Catalogue of Bodleian library. 41. A catalogue of the Bodleian library was published by James in 1620. It contains about 20,000 articles. Of these no great number are in English, and such as there are chiefly since the year 1600; Bodley, perhaps, had been rather negligent of poetry and plays. The editor observes that there were in the library three or four thousand volumes in modern languages. This catalogue is not classed, but alphabetical; which James mentions as something new, remarking at the same time the difficulty of classification, and that in the German catalogues we find grammars entered under the head of philosophy. One published by Draud, Bibliotheca Classica, sive Catalogus Officinalis, Frankfort, 1625, is hardly worth mention. It professes to be a general list of printed books; but as the number seems to be not more than 30,000, all in Latin, it must be very defective. About two fifths of the whole are theological. A catalogue of the library of Sion College, founded in 1631, was printed in 1650; it contains eight or nine thousand volumes.[679]
[679] In Museo Britannico.
Continental libraries. 42. The library of Leyden had been founded by the first prince of Orange. Scaliger bequeathed his own to it; and it obtained the oriental manuscripts of Golius. A catalogue had been printed by Peter Bertius as early as 1597.[680] Many public and private libraries either now began to be formed in France, or received great accessions; among the latter, those of the historian De Thou, and the president Seguier.[681] No German library, after that of Vienna, had been so considerable as one formed in the course of several ages by the electors Palatine at Heidelberg. It contained many rare manuscripts. On the capture of the city by Tilly, in 1622, he sent a number of these to Rome, and they long continued to sleep in the recesses of the Vatican. Napoleon, emulous of such a precedent, obtained thirty-eight of the Heidelberg manuscripts by the treaty of Tolentino, which were transmitted to Paris. On the restitution of these in 1815, it was justly thought that prescription was not to be pleaded by Rome for the rest of the plunder, especially when she was recovering what she had lost by the same right of spoliation; and the whole collection has been replaced in the library of Heidelberg.
[680] Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, c. 3.
[681] Id. ibid.
Italian academies. 43. The Italian academies have been often represented as partaking in the alleged decline of literary spirit during the first part of the seventeenth century. Nor is this reproach a new one. Boccalini, after the commencement of this period, tells us that these institutions, once so famous, had fallen into decay, their ardent zeal in literary exercises and discussions having abated by time, so that while they had once been frequented by private men, and esteemed by princes, they were now abandoned and despised by all. They petition Apollo, therefore, in a chapter of his Ragguagli di Parnasso, for a reform. But the god replies that all things have their old age and decay, and as nothing can prevent the neatest pair of slippers from wearing out so nothing can rescue academies from a similar lot; hence, he can only advise them to suppress the worst, and to supply their places by others.[682] If only such a counsel were required, the institution of academies in general would not perish. And, in fact, we really find that while some societies of this class came to nothing, as is always the case with self-constituted bodies, the seventeenth century had births of its own to boast, not inferior to the older progeny of the last age. The Academy of Humourists at Rome was one of these. It arose casually at the marriage of a young nobleman of the Mancini family, and took the same line as many had done, reciting verses and discourses, or occasionally representing plays. The tragedy of Demetrius, by Rocco, one of this academy, is reckoned among the best of the age. The Apatisti of Florence took their name from Fioretti, who had assumed the appellation of Udeno Nisielo, Academico Apatista. The Rozzi of Siena, whom the government had suppressed in 1568, revived again in 1605, and rivalled another society of the same city, the Intronati. The former especially dedicated their time to pastoral, in the rustic dialect (comedia rusticale), a species of dramatic writing that might amuse at the moment, and was designed for no other end, though several of these farces are extant. [683]
[682] Ragg., xviii., c. 1.
[683] Salfi, vol. xii.
The Lincei. 44. The Academy della Crusca, which had more solid objects for the advantages of letters in view, has been mentioned in another place. But that of the Lincei, founded by Frederic Cesi, stands upon a higher ground than any of the rest. This young man was born at Rome in 1585, son of the duke of Acqua Sparta, a father and a family known only for their pride and ignorance. But nature had created in Cesi a philosophic mind; in conjunction with a few of similar dispositions, he gave his entire regard to science, and projected himself, at the age of eighteen, an academy, that is, a private association of friends for intellectual pursuits, which, with reference to their desire of piercing with acute discernment into the depths of truth, he denominated the Lynxes. Their device was that animal, with its eyes turned towards heaven, and tearing a Cerberus with its claws; thus intimating that they were prepared for war against error and falsehood. The church, always suspicious, and inclined to make common cause with all established tenets, gave them some trouble, though neither theology nor politics entered into their scheme. This embraced, as in their academies, poetry and elegant literature; but physical science was their peculiar object. Porto, Galileo, Colonna, and many other distinguished men, both of Italy and the Transalpine countries, were enrolled among the Lynxes; and Cesi is said to have framed rather a visionary plan of a general combination of philosophers, in the manner of the Pythagoreans, which should extend itself to every part of Europe. The constitutions of this imaginary order were even published in 1624; they are such as could not have been realised, but from the organization and secrecy that seem to have been their elements, might not improbably have drawn down a persecution upon themselves, or even rendered the name of philosophy obnoxious. Cesi died in 1630, and his academy of Lynxes did not long survive the loss of their chief.[684]
[684] Salfi, xi., 102. Tiraboschi, xi., 42, 243.