The well known liberality of Cosmo’s disposition, the laudable uses to which he appropriated a considerable portion of his vast wealth, and the engaging familiarity with which he was accustomed to converse with people of merit in every class of life, constituted the most convincing proof of the malignant falsehood of this libel; and the adherents of the house of Medici would have done well, had they treated it with contempt. But thirsting for revenge, they endeavoured to expel the offending satirist from the city, by inducing the assembly of the people considerably to diminish the salaries allowed to the public instructors maintained by the state. To this defalcation of their revenues, the other professors patiently submitted; but Filelfo appealed to the senate, and by the power of his eloquence persuaded that body to restore their literary servants to their former footing in point of emolument. He had also the good fortune to procure the abrogation of a second ordinance obtained by his enemies, whereby the whole of the sums annually granted for the support of public education were marked as objects of retrenchment.[227]
Irritated by these hostile measures, Filelfo declared open war against Cosmo and his friends. He poured forth a torrent of invective in a series of satires, in which the severity of Juvenal, and his nauseous delineations of atrocious vices, are much more successfully imitated than the sublimity of his moral precepts, or the dignity of his style. The bitterness of Filelfo’s wrath was particularly directed against Niccolo Niccoli, whom, sometimes under the contemptuous appellation of Utis, and sometimes under the fanciful designation of Lycolaus, he charged with envy of the learned—hatred of the virtuous—extravagant anger—infidelity—blasphemy—and the most disgusting impurities which have ever swelled the black catalogue of human crimes.[228]
The arrest of Cosmo de’ Medici filled the heart of Filelfo with the greatest joy, as it not only freed him from the dread of a formidable adversary, but also gratified his pride, by fulfilling certain prophetic denunciations with which he had concluded his satire against confidence in wealth. In the exhilaration of triumph, he exulted over the fallen demagogue, to whom he gave the fictitious name of Mundus, in a copy of verses, in the conclusion of which he earnestly exhorted the Florentine nobility not to endanger the safety of the state, by commuting the punishment of death, which their prisoner merited, for the lighter penalty of banishment.[229] Happily for Cosmo, as it has been already related, the sanguinary counsels of his personal enemies were rejected.
Thus when Poggio arrived in Florence, he found the party of his kindest friends reduced to a state of irksome humiliation—his most powerful protector driven into exile; and his most intimate associates daily annoyed by the rancorous effusions of a libeller, whose malignant imagination seemed to supply an inexhaustible store of topics of abuse. In these circumstances, by the fidelity of his attachment to the persecuted partizans of the Medici, he drew down upon his own head the lightning of Filelfo’s wrath; and he soon found himself exhibited as a conspicuous figure in the groups of outrageous caricaturas drawn by the bold hand of the enraged satirist.[230] During the exile of Cosmo, his dread of incurring the displeasure of the ruling faction induced him to submit to obloquy in silence; and Filelfo enjoyed the mean triumph of those who wantonly malign an adversary whose pen is restrained by the strong hand of the civil power. But this triumph was of short duration. The first year of Cosmo’s banishment was not expired, before he was recalled by the commanding voice of the people. On his approach to the city his enemies fled; and amongst the rest, Filelfo, conscious of the provocations by which he had stimulated his resentment, hastily quitted Florence, and withdrew to Siena.[231]
Poggio expressed his joy on the return of his friend in a long epistle, in the commencement of which he intimated, that he had chosen that mode of address in preference to a personal congratulation, in order that his commendation of his patron might be diffused amongst such of the learned as felt an interest in the perusal of his compositions. He then proceeded to dilate at considerable length upon the unanimity with which the Florentine people passed the decree of the recall of Cosmo, which, he justly observed, was a most distinguished proof of his merits. “This is,” said he, “in my opinion, the greatest subject of congratulation in your case—that all ranks concurred in bearing testimony to your dignity and virtue. So earnest was the desire of your return, that the inconveniences resulting to yourself from your exile, must be far overbalanced by the unprecedented honour and affection with which your fellow citizens have received you on your return to your native country.” He concluded this epistle by exhorting his friend to persevere in those virtuous principles which had been his support in the day of adversity, and which had caused him to be restored to the exalted rank in the state from which he had been for a short period displaced by the intrigues of faction.[232]
Poggio had long meditated a signal retaliation of the insults which he had experienced from Filelfo; and no sooner did the Medici regain their ascendancy in the republic, than he proceeded to administer to the acrimonious Tolentine the merciless severity of a literary castigation. Wisely stepping forward as the indignant friend of the injured Niccolo Niccoli, rather than as the avenger of his own wrongs, he published an invective against Filelfo, in which he almost exhausted the Latin language in the accumulation of epithets of abuse. Noticing the obscenity of the satire which, as he says, Filelfo “had vomited forth against his friend, from the feculent stores of his putrid mouth,” he reproved him for the use of terms and phrases which even a strumpet of any degree of reputation would be ashamed to utter. The propensity of the satirist to the adoption of such language, he ascribed to the early taste which he had acquired for impurity, in consequence of the occupation of his mother, whom he represented as living at Rimini, engaged in the most sordid offices.[233] Tracing the history of his antagonist from his earliest days, he alleged, that he was banished from Padua, in consequence of his indulgence of the most depraved propensities; and that, when he had been hospitably entertained at Constantinople by John Crysoloras, he repaid the kindness of his host by debauching his daughter. By the perpetration of this crime, if credit may be given to the assertions of Poggio, Filelfo obtained the hand of a lady, to whom, if her conduct had been in any degree answerable to the nobility of her descent, he would never have had the audacity to aspire.[234] Finally, the enraged secretary accused his adversary of bartering the honour of his wife for the most vicious gratifications, and concluded his invective by proposing to ornament his brows—not with a wreath of laurel, but with a crown more befitting the filthiness of his conversation.[235]
This scurrility, as it might have been naturally expected, served only to inflame the hostile passions which had so long rankled in the breast of Filelfo, and to direct his fury against his new assailant. The exiled professor, accordingly, once more dipping his pen in gall, traduced the morals, and vilified the talents of Poggio, in a bitter satire of one hundred verses in length; of the virulence of which the reader may form some idea from the following translation of its commencement.
Poggio! ere long thy babbling tongue shall feel
The keen impression of the trenchant steel;
That tongue, the herald of malicious lies,