[10]. Strutt, in his “Chronicle of England” has given a plate representing a page of this manuscript, and in Astle’s “History of Writing,” there is a plate of the same page, coloured, in imitation of the original.
[11]. Bede, commonly called the Venerable Bede, was the most learned man of the age in which he lived; he was born at Weremouth, in Northumberland, in the year 672. Both ancient and modern authors have bestowed the highest encomiums upon the learning of this extraordinary man. His works are many, making eight large volumes, in folio, the principal of which is his Ecclesiastical History of the Anglo-Saxons, consisting of five books, from whence the more perfect part of our early history is formed; his other works are the Lives of Saints, Treatises on the Holy Scriptures, and Philosophical Tracts. This great man died at his cell at Jarrow, in the year 735, aged 63.
[12]. Lydgate was commonly called the Monk of Bury, because born at that place, about the year 1380. After some time spent in the English Universities, he travelled through France and Italy, in which countries he greatly improved himself. In addition to his poetical talents, he is described as being an eloquent rhetorician, an expert mathematician, an acute philosopher, and no mean divine. He is said to have been so much admired by his contemporaries, that they said of him, that his wit was fashioned by the Muses themselves. After his return from France and Italy, he became tutor to the sons of several of the nobility, and for his excellent endowments, was much esteemed and reverenced by them. He wrote a poem, called The Life and Death of Hector, some satires, eulogies, and odes, and other learned works in prose. He died in 1440, aged sixty, and was buried in his own convent at Bury. Lydgate is said to have been a disciple of Chaucer.
[13]. Leonard Aretin, the disciple of Chrysoloras, was a linguist, an orator, and an historian; the secretary of four successive Popes; and Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, where he died in 1444, aged seventy-five. He added a Supplement to Livy on the Punic War, and wrote the History of Italy, with other valuable works.
[14]. Emanuel Chrysoloras was one of the envoys sent by the Greek Emperor Manuel, at the end of the fourteenth century, to implore the compassion of the Western Princes. He was not only conspicuous for the nobleness of his birth but also for the extent of his learning. After visiting the courts of France and England, in furtherance of his mission, he was invited to assume the office of a Professor, and Florence had the honour of this invitation, as it had had a few years previously that of the first Greek Professor Leo Pilatus, whose mind was stored with a treasure of Greek learning, with whom history and fable, philosophy and grammar, were alike familiar, and who first read the Poems of Homer in the Schools of Florence. Chrysoloras may be considered as the founder of the Greek language in Italy, and his knowledge not only of the Greek, but of the Latin tongue, surpassed the expectation of the Florentine republic. At the same time and place, the Latin classics were explained by John of Ravenna, the domestic pupil of the celebrated Petrarch. The Italians, who illustrated their age and country, were formed in this double school, and Florence became the fruitful seminary of Greek and Roman erudition. Chrysoloras was recalled by the Emperor from the college to the court, but he afterwards taught at Pavia and Rome with equal industry and applause. He died at Constance on a public mission from the Emperor to the council. Gibbon’s Hist. vol. 12. p. 126.
[15]. Laurentius Valla, was a native of Placenza, where he was born in 1415; he revived the Latin language from gothic barbarity, but he was a rigorous critic. He fell under the displeasure of the Church of Rome, for the freedom with which he hazarded his opinions respecting some of its doctrines, and he was condemned to be burnt, but was saved by Alphonsus, king of Naples. Pope Nicholas the fifth, who was himself one of the greatest encouragers of learning of his time, and who highly respected the talents of Valla, invited him to Rome, and gave him a pension.—This Pope, whose pursuits were in direct association with our present subject, from a plebeian origin, raised himself by his virtue and his learning to the highest honours of the Church. The character of the man prevailed over the interest of the Pontiff, and he sharpened those weapons which were soon pointed against the religion of Rome. He had been the friend of the most eminent scholars of the age, and after his elevation to the chair of St. Peter, he became their patron. Under Pope Nicholas, the influence of the Holy See pervaded Christendom, and he exerted that influence in the search, not of benefices, but of books. From the ruins of the Byzantine libraries, from the darkest monasteries of Germany and Britain, he collected the dusty manuscripts of the writers of antiquity; and whenever the original could not be removed, a faithful copy was transcribed and transmitted for his use. The Vatican was daily replenished with precious furniture, and such was his industry, that in a reign of eight years, he formed a library of five thousand volumes. To his munificence the Latin world was indebted for the versions of Xenophon, Diodorus, Polybius, Thucydides, Herodotus, and Appian; of Strabo’s Geography, of the Iliad, of the more valuable works of Plato and Aristotle, of Ptolemy, and Theophrastus, and of the Fathers of the Greek Church.
[16]. For an account of the following Manuscript Libraries in England, see Savage’s Librarian, 3 vols. London, 1808-1810—namely, that of the British Museum, in vol. 1. p. 26; of the Royal Society, p. 71; of the Heralds Office, p. 73; of the Society of Antiquaries, p. 129; of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s at Lambeth Palace, p. 133; of Lincoln’s Inn, p. 183, 225; of the Middle Temple, p. 273; of the Inner Temple, vol. 2. p. 131; of the Lansdown Collection of Manuscripts, vol. 1. p. 34, and vol. 3. p. 27, and of the Cottonian Manuscripts, vol. 3. p. 31.
The curious reader who is interested in the history of the public records of his country, will find in the same volumes, the Report of the Committee of the House of Commons on the State of the Records, in vol. 1. p. 17, &c.—an account of the Records in the Tower of London, vol. 2. p. 34, &c. of those in the Rolls Chapel, ibid. p. 185, &c. and of those in the Chapter House of Westminster Abbey, vol. 3. p. 41, &c.
[17]. Vide Serjeant Heywood’s Vindication of Mr. Fox’s History of James the Second, p. 397.
[18]. Fuller’s Worthies, p. 317.