Care of the Italian Latinists. 32. Manutius, as the passage above quoted has shown, is not reckoned by Ruhnkenius quite equal to Muretus, at least in natural genius. Scioppius thinks him consummate in delicacy and grace. He tells us that Manutius could hardly speak three words of Latin, so that the Germans who came to visit him looked down on his deficiency. But this, Scioppius remarks, as Erasmus had done a hundred years before, was one of the rules observed by the Italian scholars to preserve the correctness of their style. They perceived that the daily use of Latin in speech must bring in a torrent of barbarous phrases, which “claiming afterwards the privileges of acquaintance” (quodam familiaritatis jure), would obtrude their company during composition, and render it difficult for the most accurate writer to avoid them.[935]
[935] Scioppius, Judicium de Stylo Historico, p. 65. This was so little understood in England, that, in some of our colleges, and even schools, it was the regulation for the students to speak Latin when within hearing of their superiors. Even Locke was misled into recommending this preposterous barbarism.
Perpinianus, Osorius, Maphæus. 33. Perpinianus, a Valencian Jesuit, wrote some orations, hardly remembered at present, but Ruhnkenius has placed him along with Muretus, as the two Cisalpines (if that word may be so used for brevity), who have excelled the Italians in Latinity. A writer of more celebrity was Osorius, a Portuguese bishop, whose treatise on glory, and, what is better known, his History of the Reign of Emanuel, have placed him in a high rank among the imitators of the Augustan language. Some extracts from Osorius de Gloria will be found in the first volume of the Retrospective Review. This has been sometimes fancied to be the famous work of Cicero with that title, which Petrarch possessed and lost, and which Petrus Alcyonius has been said to have transferred to his own book De Exilio. But for this latter conjecture there is, I believe, neither evidence nor presumption; and certainly Osorius, if we may judge from the passages quoted, was no Cicero. Lord Bacon has said of him, that “his vein was weak and waterish,” which these extracts confirm. They have not elegance enough to compensate for their verbosity and emptiness. Dupin, however, calls him the Cicero of Portugal.[936] Nor is less honour due to the Jesuit Maffei (Maphæus), whose chief work is the History of India, published in 1586. Maffei, according to Scioppius, was so careful of his style, that he used to recite the breviary in Greek, lest he should become too much accustomed to bad Latin.[937] This may perhaps be said in ridicule of such purists. Like Manutius, he was tediously elaborate in correction; some have observed that his History of India has scarce any value except for its style.[938]
[936] Niceron, vol. ii.
[937] De Stylo Hist. p. 71.
[938] Tiraboschi, Niceron, vol. v. Biogr. Univ.
Buchanan, Haddon. 34. The writings of Buchanan, and especially his Scottish history, are written with strength, perspicuity, and neatness.[939] Many of our own critics have extolled the Latinity of Walter Haddon. His Orations were published in 1567. They belong to the first years of this period. But they seem hardly to deserve any high praise. Haddon had certainly laboured at an imitation of Cicero, but without catching his manner or getting rid of the florid, semi-poetical tone of the fourth century. A specimen, taken much at random, but rather favourable than otherwise, from his oration on the death of the young brothers of the house of Suffolk, at Cambridge, in 1550, is given in a note.[940] Another work of a different kind, wherein Haddon is said to have been concerned jointly with Sir John Cheke, is the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum, the proposed code of the Anglican Church, drawn up under Edward VI. It is, considering the subject, in very good language.
[939] Le Clerc, in an article of the Bibliotheque Choisie, vol. viii., pronounces a high eulogy on Buchanan, as having written better than any one else in verse and prose; that is, as I understand him, having written prose better than any one who has written verse so well, and the converse.
[940] O laboriosam et si non miseram, certe mirabiliter exercitam, tot cumulatam funeribus Cantabrigiam! Gravi nos vu’nere percussit hyems, æstas saucios ad terram afflixit. Calendæ Martiæ stantem adhuc Academiam nostram et erectam vehementer impulerunt, et de priori statu suo depresserunt. Idus Juliæ nutantem jam et inclinatam oppresserunt. Cum magnus ille fidei magister et excellens noster in vera religione doctor, Martinus Bucerus, frigoribus hybernis conglaciavisset, tantam in ejus occasu plagam accepisse videbamur, ut majorem non solum ullam expectaremus, sed ne posse quidem expectari crederemus. Verum postquam inundantes, et in Cantabrigiam effervescentes æstivi sudores, illud præstans et aureolum par Suffolciensium fratrum, tum quidem peregrinatum a nobis, sed tamen plane nostrum obruerunt, sic ingemuimus, ut infinitus dolor vix ullam tanti mali levationem invenire possit. Perfectus omni scientia pater, et certe senex incomparabilis, Martinus Bucerus, licet nec reipublicæ nec nostro, tamen suo tempore mortuus est, nimirum ætate, et annis et morbo affectus. Suffolcienses autem, quos ille florescentes ad omnem laudem, tanquam alumnos disciplinæ reliquit suæ, tam repente sudorum fluminibus absorpti sunt, ut prius mortem illorum audiremus, quam morbum animadverteremus.
Sigonius, de Consolatione. 35. These are the chief writers of this part of the sixteenth century who have attained reputation for the polish and purity of their Latin style. Sigonius ought, perhaps, to be mentioned in the same class, since his writings exhibit not only perspicuity and precision, but as much elegance as their subjects would permit. He is also the acknowledged author of the treatise De Consolatione, which long passed with many for a work of Cicero. Even Tiraboschi was only undeceived of this opinion by meeting with some unpublished letters of Sigonius, wherein he confesses the forgery.[941] It seems, however, that he had inserted some authentic fragments. Lipsius speaks of this counterfeit with the utmost contempt, but after all his invective can scarcely detect any bad Latinity.[942] The Consolatio is, in fact, like many other imitations of the philosophical writings of Cicero, resembling their original in his faults of verbosity and want of depth, but flowing and graceful in language. Lipsius, who affected the other extreme, was not likely to value that which deceived the Italians into a belief that Tully himself was before them. It was, at least, not everyone who could have done this like Sigonius.