[97] Petrarch in 1350 found a bad copy at Florence. Poggio describes it thus:—'Is vero apud nos antea, Italos dico, ita laceratus erat, ita circumcisus culpâ, ut opinor, temporum, ut nulla forma, nullus habitus hominis in eo recognosceretur.'
[98] Mur. xx. 169. Cf. the Elegy of Landino quoted in the notes to Roscoe's Lorenzo, p. 388.
[99] Voigt, p. 138.
[100] See Voigt, p. 139, for this story.
[101] See the emphatic language about Palla degli Strozzi, Cosimo de' Medici, and Niccolo de' Niccoli, in Vespasiano's Lives. Islam, moreover, as is proved by Pletho's Life, was at that period more erudite than Hellas.
[102] I have touched upon this subject elsewhere. See Studies of Greek Poets, second series, pp. 304-307. In order to form a conception of the utter decline of Byzantine learning after Photius, it is needful to read the passages in Petrarch's letters, where even Calabria is compared favourably with Constantinople. In a state of ignorance so absolute as he describes, it is possible that treasures existed unknown to professed students, and therefore undiscovered by Filelfo and his fellow-workers. The testimony of Demetrius Chalcondylas, quoted by Didot, Alde Manuce, p. xiv., goes to show that the Greeks attributed their losses in large measure to the malice of the priests.
[103] The details of Virgil's romance occupy the first half of Comparetti's second volume on Virgil in the Middle Ages. For the English version of this legend see Thoms.
[104] See above, [pp. 38-49].
[105] Gibbon, ch. lxxi.
[106] [Vol. I., Age of the Despots], p. 200.