[9] Vespasiano, Vita di Piero de' Pazzi. Compare the beautiful letter of Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini to his nephew (Ep. Lib. i. 4). He reminds the young man that fair as youth is, and delightful as are the pleasures of the May of life, learning is more fair and knowledge more delightful. 'Non enim Lucifer aut Hesperus tam pulcher est quam sapientia quæ studiis acquiritur litterarum.'
[10] It is enough to refer to Luther's Table Talk upon the state of Rome in Leo's reign.
[11] Poliziano, Pontano, Sannazzaro, and Bembo divided their powers between scholarship and poetry, to the injury of the latter.
[12] For the low state of criticism, even in a good age, see Aulus Gellius, lib. xiv. cap. vi. He describes the lecture of a rhetor, quispiam linguæ Latinæ literator, on a passage in the seventh Æneid. The man's explanation of the word bidentes proves an almost more than mediæval puerility and ignorance.
[13] Most of the following quotations will be found in Comparetti, Virgilio nel Medio Evo, vol. i., a work of sound scholarship and refined taste upon the place of Virgil in the Middle Ages.
[14] Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore minus, for example, was altered into Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore nihil; for lusisset amores was substituted dampnasset amores, and so forth.
[15] The hymn quoted above in the text refers to a legend of S. Paul having visited the tomb of Virgil at Naples:—
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'When to Maro's tomb they brought him Tender grief and pity wrought him To bedew the stone with tears; What a saint I might have crowned thee, Had I only living found thee, Poet first and without peers!' |
[16] The common use of the word grammarie for occult science in our ballads illustrates this phase of popular opinion. So does the legend of Friar Bacon. See Thoms, Early English Prose Romances.
[17] Didot, in his Life of Aldus, tries to make out that Greek learning survived in Ireland longer than elsewhere.