[369] This book at the Duke of Roxburgh’s famous sale brought 1060l.
[370] The Expositio Sancti Hieronymi, of which a copy, in the public library at Cambridge, bears the date of Oxford 1468 on the title-page, is now generally given up. It has been successfully contended by Middleton, and lately by Mr. Singer, that this date should be 1478; the numeral letter x having been casually omitted. Several similar instances occur, in which a pretended early book has not stood the keen eye of criticism: as the Decor Puellarum ascribed to Nicolas Jenson of Venice in 1461, for which we should read 1471; a cosmography of Ptolemy with the date of 1462; a book appearing to have been printed at Tours in 1467, &c.
In Spain. 52. The first book printed in Spain was on the very subject we might expect to precede all others, the Conception of the Virgin. It should be a very curious volume, being a poetical contest, on that sublime theme, by thirty-six poets, four of whom had written in Spanish, one in Italian, and the rest in Provençal or Valencian. It appeared at Valencia in 1474. A little book on grammar followed in 1475, and Sallust was printed the same year. In that year printing was also introduced at Barcelona and Saragossa, in 1476 at Seville, in 1480 at Salamanca and Burgos.
Translations of Scripture. 53. A translation of the Bible by Malerbi, a Venetian, was published in 1471, and two other editions of that, or a different version, the same year. Eleven editions are enumerated by Panzer in the fifteenth century. The German translation has already been mentioned; it was several times reprinted in this decade; one in Dutch appeared in 1477, one in the Valencian language, at that city, in 1478;[371] the New Testament was printed in Bohemian, 1475, and in French, 1477; the earliest French translation of the Old Testament seems to be about the same date. The reader will of course understand, that all these translations were made from the Vulgate Latin. It may naturally seem remarkable, that not only at this period, but down to the Reformation, no attempt was made to render any part of the Scriptures public in English. But, in fact, the ground was thought too dangerous by those in power. The translation of Wicliffe had taught the people some comparisons between the worldly condition of the first preachers of Christianity and their successors, as well as some other contrasts, which it was more expedient to avoid. Long before the invention of printing it was enacted, in 1408, by a constitution of Archbishop Arundel, in convocation, that no one should thereafter “translate any text of Holy Scripture into English, by way of a book, or little book or tract; and that no book should be read that was composed lately in the time of John Wicliffe, or since his death.” Scarcely any of Caxton’s publications are of a religious nature.
[371] This edition was suppressed or destroyed; no copy is known to exist; but there is preserved a final leaf containing the names of the translator and printer. M’Crie’s Reformation in Spain, p. 192. Andrès says (xix. 154), that this translation was made early in the fifteenth century, with the approbation of divines.
Revival of literature in Spain. 54. It would have been strange if Spain, placed on the genial shores of the Mediterranean, and intimately connected through the Aragonese kings with Italy, had not received some light from that which began to shine so brightly. Her progress, however, in letters was but slow. Not but that several individuals are named by compilers of literary biography in the first part of the fifteenth century, as well as earlier, who are reputed to have possessed a knowledge of languages, and to have stood at least far above their contemporaries. Alfonsus Tostatus passes for the most considerable; his writings are chiefly theological, but Andrès praises his commentary on the Chronicle of Eusebius, at least as a bold essay.[372] He contends that learning was not deficient in Spain during the fifteenth century, though admitting that the rapid improvements made at its close, and about the beginning of the next age, were due to Lebrixa’s public instructions at Seville and Salamanca. Several translations were made from Latin authors into Spanish, which, however, is not of itself any great proof of Peninsular learning. The men to whom Spain chiefly owes the advancement of useful learning, and who should not be defrauded of their glory, were Arias Barbosa, a scholar of Politian, and the more renowned, though not more learned or more early propagator of Grecian literature, Antonio of Lebrixa, whose name was latinised into Nebrissensis, by which he is commonly known. Of Arias, who unaccountably has no place in the Biographie Universelle, Nicolas Antonio gives a very high character.[373] He taught the Greek language at Salamanca probably about this time. But his writings are not at all numerous. For Lebrixa, instead of compiling from other sources, I shall transcribe what Dr. M’Crie has said with his usual perspicuous brevity.
[372] ix. 151.
[373] In quo Antonium Nebrissensem socium habuit, qui tamen quicquid usquam Græcarum literarum apud Hispanos esset, ab uno Aria emanâsse in præfatione suarum Introductionum Grammaticarum ingenue affirmavit. His duobus amplissimum illud gymnasium, indeque Hispania tota debet barbariei, quæ longo apud nos bellorum dominatu in immensum creverat, extirpationem, bonarumque omnium disciplinarum divitias. Quas Arias noster ex antiquitatis penu per vicennium integrum auditoribus suis larga et locuplete vena communicavit, in poetica facultate Græcanicaque doctrina Nebrissense melior, a quo tamen in varia multiplicique doctrina superabatur. Bibl. Vetus.
Character of Lebrixa. 55. “Lebrixa, usually styled Nebrissensis, became to Spain what Valla was to Italy, Erasmus to Germany, or Budæus to France. After a residence of ten years in Italy, during which he had stored his mind with various kinds of knowledge, he returned home, in 1473, by the advice of the younger Philelphus and Hermolaus Barbarus, with the view of promoting classical literature in his native country. Hitherto the revival of letters in Spain was confined to a few inquisitive individuals, and had not reached the schools and universities, whose teachers continued to teach a barbarous jargon under the name of Latin, into which they initiated the youth by means of a rude system of grammar, rendered unintelligible, in some instances, by a preposterous intermixture of the most abstruse questions in metaphysics. By the lectures which he read in the universities of Seville, Salamanca, and Alcala, and by the institutes which he published on Castilian, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew grammar, Lebrixa contributed in a wonderful degree to expel barbarism from the seats of education, and to diffuse a taste for elegant and useful studies among his countrymen. His improvements were warmly opposed by the monks, who had engrossed the art of teaching, and who, unable to bear the light themselves, wished to prevent all others from seeing it; but, enjoying the support of persons of high authority, he disregarded their selfish and ignorant outcries. Lebrixa continued to an advanced age to support the literary reputation of his native country.”[374]
[374] M’Crie’s Hist. of Reformation in Spain, p. 61. It is probable that Lebrixa’s exertions were not very effectual in the present decennium, nor perhaps in the next, but his Institutiones Grammaticæ, a very scarce book, were printed at Seville in 1481.