IV. He did not remain in England long after this; soon after the midsummer of 1422 he left this country. His motive for taking this step may have been that he ended by giving up all hope of exchanging his laborious living for a sinecure free benefice, or of obtaining a permanent appointment to a prebend that was without any jurisdiction attached to it; or, what may be far more likely, he resolutely abandoned every object he had in view in England for the far brighter prospects that opened out before him at home if he undertook the forgery which had been proposed to him by Lamberteschi, and to which he had been invited by the promise of, in the first instance, a magnificent pecuniary reward, and afterwards the possibility of many rare advantages.

Only a fortnight after the last letter to Niccoli he addressed to him another, the last he wrote from London, on the 25th of June, 1422, couched in language which showed how deeply involved his Florentine friend was in the plot of the forgery: "If Lamberteschi would only place something certain before us, which we could adopt or approve," he wrote; and "How heartily I hope that Lamberteschi will do what would be so agreeable to us both." "Si Petrus certum quid responderit, quod sequi ant probare possimus"—"Quam maxime exopto, ut Petrus perficiat, quae vellemus" (Ep. I. 22).

From this day we hear no more of him in London. Sometime during the summer of 1422 he returned to Rome, and, following the advice of the Cardinal Archbishop of Pisa, went back to his old employment in Rome at the Secretariate, but now, it would appear, as the Principal Secretary to the Pope,—a post which he obtained with little or no intercession, as borne testimony to by himself: —"Ego effectus sum Secretarius Pontificis, et quidem nullis precibus, vel admodum paucis" (Ep. II. 2).

Here then was Bracciolini again in Rome, not then a city of saints and sacred things, but of scoffing priests and absolved sinners: we all know what Luther said on returning to Wittenberg, after his first visit to Rome: "everything is permitted there except to be an honest man." If that was true at the commencement of the sixteenth century, it was much more true at the commencement of the fifteenth.

Count Corniani, in his "Ages of Italian Literature," is of opinion that Bracciolini had been in Hungary (II. 76). If so, it must have been after he left England; he could not then have been so soon, as I have stated, in Rome: he was there, however, for a certainty, as some of his letters now extant show, in the earlier portion of the spring of the following year; even this is against his having been in Hungary, except on the ground that almost immediately after he had arrived there, he found that whatever it was that Lamberteschi had offered to him was neither practicable nor agreeable; therefore he relinquished it and accepted the office of Secretary in the Papal Court. Bracciolini, however, does not seem to have gone to Hungary; nor was there any necessity that he should have done so, if my theory be correct; for then, so far from Lamberteschi's offer being neither practicable nor agreeable, it was both so feasible and pleasant, that it was in order to accomplish it, he expressly accepted the Secretary's post in the Court of Rome. He could not have carried out the forgery had he remained in England, because he would not have had the necessary leisure, on account of the heavy duties attached to his cure; and we have seen how he could get neither a sinecure nor a simple prebend; but to be in the Secretariate of the Papacy was to be the holder of an office with little or nothing to do, which gave him ample leisure for literary pursuits. He, therefore, became reconciled to accepting the Papal Secretaryship; "it being the way with a wise man," he observed in a philosophic spirit, "to do the best he can under circumstances, and be satisfied." If by being Secretary to the Pope he saw he could procure what he wanted, which was "obtaining a support," stick to the Secretariate he would; accordingly, he staid in Rome, devoting himself to his books. "Parere temporis semper sapientis est habitum. Si videro me hac via consecuturum, quod cupio, hoc est aliquod sustentaculum, tum adhaeream: quiescens in studiis, hic manebo" (Ep. II. 2).

As if preparing for some great literary undertaking connected with antiquity, he wrote from Rome on the 15th of May, 1423, to his friend Niccoli to let him have without the least delay all his notes and extracts from the various books (and they not a few and miscellaneous) which he had read; here it may be observed that what Cortese, Bishop of Urbino, says of the Camaldolese General, Traversari, is strictly applicable to him:—"Such was his inexhaustible love of reading, he regretted a moment spent away from his books; and every day, when not engaged in writing, devoured the compositions of the ancient Greeks and Romans": ("Erat in hoc homine inexhaustus quidem legendi amor; nullum enim patiebatur esse vacuum tempus. Quotidie aut scribebat, aut aliquid ex Graecis Latinisque litteris mandabat"):—"Mittas ad me, rogo, singula commentariola mea, hoc est, excerpta illa ex variis libris, quos legi, quae sunt plurima, ac dispersa; collige simul omnia, oro te, et ad me quamprimum mittas" (Ep. II. 2).

Having, no doubt, obtained in due time the notes and extracts wanted, apparently in the autumn of 1423, he then set about the commencement of his immortal and wonderful forgery, or, as he styles it in the fabrication itself, his "condensed and inglorious drudgery,"—"nobis in arto et inglorius labor" (Annal. IV. 31); for in a letter written from Rome in the night of the 8th of October that year he makes a reflection about "beginnings of any kind being arduous and difficult," following up the remark with these striking words: that "what the ancients did pleasantly, quickly and easily was to him troublesome, tedious and burdensome"; a remark which he could not have made unless he was attempting something in the way of the ancients; unless, moreover, he was just setting about it; then he consoles himself by again repeating his favourite sage old saw from Virgil: that "hard work gets over everything":—"In quibusvis quoque rebus principia sunt ardua et difficilia; ut quod antiquioribus in officio sit jucundum, promptum ac leve, mihi sit molestum, tardum, onerosum. Sed 'labor omnia vincit improbus'" (Ep. II. 5).

A month after this significant declaration he was hard at work forging the Annals of Tacitus; for we find him earnestly plying for books that were indispensable for any one writing the history of the early Roman Emperors. In a letter to Niccoli dated Rome, the 6th of November, 1423, he begs his friend to do all he can to get him some map of Ptolemy's Geography; to bear it in mind in case one should happen to fall in his way; also not to forget Suetonius and the other historians, and, above all, Plutarch's Lives of Illustrious Characters: "Vellem aliquam Chartam Ptolemaei Geographiae, si fieri posset; in hoc cogita, si quid forte inciderit; ac etiam Suetonium, aliosque Historicos, et praesertim Plutarchi Viros Illustres non obliviscaris" (Ep. II. 7).

If it be said that Bracciolini wrote a History of Florence, and that these remarks which, unquestionably, refer to some "history" from the expression "describendi gesta illius," apply to that work, it must be borne in mind that he did not write that history until towards the close of his life, that is, more than thirty years after these letters which passed between him and Niccoli, for the events recorded in his History of Florence are carried down to as late as the year 1455; that that historical work is the only one he wrote under his own name; that it is no more written in imitation of the ancients, than any other of his acknowledged productions; and that even if it were, he would not have required for its composition such maps as Ptolemy's, nor such works as those of Suetonius and Plutarch. In fact, the most acute ingenuity cannot rescue Bracciolini from the charge that in October 1423 he, then resident in Rome, began to forge a work with the intention of palming it off upon the world as written by an ancient Roman: as I proceed I shall convincingly show that that ancient Roman was Tacitus, and that that work was the Annals.



CHAPTER IV.

BRACCIOLINI AS A BOOKFINDER.

I. Doubts on the authenticity of the Latin, but not the Greek Classics.—II. At the revival of letters Popes and Princes offered large rewards for the recovery of the ancient classics.—III. The labours of Bracciolini as a bookfinder.—IV. Belief put about by the professional bookfinders that MSS. were soonest found in obscure convents in barbarous lands.—V. How this reasoning throws the door open to fraud and forgery.—VI. The bands of bookfinders consisted of men of genius in every department of literature and science.—VII. Bracciolini endeavours to escape from forging the Annals by forging the whole lost History of Livy.—VIII. His Letter on the subject to Niccoli quoted, and examined.— IX. Failure of his attempt, and he proceeds with the forgery of the Annals.

I. When we thus see Bracciolini setting to work in this quiet, business-like manner to forge the Annals of Tacitus, as if it were a general, common-place occurrence, a grave suspicion enters the mind whether it was not a thing very ordinarily done in his day; if so, whether we may not have a wholesale fabrication of the Latin classics; which is very annoying to contemplate when we remember the number of works we shall have to reject as not having been written by ancient Romans but by modern Italians, of the fifteenth, and possibly the close of the fourteenth centuries. The suspicion becomes all the stronger with the fact before us that the literature of the ancient Romans was totally extinguished in Europe in the very opening centuries of the Christian aera; and that their language would have been also lost had it not been preserved till the age of Justinian (527-565) by the pleadings and writings of the leading lawyers; after which it is generally believed that it was continued to be preserved, along with the literature of the ancient Romans, in the buildings founded by the various monastic orders of Christians. Here again we are met by another equally vexing circumstance, it being excessively questionable whether monasteries ever really conserved, to any, even the least extent, the interests of human knowledge. Monks never had any love for learning; did not appreciate the volumes of antiquity; in fact, could not read them; for the Latin was not their Latin; and they are not likely to have preserved what they did not appreciate and could not read: the libraries they founded were for bibles, missals and prayer-books: the schools they established were for teaching children to read the Testament and prayer book, and to sing hymns and psalms, while the ancient manuscripts they transcribed were, at best, the hagiological productions of the Fathers of the Christian Church.

But even if the works of the ancient Romans were preserved by the monks in their convent libraries, that was only till the approach of the last quarter of the sixth century. Then came the dark period of the conquest of Italy by the last swarm of the northern barbarians from their native settlements in Pannonia: Italy continued under the iron yoke of the dominion of these illiterate Lombards till their final overthrow towards the commencement of the last quarter of the eighth century by the great conqueror, warrior, Christian and devoted admirer of learning, Charlemagne: during that period literature became entirely extinguished, for in all the vigour and savage freedom of their fresh and unworn barbarism these Pannonian dunces were as diligent for two whole centuries (568-774) in demolishing monasteries and destroying books as in levelling fortresses and ravaging cities. For six centuries after, a confused assemblage of different races of boors, Franks, Normans and Saracens, occupied Italy; they cared not a fig for knowledge; they did not know what a book was, for they did not know the alphabet, engaged as they were, like those kindred spirits in after ages, the Ioways, Mohicans and Ojibbeways, in perpetual wars and bloodshed: all this time the light of literature never once broke in upon the scene: at length traces of it were discerned in the revival of learning during the age of Petrarch and the Father of modern Italian prose, Boccaccio, in the middle of the fourteenth century. Thus for eight hundred years there was a moral eclipse of all that was excellent in human knowledge in Italy and the whole West of Europe.

Fortunately there was no such middle age of darkness in Greece: there the light of science and literature remained unextinguished: the knowledge of the works of antiquity was cultivated in the East with enthusiasm; and while we may be confident that we possess the works of all those high and gifted spirits who adorned that bright period which extends from Homer and Hesiod to Plato and Aristotle, and again the works of all those Greeks who flourished from the death of Alexander the Great to the death of Augustus Caesar, the brightest of whom were Menander, Theocritus, Polybius, Strabo, and a gorgeous array of philosophers, sophists and rhetoricians, we can be by no means sure that we have the real works of the Roman classics; there must even be the gravest doubt as to the probability; for, though during the close of the fourteenth century, throughout the fifteenth, and at the commencement of the sixteenth, books purporting to be of their writing were constantly being recovered, it was invariably under distressingly suspicious circumstances; exactly the Roman author that was wanted turned up; and always for a certainty that Roman author for whom the highest price had been offered; the monastery was rarely famous, seldom in Italy, but obscure and situated in a barbarous country; the discoverer, too, was not, as is generally supposed, an ignorant, unlettered monk or friar, who could not read what he found, and who could not, therefore be suspected of having forged what he stated he had discovered; it was invariably a most cultured scholar, nay, a man of the very highest literary attainments, an exquisitely accomplished writer, to boot; a "Grammaticus," forsooth, who possessed a masterly and critical knowledge of the Latin language.

II. The unlettered gloom in which Italy had been immersed for ages was effectually dissipated by the great number of learned and illustrious Greeks who took refuge in the West of Europe, in order to escape from Ottoman Power long before the fall of Constantinople. On account of their enlightenment, literature revived in Florence, Venice and Rome; it speedily spread from the Cities of the Great Merchants and of the Popes into the provincial and inferior towns; thus Italy was the first country in the West where good taste, enlightened views, and generous emulation in the sciences and the fine arts took the place of the ignorance, the avarice and the venality which for centuries had held sole sway in that civilized portion of the world. Princes and nobles vied with Popes and Cardinals in the restoration of letters; and now the best way for a man to advance himself was to show a desire for the promotion of letters; above all, for the discovery of manuscripts of the ancient classics, which, when long looked for, and not found, were usually,—from the too tempting reward, which was a fortune,—forged by some unscrupulous "Grammaticus," or writer of Latin.

III. At the commencement of the fifteenth century, a little band of men lived in Rome: some were Apostolic Secretaries; all were famous for their abilities; five were scholars endowed with sterling talents, Antonio Lusco Cincio de Rustici, Leonardo Bruni, and two others from Florence, Bracciolini, and Dominici, afterwards Cardinal Archbishop of Ragusa. (Pog. Vita p. 180 from Joannes Baptista Poggius in Orat. Card. Capranicae (Miscell. Ballutii Tom. 3.) They were all friends; and their delight was, like their masters, the Popes, to retire in summer from the heat of Rome into the cool air of the Campagna; there, after a frugal repast, they held discourse daily, like men of mind, on a variety of engaging topics: "sumus saepius una confabulantes variis de rebus," says Bracciolini in a letter to Francesco Marescalcho of Ferrara (Op. Pog. 307), and continues: "incidit inter nos sermo de viris doctis et eloquentibus." Thus

"Oft unwearied did they spend the nights, Till the Ledaean stars, so famed for love, Wondered at them from above— They spent them not in toys, or lust, or wine; But search of deep philosophy, Wit, eloquence, and poetry, Arts which they loved."

Of these men, the most extraordinary for superlative qualifications, and, apparently that inseparable companion of the highest order of genius, indefatigable energy, was Bracciolini. Muratori, in his "Annali d'Italia" (anno 1459) speaks of him as "letterato insigne di questi tempi," and, as leaving behind him when he died on the 30th of October, 1459, "molte opere e gran nome" (Vol. XIII. 481).

When Bracciolini first joined the Papal Court, Guarino of Verona, Aurispa and Filelfo were making continuous voyages to Greece in order to fetch home manuscripts of Greek authors yet unknown in Italy; at this time were found and first brought to the West of Europe the poems of Callimachus, Pindar, Oppian and Orpheus; the Commentaries of Aristarchus on the Iliad; the works of Plato, Proclus, Plotinus, Xenophon and Lucian; the Histories of Arrian, Cassius Dio, and Diodorus Siculus; the Geography of Strabo; Procopius and some of the Byzantine historians; Gregory of Nazianzen, Chrysostom, and other Greek Fathers of the Church. In emulation of these men Bracciolini and a band of bookfinders, assisted and rewarded by the wealth of Princes and Popes, went up and down the countries of Europe to find manuscripts of the ancient works of the Romans that were supposed to be lost; and it is generally believed that the republic of letters is more indebted to him than to anybody else of his manuscript finding age for the numerous books that were found, and which without such timely recovery we are given to understand, from the decaying state of the manuscript and the pernicious place where it was lighted on, would very soon, in almost every instance, have been irrecoverably lost.

When Bracciolini accompanied the Papal Court in the capacity of Secretary to the Council of Constance in 1414, he, one day, went with two friends, Cincio, the Roman gentleman and scholar of fortune, of the family de Rustici, and the eminent schoolman and finished writer Bartolommeo de Montepulciano to the monastery of St. Gall about twenty miles distant from Constance for the purpose of finding new manuscripts; his companions found Lactantius, "De Utroque Homine," Vitruvius on Architecture and the Grammar of Priscian, while he himself found, in addition to the Commentaries of Asconius Pedianus on eight of Cicero's Orations,—the three first books, and half of the fourth of the Argonauticon of Valerius Flaccus. On this discovery being communicated to Francesco Barbaro, the latter in his reply spoke of other discoveries of Bracciolini's, of some of which we have no account as to where they were found, nor when, except before 1414: Tertullian, Lucretius, Silius Italicus, Ammianus Marcelinus, Manilius (his unfinished poem on "Astronomy," clearly a forgery), Lucius Septimius Caper, Eutychius and Probus; and, adds Barbaro, "many others,"—"complures alios," among which Aulus Gellius may be included. All these were found not by Bracciolini alone, but always in the company of very remarkable characters, and more frequently than any other, Bartolommeo de Montepulciano, of whom nothing is known, except that he was a splendid scholar, and great bookfinder, or forger (the terms are synonymous), and that he resided in Rome in a pleasant villa situated near the Lateran Church (Pog. Op. p. 2).

In the oration which he delivered over the remains of his friend Niccoli (Op. 272) Bracciolini says that he found in French and German monasteries, besides Quintilian, Silius Italicus, and part of the poem of Lucretius, some orations of Cicero and Nonius Marcellus. In his Treatise "de Infelicitate Principum" (p. 394), and in one of his Letters (II. 7), he mentions having found Cicero's Orations along with Columella in the Monastery of Cluny in the Maconnois district of Burgundy; he gives the number of the Orations of Cicero, which were eight (Ep. IV. 2), and which are generally supposed to have been those for Caecina, Rubirius and Roscius, against Rullus and Lucius Piso, and those relating to the Agrarian Laws. He also found Cicero's two treatises De Legibus and De Finibus. In his Descriptio Ruinarum Urbis Romae he states that he found in the Monastery of Monte Casino, near Naples, Frontinus on the Aqueducts of Rome, and it was, as we know from one of his letters (III. 37), in July 1429. The Abbe Mehus, in the preface to his edition of the works of Traversari, adds that he found the eight books of the Mathematics of Firmicus, which is confirmed by himself (Ep. III. 37). While in England he recovered the poems of Julius Calpurnicus who wrote pastorals in the reign of the Emperor Carus; he also lighted in the monasteries on part of Petronius Arbiter (Ep. IV. 3), also part of Statius, and book XV. in Cologne in 1423 (ib.); six years after he found the following twelve plays of Plautus: Bacchides, Mostellaria, Mercator, Miles Gloriosus, Pseudolus, Poenulus, Persa, Rudens, Stichus, Trinummus and Truculentus. In fact, he was occupied nearly all his days, as long as he was in the vigour of life, in traversing Germany and other lands in search of ancient manuscripts, which he recovered in monasteries at different times and in different places; nor was he to be deterred from these toils, which have been likened to the labours of Hercules, by any stress of weather, length of journey or badness of roads.

IV.—The account which he gives in his Dialogue "De Infelicitate Principum," while dwelling upon a custom of his of going from one country to another in far distant and barbarous parts for Latin books, opens our eyes to a very strange state of belief which obtained at the beginning of the fifteenth century with respect to the refined works of the ancients;—that, because a number of these manuscripts were discovered by him, and his band of bookfinders, in obscure monasteries in barbarous countries, there was to be deduced therefrom a definite conclusion that many more were to be discovered in that way; and that this conclusion was so firmly lodged in the minds of men it prevented Popes and Princes from continuing to offer that pecuniary aid and those other rewards which they had been for a long time in the habit of tendering for the recovery of such manuscripts:—"When these," says he in the above-mentioned treatise, "had been brought to light by him, and when the very sanguine and certain hope was held forth of more being found, never after that did either a Pope or a Prince give the slightest attention or assistance to the recovery of those most illustrious men out of the convents of barbarians:"— "haec cum ab eo fuissent in lucem edita, cumque uberior et certa spes proposita esset ampliora inveniendi, nunquam postea aut pontifex aut princeps vel minimum operae aut auxilii adhibuit ad liberandos praeclarissimos illos viros ex ergastulis barbarorum" (p. 393). This statement is so remarkably curious that it requires a little consideration.

We can easily understand how the valuable works of the Greeks and Romans, from the importance attached to them and the appreciation in which they were held, were safest and longest preserved in their respective countries, and that, therefore, they could have been found, sooner than elsewhere, in Greece and Italy; but after those countries had been thoroughly ransacked, it is not so clear to comprehend how it should follow that their works were to be just as rapidly and easily found in other, and those barbarous countries, nay, indeed, more rapidly and more easily. To put this forth was to endeavour to prepare people's minds for the numbers of discoveries that were made, or, perhaps, more properly, pretended to be made in foreign parts. It was, in fact, to pursue this course of reasoning:—If those works had remained in civilized hands, centuries would not have elapsed without the world being cognizant of their existence; the learned could not have lost sight of them; the select few would have transmitted copies from generation to generation; but when they passed into the possession of unlettered men living in barbarous countries, they would then be altogether hidden from view; such people would treat them as swine treat pearls; spurn them; not keep them in libraries, but throw them away as useless lumber into cellars, pits, dark holes, dirty passages, dry wells; fling them away as refuse into dustbins or upon dungheaps. Nearly as much says Bracciolini by these shadowy phrases: "in darkness"; "in a blind dungeon"; "in a dirty dungeon;" "in dismal dungeons," and "in many dens," as for instance, "for the sake of finding books that were kept by them in their convents shut up in darkness and in a blind dungeon" (Op. 393)—"He had rescued renowned authors out of the dismal dungeons in which, against their will and without being used, they had been kept concealed (for they were shut up in many a den and foul dungeon" (ib.):— "in tenebris"; "carcere caeco"; "foedo carcere"; "diris carceribus," and "multis vinculis," e.g.:—"librorum perquirendorum gratia, qui in ergastulis apud illos reclusi detinentur in tenebris, et carcere caeco" (Op. 393)— "Autores praeclaros ... ex diris carceribus quibus inviti obsoletique opprimuntur eruisset (sunt enim multis vinculis et foedo carcere abstrusi" (ib.). Books thrown away in such places must be regarded, when recovered, as found by the purest accident; hence it was at once comprehensible how they had remained unknown to the world for hundreds of years; for who would think of looking for books in such places?

Yet it was precisely in such places that Bracciolini and his companions looked for the books that they wanted; what is still stranger, they always found in such queer places the exact books they were in search of. It was so, for example, when they recovered the books in the monastery of St. Gall; the books were not found where, Bracciolini admits, they ought to have been, on account of their excellence, on the shelves of the library, but where slugs and toads are more frequently looked for and found than books and manuscripts, in an exceedingly dirty and dark dungeon at the bottom of a tower and one of these books, Quintilian, though described as "sound and safe," is also described as being "saturated with moisture and begrimed with mire," as if it had been made dirty expressly for the occasion of the recovery: "Quintilianum comperimus, adhuc salvum et incolumem, plenum tamen situ et pulvere squalentem. Erant non in bibliotheca libri illi, ut eorum dignitas postulabat, sed in teterrimo quodam et obscuro carcere, fundo scilicet unius turris." (From a letter of Bracciolini to Guarino of Verona, preserved in St. Paul's Library, Leipzic—printed at the end of Poggiana, and dated Jan. 1, 1417).

V. This kind of reasoning, when admitted, throws the door open to fraud and forgery; but it cannot be admitted, because it is fallacious in reality, sound in appearance only, as will be seen by only putting a few natural questions:—How came these books into such places? Who took them from Italy, Greece, or other enlightened parts of the globe? If some learned monk, made abbot or prior of a convent of Germany or Hungary? or some equally learned priest sent as bishop to christianize the heathen in still more barbarous lands in the North in a far distant age, why should succeeding monks, fonder, be it granted, of ploughing and reaping than reading and writing, treat as refuse books which, though not deemed by them of any value, as far as their own tastes and inclinations were concerned, they, nevertheless, knew were held in the very highest esteem by the studious in more civilized parts; and that these studious people, understanding the language in which they were written, and considering their contents most precious, would willingly give in exchange for them at any time not large, but enormous sums of money?

These are questions that cannot be answered with satisfaction: they seem to give the highest colouring of truth to what has been suggested, that there was a wholesale forgery of these books; and one is almost inclined to give Father Hardouin credit, for being quite right, when he expressed as his belief that, perhaps, not more than two or three of the ancient Latin classics were really written by the old Romans. [Endnote 208]

VI. The clause in the passage just quoted from the "De Infelicitate Principum":—"never after" (Bracciolini had found a great many books abroad, in Germany and elsewhere) "did either a Pope or a Prince give the slightest attention or assistance towards the recovery of those most illustrious men out of the convents of barbarians."—"nunquam postea aut Pontifex aut Princeps vel minimum operae aut auxilii adhibuit ad liberandos praeclarissimos illos viros ex ergastulis barbarorum," shows that before the time of Bracciolini the custom prevailed of valuable assistance and large money rewards being given by Popes and Princes for the recovery of ancient classics; and therefore confirms what was stated in the first portion of this inquiry that the custom was not confined to the age of Leo X., but ranged back to, at least, a hundred, if not, half as many more years. In that way men, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, made large fortunes. In that way Bracciolini made his.

The finding of any ancient Latin MSS. was a distinct profession in those days, and Bracciolini may be said to have studied the art, of which he was one of the greatest experts, so carefully, and to have practised it with such ability and diligence as to have elevated it into a science. Many enterprising scholars before him had devoted themselves with indefatigable perseverance to traversing, sometimes singly, but more frequently in bands of two, three, or more, Italy, Greece, Spain, and the more civilized countries of Europe for the purpose of ransacking,—or pretending to ransack,—the shelves of convent libraries of their treasures. As scarcely anything was more profitable than searching for MSS.,— particularly when it was certain that, after the looking for, they would be found, if not of the particular authors wanted, yet of others that would repay for the searching;—and as Emperors and Popes, Kings, Princes, Cardinals, Ministers and Bishops paid fabulous prices for the literary treasures of ancient Rome, Bracciolini improved upon this plan by extending the area of search into the woods of Germany, the wildernesses of Bohemia and Hungary, and the not then over civilized fastnesses and forests of England and marshes and bogs of France: the great thing with him and his companions was, when they could not find, to forge; all they had to ascertain was simply which ancient Roman was particularly wanted and would fetch the highest price; and as the band consisted of men of genius of different tastes or faculties,— poetical, historical or narrative, philosophical, grammatical or critical, and scientific or mathematical, if the reward was sufficiently munificent to pay for the time and labour, the highly valued work that was wanted, no matter to what department of literature or science it belonged, was sure to turn up, sooner or later; and if the man who was to forge was not in the proper mood of inspiration for the business, some other fabricated writer was put forward on the ground that he was quite equivalent in merit to the author that was desiderated, as when a thief or other vagabond is wanted by a London Detective, he is certain to turn up in due time, and if not the actual delinquent, at any rate somebody else as bad, who serves equally well for the culprit.

VII. Bracciolini now engaged in forging an addition to the History of Tacitus, impelled to it from his intolerable and restless passion for the acquisition of a fortune, greater even than his constantly increasing avidity for knowledge, soon saw that it was a task beset by enormous difficulties; nay, difficulties of an apparently insuperable nature. We have no record that he was aware of this; but we require no record to know it; his proceedings pointed to it: We have already speculated as to the reasons which must have induced him to forge the Annals so strangely as he did, but before those reasons could have entered his mind, they must have been preceded by others: it is to be presumed that he endeavoured, in the first instance, to continue the History of Tacitus, as Tacitus himself would have continued it, by following up the history of Domitian with that of Nerva; but the few materials that were left rendered it impossible for him to record the events in that Emperor's reign on the broad and expansive plan adopted by Tacitus, which was to spread out the events of one year so that they should fill four lengthy books. He therefore gave up the notion as utterly impracticable; but in trying to get out of the forgery of the Annals he suggested another scheme of fabrication just as audacious, and which he seems to have imagined would have been just as remunerative.

Two months after he had written for Ptolemy's maps, Plutarch's Lives, and the works of Suetonius and other historians of the first Roman Emperors, he addressed another letter to his Florentine friend, Niccoli, dated the 8th of January, 1424, in which he hinted at no less a forgery than the whole of Livy's History, and if circumstances had been favourable to it, we should have, doubtless, had a composition so like the original,—even so much more like than even what was afterwards honourably and admirably done by Freinshemius,—as to have defied detection. His statement was that a learned Goth, who had been a great traveller, had told him he had seen the Ten Decades of Livy's History in the Cistercian Abbey of Sora, near Roschild, about a day's journey from Lubeck. He wrote in the highest spirits, as gay as a butterfly, as playful as a kitten, and as light as a balloon; he implored his friend to lose no time in seeking out Cosmo de Medici and get his consent for the finding of these volumes, which he described as written in two large, oblong volumes in Lombard characters. He added that the man who had brought the news was not to be relied upon, yet he wished to believe him in a matter "out of which coin could be made to such an amount as to be absolutely incredible,"—"ex qua tantum lucrum fieri posset, quam esse omnino incredulus" (Ep. II. 9).

He wished it to be further communicated to Leonardo Bruni who had just been appointed Chancellor of the Republic of Florence, in hopes, no doubt, that Bruni would further the scheme by money assistance; he also wrote about it to Leonello d'Este;—all which eagerness on his part with respect to forging the lost books of Livy can be easily accounted for, when, in exchange for a mere copy of Livy's imperfect history he got from Beccadelli of Bologna, the minister of King Alphonso I. of Arragon, a sum sufficient wherewith to purchase a landed estate:—"Poggio vendette un codice di Tito Livio per acquistarsi un podere, e il Panormita vendette un podere per acquistare il codice di Tito Livio" (Corniani, tom. II. p. 122). Although, for the purpose of making a statement with a telling or striking effect, these are the words of Count Corniani in his "I Secoli della Letteratura Italiana," it was not exactly "a farm" that was taken and given by the accepter and disposer of a manuscript copy of Livy; Count Corniani himself is immediately his own contradicter by quoting in a note a passage from one of Beccadelli's Letters (Lib. V.), to the effect that the "farm" in Bracciolini's case was a "villa at Florence," as Beccadelli thus wrote to King Alphonso: "But I also want to know who in your judgment acted wiser, Poggio or myself; he, that he might buy a villa at Florence, sold a Livy which he had written with his own hand and was a most beautiful copy; I, that I might buy a Livy, sold a farm by auction":—"Sed et illud a prudentia tua scire desidero, uter ego an Poggius melius fecerit: is ut Villam Florentiae emerit, Livium vendidit, quem sua manu pulcherrimus scripserat; ego ut Livium emam, fundum proscripsi." If Bracciolini could get so much for an incomplete copy of Livy's History, what might he not hope to get for a complete one? Imagination wanders into the realms of fairy. I am confident that if he had received the requisite encouragement from Niccolo Niccoli, or Leonardo Bruni, or Cosmo de Medici, or that munificent patron of letters, Leonello d' Este, afterwards that enormously wealthy prince, the Marquis of Ferrara, and had undertaken the task, he would have been more successful as an imitator of Livy than he proved himself to be (marvellous though he was) as an imitator of Tacitus. The genius of Livy, and also of Sallust, was more in accord with his own than the staid majestic coldness and the solemn curt sententiousness of Tacitus. Indeed, he was such a devoted admirer of Livy and Sallust, that he reminds the reader of them throughout his History of Florence; in the Annals, too, he goes out of his way to lavish praises upon them, and upon them only of all the Roman historians: he speaks of Sallust as the "finest writer of Roman history": and of Livy, as "famous, above others, for eloquence and fidelity":—"Caius Sallustius, rerum Romanarum florentissimus auctor" (III. 30):— "Titus Livius, eloquentiae ac fidei praeclarus in primis" (IV. 34). Tacitus nowhere expresses such very lofty opinions of his, two fellow and rival historians; on the contrary, he does not seem to have so thoroughly approved their style and manner; at any rate, he carefully avoided their mode of treating history. It is true that in his Agricola he speaks well of Livy, but at the same time he places Fabius Rusticus exactly upon the same level with him:—for he says "that Livy among the ancients, and Fabius Rusticus among the modern authors were the most eloquent": "Livius veterum, Fabius Rusticus recentium, eloquentissimi auctores" (10); he, therefore, never could have spoken of Livy, as Bracciolini speaks of him in the Annals, as "famous, above others,"— "praeclarus in primis." This is another of those little slips of Bracciolini's, which, without question, at once, bring his forgery to light.

VIII. After these remarks, it cannot but be highly interesting to the reader if I now place before him the whole of the very remarkable, and what should be ever-memorable letter about the contemplated forgery of Livy, not only for the subject on which it touches, but as exhibiting Bracciolini in his most playful, and, it may also be added, most roguish mood:—

"A learned man who is a Goth in race, and has travelled over a great part of the world, has been here; he is a man of a good understanding, but unreliable. He said that he had seen the X. Decades of Livy, in two big and oblong volumes written in Lombard characters, and there was on the title page of one volume a note that the codex contained the ten decades of Titus Livy, and that he had read some parts of these volumes. This he asserts with an air of truth that commands belief; he told the same tale to Cardinal Orsini, and to many more, and to all in the very same words, so that I think this is no fib of his. What more do you want? This statement of his, and his serious countenance, cause me to give some credence to him. For it is a very good thing to be misled in a matter of this kind, out of which coin can be made to such an amount as to be absolutely incredible. Therefore I have wanted to write to you about this, that you may talk over it with Cosmo, and anxiously set to work for these volumes to be searched for; it will be an easy job for you. The books are in the Monastery at Sora that belongs to the Cistercian Order, about two German miles from Roschild, that is, a little more than a day's journey from Lubeek. Prick up your ears, Pamphilus. Two volumes big, oblong, in Lombard characters, are in the monastery at Sora that belongs to the Cistercian Order, about two German miles from Roschild, and to be reached from Lubeek in two days or so. See then that Cosmo writes as soon as possible to Gherard de Bueri, for him to betake himself there when he has the opportunity,—aye, betake himself at once to the Monastery. For if this is true, it will be a triumph over the Dacians. The Cardinal will send somebody there, or commission a person to start post-haste. I don't want such a big pill as this to slip out of our own throats; therefore, be on the stir, look alive, and don't sleep over it. For this is just what the man has stated, and though he might seem to talk too fast, yet there is no reason why he should tell an impudent lie, especially as he can gain nothing by telling lies. Therefore, I, who am such a sort of man as scarcely to believe what I see, am induced to think that this is not entirely false, and in a matter of this kind it is a proper thing to be deceived. Run then to Cosmo,—press him,—importune him to make an advance for these books to be brought to you safe and sharp. Adieu. Rome, the 8th of January, 1424. What you do, mind you let me know. In haste. Tell this to our Chancellor, Leonardo. In that monastery nearly all the kings of the Dacians are buried:"—

"Venit huc quidam doctus homo natione Gothus, qui peragravit magnam partem orbis; homo quidem est ingenio acuto, sed inconstans. Idem retulit se vidisse X. decades Livii, duobus voluminibus magnis, et oblongis, scriptas litteris Longobardis, et in titulo esse unius voluminis, in eo contineri decem decades Titi Livii, seque legisse nonnulla in iis voluminibus. Hoc ita verum esse asserit, ut credi possit; retulit hoc Cardinali de Ursinis, multisque praeterea, et omnibus eisdem verbis, ut opinor, non esse haec ab eo conficta. Quid quaeris? Facit assertio sua, et constans vultus, ut credam aliquid. Melius est enim peccare in hanc partem, ex qua tantum lucrum fieri posset, quam esse omnino incredulus. Itaque volui hoc ad te scribere, ut loquaris cum Cosmo, desque solicite operam, ut haec volumina quaerantur; nam facile erit vobis. Libri sunt in Monasterio de Sora, ordinis Cisterciensium, prope Roschild ad duo milliaria theutonica, hoc est, prope Lubich paulo amplius quam est iter diei unius. Arrige aures, Pamphile. Duo sunt volumina, magna, oblonga, litteris Longobardis, in Monasterio de Sora, ordinis Cisterciensium, prope Roschild, ad duo milliaria theutonica, quo adiri potest a Lubich biduo amplius. Cura ergo, ut Cosmus scribat quam primum diligenter ad Gherardum de Bueris, ut, si opus sit, ipse eo se conferat; imo omnino se conferat ad Monasterium. Nam si hoc verum est, triumphandum erit de Dacis. Cardinalis mittet illuc nescio quem, aut committet uni propediem discessuro. Nollem hunc tantum bolum de faucibus nostris cadere; itaque matura, ac diligenter; ne dormias. Nam haec vir ille ita affirmavit, ut quamvis verbosior videretur, tamen nulla esset causa, cur ita impudenter mentiretur, praesertim nullo proposito mentiendi praemio. Ego igitur ille, qui vix credo quae video, adducor, ut hoc non omnino esse falsum putem, et hac una in re honestum est falli. Tu igitur curre, insta, preme Cosmum, ut aliquid expendat, quo litterae cito tutae deferantur. Vale. Romae die VIII. Januarii 1424. Quid autem egeritis, cura, ut sciam. Manu veloci. Dicas haec Leonardo nostro Cancellario. In eo monasterio omnes fere Dacorum reges sepeliuntur." (Lib. II. Ep. 9.)

I cannot pass away from this singular letter without some comment. It is very certain that there never was known to have been any such copy of Livy in the Monastery of Sora, though Tiraboschi, who is simple enough to believe in the sincerity of Bracciolini, speaks of these volumes as having shared the same fate as other manuscripts, that is, being lost:—"questo si raro codice ha avuta la stessa sorte degli altri" (Vol. I. p. 452 n.). We may be assured that the "two big, oblong volumes" never had an existence:—the two volumes, like Sir John Falstaff's men in buckram, increase in number in the telling, for in a subsequent letter addressed by Bracciolini to Leonello d'Este, the "two" become "THREE": what is more, the learned Goth's "serious statement" is "a sacred oath"; the "Lombard characters" are intermixed with some "Gothic" ones, and "another person" is found who declares that he has also seen the whole of the Decades of Livy:—"Nicolaus quidam, natione Gothus ... sancte juravit esse ... TRIA praegrandia volumina, et oblonga, conscripta literis Longobardis et nonnullis praeterea Gothicis intermixtis ... nunc quoque alius testis horum librorum reperiatur, qui se quoque decades omnes vidisse asseveret" (Pog. Ep. XXX., post lib. De Variet. Fortun.). After this one is almost inclined to exclaim with Shakespeare's Prince Hal: "Prithee, let him alone: we shall have more anon." Where there is such inconsistency in the putting of a statement, the account looks uncommonly like a figment. We may be equally sure that the learned Goth never had an existence, any more than the "two" volumes, or the "three" volumes; (for, with the different statements, it is difficult to determine their number), nor, consequently, can there be any truth about the communication made by the Goth to Cardinal Orsini, and many others.

It will have been observed also that Bracciolini himself insists on the probable myth of the whole tale; the learned Goth is "unreliable"; he maintains that he is "telling no fib"; Bracciolini doubts himself whether what he hears is "true," but he can "see no reason why the man should lie": thus repeatedly in a very short letter he strongly suspects the veracity of the story— he only believes it because he wishes to believe it.

The whole thing was trumped up by himself for a very obvious reason: he wanted to ascertain whether Cosmo de' Medici (or any other rich man) would give money (in fact, a fortune,) for the recovered portion of the whole History of Livy: that being ascertained, he had his own scheme of further procedure; he kept that to himself; it has died with him, and, never having been revealed, it can only be divined:—my conjecture (looking at the character of Bracciolini) is that he would have played upon the credulity of Cosmo de' Medici, Leonardo Bruni, Leonello d'Este (or any other man whom he could have duped) till he had had time, which would have been years, to forge what he would have continued to assert, until the completion of the forgery, was in existence somewhere in Germany, a mistake only having been made by the "learned Goth" as to the name and site of the monastery. Hence his speaking of that imaginary individual as "unreliable,"—or whatever else he may mean by "inconstans,"—a word that he uses to denote a man who might fall into mistakes, as, for example, in not recollecting the exact name or precise situation of a monastery, but who could not possibly err as to the nature of a book which he had seen, handled, opened and read, and had learning to understand what he read.

IX. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm and energy, as well as the craft and force, with which he laid the foundation for its acceptance, nothing came of this grand determination—this indirect proposal of his to produce by imposture the whole lost portion of the history of Livy; so whether he liked it or not, if he wanted to get a sum equivalent in these days to a little fortune of L10,000 at the least, he had to return to the fabrication of the Annals of Tacitus; and get through the ungrateful task as best he could. So, "hanging down his ears," as Horace says,

"ut iniquae mentis asellus, Cum gravius dorso subiit onus,"

he steadily set to work in the January of 1424, with a patient soul and an iron will to the completion of the dolorous drudgery from which he had ascertained to his sorrow there was no escape.

All went on for months,—for years in silence and secresy, as the case always is when mischief is brewing. Upwards of three years and a half thus elapsed; then the low and hidden rumblings of the volcano were again heard; once more vague and mysterious utterances with respect to Tacitus passed in their correspondence between Bracciolini and Niccoli. Two years,—or nearly that time,— again passed: then followed the pangs of labour from the womb of forgery: through the hands of Bracciolini came a hitherto thoroughly unknown MS. of Tacitus, which he said had been brought to him by a monk from a far distant convent in the easternmost corner of Saxony, on the borders of Bohemia; (the reader will be pleased to observe not "Hungary" although the country adjacent to it;—so circumstances shift and vary, in the lapse of years, and owing to the inconstancy of men's intentions). The new codex was an affair at once startling and gratifying: it was such a triumph over darkness in the progress of knowledge that it rivalled a conquest over the Dacians in the march of civilization: for the first time it brought to light as the opening portion of the History of Tacitus what are now known as "The Last Six Books of the Annals." These I shall now endeavour to point out were the handiwork of Bracciolini, to whose wondrous power of assimilating his literary abilities to those of another I must pay this just tribute;—that in those six books of the Annals he mastered the simplicity, though he came far short of the elegance of Tacitus.

END OF BOOK THE SECOND.



BOOK THE THIRD.

THE LAST SIX BOOKS OF THE ANNALS.

Quum itaque multa ex Taciti operibus deessent, ut Nicoli voluntati morem gereret Poggius, nil omisit intentatum, ut per Monachum nescio quem e Germania Tacitum erueret. MEHUS, Praefat. ad Lat. Epistol. Traversarii.



CHAPTER I.

THE CHARACTER OF BRACCIOLINI.

I. The audacity of the forgery accounted for by the mean opinion Bracciolini had of the intelligence of men.—II. The character and tone of the last Six Books of the Annals exemplified by what is said of Sabina Poppaea, Sagitta, Pontia and Messalina.—III. A few errors that must have proceeded from Bracciolini about the Colophonian Oracle of Apollo Clarius, the Household Gods of the Germans, Gotarzes, Bardanes and, above all, Nineveh.—IV. The estimate taken of human nature by the writer of the Annals the same as that taken by Bracciolini.—V. The general depravity of mankind as shown in the Annals insisted upon in Bracciolini's Dialogue "De Infelicitate Principum".

I. There is a great difference between the first six books of the Annals and the last six books; the latter portion is more historical, and less biographical than the first portion: there is an obvious attempt to assimilate it as closely as possible to the work of Tacitus; and any material difference in the character of the two productions is not to be detected at a superficial glance. Hence many most intelligent readers are led astray in believing that the Annals and the History of Tacitus proceeded from the same hand, from not sufficiently bearing in mind that whatever a history may be, the general character must always be the same; plots and intrigues being alike, as well as stratagems and revolutions; also persons and passions: the reason is clear: man ever remains the same, affording the same examples of virtues and vices, and carrying on wars in the same way, according to interest and ambition, while the most important events in which he plays a part resemble in having their origin from trivial causes, as rivers, even the mightiest, take their source from insignificant springs.

But while nobody discerns any such material difference in the character of the Annals and the History of Tacitus as to be struck with wonder, everybody is filled with amazement at there being in the two works two such very different conceptions of historical composition. In the History only full light is thrown on important events and leading characters: that this may shine the brighter every common action is thrown into the shade, and every small individual passed over unmentioned. But the pages in the last six books of the Annals are crowded with incidents, great and small, and figures, good, bad and indifferent. Contrary also to Tacitus, who disposes materials in a just order, arranging those together that refer to the same thing at different times, the writer of the Annals speaks of cognate things, that should be associated, separately, as they occur from year to year, thus reducing his narrative from the height of a general history to the level of a mere diary.

The audacity of the forgery is here something absolutely marvellous;—and it never would have been attempted by any one who was not made of the stuff of Bracciolini: it was the stuff that makes a forger: anyone with proper appreciation of men's intelligence would not have dared to do this; but, instead of regarding the majority of his kind as sagacious, or even more so than they are, and knowing much, or more than they do,—as is the case with well-disposed people,—Bracciolini, who was far from being of a benevolent nature, fell into the very opposite extreme, of looking upon men as remarkably stupid and ignorant. Nothing is more common than meeting in his works with contemptuous disparagements of his kind; he scoffs at human nature for its deficiency of understanding; he does not hesitate decrying its want of thought, as in his Essay "De Miseria Humanae Conditionis": "we must at times recollect," says he, "that we are men, silly and shallow in our nature":—"aliquando nos esse homines meminerimus, hoc est, imbecillis fragilisque naturae" (p. 130); or, "I admit the silliness of mankind to be great": "fateor—magnam esse humani generis imbecillitatem" (p. 90); or, "Knowledge is cultivated by a few on account of the general stupidity": "quoniam communi stultitia a paucis virtus colitur" (p. 9l): pretty well this for one work. Then opening his "Historia Disceptativa Convivalis," the reader lights on him sneering at the "shallowness and silliness of his age":—"haec fragilis atque imbecilla aetas" (p. 32). As in his elaborate and carefully conned works, so in his Epistles thrown off on the spur of the moment,—as when he is inviting his friend Bartolomeo Fazio to stay with him in Florence, he continues: "Though I have lived in this city now for a great many years, from my youth upwards, yet every day as if a fresh resident I am overcome with amazement at the number of the remarkable objects, and very often am roused to enthusiasm at the sight of those public buildings which fools, from the stupidity of their understandings, speak of as erected by supernatural beings":—"quamvis in ea jam pluribus annis ab ipsa juventute fuerim versatus, tamen quotidie tamquam novus incola tantarum rerum admiratione obstupesco, recreoque persaepe animum visu eorum aedificiorum, quae stulti propter ingenii imbecillitatem a daemonibus facta dicunt" (Ep. IX. Bartol. Facii Epist. p. 79, Flor. Ed. 1745).

II. With such a low notion of men's intelligence and the stupidity of his age (though it was a clever one,—at least, so far as Italy was concerned, the country of which he had the closest knowledge and with which he had the most constant intercourse), it is to be expected,—quite natural, in fact, that he should have regarded lightly the difficulties he had to encounter in his endeavours to imitate Tacitus; and though he must have been thoroughly conscious that it was not in his power victoriously to surmount them, yet he cared not, for he did not fear detection, viewing, as he did, with such withering and lordly disdain the want of perspicacity which, in his fancy, characterized his species. He worked on, then, as best he could, with courage and confidence; every now and then doing things that never would have been done by Tacitus: the story, for example, of Sabina Poppaea in the 14th book; Tacitus would have surely passed it over as, though having some relation to the public, coming within the province of biography. Unquestionably, Tacitus would have rejected as strictly unhistorical the dark tale of murder and adultery of the tribune of the people, Sagitta, and the private woman, Pontia, which has no more to do with the historical affairs of the Romans, than a villainous case of adultery in the Divorce Court, or a monstrous murder tried at the Old Bailey is in any way connected with the public transactions of Great Britain. [Endnote 231]

What history, then, we have in the last six books of the Annals does not remind us in its character of the history taken note of by Tacitus.

The tone and treatment, too, are not his.

The Jesuit, Rene Rapin, in his Comparisons of the Great Men of Antiquity (Reflexions sur l'Histoire, p. 211), may, with a violent seizure of ecstacy, fall, like a genuine Frenchman, into a fit of enthusiasm over the description, as "exquisite in delicacy and elegance" ("tout y est decrit dans une delicatesse et dans une elegance exquise" says he), of the lascivious dancing of Messalina and her wanton crew of Terpsichorean revellers when counterfeiting the passions and actions of the phrenzied women-worshippers of Bacchus celebrating a vintage in the youth of the world, when the age was considered to be as good as gold: the gay touches in the lively picture may be introduced with sufficient warmth to enrapture the chaste Jesuit priest, and judiciously enough to contrast boldly with the dreadful, tragic details of the shortly ensuing death of the Empress; but they are not circumstances that would have ever emanated with their emotional particularities from the solemn soul of Tacitus. The passage is only another powerful proof how absolutely ineffectual was the attempt of Bracciolini to render history after the style of the stern, majestic Roman.

III. Every now and then, too, the most extraordinary errors with respect to facts cannot be explained by the hypothesis that Tacitus wrote the Annals; for there could not have been such deviations from truth on the part of any Roman who lived in the time of the first Caesars: on the other hand, the errors are just of the character which makes it look uncommonly as if they were the unhappy blunders of a mediaeval or Renaissance writer such as Bracciolini. An instance or two will best illustrate what is meant.

In the Twelfth Book Lollia Paulina is made to consult the Colophonian Oracle of Apollo Clarius respecting the nuptials of the Emperor Claudius: "interrogatumque Apollinis Clarii simulacrum super nuptiis Imperatoris" (An. XII. 22). How could this be? when Strabo, who lived in the time of Augustus, tells us that in his day that oracle no longer existed, only the fame of it, for his words are: "the grove of Apollo Clarius, in which there used to be the ancient oracle":—[Greek: "alsos tou Klariou Apollonos, en ho kai manteion aen pote palaion"] (XIV. I. 27). This is quite convincing that Tacitus could not have written those words.

There is another reason against Tacitus having made the statement: he must have been aware from personal knowledge that his countrymen obtained all their oracular responses from water. Bracciolini might have known that this custom prevailed among the Romans during the time of the Caesars, had he consulted Lucian's Alexander or Pseudomantis, Melek (better known as Porphyry), and, above all, Jamblicus, who, in his book upon Egyyptian, Chaldaean and Assyrian Mysteries, speaks (III. 11) of the habit among the Romans of "interpreting the divine will by water": [Greek: di hudatos chraematizesthai], and explains the manner how, "for in a subterraneous temple" (by which, I presume, Jamblicus means a "sanctified cave or grotto") there was a fountain, from which the augur drank," [Greek: einai gar paegaen en oiko katageio, kai ap autaes pinein ton prophaetaen.] How can we believe that Tacitus was ignorant of such an ordinary native ceremony, and one, too, that must have come repeatedly within his ken?

Another error is, apparently, very trifling, but it becomes quite startling when we are to suppose that it was made by Tacitus, an accepted authority upon the people in question,—the ancient Germans of the first century of our aera:—that people who (according to Sanson's Maps and Geographical Tables) inhabited what was then known as "Germany," namely, the country between the Danube and the Rhine, with Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the western portion of Poland and some part of the kingdom of Hungary,—are represented as having HOUSEHOLD GODS, for we are told that if Italicus had had the spirit of his father (Flavius, brother of Armin), he would have done what his parent did, wage war more rancorously than any man, against his country and his "Household Gods"; "Si paterna Italico mens esset, non alium infensius coutra patriam ac Deos Penates, quam parentes ejus exercuisse" (An. XV. 16). Into this mistake Tacitus could not possibly have fallen, from being thoroughly acquainted with the manners of the Germans, as he has shown in his work on that subject: he knew that that people had only one set of gods whom they worshipped publicly in sacred groves and woods, but none corresponding to the Roman Dei Penetrales, privately worshipped at home.

We have read scarcely more than a page from the commencement of that portion of the Annals where the forgery began,—the Eleventh Book,—before we find that a mistake is made about Gotarzes being the brother of Artabanus: for he is described as having "compounded poison for the particular purpose of killing his 'brother' Artabanus and his wife and son": "necem fratri Artabano conjugique ac filio ejus praeparaverat" (An. XI. 8). Artabanus was the father, as may be seen in Josephus: "not long after Artabanus died, leaving his kingdom to his son Vardanes: [Greek: "Met' ou polun de chronon Artabanos telueta, taen Basileian to paidi Ouardanae katalipon"] (Antiq. Jud. XX. 3, 4 in init). Vardanes (according to Josephus), but (according to other writers) Bardanes was the brother of Gotarzes; as was known to Bracciolini who speaks of "Gotarzes revealing to his brother," meaning Bardanes, "a conspiracy of their countrymen which had been disclosed to him": "cognitis popularium insidiis, quas Gotarzes fratri patefecerat" (An. XI. 9). It cannot be said that Bracciolini was unacquainted with Josephus; for he follows him closely in the last six books of the Annals; further he mentions him in his letters, for he says that he has been "a long while waiting for his works," (to make use of them in his forgery): "Jamdiu expectavi Josephi libros," &c. (Ep. III. 28): his memory, notwithstanding, entirely failed him with respect to the passage in question, or else he paid no heed to it.

While he makes this misstatement about Gotarzes and Artabanus he falls into another blunder with respect to Bardanes: he circumscribes the limit of his reign to less than one twelvemonth,—the year when the Secular Games were celebrated which, according to his own account, was the year 800 from the Foundation of Rome, or the year 47 of the Christian Aera ("Ludi Saeculares octingesimo post Romam conditam ... spectati sunt." An. XI. 11).

Soon after his accession Bardanes, (according to the narrative we have of him in the Annals), found a rebel in his brother Gotarzes, who waged war against him, defeated him, and, gaining his kingdom, had him assassinated by a body of Parthians, who "killed him in his very earliest youth while he was engaged in hunting and not anticipating any harm:" "incautum venationique intentum interfecere primam intra juventam" (An. XI. 10). All these circumstances are made to occur in such rapid succession to each other that they occupied only one year, if so much; for they are all shown as taking place during the consulship of Valerius Asiaticus and Valerius Messalla.

Now let the reader turn to the Life of Apollonius of Tyana by Philostratus. He will there see that the Magician of Cappadocia on his arrival in Babylon was told that Bardanes had been reigning two years and as many months; Apollonius stopped in the palace of the king twenty months; then he started on a tour to India; he travelled about the Asiatic Peninsula for a considerable time; next he went on a visit to the Brahmins with whom he staid four months; after that he returned to Babylon, where he found Bardanes as he had left him, still king and in the enjoyment of excellent health. It is necessary that I should substantiate this by extracts from Philostratus. In a conversation with one of the king's courtiers Apollonius asks the question: "What year that was since Bardanes had recovered his kingdom?" and received the reply that it was "the third, two months of which they had already reached": [Greek: "poston de dae touto etos tae anaktaetheisae archae; pritou, ephae, haptometha duo aedae pou maenes"] (I. 28): in another conversation with Damis Apollonius says that he "is off to India"; that he has been staying at the court "already a year and four months"; though "the king will not let him take his departure until the completion of the eighth month": [Greek: age, o Dami, es Indous iomen ... eniautos gar haemin aedae, kai tettares ... oude anaesei haemas ... ho Basilaeus proteron, ae ton ogdoon telesai maena]: the biographer then speaking of the visit to the Brahmins, says that Apollonius spent four months with them": [Greek: maenon tettaron ekei diatripsanti]: and "on his return to Babylon he found Bardanes as he had left him," that is, on the throne and in the enjoyment of health: [Greek: es Babylona ... anapleusai para ton Ouardanon, kai tuchontes auton oion egignoskon] (III. 58).

We have proof positive here that Bardanes sat on the throne of Babylon for at least four years and a half; quite contrary to the account in the Annals. Philostratus is generally regarded as a most reliable writer of antiquity; we may be, therefore, tolerably certain, from the look out given us in the pages of the historian of Lemnos, that Bardanes did not die, as we are told in the Annals, in his earliest youth by assassination after a short reign of less than one year, but that he reigned long, lived to a good old age, and died a natural death.

One more example of this kind, which almost seems to bring home the forgery to Bracciolini; and then we will pass on to other matters (for the present).

Nowhere in his works do I find that Bracciolini makes any reference to Lucian or Strabo, or even mentions their names. I think if he had read them, he would have known better than to have spoken of Nineveh being in existence in the reign of the Emperor Claudius, because this is the reverse of what we are told by Lucian and Strabo. For all that, we hear in the Annals of troops "along their march capturing the City of Nineveh, that most ancient capital of Assyria": "Capta in transitu urbis Ninos vetustissima sedes Assyriae" (An. XII. 13). In Lucian's amusing Dialogue, entitled "Charon," when Mercury points out the tomb of Achilles on Cape Sigaeum and that of Ajax on the Rhoetaean promontory, Charon wants to see Nineveh, with Troy, Babylon, Mycenae, and Cleone, the following being the conversation; "I want to point out to you," says Mercury, "the tomb of Achilles: you see it on the sea? That's Cape Sigaeum in the Troad: and on the Rhoetaean promontory opposite Ajax is buried. CHAR. Those tombs, O Hermes, are no great sights. Rather point out to me those renowned cities, of which I have heard below,—Nineveh, the capital of Sardanapalus, Babylon, Mycenae, Cleone and that famous Troy, on account of which I remember ferrying across there such numbers that for ten whole years my skiff was never high and dry and never caught cold," (that being Charon's fun, according to Lucian's conception, in conveying that all that long time his boat was in the water (hence "catching cold") from being perpetually used: [Greek: "Thelo soi deixai ton tou Achilleos taphon, horas ton epi tae thalattae; Sigeion men ekeino to Troikon, antikru de ho Aias tethattai en to Rhoiteio. CHAR. Ou megaloi, o Hermae, oi taphoi tas poleis de tas episaemous deixon moi aedae, has kato akouomen taen Ninon taen Sardanapalou, kai Babulona, kai Mukaenas, kai Kleonas, kai taen Ilion autaen, pollous goun memnaemai diaporthmensas ekeithen, hos deka oloneon maede neolkaesai, maede diapsuxai to skaphidion."] The reply that then follows of Mercury shows that not a remnant was left of Nineveh in the very ancient time of Croesus, and that nobody even then knew of its site: "Nineveh, O Ferryman, is quite destroyed, and not a trace of it is left now, nor can you tell where it used to be": [Greek: "Hae Minos men, o porthmen, apololen aedae, kai ouden ichnos eti loipon autaes oud an eipois hopou pot' ae"] (Charon 23). Strabo says the same with respect to the destruction of Nineveh: "The city of Nineveh was thereupon demolished simultaneously with the overthrowal of the Syrians: [Greek: Hae men oun Ninos polis aephanisthae parachraema meta taen ton Suron katalusin"] (XVI. I.3), —though to speak of the inhabitants as "Syrians," at such a juncture is hardly correct language on the part of Strabo; it should have been "Assyrians," if Justin is right in saying that that people only took the name of Syrians after their empire was at an end: "for thirteen hundred years," says he, "did the Assyrians, who were afterwards called the Syrians, retain their empire": "Imperium Assyrii, qui postea Syri dicti sunt, mille trecentis annis tenuere" (Justin I. 2).

Had Bracciolini been acquainted with these things, they would have made such an impression upon his mind that he could never have forgotten them. But as he wrote ancient history in the fifteenth century, and did not know what Lucian and Strabo had said of Nineveh, he took as an authority for his statement a most indifferent historian who flourished towards the close of the fourth century of our aera, Ammianus Marcellinus; for I know of nobody but Marcellinus, who makes this statement; nor is there likely to be anybody else, because the statement is ridiculous. It will be remembered that Bracciolini recovered the work of Ammianus Marcellinus: it is then reasonable to presume that he had read, if not studied his history. Indeed, there can be very little doubt that it was Marcellinus who misled him: for when he was setting about the forgery and importunately soliciting Niccoli to supply him with books for that purpose in the autumn of 1423, Ammianus Marcellinus was one of these authorities: in the letter dated the 6th of November that year, he says he was "glad that his friend had done with Marcellinus, and would be still more glad if he would send him the book": "Gratum est mihi te absolvisse Marcellinum, idque gratius si me librum miseris" (Ep. II. 7). We may be certain the book, being "done with" by Niccoli, was sent to him on account of the importance of his having it, for the carrying out of his undertaking; thus he makes Tacitus commit the same mistake as Marcellinus committed,—that Nineveh was in existence in the time of the Roman Emperors: "In Adiabena is the city of Nineveh, which in olden time had possessed an extensive portion of Persia"; "In Adiabena Ninus EST civitas quae olim Persidis magna possederat" (XXIII. 6). Tacitus lived a good three hundred years before that historical epitomist of not much note or weight; and could not, on his authority, have been dragged, like his "discoverer" and student, Bracciolini, into this monstrous error.

IV. But it is in the estimate of human nature, and the invariable disparagement pervading the delineation of the character of every individual, in the last six books of the Annals, that the Italian hand of Bracciolini is unmistakably detected, and the Roman hand of Tacitus not at all traceable. Shakespeare makes Iago say of himself: "I am nothing if not critical,"—meaning censorious. Bracciolini might have said the same of himself. He was never so much "at home," (by which I mean that he never seemed to have been so completely "happy"), as when lashing the anti-pope Felix, Filelfo, Valla, George of Trebizond, Guarino of Verona, or some other great literary rival of whose fame he was jealous; carping at others, whose intellectual attainments were at all commensurate to his own, and accusing of foul enormities persons who were possessors of rhetorical merit, as he accused the "Fratres Observantiae," for no other reason that one can see except that those interlopers in the monastic order (the "Brothers of Observance" being a new branch of the Franciscans) preached capital sermons.

There is no getting at any insight as to his nature from the biographies of him; they are all such faint and imperfect sketches: we learn nothing of him from that curiosity of literature, L'Enfant's astonishing performance, "Poggiana"—in which the pages and the blunders contend for supremacy in number, and the blunders get it,—nor from that bald, cold business, entitled "Vita Poggii," which Recanati, flinging aside brilliancy and clinging fast to fidelity in facts and plainness of speech, prefixed to his edition of Bracciolini's "Historia Florentina," published at Venice in 1715, and which Muratori, sixteen years after, reprinted at Milan along with the said "History of Florence, in the 20th volume of his "Rerum Italicarum Scriptores;"—nor from the Rev. William Shepherd's innocent affair, "The Life of Poggio Bracciolini"; but the deficiencies of the biographers have been supplied by a true man of genius, Poliziano, who has hit off his character in a noun substantive and an adjective in the superlative. In his History of the Pazzi and Salviati Conspiracy against Lorenzo de' Medici,—which plot to overthrow the government Bracciolini's third son, Jacopo, joined, and was hanged for his pains in front of the first floor windows of that Prince's palace,—Poliziano says that Jacopo Bracciolini was "specially remarkable for calumny," in which respect," adds the historian, "he was exactly like his father, who was a MOST CALUMNIOUS MAN:"—"Ejus praecipua in maledicendo virtus, in qua vel patrem HOMINEM MALEDICENTISSIMUM referebat" (Politiani Opera, p. 637).

Such being the character of Bracciolini, I may glance aside for a moment to observe that nothing can be more incongruous than that his statue, which his countrymen originally placed in the portico of the Church of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence (because he had praised them in his history of their city and abused all foreigners), should have been transferred in 1560 by the reigning Duke of Tuscany into the interior of the sacred building and placed among the figures of the Twelve Apostles, where it still remains, the ungodly "Poggio" forming a grotesque portion of the saintly group.

If the son was such an exact counterpart of the father in evil- speaking, as borne testimony to by that admirable and accurate historian, Poliziano, it follows that Bracciolini confirmed by his tongue and pen the words put by Shakespeare into the mouth of the Duke in "Measure for Measure":

"Back-wounding calumny The whitest virtue strikes: What king so strong Can tie the gall up in a slanderous tongue?"

Indeed, if faith is to be placed in what Poliziano says, then Bracciolini was, like Thersites in the Iliad, a "systematic calumniator of kings and princes, while at the same time he must have indiscriminately inveighed against the characters of private individuals, run down the productions of all learned men, and, in fact, vilified everybody"; for that is exactly the estimate formed of him by Poliziano:—"Semper ille aut principes insectari passim, aut in mores hominum sine ullo discrimine invehi, aut eujusque docti scripta lacessere: nemini parcere" (Polit. Op. 1. c.).

If this was, really, the distinguishing characteristic of Bracciolini, we have then another very strong point in evidence that he forged the Annals, for the spirit of detraction stands forth in the boldest relief on every page of that production. From the beginning to the end of the last six books (with which we are at present dealing, as we shall hereafter deal separately with the first six books), there is scarcely such a thing as a good man. Now though we are all perfectly conscious of our shortcomings and those of our kind, so that we spontaneously acknowledge the truthfulness of the smart, though not altogether decorous remark of Ovid's, that "if Jupiter were to strike men with lightning as often as they committed sins, he would in a short time be without his thunderbolts":—

"Si quoties peccant homines, sua fulmina mittat Jupiter, exiguo tempore inermis erit;"

there is, nevertheless, no necessity for exaggerating those faults with the persistency met with in the Annals. Scandal without contradiction is admitted of all persons who are either thought good or who act properly. Every infamous slander is accepted that is cast on the eminent statesman and philosopher, Seneca (XIII. 20 and 42.—XIV. 52-3). Piso, who has the reputation of being a good man, is described as a hypocrite, pretending to have virtues (XV. 48). Fenius Rufus draws no gain nor advantage from his office of superintendent of the stores (XIV. 51), and is held in general esteem for his course of life (XIV. 51.—XV. 50); but he is described as immeasurably severe (XV. 58), harsh towards his associates (ib.), and wanting in spirit (XV. 61). Sylla's innocence is ascribed to despicable pusillanimity and cowardice (XIII. 47). Corbulo, though he took "the shortest route," and "sped his march day and night without intermission" (XV. 12), to relieve Poetus when distressed from the approach of Vologeses and the Parthian army, is said, contrary to these statements, to "have made no great haste in order that he might gain more praise from bringing relief when the danger had increased" (XV. 10). Because Flavius, the brother of the German hero, Armin, takes up his abode in Rome, he is accused of being a "spy." (XI. 16). This is, certainly, the writing of a malicious, altogether spiteful man,—a man, too, irrational in his calumny,—revelling, in short, in the spirit of detraction.

V. It is, of course, (if there be any truth in the present theory), a thing by no means strange, but, on the contrary, to be thoroughly expected, when this temper and turn of mind are strongly enforced by Bracciolini in his Dialogue "De Infelicitate Principum"; his friend, Niccoli, one of the interlocutors, when asked "why he was more prone to blame than praise," replies that "there was no difficulty at all in giving an explanation, because he had been taught it by the experience of advanced age and the antecedents of a long life: he had too often been wrong in praising men, because he had found them worse than he had thought them; yet he had never been wrong when he had abused them, for there was such a multitude of rogues amongst men, such an amount of vices and crimes, such a superabundance of hypocrites, from people preferring to seem rather than be good, so many who threw such a veil of honesty over their rascalities, that it was perilous, and akin to falsehood, to bestow laudation on anybody." "'Cur in vituperando sis quam in laudando proclivior.' 'Hoc facile est ad explicandum,' Nicolaus inquit, 'quod longa aetas et ante acta vita me docuit. Nam in laudandis hominibus saepius deceptus sum, cum hi deteriores essent quam existimarem, in vituperandis vero nunquam me fefellit opinio. Tanta enim inter homines versatur improborum copia,—ita sceleribus omnia inficiuntur, ita hypocritae superabundant, qui videri quam esse boni malunt,—ita quilibet sua vitia aliquo honesti velamento tegit, ut periculosum sit et mendacio proximum quempiam laudare'" (Pog. Op. 394). Though these words are ascribed to his friend Niccoli, they exactly expressed his own sentiments, as may be seen in the letter to his friend, Bartolommeo Fazio, from which we have already quoted, where he speaks of himself as being "always excessively averse to the language of praise," and further reproves it as "a species of vice":—"non adulandi causa loquor, nam abfuit a me longissime semper id vitii genus" (Ep. IX. Bartol. Facii Epistol).

In that strongly expressed sentiment of the world being filled with so many knaves that it was dangerous, and all but destructive of truth, to believe in honesty, we have the keynote to the whole of the Annals; and the last six books are marked by a universal cynical disbelief in human honesty; for from the first character, Asiaticus, who is accused of every kind of corruption and abomination (XI. 2), down to Egnatius, with his perfidy, treachery, avarice, lust, and superficial virtues (XVI. 32), all are patterns of the vices, few, except the aged Thrasea, being bright examples of virtue. I have no doubt this description of the general depravity of Adam's descendants, the dwelling on which was so delectable to the disposition of Bracciolini, was a very correct portraiture of the human race in the fifteenth century, when, in Italy especially, and, above all, in Rome, the light from the lamp of Diogenes was, I suspect, very much wanted to find an honest man.



CHAPTER II.

THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

I. The intellect and depravity of the age.—II. Bracciolini as its exponent.—III. Hunter's accurate description of him.—IV. Bracciolini gave way to the impulses of his age.—V. The Claudius, Nero and Tiberius of the Annals personifications of the Church of Rome in the fifteenth century.—VI. Schildius and his doubts.— VII. Bracciolini not covetous of martyrdom: communicates his fears to Niccoli.—VIII. The princes and great men in the Annals the princes and great men of the XVth century, not of the opening period of the Christian aera.—IX. Bracciolini, and not Tacitus, a disparager of persons in high places.

I. The fifteenth century was the most curious of all ages: it has never been properly depicted, except on its darker side, indirectly, in the Annals. It is usually regarded as an age of barbarism; it was not that; it must ever be memorable for splendour of genius and the promotion of letters. A proof of the esteem in which literary excellence was held is afforded by the conduct of the Sultan of Turkey, Mahomet II., who deemed a mere ode by Filelfo a sufficient ransom for that scholar's mother-in-law, Manfredina Doria, and her two daughters. Astronomers were treading for the first time in the right track after two thousand years, since the days of Pythagoras, as may be seen by the hypothesis of Domenico Maria, about the variability of the axis of the globe, and by the labours of Mueller, better known by the Latin name derived from his native town of Koenigsberg, Regiomontanus, who almost anticipated Copernicus in discovering the true system of the universe. Few before or since have so excelled in mathematics and mechanics as Peurbach. Divinity had a profound and subtle exponent in the mild and gentle Thomas a Kempis. The age nursed the man who first philosophized in politics, Machiavelli. Italy was ablaze, like the galaxy, with a countless number of brilliant lights that shone in classical lore and accomplishments. Alberti shewed by his Gothic church dedicated to St. Francis (now the Cathedral at Rimini), that the genius of architecture was again abroad as much inspired as when Hermogenes reared the temple of Bacchus at Teos. Chaucer, the morning star of poetry in England, briefly preceded one greater, and even more learned, Rowley, whose few fragments recovered, as asserted by the sprightly boy-finder, Chatterton, in a chest in the muniment room of the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, reveal to us what we have unfortunately lost; his Battle of Hastings, though far away from the power and grandeur of the poetry, recalls, if not the tramp and march of the verse, attempts at the subdued tone, ease of manner, effect and picturesqueness of thoughts and figures, along with frequent, rich similes drawn from nature, which meet us at every turn in the Iliad, then newly brought to Europe, and with which the delighted poet had evidently saturated his astonished soul, a few of his expressions being close copies and some of his language a literal translation from Homer. [Endnote 251] All over Europe princes and nobles signalized themselves in martial achievements and the art of war: some revived memories of the mightiest: the great hero of antiquity, Cyrus, had not a history more obscured with fable than the great hero of the Tartars, Tamerlane; the tale of George Castriot, surnamed Scanderbeg, for his acts of valour and feats of strength, is as mythical as the tale of Ninus: Francis Sforza, Duke of Milan, could have stood by the side of Pausanias, having as signally defeated at Mont Olmo the great general Francis Piccinino as the King of Sparta crushed at Plataea the brilliant chief, Mardonius; the Hungarian sovereigns, John Corvinus Hunniades and his son Matthias occupied the ground that was held by the Theban princes, Pelopidas and Epaminondas; for the two Woiwodes of Transylvania kept their country free from the enslavement of the Turk, as the two Boeotarchs preserved Thebes in independence from the rule of the Lacedaemonians. Never did Athens produce a general superior to our own gallant and magnanimous Henry the Fifth:—

"quo justior alter Nec pictate fuit, nec bello major et armis."

Still the age, though distinguished for intellect and valour, was degraded by the most monstrous villainies that were ever perpetrated, and the most detestable characters who ever existed; and a becoming procreation of such an intellectual and depraved age was that revolting monster in letters,—the Annals.

The Muses were courted more than the Graces: talents were held in higher esteem than the virtues. Men were unremitting, indiscriminate worshippers of money; they were not trained in the school of good morals; and when people, brought up without the pale of the precepts of probity, are congenitally cursed with a greed for pelf and a legion of evil and rascally proclivities, they become easily pervious to the promptings of all sorts of knavery.

Profligacy was so wide-spread that it extended to men usually supposed to be most pious and exemplary in their lives: Bishops, Archbishops, Cardinals and the Pope himself, though celibats and holders of ecclesiastical dignities, did not arrive at Delphi without touching at Cythera: indirect evidence is afforded of this by the treatises which physicians, shortly after the commencement of the next century, wrote on the disease then called "Morbus Gallicus," when Gaspard Torella wrote his for the purpose of benefiting the manners of the Bishop of Avranches, Ulrich von Hutten his as a safeguard for the perils that attended the habits of the Cardinal Archbishop of Mayence, and Peter Pintor his to warn that gay pope, Alexander VI., of the danger of his ways, the Spanish physician even expressing the kind hope (which may not have been fulfilled) that the Holy Father would be preserved "morbo foedo et occulto his temporibus affligente": there is direct evidence of this state of abandonment to vice on the part of consecrated men from Bracciolini, who, during his excursion to the Baths of Baden in 1416, gave an account of that favourite watering place of the fifteenth century, where abbots, monks, friars and priests comported themselves with more licentiousness than the laity, laid aside all thoughts of religion, and sometimes bathed with women, whose hair they decked with ribbons and wreaths of flowers: "hic quoque virgines Vestales, vel, ut verius loquar, Florales: hic abbates, monachi, fratres, sacerdotes majori licentia quam caeteri vivunt, et simul quandoque cum mulieribus lavantes, et sertis quoque comas ornantes, omni religione abjecta" (Ep. I. 1). Joanna II., Queen of Naples, when a Doctor of Laws of Florence was sent to her court on an embassy from his fellow- citizens, and, seeking a private interview, made a coarse declaration of love, could look with a pleasant smile upon him, and ask mildly "If that was also in his instructions?" At the wonderfully numerous assembly that attended at Constance on the 22nd of April, 1418, on the formal dismissal of the Ecumenical Council by the newly elected Pope, Otto Colonna, who took the name of Martin V., there were present no fewer (according to one account) than 1,500 courtezans, many of whom heaped up a great mass of money, one accumulating 800 gold sequins, equivalent now to a little fortune of L16,000, not so much, it appears, from among the 80,000 married laymen, who were Emperors, Kings, Princes, Dukes, Counts and Knights, bankers, shop-keepers, bakers, tailors, barbers and merry-andrews, as from among the 18,000 celibats, who were the Pope, the prelates, the priests, the presbyters, the monks and the friars, grey, white and black.

II. As a notable informer in the Annals of the exact spirit of his age, Bracciolini necessarily places before his reader not a few pictures of the deterioration of moral principles in the aphrodisiac direction; his book reflects in the most vivid light the strange and very wonderful depravities of his period, some so huge as to deviate greatly out of the common course of nature. From time to time the historic and philosophic gravity of the last six books of the Annals suffers great eclipses by his leaving aside weighty affairs of State to descend into petty descriptions of the erratic conduct of Messalina, with her extravagant lewdness (XI. 26-8), Nero, with his abominable pollutions (XVI. 37), and that Emperor's mother, Agrippina, with her monstrous incest (XIV. 2). These matters, even if true of the ancient Romans in the first century of our aera, Tacitus, we may be certain, would have avoided as not coming within the scope of the historian's province, and as being altogether uncongenial to his sublime tone of elevated sentiments and high-minded refinement. But anyone conversant with the writings and temper of Bracciolini will know well that such passages, instead of being in any way distasteful, would be altogether agreeable. To be convinced, one has only to glance at the collection of anecdotes, styled "Facetiae," at the end of his works, which even a frequenter of the Judge and Jury Society would consider justly liable to objection, howbeit that a pious gentleman in holy orders who wrote a Life of Bracciolini, the Reverend William Shepherd, can find words of palliation for them as sprightly pleasantries. They show us Bracciolini in his merry mood; they give us a fresh glimpse into the fifteenth century; they may be considered the best jokes or Joe Millerisms of the fifteenth century, such as the one commencing "Homo e nostris rusticanus, et haud multum prudens" (Pog. Op. 423), the one that follows entitled "De Vidua accensa libidine cum paupere" (ibid); and that which begins "Adolescens nobilis et forma insignis" (p. 433).

The taste of Bracciolini which is shown by these "Facetiae," is still more forcibly exhibited in a letter to Becadelli of Bologna (Ep. II. 40), in which he gloats over a book of indecent epigrams which his friend had written; he describes it as a "work at once waggish and luxuriating in voluptuousness," "opus et jocosum et plenum voluptatis," and as "a most sweet book," "liber est suavissimus." With respect to his own feelings on reading it, he observes, "that he was delighted beyond measure at the variety of the subjects and the elegance of the poetry; at the same time he wondered how things so improper and so obscene could be represented by his friend so gracefully and so neatly, and" he was of opinion that "the many excessive obscenities were expressed in such a manner that they seemed not only to be depicted but to have been actually committed; for he could not help thinking that they must be considered as facts, and not as fictions merely for the sake of entertaining the reader":—"Delectatus sum, mehercule, varietate rerum et elegantia versuum: simulque admiratus sum res adeo impudicas, adeo ineptas tam venuste, tam composite a te dici, atque ita multa exprimi turpiuscula, ut non enarrari, sed agi videantur: neque ficta a te jocandi causa, ut existimo, sed acta aestimari possunt." Such was his extravagant commendation, and, consequently, his hearty approbation of a most unnatural production, "Hermaphroditus," which ultimately received the censure of the author himself, who was ashamed that he had written it, as shown in the following epigram preserved by Cardinal Quirini in his "Diatriba in Epistolas Francisci Barbari":—

"Hic faeces varias Veneris, moresque prophanos, Quos natura fugit, me docuisse pudet."

III. We shall now see how accurately a writer in the middle of the last century, the Reverend Thomas Hunter, in his "Observations on Tacitus" (p. 51), hit off the character of Bracciolini, all the while that he fancied he was venting objurgations on the staid old Roman: "If he is anywhere happy in his description, it is in the display of ... luxury refined and high-flavoured ... Never writer had a happier pen at describing wickedness ... Were we to give room to suspicions ... we should say that he might have been ... a party in every lewd scene he represents."

Mr. Hunter proceeds: "Messalina's guilty amours with Silius are described with a gay and festive air, with that pride of voluptuousness, and feeling taste of pleasure, as show the writer well versed in court intrigue. The description is too luscious, and may lead to a perpetration of the crime, rather than an abhorrence of the criminals."