5. Few books of that age give us more insight into its literary history and the public taste than the Ciceronianus. In a short retrospect Erasmus characterises all the considerable writers in Latin since the revival of letters, and endeavours to show how far they wanted this Ciceronian elegance for which some were contending. He distinguishes in a spirit of sound taste between a just imitation which leaves free scope for genius, and a servile following of a single writer. “Let your first and chief care,” he says, “be to understand thoroughly what you undertake to write about. That will give you copiousness of words, and supply you with true and natural sentiments. Then will it be found how your language lives and breathes, how it excites and hurries away the reader, and how it is a just image of your own mind. Nor will that be less genuine which you add to your own by imitation.”
6. The Ciceronianus, however, goes in some passages beyond the limited subject of Latin style. The controversy had some reference to the division between the men of learning and the men of taste, between the lovers of the solid and of the brilliant, in some measure also, to that between Christianity and Paganism, a garb which the incredulity of the Italians affected to put on. All the Ciceronian party, except Longolius, were on the other side of the Alps.[631] The object of the Italian scholars was to write pure Latin, to gleam little morsels of Roman literature, to talk a heathenish philosophy in private, and leave the world to its own abuses. That of Erasmus was to make men wiser and better by wit, sense, and learning.
[631] Though this is generally said, on the authority of Erasmus himself, Peter Bunel is asserted by some French scholars of great name, and particularly by Henry Stephens, to have equalled in Ciceronian purity the best of the Italians; and Paulus Manutius owns him as his master, in one of his epistles: Ego ab illo maximum habebam beneficium, quod me cum Politianis et Erasmis nescio quibus miserè errantem, in hanc rectè scribendi viam primus induxerat. In a later edition, for Politianis et Erasmis, it was thought more decent to introduce Philelphis et Campanis. Bayle, art. Bunel, Note A. The letters of Bunel, written with great purity, were published in 1551. It is to be observed, that he had lived much in Italy. Erasmus does not mention him in the Ciceronianus.
Scaliger’s invective against it. 7. Julius Cæsar Scaliger wrote against the Ciceronianus with all that unmannerly invective, which is the disgrace of many scholars, and very much his own. His vanity blinded him to what was then obvious to Europe, that with considerable learning, and still better parts, he was totally unworthy of being named with the first man in the literary republic. Nor in fact had he much right to take up the cause of the Ciceronian purists, with whom he had no pretension to be reckoned, though his reply to Erasmus is not ill written. It consists chiefly in a vindication of Cicero’s life and writings against some passages in the Ciceronianus which seem to affect them, scarcely touching the question of Latin style. Erasmus made no answer, and thus escaped the danger of retaliating on Scaliger in his own phrases.
Editions of Cicero. 8. The devotedness of the Italians to Cicero was displayed in a more useful manner than by this close imitation. Pietro Vettori (better known as Victorius), professor of Greek and Roman literature at Florence, published an entire edition of the great orator’s writings in 1534. But this was soon surpassed by a still more illustrious scholar, Paulus Manutius, son of Aldus, and his successor in the printing-house at Venice. His edition of Cicero appeared in 1540. It is by far the most important edition of any ancient author that had hitherto been published. In fact, the notes of Manutius, which were very much augmented in later editions,[632] form at this day in great measure the basis of interpretation and illustration of Cicero, as what are called the Variorum editions will show. A further accession to Ciceronian literature was made by Nizolius in his Observationes in M. Tullium Ciceronem, 1535. This hardly indicates that it is a dictionary of Ciceronian words, with examples of their proper senses. The later and improved editions bear the title of Thesaurus Ciceronianus. I find no critical work in this period of greater extent and labour than that of Scaliger de Causis Latinæ Linguæ; by “causis” meaning its principles. It relates much to the foundations of the language, or the rules by which its various peculiarities have been formed. He corrects many alleged errors of earlier writers, and sometimes of Valla himself; enumerating, rather invidiously, 634 of such errors in an index. In this book he shows much acuteness and judgment.
[632] Renouard, Imprimerie des Aldes.
Alexander ab Alexandro. 9. The Geniales Dies of Alexander ab Alexandro, a Neapolitan lawyer, published in 1522, are on the model of Aulus Gellius, a repertory of miscellaneous learning, thrown together without arrangement, on every subject of Roman philology and antiquities. The author had lived with the scholars of the fifteenth century, and even remembered Philelphus; but his own reputation seems not to have been extensive, at least through Europe. “He knows every one,” says Erasmus in a letter; “no one knows who he is.”[633] The Geniales Dies has had better success in later ages than most early works of criticism, a good edition having appeared, with Variorum notes, in 1673. It gives, like the Lectiones Antiquæ of Cælius Rhodiginus, an idea of the vast extent to which the investigation of Latin antiquity had been already carried; though so much was left for the coryphæi of these researches, whom the ensuing age was to produce.
[633] Demiror quis sit ille Alexander ab Alexandro. Novit omnes celebres Italiæ viros, Philelphum, Pomponium Lætum, Hermolaum, et quos non? Omnibus usus est familiariter; tamen nemo novit illum. Append. ad Erasm. Epist. ccclxxiii. (1533). Bayle also remarks, that Alexander is hardly mentioned by his contemporaries. Tiraqueau, a French lawyer of considerable learning, undertook the task of writing critical notes on the Geniales Dies about the middle of the century, correcting many of the errors which they contained.
Works on Roman antiquities. 10. A very few books of the same class belong to this period; and may deserve mention, although long since superseded by the works of those to whom we have just alluded, and who filled up and corrected their outline. Marlianus on the Topography of Rome, 1534, is admitted, though with some hesitation, by Grævius into his Thesaurus Antiquitatum Romanarum, while he absolutely sets aside the preceding labours of Blondus Flavius and Pomponius Lætus. The Fasti Consulares were first published by Marlianus in 1549; and a work on the same subject in 1550 was the earliest production of the great Sigonius. Before these the memorable events of Roman history had not been critically reduced to a chronological series. A treatise by Raphael of Volterra de Magistratibus et Sacerdotibus Romanorum is very inaccurate and superficial.[634] Mazochius, a Roman bookseller, was the first who, in 1521, published a collection of inscriptions. This was very imperfect, and full of false monuments. A better appeared in Germany by the care of Apianus, professor of mathematics at Ingoldstadt, in 1534.[635]
[634] It is published in Sallengre, Novus Thesaurus Antiquit. vol. iii.