Oxford, 1583.In April, May, and June of 1583 Bruno was in Oxford, although the university and college records make no mention of his name. The University and Aristotle.He must have known it as a stronghold of Aristotelianism; on its statutes stood “that Bachelors and Masters who did not follow Aristotle faithfully were liable to a fine of five shillings for every point of divergence, and for every fault committed against the Logic of the Organon”; and that this was no dead law had been proved a few years before when one Barebones was degraded and expelled because of an attack on Aristotle from the standpoint of Ramus. The only living subject of teaching was theology, there was no real science, and no real scholarship. This peaceful school was not likely to be gratified by the letter which Bruno wrote asking permission to lecture at Oxford; it is printed in the Explicatio Triginta Sigillorum:[39] “To the most excellent the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, its most famous Doctors and celebrated Masters—Salutation from Philotheus Jordanus Brunus of Nola, Doctor of a more scientific theology, professor of a purer and less harmful learning, known in the chief universities of Europe, a philosopher approved and honourably received, a stranger with none but the uncivilised and ignoble, a wakener of sleeping minds, tamer of presumptuous and obstinate ignorance, who in all respects professes a general love of man, and cares not for the Italian more than for the Briton, male more than female, the mitre more than the crown, the toga more than the coat of mail, the cowled more than the uncowled; but loves him who in intercourse is the more peaceable, polite, friendly and useful—(Brunus) whom only propagators of folly and hypocrites detest, whom the honourable and studious love, whom noble minds applaud.” The epistle which so begins is the preface to a work on the art of discovering, arranging, and remembering facts of knowledge, by which Bruno hoped to commend himself to the English, as he had succeeded in commending himself to the French universities. He attempted to disarm prejudice by sheltering under the twofold truth—“if this writing appears to conflict with the common and approved faith, understand that it is put forward by me not as absolutely true, but as more consonant with our senses and our reason, or at least less dissonant than the other side of the antithesis. And remember, that we are not so much eager to show our own knowledge, as moved by the desire of showing the weakness of the common philosophy, which thrusts forward what is mere opinion as if demonstratively proved, and of making it clear by our discussion (if the gods grant it) how much in harmony with regulated sense, in consonance with the truth of the substance of things, is that which the garrulous multitude of plebeian philosophers ridicule as foreign to sense.”
He was coldly received, however; in common-sense England his new art could evoke no enthusiasm, and his real and vital doctrines met with nothing but opposition at the old university—“the widow of true science,” Bruno calls it. Alasco of Poland.From the 10th to the 13th June the Polish prince, Alasco, was in Oxford, and disputations were held in his honour as well as banquets. Among others, Bruno disputed publicly in presence of the prince and some of the English nobility.[40] Alasco appears to have caused some excitement to the Elizabethan court. According to Mr. Faunt (of the secretary’s office) he had been General in more than forty fought battles, spoke Latin and Italian well, and was of great revenues. Mauvissière grumbled in a letter to the French king, that the Palatine Lasque and a Scottish ambassador seemed to be governing the court.[41] The real object of the visit was apparently political, to prevent the traffic in arms between England and Muscovy.[42] Whether Alasco succeeded in this design or not, he seems to have found life in England too fast for his purse—“A learned man of graceful figure, with a very long beard, in decorous and beautiful attire, who was received kindly by the Queen, with great honour and praise by the nobles, by the university of Oxford with erudite delectations (oblectationibus) and varied spectacles; but after four months, being harassed for debt, he withdrew secretly.”[43] The arrival of this tragic-comic figure in Oxford appears to have gratified the city and university; he was most hospitably received, and put up at Christ Church. On the following day there was a dinner at All Souls, at which “he was solemnlie satisfied with scholarlie exercises and courtlie fare.” That evening was performed a “pleasant comedie,” the Rivales, and on the following night a “statelie tragedie,” Dido,[44] and there were in the intervals shows, disputations in philosophy, physics, and divinity, in all of which, we are glad to know, “these learned opponents, respondents, and moderators, acquitted themselves like themselves, sharplie and soundlie.” The disputation.Let us hope that Bruno too, who took part in one of these disputations, made this impression. According to his own account the protagonist put forward by the university could not reply to one of his arguments, and was left fifteen times by as many syllogisms, “like a hen in the stubble,” resorting accordingly to incivility and abuse, in face of the patience and humanity of the Neapolitan “reared under a kinder sky.” The result was unfortunate for Bruno; it put an end to the public lectures, which he was giving at the time, on the Immortality of the Soul and on the “Five-fold Sphere.” The Cena.The same month he returned to London, and shortly after published the Cena (Ash-Wednesday Supper), in which he ridiculed the Oxford Doctors. Inter alia, he thought they knew a good deal more of beer than of Greek.[45] The Causa.The impression this attack produced in his London circle was apparently not that which he desired, for in the following dialogue, the Causa, he was much more judicious.[46] He admitted much in the university that was well instituted from the beginning: “the fine arrangement of studies, the gravity of the ceremonies, careful ordering of the exercises, seemliness of the habits worn, and many other circumstances that made for the requirements and adornment of a university; without doubt every one must admit it to be the first in Europe, and consequently in all the world—nay, more, in gentleness of spirit and acuteness of mind, such as are naturally brought out in both parts of Britain, it equals perhaps the most excellent of the universities. Nor is it to be forgotten that before speculative philosophy was taught in any other part of Europe it flourished here, and through its princes in metaphysics (although barbarians in speech and of the profession of the cowl) the splendour of one of the noblest and rarest spheres of philosophy, in our times almost extinct, was diffused to all other academies in civilised countries.” What Bruno condemned in Oxford was the undue attention it gave to language and words, to the ability to speak in Ciceronian Latin and in eloquent-phrase, neglecting the realities of which the words were signs. As for the knowledge of Aristotle and of philosophy generally that was demanded for the degree of Master or Doctor, Bruno suggests an evasion that probably had its origin in the undergraduate wit of the time. The statute read “nisi potaverit e fonte Aristotelis,” but there were three springs in the town, the Fons Aristotelis, Fons Pythagorae, Fons Platonis, and “as the water for the beer and cider was taken from these springs, one could not be three days in Oxford without imbibing not merely of the spring of Aristotle, but of those of Pythagoras and of Plato as well.” Doctors were easily created and doctorates easily bought. There were of course exceptions, men renowned for eloquence and doctrine like Tobias Matthew[47] and Culpepper,[48] but as a rule the nobility and best men generally refused to avail themselves of the “honour,” and preferred the substance of learning to its shadow.
VI
London.It was after his return from Oxford that the pleasant and busy life in London literary society began—the period of Bruno’s greatest productiveness. In the house of the enlightened and cultured Mauvissière he found, for the first time since leaving Nola, a home.[49] Bruno’s position in London has given rise to great difference of opinion; none of the ordinary contemporary records make mention of him, or the slightest allusion to his presence in England. At his trial he professed to have brought letters to the French Ambassador from the King of France, to have stayed at the house of the former continuously, to have gone constantly to the Court with the Ambassador, and to have known Elizabeth; and in his works he claims intimacy with Sidney and Greville. It was consequently thought that he moved in the highest English society of the time, and from the Cena that he belonged to a literary coterie, or club, of which Sidney, Greville, Dyer, Temple, and others were members. Lagarde, believing Bruno (but on ludicrous grounds)[50] to have sprung from the lowest of Italian society, could hardly accept this familiar legend of Bruno-biographies, and more recently, the Quarterly Review has questioned both the friendship with Sidney and Greville, and the existence of the supposed Society. As to the last, there was certainly at one time a literary society, Sidney’s Areopagus, to which Spenser belonged in 1579, but which concerned itself chiefly with artificial rules of versification, and the merits of various metres; the habit of meeting may have very well persisted for a few years, after the first flush of enthusiasm had passed, and the Ash Wednesday supper may have represented one of these meetings to which Bruno—the defender of the Copernican theory—may have been invited as Protagonist. As for Bruno’s position, it must have been that of a secretary or tutor, perhaps both, in Mauvissière’s employment. The French Ambassador was constantly in want of funds, and could not very well afford to support any casual stranger whom the King of France recommended to him. In November 1584 he complained of absolute penury, of being unable to obtain money due to him from the King of France (the King paid him by occasional doles only), of being hard pressed by London and Italian bankers, while his wife was in ill health. He was not greatly respected either by the Court, who, with good grounds, believed him to have no influence with the French King, or by Mary of Scotland and the English Catholics, partly because of his supposed Huguenot leanings, and partly because of their distrust of Henry III., or by the French King himself. Mauvissière had been sent to England as one who could be trusted not to err by way of undue zeal. Henry had no desire to see the unfortunate Queen of Scots liberated, although he put out all his diplomatic power to save her life; the status quo in England suited his policy only too well; there was no need for active interference. It was Mary of Guise that spurred on Mauvissière to act as energetically as he did for Queen Mary. We may assume then that Bruno, when Oxford rejected him, entered the French Embassy as an unofficial secretary. The words he employed at the Venetian inquiry quite harmonise with this supposition: “In his house I stayed as his gentleman, nothing more,” not as friend or guest, but as “his gentleman.”[51] That he went constantly to Court with the Ambassador, and was introduced to Queen Elizabeth, would be natural in the case of a secretary—it would be curious in the case of a mere guest, or of any servant lower than a secretary. Finally, in the Infinito[52] the grateful remark that Mauvissière entertained Bruno within his family, “not as one who was of service to him (Mauvissière), but as one whom he could serve on the many occasions in which aid was required by the Nolan,” obviously suggests that services were rendered by Bruno to the Ambassador. A man who was prepared to make a living by teaching children as readily as by lecturing to students, by setting books in print as readily as by writing them, was not likely to be an expensive secretary, and it must have been pleasant to Bruno to escape from the turmoil of scholastic strife and its bitter antagonisms to the quiet haven of the Embassy. His host was a well-meaning, kindly, but unfortunate man, unequal to the great issues that were being decided around him. Although it was a Catholic family, and mass was frequently said in the house, Bruno’s religious freedom was respected. He attended neither mass nor any of the preachings, on account of his excommunication. If one may judge from Bruno’s enthusiasm, the wife and daughter of Mauvissière must have been charming companions, the one “endowed with no mean beauty of form, both veiling and clothing the spirit within, and also with the threefold blessing of a discreet judgment, a pleasing modesty, and a kind courtesy, holding in an indissoluble tie the mind of her consort, and captivating all who come to know her”; the other, “who has scarcely seen six summers, and from her speech you could not tell whether she be of Italy, of France, or of England; from her musical play, whether she is of corporeal or incorporeal substance; from the ripe sweetness of her manners, whether she is descended from heaven or risen from earth.”[53] For Mauvissière himself, to whom the three most important of the Italian dialogues are dedicated, no words that Bruno can invent are too high praise. In the dedication of the Causa, after comparing his persevering zeal and delicate diplomatic powers to the dropping of water upon hard stone, and his steadfast support of Bruno in face of detractions of the ignorant and the mercenary, of sophists, hypocrites, barbarians, and plebeians, to the strength of the rock against seething waves, the philosopher adds, “I, whom the foolish hate, the ignoble despise, whom the wise love, the learned admire, the great honour—I, for the great favours enjoyed from you, food and shelter, freedom, safety, harbourage, who through you have escaped so terrible and fierce a storm, to you consecrate this anchor, these shrouds and slackened sails, this merchandise so dear to me, more precious still to the future world, to the end that through your favour they may not fall a prey to the ocean of injustice, turbulence, and hostility.” The merchandise of which Bruno thought so highly was the Dialogue itself; we must of course allow for the grandiloquence of the dedications of the time, and of Bruno’s especially, but a real gratitude shines through the words.
Queen Elizabeth.His account of the Queen must be taken much less seriously, although his praise of her formed one of the many counts against him in Venice. “That most singular and rare of ladies, who from this cold clime, near to the Arctic parallel, sheds a bright light upon all the terrestrial globe. Elizabeth, a Queen in title and in dignity, inferior to no King in all the world. For her judgment, counsel, and government, not easily second to any other that bears a sceptre in the earth. In her familiarity with the arts, knowledge of the sciences, understanding and practice of all languages spoken in Europe by the people or by the learned, I leave the whole world to judge what rank she should hold among princes.”[54] In a satirical passage of the Causa, where Bruno is proving that all vices, defects, crimes are masculine, all virtues, excellences, goodnesses, feminine, Elizabeth is given as a crowning example:—“than whom no man is more worthy in the whole kingdom, among the nobles no one more heroic, among the long robed no one more learned, among the councillors no one more wise.”[55] Exaggerated as the language is, it is not more so than was common with the writers who adorned Elizabeth’s Court; and it was one of his errors which Bruno could easily regret before his judges. “In my book on ‘the Cause, Principle, and One,’ I praise the Queen of England and call her ‘divine,’ not as a term of worship, but as an epithet such as the ancients used to apply to their princes, and in England where I then was, and where I composed this book, the title ‘divine’ is usually given to the Queen. I was the more inclined to call her so, that she knew me, as I went continually with the Ambassador to Court; but I know I erred in praising this lady, she being a heretic, and in calling her ‘divine.’” Mendoça.Through Mauvissière, Bruno made acquaintance with Bernardino di Mendoça, Spanish Ambassador to England from 1578 to 1584, a much stronger man as well as a more unscrupulous servant of his king than Mauvissière could be. Bruno says definitely that Mendoça was known by him at the English Court. So well was he known that Bruno approached the Ambassador in Paris on the delicate subject of his own relations with the Catholic Church, and was introduced by him to the Papal Nuncio. There is absolutely no reason for doubting these statements, and if true, they are quite compatible with acquaintance, if not friendship, between Bruno and Sir Philip Sidney, or the others whom he mentions. Mendoça was not, however a persona grata at Court: he was a thorough-going supporter of the Scottish Queen, and seems to have had a finger in almost every conspiracy that was planned or formed by the English Catholics. He became unbearable to Queen Elizabeth; his recall was demanded and refused; but in January of 1584 he was compelled to leave England, and a formal rupture with Spain was the consequence, which became actual war four years afterwards. Philip of Spain did not desert his champion, in whom he had the highest confidence. In October of 1584 Mendoça became Ambassador to France, and there in 1855 Bruno renewed acquaintance with him.
Sidney.Like all his contemporaries, Bruno came under the spell of Sir Philip Sidney’s charm. He had already heard in Milan and in France of that “most illustrious and excellent cavalier, one of the rarest and brightest spirits in the world.” To Sir Philip are dedicated the two chief ethical writings of Bruno, the Spaccio, and the Heroici Furori, with the expressed assurance that the author is not presenting a lyre to a deaf man, nor a mirror to a blind. “The Italian reasons with one who can understand his speech; his verses are under the censure and the protection of a poet. Philosophy displays her form unveiled to so clear an eye as yours. The way of heroism is pointed out to a heroic and generous spirit.” Sidney was one of the first to take an interest in the Italian on his arrival in England, and when the Spaccio was published, on the eve, as Bruno thought, of his departure from England towards the close of 1584,[56] Bruno could not turn his back upon Sidney’s “beautiful, fortunate, and chivalrous country, without saluting him with a mark of recognition, along with the generous and humane spirit, Sir Fulke Greville.” Greville.There was some disagreement, however, between Greville and Bruno, “the invidious Erinnys of vile, malignant, ignoble, interested persons, had spread its poison” between them, in Bruno’s emphatic words. What the ground of division was we do not know; possibly the tone in which the Cena spoke of Oxford men, and of English scholars generally, had offended Greville, and this may have called out the partial retractation in the Causa. As is well known the friendship of the two men, Sidney and Greville (with whom Edward Dyer was closely associated), was of the noblest type. Greville died in 1628 in the fulness of years and of honours, but had retained the impress of his young friendship fresh to the end.[57] It may be added that he became an intimate of Francis Bacon, who may through him have been introduced to Bruno’s works. Spenser.It must have been in some such way also that Spenser knew of Bruno, as it is probable that the Cantos on Mutability (first published posthumously in 1609, but written probably after his visit to England in 1596) were “suggested” by Bruno’s Spaccio.[58] The “new poet” certainly could not have met Bruno, for he was in Ireland continuously, as secretary, from 1580 till 1589, when he came over to publish the first three books of the Faerie Queen.
Bacon.It is possible, on the other hand, that Bruno met Bacon, who was a rising young barrister and member of Parliament when he arrived in England, and had already achieved some fame as a critic of Aristotle. The idea, however, that he knew and influenced Shakespeare, is entirely fanciful. Richard Field, a friend of Shakespeare, had come to London in 1579, and served his apprenticeship with Thomas Vautrollier;Shakespeare. and Field was Shakespeare’s first publisher, having set up for himself by 1587. It has been suggested that before this time Shakespeare worked in Vautrollier’s printing office. On the other hand, it has been universally received that Vautrollier was Bruno’s publisher in England, and Bruno usually corrected his own proofs. Hence the two may have met, Shakespeare and Bruno, in a grimy printer’s den. The idea is charming, but it has to yield before the light of fact. Shakespeare did not come to London until 1586, and there is no proof that he worked with Vautrollier. Bruno had left England by the end of 1585, and there is no proof that Vautrollier was his printer. The suggested analogies between one or two ideas in Hamlet and Bruno’s conceptions of transmigration, of the relativity of evil, and the rest, are of the shallowest.[59] Thomas Vautrollier, a French printer who came to London some years before, and set up a press in Blackfriars, was said (by Thomas Baker) to have gained an undesired notoriety as Bruno’s printer, and to have been compelled to leave England for a period, which he spent in Edinburgh, to the advantage of Scottish printing. The Triginta Sigilli and all the Italian Dialogues of Bruno were certainly published in England, although Venice or Paris was set down as their place of publication. According to Bruno, this was “that they might sell more easily, and have the greater success, for if they had been marked as printed in England, they would have sold with greater difficulty in those parts.” It is doubtful, however, whether Vautrollier was really the printer; in any case it was not on that account that he went to Edinburgh.[60]
Florio.Of the Italians in England during Elizabeth’s reign the most familiar to us is Florio, whose father had been preacher to the Protestant Italians in London. Florio had been at Oxford, from which university he dedicated his “First Fruites” to Leicester in 1578, so that he was already well known as a scholar when Bruno came to England and made his acquaintance. This may have occurred through Sidney; or vice versa, Sidney’s attention may have been called to Bruno by Florio. The latter was described by Cornwallis as one who looked “more like a good fellow than a wise man,” yet was “wise beyond his fortune or his education.” It was long after Bruno’s departure that Florio devoted himself to the charming translation of Montaigne (published in 1603), of which a copy has been found bearing Shakespeare’s name, while to Shakespeare is attributed a sonnet in praise of Florio. Curiously, we find him in his translation acknowledging assistance from one with whom Bruno also has casually connected him in the Cena, viz. Matthew Gwinne. Alexander Dicson.Of Bruno’s more intimate acquaintance in England we know little: there are two whose names occur in the dialogues, “Smith” in the Cena, and Dicson in the Causa, both sympathetic listeners and adherents of Theophilo, who is Bruno’s representative. The former it is naturally difficult to place: he may however have been the poet William Smith, a disciple of Spenser, who published a pastoral poem “Chloris, or the Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepherd.” Of Dicson,—“learned, honourable, lovable, well-born faithful friend Alexander Dicson, whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes,”[61] a little more can be told. He was the author of a De Umbra Rationis, (1583), obviously inspired by Bruno’s De Umbris Idearum, and on the same basis of Neoplatonism. The work is extremely sketchy, occasionally diffuse, and of little value even were there anything of value in the Art of Memory which it teaches. Antidicsonus.But it seems from a reply it called forth (Antidicsonus) to have had some vogue, and to have been backed by a vigorous and aggressive school in which Bruno, who is joined in condemnation with Dicson, may have had a place.[62] Watson.The poet Thomas Watson has also connected Bruno with Dicson in his Compendium Memoriæ Localis, published in 1585 or 1586. Watson also published a translation of Tasso’s Aminta, in Latin hexameters,—in 1585, i.e. in the year following the appearance of Bruno’s Spaccio, with its satire on Tasso’s Age of Gold.[63] Watson had been in Paris in 1581, when he met Walsingham, and he may of course have met Bruno also: he was a scholarly poet, although his work lay more in the direction of translation and imitation of foreign writers, than in that of original verse, but during his lifetime he ranked as the equal of Spenser and Sidney. The Compendium of Local Memory is in clear, simple, classical Latin, in strong contrast with the corresponding works of Dicson and of Bruno; but the principles of the Art which it describes are those of Bruno, or Ravenna, or of some common source, more skilfully arranged and more aptly expressed.