MODERN HISTORY OF ENGLAND. BOOK II. CHAP. I. SKETCH OF THE INTELLECTUAL EXCITEMENT; SPIRIT OF I. IF a new era in the mind and history of mankind CHAP. was felt by some of the most distinguished of his contemporaries to be accompanying the age and reign of Henry VIII. it is still more manifest to us, who can now look back thro the three centuries of events which have since succeeded, that an extraordinary and beneficent revolution, still enlarging in its consequences, was then advancing on Europe, and beginning to penetrate into the British Islands. A simultaneous activity; a desire of improvement, and of personal distinction connected with the progress; new directions of thought, and new facts or opinions resulting from industrious research and very varied pursuits, appeared to be rising in every department of human exertion and inquiry. BOOK II. The labors and the results were not, as in former times, partial and limited; the mind began to act with an universality and with an emulous diversity which preceding ages had never equally witnessed. In science; in art; in war; in literature; in mechanical inventions; in navigation; in civil polity and in a more diffused and elaborate education, as well as on the venerated topics of religion and its establishments, individuals from every class of life, and in every region on the continent, emerged into notice. by their activity, their improvements, their speculations, and their discoveries. The intellectual principle, which animates and guides the human frame, displayed in all things an excited and an investigating curiosity; awakening from the sleep of its former contentedness, and never to be deadened or satiated again. This great commotion and new evolution of mind. began in the fourteenth century; and in Italy and England more decidedly than in any other nation." In both these countries, Literature suddenly ascending out of its former vernacular rudeness, yet deviating from ancient models, assumed original forms and topics of composition, which kindled future genius, and interested the public heart." They No country in this century, out of Italy, could shew, at the same time, six such men as Gower, Chaucer, Wickliffe, The Black Prince, Raymond Lully, and W. Occham; all contemporaries, and pre-eminent in their respective pursuits. 2 The lettered world has not received from Greece or Rome any works like those of Petrarch, Dante or Boccacio, either in form or subject; and if the first of these authors be in part an emanation from the Troubadours, the two last had no previous exemplar. All three have preserved the enviable fortune of continuing to be the common classics of their country, in its more polished age, as Hesiod and Homer were in Greece. Our Brunne, Gower and Chaucer, are as became the general study and conversation both to the noble and middle ranks; and by this happy effect diffused the taste and means of mental culti vation, and gave to society at large, improving as well as additional sources of individual enjoyment. In Italy, from causes not fully discernible, the genius of Painting, which had departed from the ancient world in the days of the first Cæsars,3 suddenly re-appeared, as if recalled by enchantment, in some gifted individuals; and that interesting art, which confers on the educated hand, the power of creating to the gratified eye, the finest conceptions of the imagination, attained gradually a perfection, which still moves in every spectator that interior sympathy for the beautiful and the grand, of which every bosom has been made susceptible. With original in their qualities and style, and became as important in their public effect; but, like Ennius and Lucilius in Rome, being deficient in that correctness and harmony of verse which good taste requires, they no longer form a part of the usual reading of their countrymen. The Roman du Rose of France, as peculiar as the others, but far less poetical, has become as obsolete as it was once attractive. 3 We learn this little-noticed fact from a passage in Petronius Arbiter, who lived under Nero. I inquired why the art of painting should have become lost, which had not left even the smallest trace of its ancient lustre;' he answered, 'that the insatiable desire of amassing money was the cause of the change. When virtue was valued, the arts and sciences were in their perfection, and an emulation arose among mankind, which urged them to something that could be useful to posterity. Wonder then no more that Painting has expired (deficit,) when an ingot of gold seems more beautiful to all men and their divinities, than any thing that Apelles, Phidias, or the raving Greeks, may have made.'-Petron.Satyr. The revival of painting by Cimabue, a Florentine gentleman, in 1300, was still more remarkable in his pupil, Giotto, a shepherd, whom he found sketching his sheep and goats upon the rocks and stones about him. The love and power of this creative art had fallen like inspiration upon this humble peasant as he was watching his flock among his native hills. The rural disciple soon excelled his generous and liberal-minded master. Both concurred to take Italian painting out of its lifeless rudeness, and to give it the first breathings of that spirit and sentiment which have since so wonderfully animated this noble product of the human talent. See Lanzi Stor. Pittor. and Roscoe's pleasing translation. СНАР. I. BOOK quickly succeeding step, and as if appointed to II. perform its emulous part on the great theatre of public improvement, Classical Literature re-entered Europe at this period, in its richest and most attractive shape, and with all its interesting novelties; for, above fifty years before the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, Greek literature was introduced into Italy after an absence of seven hundred years." Spreading thence into France, Holland, and Germany, as that catastrophe multiplied its teachers in the exiles, whom every one pitied, and whom the great nobly cherished; and crossing in due time 8 It was in 1389 that Paulus Langius, who lived in the next century, dates the arrival of Manuel Chrysoloras in Italy. Lang. Chron. p.845. 1 Pist. Tho the Mag. Chron. Belgicum states that he brought into it the Greek learning in 1398. p. 300. He was sent by the Grecian Emperor to solicit aid from the Christian States against the advancing Turks. He so generally pleased, as to be invited by the Italian princes to remain with them, and after returning to Constantinople with the result of his mission, he came back into Italy with another Greek scholar, Demetrius Cidonius, and settled at Venice. Inquiring men came to him to learn his language and see his books, and he was at length settled in Florence in 1399, as teacher of this interesting tongue, with an annual stipend of 100 florins. In 1400 he was at Milan, and in 1403 at Genoa, for the same great purpose. Tirab. Lit. Ital. T. 6. p. 781. The same valuable Jesuit notices his disciples, p. 785. A Grecian was in 1408 elected Pope, who assumed the name of Alexander V. From him, Langius says, as from the Trojan Horse, a host with light and knowlege issued, p. 845. It was in 1470, that George Tifernas went from his school in Italy, and first taught Greek at Paris, whom Hier. Spartiata succeeded, Meibom. Chron. Ridd. p. 380. Within fifty years afterwards, the Greek historians, and Plutarch's Lives and Morals, were translated into Latin. Eras. Ep. Botzh. 7 At Paris, from Spartiata, Erasmus imbibed the new knowlege, and carried it to Daventer; as Capnio did into Paderborn. While Rud. Agricola learnt it from Gaza to diffuse it also into Germany. Meib. ib. Of him, Erasmus says, that he 'first of all brought an aurulam melioris literaturæ to us out of Italy; I saw him at Daventer when I was twelve years old.' Ep. Botzhemo. Jortin. v. 3. p. 105. Erasmus translated the Hecuba of Euripides, and much of Lucan, and Gaza's grammar, expressly, ut plures alliceremus ad studium Grecanici Sermonis.' ib. Cardinal Cusa, in his dedication to Nicholas V. expresses to him, You have acted most magnificently in causing the MSS. of all the Greek writers as well as of the Latin, which by your wonderful exertions 1. our Channel into England," it established every CHAP. where new habits and objects of intellectual gratification. Studied even by the aged, as it had been by the half-murmuring Cato in Rome, 10 it diffused a taste for elegance of style, for discrimination and delicacy of expression and meaning, and for an aspiring philosophy of thought which was too stimulating, and often too rash, not to excite the alarm of the well intentioned," and at last the enmity of those who, for selfish purposes, wished the torpid submission of the human mind to be its unaltering condition, and its contented degradation." As these could be found, to be most accurately brought to our knowlege.' Cusa Oper. p. 1004. Vespasiano also mentions of this pope, that with much trouble he prevailed on Chrysoloras to come into Italy, and defrayed a large portion of his expenses, and caused the Palla family to befriend him. As there were no Greek books then in Italy, they procured from Constantinople copies of Ptolemy, Plutarch, Plato, Aristotle, and other celebrated authors. Tirab. Stor. Lit. v. 6. p. 786. Lorenzo de Medici was also a zealous patron of Greek literature. One of its earliest cultivators before the Turkish triumph was Cardinal Juliano, whom Cusa calls his preceptor, and whom he extols for his supreme knowlege of the best Greek as well as Latin authors-he marks the Greek with nunc etiam,' as the more recent acquisition. 9 Vitellius from Tuscany, his pupil Grocyn, and Linacer, who studied in Italy, and translated part of Proclus, and dedicated it to Henry VII., were the first teachers of Greek at Oxford. W. Latimer, Cheke and Ascham, became soon afterwards distinguished for their proficiency in it. 10 We have an instance of this in our bishop Fisher, beheaded with sir Thomas More. At the age of 40 he applied to it, tho he found the study of it, and of Hebrew, at that age, very difficult to him. Rud. Agricola, at the same age of 40, applied to Hebrew, to which Erasmus at 53, re-applied. Jort. Eras. 1. p. 76. "The remark of the monk Langius on his contemporaries, shews this feeling: He says, 'This Hussite heresy, ut semper, had its beginning from the literati and philosophical men. And what else could or can Philosophy effect, that mother of heresy and parent of errors, but produce the seeds of heresy. As far as it can, it always contaminates the Catholic faith.' Chron. p. 852. It was beneficial to literature, but not creditable to its moral effects, that the notorious Alexander VI. was then a great example and promoter of it. Lang. Chron. p. 883. But the occasional union of profligacy and intellectual cultivation has often startled and disgusted the wiser mind. 12 There is no more natural connection between Greek and Atheism, |