About the same period, Boccaccio also collected several Latin MSS., and copied such as he could not purchase. He transcribed so many of the Latin poets, orators, and historians, that it would appear surprising had a copyist by profession performed so much. In a journey to Monte Casino, a place generally considered as remarkably rich in MSS., he was both astonished and afflicted to find the library exiled from the monastery into a barn, which was accessible only by a ladder. He opened many of the books, and found much of the writing effaced by damp. His grief was redoubled when the monks told him, that when they wanted money, they erased an ancient writing, wrote psalters and legends on the parchment, and sold the new MSS. to women and children[548].
But though, in the fourteenth century, copies of the classics were multiplied and rendered more accessible to the world, and though a few were made by such hands as those of Petrarch and Boccaccio, the transcriptions in general were much less accurate than those of a former period. The Latin tongue, which had received more stability than could otherwise have been expected, from having been consecrated in the service of the church, had now at length become a dead language, and many of the transcribers did not understand what they wrote. Still more mistakes than those produced by ignorance, were occasioned by the presumption of pretenders to learning, who were often tempted to alter the text, in order to accommodate the sense to their own slender capacity and defective taste. Whilst a remedy has been readily found for the gross oversight or neglect of the ignorant and idle, in substituting one letter for another, or inserting a word without meaning, errors affecting the sense of the author, which were thus introduced, have been of the worst species, and have chiefly contributed to compose that mass of various readings, on which the sagacity of modern scholars has been so copiously exercised. In a passage of Coluccio Salutati’s treatise De Fato, published by the Abbé Mehus, the various modes in which MSS. were depraved by copyists are fully pointed out[549]. To such extent had these corruptions proceeded, that Petrarch, talking of the MSS. of his own time, and those immediately preceding it, asks, “Quis scriptorum inscitiæ medebitur, inertiæque corrumpenti omnia ac miscenti? Non quæro jam aut queror Orthographiam, quæ jam dudum interiit; qualitercunque utinam scriberent quod jubentur. An si redeat Cicero aut Livius, ante omnes Plinius Secundus, sua scripta religentes intelligent?” So sensible was Coluccio Salutati of the injury which had been done to letters by the ignorance or negligence of transcribers, that he proposed, as a check to the evil, that public libraries should be every where formed, the superintendence of which should be given to men of learning, who might carefully collate the MSS. intrusted to them, and ascertain the most correct readings[550]. To this labour, and to the detection of counterfeit works, of which many, from various motives, now began to be circulated, Coluccio devoted a considerable portion of his own time and studies. His plan for the institution of public libraries did not succeed; but he amassed a private one, which, in that age, was second only to the library of Petrarch. A considerable classical library, though consisting chiefly of the later classics, particularly Seneca, Macrobius, Apuleius, and Suetonius, was amassed by Tedaldo de Casa, whose books, with many remarks and emendations in his own hand, were inspected by the Abbé Mehus in the library of Santa-Croce at Florence[551].
The path which had been opened up by Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Coluccio Salutati, in the fourteenth century, was followed out in the ensuing century with wonderful assiduity and success by Poggio Bracciolini, Filelfo, and Ambrosio Traver[pg A-13]sari, Abbott of Camaldoli, under the guidance and protection of the Medicean Family and Niccolo Niccoli.
Of all the learned men of his time, Poggio seems to have devoted himself with the greatest industry to the search for classical MSS. No difficulties in travelling, or indifference in the heads of convents to his literary inquiries, could damp his zeal. His ardour and exertions were fortunately crowned with most complete success. The number of MSS. discovered by him in different parts of Europe, during the space of nearly fifty years, will remain a lasting proof of his unceasing perseverance, and of his sagacity in these pursuits. Having spent his youth in travelling through different countries, he at length settled at Rome, where he continued as secretary, in the service of eight successive Pontiffs. In this capacity he, in the year 1414, accompanied Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, which was opened in that year. While residing at Constance, he made several expeditions, most interesting to letters, in intervals of relaxation during the prosecutions of Jean Hus and Jerome of Prague, of which he had the official charge. His chief excursion was to the monastery of St Gal, about twenty miles distance from Constance, where his information led him to expect that he might find some MSS. of the ancient Roman writers[552]. The earliest Abbots, and many of the first monks of St Gal, had been originally transferred to that monastery from the literary establishment founded by Charlemagne at Fulda. Werembert and Helperic, who were sent to St Gal from Fulda in the ninth century, introduced in their new residence a strong taste for letters, and the practice of transcribing the classics. In examining the Histoire Litteraire de la France, by the Benedictines, we find that no monastery in the middle ages produced so many distinguished scholars as St Gal. In this celebrated convent, which, (as Tenhove expresses it) had been so long the Dormitory of the Muses, Poggio discovered some of the most valuable classics,—not, however, in the library of the cloister, but covered with dust and filth, and rotting at the bottom of a dungeon, where, according to his own account, no criminal condemned to death would have been thrown[553]. This evinces that whatever care may at one time have been taken of classical MSS. by the monks, they had subsequently been shamefully neglected.
The services rendered to literature by Ambrosio of Camaldoli were inferior only to those of Poggio. Ambrosio was born at Forli in 1386, and was a disciple of Emanuel Chrysoloras. At the age of fourteen, he entered into the convent of Camaldoli at Florence, and thirty years afterwards became the Superior of his order. In the kind conciliatory disposition of Ambrosio, manifested by his maintaining an uninterrupted friendship with Niccolo Niccoli, Poggio, and Filelfo, and by moderating the quarrels of these irascible Literati—in his zeal for the sacred interests, discipline, and purity of his convent, to which his own moral conduct afforded a spotless example—and, finally, in his enthusiastic love of letters, in which he was second only to Petrarch, we behold the brightest specimen of the monastic character, of which the memory has descended to us from the middle ages. Though chiefly confined within the limits of a cloister, Ambrosio had perhaps the best pretensions of any man of his age, to the character of a polite scholar. The whole of the early part of his life, and the leisure of its close, were employed in collecting ancient MSS. from every quarter where they could be procured, and in maintaining a constant correspondence with the most distinguished men of his age. His letters which have been published in 1759, at Florence, with a long preface and life by the Abbé Mehus, contain the fullest information that can be any where found with regard to the recovery of ancient classical MSS. and the state of literature at Florence in the fifteenth century.
It would appear from these Epistles, that though the monks had been certainly instrumental in preserving the precious relics of classical antiquity, their avarice and bigotry now rather obstructed the prosecution of the researches undertaken for the purpose of bringing them to light. It was their interest to keep these treasures to themselves, because it was a maxim of their policy to impede the diffusion of knowledge, and because the transcription of MSS. was to them a source of considerable emolument. Hence they often threw obstacles in the way of the inquiries of the learned, who were obliged to have recourse to various artifices, in order to draw classical MSS. from the recesses of the cloister[554].
The exertions of Poggio and Ambrosio, however, were stimulated and aided by the munificent patronage of many opulent individuals of that period, who spared no expense in reimbursing and rewarding those who had made successful researches after these favourite objects of pursuit. “To such an enthusiasm,” says Tiraboschi, “was this desire carried, that long journeys were undertaken, treasures were levied, and enmities were excited, for the sake of an ancient MS.; and the discovery of a book was regarded as almost equivalent to the conquest of a kingdom.”
The most zealous promoters of these researches, and most eager collectors of MSS. during the fifteenth century, were the Cardinal Ursini, Niccolo Niccoli and the Family of Medici.
Niccolo Niccoli, who was an humble citizen of Florence, devoted his whole time and fortune to the acquisition of ancient MSS. In this pursuit he had been eminently successful, having collected together 800 volumes, of which a great proportion contained Roman authors. Poggio, in his funeral oration of Niccolo, bears ample testimony to his liberality and zeal, and attributes the successful discovery of so many classical MSS. to the encouragement which he had afforded. “Quod autem,” says he, “egregiam laudem meretur, summam operam, curamque adhibuit ad pervestigandos auctores, qui culpâ temporum perierant. Quâ in re verè possum dicere, omnes libros fere, qui noviter tum ab aliis reperti sunt, tum a me ipso, qui integrum Quintilianum, Ciceronis nostri orationes, Silium Italicum, Marcellinum, Lucretii partem, multosque præterea e Germanorum Gallorumque ergastulis, meâ diligentiâ eripui, atque in lucem extuli, Nicholai suasu, impulsu, cohortatione, et pæne verborum molestiâ esse Latinis literis restitutos[555].” Several of these classical works Niccolo copied with his own hand, and with great accuracy, after he had received them[556]. The MSS. in his hand-writing were long known and distinguished by the beauty and distinctness of the characters. Nor did he content himself with mere transcription: He diligently employed himself in correcting the errors of the MSS. which were transmitted to him, and arranging the text in its proper order. “Quum eos auctores,” says Mehus, “ex vetustissimis codicibus exscriberet, qui suo potissimum consilio, aliorum vero operâ inventi sunt, non solum mendis, quibus obsiti erant, expurgavit, sed etiam distinxit, capitibusque locupletavit[557].” Such was the judgment of Niccolo, in this species of emendation, that Politian always placed the utmost reliance on his MS. copies[558]; and, indeed, from a complimentary poem addressed to him in his own time, it would seem that he had carefully collated different MSS. of the same work, before he transcribed his own copy—
“Ille hos errores, unâ exemplaribus actis