[299] Ghiberti, Secondo Commentario, cap. xv. (Vasari ed Lemonnier, i. p. xxix.).
[300] Codri Urcei Vita, at the end of his works, first pub. Bologna 1502. This certainly comes near the old saying: ‘ubi bene, ibi patria.’ C. U. was not called after the place of his birth, but after Forli, where he lived long; see Malagola, Codro Urceo, Bologna, 1877, cap. v. and app. xi. The abundance of neutral intellectual pleasure, which is independent of local circumstances, and of which the educated Italians became more and more capable, rendered exile more tolerable to them. Cosmopolitanism is further a sign of an epoch in which new worlds are discovered, and men feel no longer at home in the old. We see it among the Greeks after the Peloponnesian war; Plato, as Niebuhr says, was not a good citizen, and Xenophon was a bad one; Diogenes went so far as to proclaim homelessness a pleasure, and calls himself, Laertius tells us, ἁπολις. Here another remarkable work may be mentioned. Petrus Alcyonius in his book: Medices Legatus de Exilio lib. duo, Ven. 1522 (printed in Mencken, Analecta de Calam. Literatorum, Leipzig, 1707, pp. 1-250) devotes to the subject of exile a long and prolix discussion. He tries logically and historically to refute the three reasons for which banishment is held to be an evil, viz. 1. Because the exile must live away from his fatherland. 2. Because he loses the honours given him at home. 3. Because he must do without his friends and relatives; and comes finally to the conclusion that banishment is not an evil. His dissertation culminates in the words, ‘Sapientissimus quisque omnem orbem terrarum unam urbem esse ducit. Atque etiam illam veram sibi esse patriam arbitratur quæ se perigrinantem exciperit, quæ pudorem, probitatem, virtutem colit, quæ optima studia, liberales disciplinas amplectitur, quæ etiam facit ut peregrini omnes honesto otio teneant statum et famam dignitatis suæ.’
[301] This awakening of personality is also shown in the great stress laid on the independent growth of character, in the claim to shape the spiritual life for oneself, apart from parents and ancestors. Boccaccio (De Cas. Vir. Ill. Paris, s. a. fol. xxix. b) points out that Socrates came of uneducated, Euripides and Demosthenes of unknown, parents, and exclaims: ‘Quasi animos a gignentibus habeamus!’
[302] Boccaccio, Vita di Dante, p. 16.
[303] The angels which he drew on tablets at the anniversary of the death of Beatrice (Vita Nuova, p. 61) may have been more than the work of a dilettante. Lion. Aretino says he drew ‘egregiamente,’ and was a great lover of music.
[304] For this and what follows, see esp. Vespasiano Fiorentino, an authority of the first order for Florentine culture in the fifteenth century Comp. pp. 359, 379, 401, etc. See, also, the charming and instructive Vita Jannoctii Manetti (b. 1396), by Naldus Naldius, in Murat. xx. pp. 529-608.
[305] What follows is taken, e.g., from Perticari’s account of Pandolfo Collenuccio, in Roscoe, Leone X. ed. Bossi iii. pp. 197 sqq., and from the Opere del Conte Perticari, Mil. 1823, vol. ii.
[306] For what follows compare Burckhardt, Geschichte der Renaissance in Italien, Stuttg. 1868, esp. p. 41 sqq., and A. Springer, Abhandlungen zur neueren Kunstgeschichte, Bonn, 1867, pp. 69-102. A new biography of Alberti is in course of preparation by Hub. Janitschek.
[307] In Murat. xxv. col. 295 sqq., with the Italian translation in the Opere Volgari di L. B. Alberti, vol. i. pp. lxxxix-cix, where the conjecture is made and shown to be probable that this ‘Vita’ is by Alberti himself. See, further, Vasari, iv. 52 sqq. Mariano Socini, if we can believe what we read of him in Æn. Sylvius (Opera, p. 622, Epist. 112) was a universal dilettante, and at the same time a master in several subjects.
[308] Similar attempts, especially an attempt at a flying-machine, had been made about 880 by the Andalusian Abul Abbas Kasim ibn Firnas. Comp. Gyangos, The History of the Muhammedan Dynasties in Spain (London, 1840), i. 148 sqq. and 425-7; extracts in Hammer, Literaturgesch. der Araber, i. Introd. p. li.