[636] Of such children we meet with several, yet I cannot give an instance in which they were demonstrably so treated. The youthful prodigy Giulio Campagnola was not one of those who were forced with an ambitious object. Comp. Scardeonius, De urb. Patav. antiq. in Graev. thes. vi. 3, col. 276. For the similar case of Cecchino Bracci, d. 1445 in his fifteenth year, comp. Trucchi, Poesie Ital. inedite, iii. p. 229. The father of Cardano tried ‘memoriam artificialem instillare,’ and taught him, when still a child, the astrology of the Arabians. See Cardanus, De propria vita cap. 34. Manoello may be added to the list, unless we are to take his expression, ‘At the age of six years I am as good as at eighty,’ as a meaningless phrase. Comp. Litbl. des Orients, 1843, p. 21.
[637] Bapt. Mantuan. De calamitatibus temporum, l. i.
[638] Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, Progymnasma adversus literas et literatos. Opp. ed. Basil. 1580, ii. 422-445. Dedications 1540-1541; the work itself addressed to Giov. Franc. Pico, and therefore finished before 1533.
[639] Lil. Greg. Gyraldus, Hercules. The dedication is a striking evidence of the first threatening movements of the Inquisition.
[640] He passed, as we have seen, for the last protector of the scholars.
[641] De infelicitate literatorum. On the editions, see above, p. 86, note 4. Pier. Val., after leaving Rome, lived long in a good position as professor at Padua. At the end of his work he expresses the hope that Charles V. and Clement VII. would bring about a better time for the scholars.
[642] Comp. Dante, Inferno, xiii. 58 sqq., especially 93 sqq., where Petrus de Vineis speaks of his own suicide.
[643] Pier. Valer. pp. 397 sqq., 402. He was the uncle of the writer.
[644] Cœlii Calcagnini, Opera, ed. Basil. 1544, p. 101, in the Seventh Book of the Epistles, No. 27, letter to Jacob Ziegler. Comp. Pierio Val. De inf. lit. ed. Menken, p. 369 sqq.
[645] M. Ant. Sabellici Opera, Epist. l. xi. fol. 56. See, too, the biography in the Elogia of Paolo Giovio, p. 76 sqq. The former appeared separately at Strasburg in 1510, under the title Sabellicus: Vita Pomponii Laeti.