Prejudice for antiquity diminished. 45. The tide of public opinion had hitherto set regularly in one direction; ancient times, ancient learning, ancient wisdom and virtue, were regarded with unqualified veneration; the very course of nature was hardly believed to be the same, and a common degeneracy was thought to have overspread the earth and its inhabitants. This had been at its height in the first century after the revival of letters, the prejudice in favour of the past, always current with the old, who affect to dictate the maxims of experience, conspiring with the genuine lustre of classical literature and ancient history, which dazzled the youthful scholar. But this aristocracy of learning was now assailed by a new power which had risen up in sufficient strength to dispute the pre-eminence. We, said Bacon, are the true ancients; what we call the antiquity of the world was but its infancy. This thought equally just and brilliant, was caught up and echoed by many; it will be repeatedly found in later works. It became a question whether the moderns had not really left behind their progenitors; and though it has been hinted, that a dwarf on a giant’s shoulders sees farther than the giant, this is, in one sense, to concede the point in dispute.[685]
[685] Ac quemadmodum pygmæus humeris gigantis insidens longius quam gigas prospicere, neque tamen se gigante majorem habere aut sipi multum tribuere potest, ita nos veterum laboribus vigiliisque in nostros usus conversis adjicere aliquid, non supercilia tollere, aut parvi facere, qui ante nos fuerunt, debemus. Cyprianus, Vita Campanellæ, p. 15.
46. Tassoni was one of the first who combated the established prejudice by maintaining that modern times are not inferior to ancient; it well became his intrepid disposition.[686] But Lancilotti, an Italian ecclesiastic, and member of several academies, pursued this subject in an elaborate work, intended to prove—first, that the world was neither morally worse nor more afflicted by calamities than it had been; secondly, that the intellectual abilities of mankind had not degenerated. It bears the general title, L’Hoggidi, To-Day; and is throughout a ridicule of those whom he calls Hoggidiani, perpetual declaimers against the present state of things. He is a very copious and learned writer, and no friend to antiquity; each chapter being entitled Disinganno, and intended to remove some false prejudice. The first part of this work appeared in 1623, the second, after the author’s death, not till 1658. Lancilotti wrote another book with somewhat a similar object, entitled Farfalloni degl’Antichi Istorici, and designed to turn the ancient historians into ridicule; with a good deal of pleasantry, but chiefly on account of stories which no one in his time would have believed. The same ground was taken soon afterwards by an English divine, George Hakewill, in his “Apology, or Declaration of the Power and Providence of God in the Government of the World,” published in 1627. This is designed to prove that there is not that perpetual and universal decay in nature which many suppose. It is an elaborate refutation of many absurd notions which seem to have prevailed; some believing that even physical nature, the sun and stars, the earth and waters, were the worse for wear. A greater number thought this true of man; his age, his size, his strength, his powers of mind were all supposed to have been deteriorated. Hakewill patiently and learnedly refuted all this. The moral character of antiquity he shows to be much exaggerated, animadverting especially on the Romans. The most remarkable, and certainly the most disputable chapters, are those which relate to the literary merits of ancient and modern times. He seems to be one of the first who ventured to put in a claim for the latter. In this he anticipates Wotton, who had more to say. Hakewill goes much too far in calling Sydney’s Arcadia “nothing inferior to the choicest piece among the ancients”; and even thinks “he should not much wrong Virgil by matching him with Du Bartas.” The learning shown in this treatise is very extensive, but Hakewill has no taste, and cannot perceive any real superiority in the ancients. Compared with Lancilotti, he is much inferior in liveliness, perhaps even in learning; but I have not observed that he has borrowed anything from the Italian, whose publication was but four years earlier.
[686] Salfi, xi., 381.
Browne’s Vulgar Errors. 47. Browne’s Inquiry into Vulgar Errors displays a great deal of erudition, but scarcely raises a high notion of Browne himself as a philosopher, or of the state of physical knowledge in England. The errors he indicates are such as none but illiterate persons, we should think, were likely to hold; and I believe that few on the Continent, so late as 1646, would have required to have them exploded with such an ostentation of proof. Who did not know that the phœnix is a fable? Browne was where the learned in Europe had been seventy years before, and seems to have been one of those who saturate their minds with bad books till they have little room for anything new that is better. A man of so much credulity and such an irregular imagination as Browne was almost sure to believe in witchcraft and all sorts of spiritual agencies. In no respect did he go in advance of his age, unless we make an exception for his declaration against persecution. He seems to have been fond of those trifling questions which the bad taste of the schoolmen and their contemporaries introduced; as whether a man has fewer ribs than a woman, whether Adam and Eve had navels, whether Methusaleh was the oldest man; the problems of children put to adults. With a strong curiosity and a real love of truth, Browne is a striking instance of a merely empirical mind; he is at sea with sails and a rudder, but without a compass or log-book; and has so little notion of any laws of nature, or of any inductive reasoning either as to efficient or final causes, that he never seems to judge anything to be true or false except by experiment.
Life and character of Peiresc. 48. In concluding our review of the sixteenth century, we selected Pinelli, as a single model of the literary character, which loving and encouraging knowledge, is yet too little distinguished by any writings to fall naturally within the general subject of these volumes. The period which we now bring to a close will furnish us with a much more considerable instance. Nicholas Peiresc was born in 1580, of an ancient family in Provence, which had for some generations held judicial offices in the parliament of Aix. An extraordinary thirst for every kind of knowledge characterized Peiresc from his earliest youth, and being of a weak constitution, as well as ample fortune, though he retained, like his family, an honourable post in the parliament, his time was principally devoted to the multifarious pursuits of an enlightened scholar. Like Pinelli, he delighted in the rarities of art and antiquity; but his own superior genius, and the vocation of that age towards science, led him on to a far more extensive field of inquiry. We have the life of Peiresc written by his countryman and intimate friend Gassendi; and no one who has any sympathy with science or with a noble character will read it without pleasure. Few books indeed of that period are more full of casual information.
49. Peiresc travelled much in the early part of his life; he was at Rome in 1600, and came to England and Holland in 1606. The hard drinking, even of our learned men,[687] disconcerted his southern stomach; but he was repaid by the society of Camden, Savile, and Cotton. The king received Peiresc courteously, and he was present at the opening of parliament. On returning to his native province, he began to form his extensive collections of marbles and medals, but especially of natural history in every line. He was, perhaps, the first who observed the structure of zoophytes, though he seems not to have suspected their animal nature. Petrifactions occupied much of his time; and he framed a theory of them which Gassendi explains at length, but which, as might be expected, is not the truth.[688] Botany was among his favourite studies, and Europe owes to him, according to Gassendi, the Indian jessamine, the gourd of Mecca, the real Egyptian papyrus, which is not that described by Prosper Alpinus. He first planted ginger, as well as many other Oriental plants, in an European garden, and also the cocoa-nut, from which, however, he could not obtain fruit.
[687] Gassendi, Vita Peiresc, p. 51.
[688] P. 147.
50. Peiresc was not less devoted to astronomy; he had no sooner heard of the discoveries of Galileo than he set himself to procure a telescope, and had in the course of the same year, 1610, the pleasure of observing the moons of Jupiter. It even occurred to him that these might serve to ascertain the longitude, though he did not follow up the idea. Galileo indeed, with a still more inventive mind, and with more of mathematics, seems to have stood in the way of Peiresc. He took, as far as appears, no great pains to publish his researches, contenting himself with the intercourse of literary men, who passed near him, or with whom he could maintain correspondence. Several discoveries are ascribed to him by Gassendi; of their originality, I cannot venture to decide. “From his retreat,” says another biographer, “Peiresc gave more encouragement to letters than any prince, more even than the Cardinal de Richelieu, who sometime afterwards founded the French Academy. Worthy to have been called by Bayle the attorney-general of literature, he kept always on the level of progressive science, published manuscripts at his own expense, followed the labours of the learned throughout Europe, and gave them an active impulse by his own aid.” Scaliger, Salmasius, Holstenius, Kircher, Mersenne, Grotius, Valois, are but some of the great names of Europe whom he assisted by various kinds of liberality.[689] He published nothing himself, but some of his letters have been collected.