No place having hitherto occurred suitable for mention of theTravels of Marco Polo, they, although belonging to the thirteenth century, may find mention here. From the purely literary point of view they are of no great importance, but as the first book that opened the knowledge of the East to Europeans, their significance cannot be overrated. Mention should also be made of another traveller, CIRIACO DI ANCONA, the first archæologist, who, in the second quarter of the fifteenth century, set the example of collecting inscriptions and works of antiquity.
The next prose author whom it is necessary to mention, ENEA SILVIO PICCOLOMINI, afterwards Pope Pius the Second (1405-64), writing solely in Latin, has no place in the literary history of the Italian language, but is perhaps the most typical example of the fifteenth-century man of letters, accomplished, versatile, adroit, imperfectly restrained by principle, but inspired by a genuine zeal for culture and humanity. No literary personage since Petrarch had displayed such various activity, or, by his controversial, no less than by his diplomatic ability, had exerted an equal influence in the affairs of Church and State. Apart from the substantial merits of his writings, Æneas is a typical figure as indicating that the pen was beginning to govern the world, and that literary dexterity could make a Pope of a struggling adventurer. As an author he has come down to our day by his Commentaries of his own times, one of that valuable class of histories whose authors can say, “Pars magna fui”; and by hisEuryalus and Lucretia, a romance founded on an actual occurrence, and noteworthy as a precursor of the modern novel.
In LEONE BATTISTA ALBERTI (1404-72) we at length encounter a humanist accomplished alike in the learned and the vulgar tongue; while, like Leonardo da Vinci, to whom he offers a strong resemblance, less remarkable for any particular work than for the universality of his genius. An architect and mathematician, an engineer and the inventor of the camera obscura, he was almost the first of the moderns to treat these subjects scientifically, and extended his researches to painting and sculpture. His literary celebrity, however, arises rather from his treatiseDella Famiglia, a model of practical wisdom, couched in the clear and cheerful spirit of a Goethe, and affording a pleasing insight into the Italian family life of the period, as yet unspoiled by luxury. “What he says about the beauty of the body is worthy of a Greek, what he says about exercise might have been written by an Englishman” (Symonds). The third book, superior to the others in diction, has been attributed to Agnolo Pandolfini, a distinguished Florentine statesman of an earlier date, but Alberti’s claim to it seems satisfactorily established. HisIciarchia, a treatise on the ideal prince, is also a remarkable work; and his novelette,Ippolito and Leonora, founded on a Florentine tradition, is distinguished by pathos and simplicity. Alberti was the natural son of a Florentine exile, and was born at Genoa. His early years were years of hardship. Restored to his ancestral city, he there executed important architectural and engineering works, and subsequently metamorphosed into a splendid temple the old church at Rimini, which Sigismondo Malatesta dedicated in its altered form to the memory of his mistress Isotta. He was afterwards abbreviator of Papal briefs at Rome. Deprived of this office, along with sixty-nine other eminent scholars, by the Philistine but practical Pope Paul II., he devoted himself to architecture at Florence and Mantua, and died at Rome in 1472.
The excellent VESPASIANO DA BISTICCI (1421-98), almost alone among his literary contemporaries, followed a trade, being a bookseller at Florence. He formed the great library of the first Duke of Urbino, and has left particulars of his zeal in the preparation of illuminated manuscripts, and a vigorous expression of his disesteem for printed books in comparison with them. We are indebted to him for no fewer than 105 biographies of contemporaries, most of whom were personally known to him. A few, of considerable length and elaboration, record the lives of popes, kings, and cardinals; the great majority are brief and simple notices of scholars and literary men, some of whom, but for Bisticci, would be almost unknown. All are charming from their unaffected simplicity and geniality, and the curious traits of the age which they preserve.
Had GIOVANNI PONTANO (1426-1503) written in the vernacular, he would have won a place equal to any contemporary’s as a poet, and a place among prose-writers entirely his own. Though a statesman and diplomatist, the confidant of the King of Naples, a philologist beside, and the life and soul of the Neapolitan Academy, he is none the less the Lucian and the Martial of his age; the lively satirist and delineator of popular manners in his dialogues; in his verse a genuine lyrist, careful of form as a Greek, animated and eager as if he had been a born Neapolitan. His prose and verse palpitate with feeling, and he gains life at the expense of Latinity. His historical writings, though respectable, are of less mark; but as a popular poet and satirist, Italian speech had an infinite loss in him. Even as it is, he seems but one remove from a vernacular author. His dialogues had probably much influence upon Erasmus. Another contemporary figure is strange and enigmatical. We know but imperfectly who FRANCESCO COLONNA, the author of theHypnerotomachia Poliphili, was, and can only guess why he composed his visionary romance in a macaronic jargon neither Latin nor Italian. The book describes a vision in which Polifilo, after viewing magnificent processions and going through various adventures, ultimately obtains the hand of his lady, Polia, who has been identified with Lucrezia Lello, daughter of a jurisconsult at Treviso. It is barely readable, and yet its very inarticulateness gives it a charm which it would not have possessed if the author had been another Boccaccio. The soul of the Renaissance seems to have passed into it, and to be dumbly yearning for a manifestation never found, “moving apart in worlds not realised.” The impression is greatly assisted by the unique illustrations to which it owes its preciousness in artistic eyes, and whose origin is still an unsolved problem. Their lavish fancy and skill in rendering every variety of expression by mere outline are apparent to all; but behind these technical qualities lies the suggestion of a romantic and far-away world, comparable to the Hades adumbrated in the tender farewells on Greek sepulchral reliefs.
On the whole the literary harvest of the century following the death of Petrarch was poor, and the seed dispersed by him and Boccaccio seemed to have fallen upon barren ground. It was not, however, entirely thus: some of the Latin poets, such as Baptista Mantuanus, Campanus, Augurellus, whom we have been compelled to pass without special notice, might have won durable renown if they had written in Italian; and though there is little achievement in vernacular literature, several branches of human activity are for the first time in modern Europe brought under literary influence. The dearth of literary genius was paralleled by an equal paucity of statesmen and warriors of real greatness, though a Ziska or a Sforza appears here and there. Some mysterious cause had depressed the intellectual vitality of the age, which, nevertheless, continued to progress in social refinement and in opulence. Its æsthetic sensitiveness was chiefly expressed in the rapid development of pictorial and plastic art, and the renovation of architecture; its literary ideal was mainly manifested by the philological and critical apostles of the Renaissance, a remarkable band, who must find place in another chapter. As was to be expected under such circumstances, one of the features of the time was the improvement of the old universities and the formation of private societies of scholars, which expressed Italian intellectual needs as clearly as the foundation of the Royal Society expressed English needs at a later elate. Two achieved special celebrity—the Roman Academy, persecuted by Pope Paul II. for its relapse into paganism, and the Platonic Academy at Florence, cherished by the Medici. It fell to the lot of the latter to solemnly decide, under the auspices of Lorenzo de’ Medici, that the Italian language actually was on a par with the Latin, and that a man of wit or learning need not fear to lose caste by writing in it.
FOOTNOTES:
[9] Many will be found in a collection unfortunately published on too limited a scale to be generally accessible, Daelli’sBiblioteca Rara.