Dans l’étude des sciences qui tiennent aux mathématiques, ceux qui ne consultent pas la nature, mais les auteurs, ne sont pas les enfans de la nature; je dirais qu’ils n’en sont que les petits fils: elle seule, en effet, est le maitre des vrais génies. Mais voyez la sottise! on se moque d’un homme qui aimera mieux apprendre de la nature elle-même, que des auteurs, qui n’en sont que les clercs. Is not this the precise tone of Lord Bacon?
Vinci says, in another place: Mon dessein est de citer d’abord l’expérience, et de démontrer ensuite pourquoi les corps sont contraints d’agir de telle manière. C’est la méthode qu’on doit observer dans les recherches des phénomènes de la nature. Il est bien vrai que la nature commence par le raisonnement, et finit par l’expérience; mais n’importe, il nous faut prendre la route opposée: comme j’ai dit, nous devons commencer par l’expérience, et tâcher par son moyen d’en découvrir la raison.
He ascribes the elevation of the equatorial waters above the polar to the heat of the sun: Elles entrent en mouvement de tous les côtés de cette éminence aqueuse pour rétablir leur sphéricité parfaite. This is not the true cause of their elevation, but by what means could he know the fact?
Vinci understood fortification well, and wrote upon it. Since in our time, he says, artillery has four times the power it used to have, it is necessary that the fortification of towns should be strengthened in the same proportion. He was employed on several great works of engineering. So wonderful was the variety of power in this miracle of nature. For we have not mentioned that his Last Supper at Milan is the earliest of the great pictures in Italy, and that some productions of his easel vie with those of Raphael. His only published work, the Treatise on Painting, does him injustice; it is an ill-arranged compilation from several of his manuscripts. That the extraordinary works, of which this note contains an account, have not been published entire, and in their original language, is much to be regretted by all who know how to venerate so great a genius as Lionardo da Vinci.
Sect. VI. 1491-1500.
State of Learning in Italy—Latin and Italian Poets—Learning in France and England—Erasmus—Popular Literature and Poetry—Other kinds of Literature—General Literary Character of Fifteenth Century—Book-trade, its Privileges and Restraints.
Aldine Greek editions. 114. The year 1494 is distinguished by an edition of Musæus, generally thought the first work from the press established at Venice by Aldus Manutius, who had settled there in 1489.[460]
[460] The Erotemata of Constantino Lascaris, printed by Aldus, bears date Feb. 1494, which Menu to mean 1495. But the Musæus has no date, nor the Galeomyomachia, a Greek poem by one Theodoras Prodromus. Renouard, Hist. de I’Imprimerie des Aldes.
In the course of about twenty years, with some interruption, he gave to the world several of the principal Greek authors; and though, as we have seen, not absolutely the earliest printer in that language, he so far excelled all others in the number of his editions, that he may be justly said to stand at the head of the list. It is right, however, to mention, that Zarot had printed Hesiod and Theocritus in one volume, and also Isocrates, at Milan, in 1493; that the Anthologia appeared at Florence in 1494; Lucian and Apollonius Rhodius in 1496; the lexicon of Suidas, at Milan, in 1499. About fifteen editions of Greek works, without reckoning Craston’s lexicon and several grammars, had been published before the close of the century.[461] The most remarkable of the Aldine editions are the Aristotle, in five volumes, the first bearing date of 1495, the last of 1498, and nine plays of Aristophanes in the latter year. In this Aristophanes, and perhaps in other editions of this time, Aldus had fortunately the assistance of Marcus Musurus, one of the last, but by no means the least eminent, of the Greeks who transported their language to Italy. Musurus was now a public teacher at Padua. John Lascaris, son, perhaps, of Constantine, edited the Anthologia at Florence. It may be doubted whether Italy had as yet produced any scholar, unless it were Varino, more often called Phavorinus, singly equal to the task of superintending a Greek edition. His Thesaurus Cornucopiæ, a collection of thirty-four grammatical tracts in Greek, printed 1496, may be an exception. The Etymologicum Magnum, Venice, 1499, being a lexicon with only Greek explanations, is supposed to be chiefly due to Musurus. Aldus had printed Craston’s lexicon, in 1497, with the addition of an index; this has often been mistaken for an original work.[462]
[461] The grammar of Urbano Valeriano was first printed in 1497. It is in Greek and Latin, and of extreme rarity. Roscoe (Leo X., ch. xi.) says, “it was received with such avidity that Erasmus, on inquiring for it in the year 1499, found that not a copy of this impression remained unsold.” I have given, a little below, a different construction to these words of Erasmus.