arts, to give men countenance, that those which use the terms might be thought to understand them.”
80. The writings of Lully are admitted to be very obscure; and those of his commentators and admirers, among whom the meteors of philosophy, Cornelius Agrippa and Jordano Bruno, were enrolled, are hardly less so. But, as is usual with such empiric medicines, it obtained a great deal of celebrity, and much ungrounded praise, not only for the two centuries which intervened between the author’s age and that of its appearance from the press, but for a considerable time afterwards, till the Cartesian philosophy drove that to which the art of Lully was accommodated from the field; and even Morhof, near the end of the seventeenth century, avows that, though he had been led to reckon it a frivolous method, he had very much changed his opinion on fuller examination.[623] The few pages which Brucker has given to Lully do not render his art very intelligible;[624] but they seem sufficient to show its uselessness for the discovery of truth. It is utterly impossible, even for those who have taken much pains to comprehend this method, which is not the case with me, to give a precise notion of it in a few words, even with the help of diagrams, which are indispensably required.[625]
[623] Morhof, Polyhistor. l. ii. c. 5. But if I understand the ground on which Morhof rests his favourable opinion of Lully’s art, it is merely for its usefulness in suggesting middle terms to a syllogistic disputant.
[624] Brucker, iv. 9-21. Ginguéné, who observes that Brucker’s analysis, à sa manière accoutumée, may be understood by those who have learned Lully’s method, but must be very confused to others, has made the matter a great deal more unintelligible by his own attempt to explain it Hist. Litt. de l’Italie, vii. 497. I have found a better development of the method in Alstedius, Clavis Artis Lullianæ (Argentor. 1633), a staunch admirer of Lully. But his praise of the art, when examined, is merely as an aid to the memory, and to disputation, de quavis quæstione utramque in partem disputandi. This is rather an evil than a good; and though mnemonical contrivances are not without utility, it is probable that much better could be found than that of Lully.
[625] Buhle has observed that the favourable reception of Lully’s method is not surprising, since it really is useful in the association of ideas, like all other topical contrivances, and may be applied to any subject, though often not very appropriately, suggesting materials in extemporary speaking, and notwithstanding its shortness, professing to be a complete system of topics; but whosoever should try it must be convinced of its inefficacy in reasoning. Hence he thinks that such men as Agrippa and Bruno kept only the general principle of Lully’s scheme, enlarging it by new contrivances of their own. Hist. de Philos. ii. 612. See also an article on Lully in the Biographie Universelle. Tennemann calls the Ars Magna a logical machine to let men reason about everything without study or reflection. Manuel de la Philos. i. 380. But this seems to have been much what Lully reckoned its merit.
Peter Martyr’s epistles. 81. The only geographical publication which occurs in this period is, an account of the recent discoveries in America, by Peter Martyr of Anghieria, a Milanese, who passed great part of his life in the court of Madrid. The title is, De Rebus Oceanicis Decades tres; but it is, in fact, a series of epistles, thirty in number, written, or feigned to be written, at different times as fresh information was received; the first bearing date a few days only after the departure of Columbus in 1493; while the two last decades are addressed to Leo X. An edition is said to have appeared in 1516, which is certainly the date of the author’s dedication to Charles V.; yet this edition seems not to have been seen by bibliographers. Though Peter Martyr’s own account has been implicitly believed by Robertson and many others, there seems strong internal persumption, or rather irresistible demonstration, against the authenticity of these epistles in the character they assume. It appears to me evident that he threw the intelligence obtained into that form many years after the time. Whoever will take the trouble of comparing the two first letters in the decades of Peter Martyr with any authentic history, will perceive that they are a negligent and palpable imposture, every date being falsified, even that of the year in which Columbus made his great discovery. It is a strange instance of oversight in Robertson that he has uniformly quoted them as written at the time, for the least attention must have shown him the contrary. And it may here be mentioned, that a similar suspicion has been very reasonably entertained with respect to another collection of epistles by the same author, rather better known than the present. There is a folio volume with which those who have much attended to the history of the sixteenth century are well acquainted, purporting to be a series of letters from Anghiera to various friends between the years 1488 and 1522. They are full of interesting facts, and would be still more valuable than they are, could we put our trust in their genuineness as strictly contemporary documents. But, though Robertson has almost wholly relied upon them in his account of the Castilian insurrection, and even in the Biographie Universelle no doubt is raised as to their being written at their several dates, yet La Monnoye (if I remember right, certainly some one) long since charged the author with imposture, on the ground that the letters, into which he wove the history of his times, are so full of anachronisms as to render it evident that they were fabricated afterwards. It is several years since I read these epistles; but I was certainly struck with some palpable errors in chronology, which led me to suspect that several of them were wrongly dated, the solution of their being feigned not occurring to my mind, as the book is of considerable reputation.[626] A ground of suspicion hardly less striking is, that the letters of Peter Martyr are too exact for verisimilitude; he announces events with just the importance they ought to have, predicts nothing but what comes to pass, and must in fact be either an impostor (in an innocent sense of the word), or one of the most sagacious men of his time. But, if not exactly what they profess to be, both these works of Anghiera are valuable as contemporary history; and the first mentioned in particular, De Rebus Oceanicis, is the earliest account we possess of the settlement of the Spaniards in Darien, and of the whole period between Columbus and Cortes.
[626] The following are specimens of anachronism, which seem fatal to the genuineness of these epistles, and are only selected from others. In the year 1489 he writes to a friend: In peculiarem te nostræ tempestatis morbum, qui appellatione Hispanâ Bubarum dicitur, ab Italis morbus Gallicus, medicorum Elephantiam alii, alii aliter appellant, incidisse præcipitem, libero ad me scribis pede. Epist. 68. Now if we should even believe that this disease was known some years before the discovery of America and the siege of Naples, is it probable that it could have obtained the name of morbus Gallicus before the latter æra? In February 1511, he communicates the absolution of the Venetians by Julius II., which took place in February 1510. Epist. 451. In a letter dated at Brussels, 31st Aug. 1520, (Epist. 689) he mentions the burning of the canon law at Wittenberg by Luther, which is well known to have happened in the ensuing November.
82. It would be embarrassing to the reader were we to pursue any longer that rigidly chronological division by short decennial periods, which has hitherto served to display the regular progress of European literature, and especially of classical learning. Many other provinces were now cultivated, and the history of each is to be traced separately from the rest, though frequently with mutual reference, and with regard, as far as possible, to their common unity. In the period immediately before us, that unity was chiefly preserved by the diligent study of the Latin and Greek languages; it was to the writers in those languages that the theologian, the civil lawyer, the physician, the geometer and philosopher, even the poet, for the most part, and dramatist, repaired for the materials of their knowledge, and the nourishment of their minds. We shall begin, therefore, by following the further advances of philological literature; and some readers must here, as in other places, pardon what they will think unnecessary minuteness in so general a work as the present, for the sake of others who set a value on precise information.