Count Guidantonio a patron of learned men—Duke Federigo—TheAssorditiAcademy—Dedications to him—Prose writers of Urbino—Gentile Becci, Bishop of Arezzo—Francesco Venturini—Berni of Gubbio—Polydoro di Vergilio—Vespasiano Filippi—Castiglione—Bembo—Learned ladies.
Count Guidantonio a patron of learned men—Duke Federigo—TheAssorditiAcademy—Dedications to him—Prose writers of Urbino—Gentile Becci, Bishop of Arezzo—Francesco Venturini—Berni of Gubbio—Polydoro di Vergilio—Vespasiano Filippi—Castiglione—Bembo—Learned ladies.
THE reputation long enjoyed by the house of Montefeltro as patrons of letters and arts can scarcely be traced further back than Federigo, second Duke of Urbino. Yet the few memorials that remain of his father, Count Guidantonio, throw some scattered lights upon congenial tastes, and from these we select three letters to the magistracy of Siena, which are preserved in the Archivio Diplomatico of that city. The first of them is written in Latin, the others in Italian.
"To the mighty and potent Lords the well beloved Fathers, the Lords Priors, Governors, and Captain of the people of the city of Siena."Mighty and potent Lords, my especial Fathers,"After the expression of my sincere affection: I understand that your Magnificences are about to agree upon a commendable work, that of endeavouring to amend the course of legal and other educational studies in your city: what is really laudable needs no verbose exposition, the fact being of itself clear and manifest. I have here my compeer the excellent Doctor Benedetto di Bresis of Perugia, a man of great integrity, who, without gainsaying any one, sets forth the law in that city more amply than any of the other judges who expound it there, and whomhis sacred Majesty lately invited to undertake the office of captain of Aquila, on the recommendation of his own merits, a charge which he has hitherto declined only from an unwillingness to interrupt those studies to which he is primarily devoted. I, however, hesitate not to propose him as well qualified for your Magnificences, induced by a twofold motive; first, that he may be able to continue his studies; secondly, that he may escape from the contagion of a home now struck by the pestilence; thirdly, that through me you may have the honour of securing for your course of study so able a doctor. I therefore heartily entreat your Magnificences, and again pray and beseech you, to appoint him to your lectureship of civil law with an adequate salary, as a singular pleasure to myself, and as a compliment to him, whose ample qualifications must be satisfactory to the free wishes of your community and the judges. And should he now or in future fall short of these recommendations, which I cannot suppose (for I am not so stupid), I shall consider your Magnificences to have received at my hands a disgrace and injury, entitling you in reason and justice to complain of me, after having so received him into your service; and I shall always continue beyond measure obnoxious to you and your city. Ever ready to do you all service; from Urbino, 1st of August, 1412."Count Guidantonio of Montefeltroand Urbino.""Mighty and potent Lords, dearest Fathers:"The worthy and skilful Messer Piero di Pergolotti of Verona is repairing to your magnificent Lordships, who for a good while has been at Pesaro, where he practised surgery, conducting himself with propriety and diligence, so that the lords of that place and myself feel much obliged to him, and consider ourselves bound to promote his knowledge by providing him with the means of study.He earnestly desires to enter into your establishment of the Sapienza, where he hopes to do credit to this recommendation, as well as to advance his own honour and advantage. And knowing how much I am devoted to your Magnificences, he has had recourse to me, hoping through me to effect his wish. I, therefore, in consideration of his capacity, science, and worth, pray that on my account you will consider him fully recommended, and will grant him admission into the Sapienza, whereby your Magnificences will greatly gratify me, to whom I ever commend myself. From Durante, the 2nd of May, 1440."Guidantonio, Count of Montefeltro,Urbino, and Durante.""Mighty and potent Lords, most honoured Fathers,"There is in your Sapienza one Messer Zucha da Cagli, my intimate friend, who, as I am informed, is very able in civil rights, and who, for his advancement in reputation and skill, wishes to have a lectureship, either the one read after the first doctors come forth in the morning, or that in the afternoon an hour before the ordinary doctors enter. I hereby pray your magnificent Lordships, that the said Messer Zucha be at my sight recommended to you, and whatever honour or benefit your Lordships grant him I shall consider as bestowed on myself, and shall remain constantly grateful. From Cagli, the 24th of December, 1441."Guidantonio, Count of Montefeltro,Urbino, and Durante."
"To the mighty and potent Lords the well beloved Fathers, the Lords Priors, Governors, and Captain of the people of the city of Siena.
"Mighty and potent Lords, my especial Fathers,
"After the expression of my sincere affection: I understand that your Magnificences are about to agree upon a commendable work, that of endeavouring to amend the course of legal and other educational studies in your city: what is really laudable needs no verbose exposition, the fact being of itself clear and manifest. I have here my compeer the excellent Doctor Benedetto di Bresis of Perugia, a man of great integrity, who, without gainsaying any one, sets forth the law in that city more amply than any of the other judges who expound it there, and whomhis sacred Majesty lately invited to undertake the office of captain of Aquila, on the recommendation of his own merits, a charge which he has hitherto declined only from an unwillingness to interrupt those studies to which he is primarily devoted. I, however, hesitate not to propose him as well qualified for your Magnificences, induced by a twofold motive; first, that he may be able to continue his studies; secondly, that he may escape from the contagion of a home now struck by the pestilence; thirdly, that through me you may have the honour of securing for your course of study so able a doctor. I therefore heartily entreat your Magnificences, and again pray and beseech you, to appoint him to your lectureship of civil law with an adequate salary, as a singular pleasure to myself, and as a compliment to him, whose ample qualifications must be satisfactory to the free wishes of your community and the judges. And should he now or in future fall short of these recommendations, which I cannot suppose (for I am not so stupid), I shall consider your Magnificences to have received at my hands a disgrace and injury, entitling you in reason and justice to complain of me, after having so received him into your service; and I shall always continue beyond measure obnoxious to you and your city. Ever ready to do you all service; from Urbino, 1st of August, 1412.
"Count Guidantonio of Montefeltroand Urbino."
"Mighty and potent Lords, dearest Fathers:
"The worthy and skilful Messer Piero di Pergolotti of Verona is repairing to your magnificent Lordships, who for a good while has been at Pesaro, where he practised surgery, conducting himself with propriety and diligence, so that the lords of that place and myself feel much obliged to him, and consider ourselves bound to promote his knowledge by providing him with the means of study.He earnestly desires to enter into your establishment of the Sapienza, where he hopes to do credit to this recommendation, as well as to advance his own honour and advantage. And knowing how much I am devoted to your Magnificences, he has had recourse to me, hoping through me to effect his wish. I, therefore, in consideration of his capacity, science, and worth, pray that on my account you will consider him fully recommended, and will grant him admission into the Sapienza, whereby your Magnificences will greatly gratify me, to whom I ever commend myself. From Durante, the 2nd of May, 1440.
"Guidantonio, Count of Montefeltro,Urbino, and Durante."
"Mighty and potent Lords, most honoured Fathers,
"There is in your Sapienza one Messer Zucha da Cagli, my intimate friend, who, as I am informed, is very able in civil rights, and who, for his advancement in reputation and skill, wishes to have a lectureship, either the one read after the first doctors come forth in the morning, or that in the afternoon an hour before the ordinary doctors enter. I hereby pray your magnificent Lordships, that the said Messer Zucha be at my sight recommended to you, and whatever honour or benefit your Lordships grant him I shall consider as bestowed on myself, and shall remain constantly grateful. From Cagli, the 24th of December, 1441.
"Guidantonio, Count of Montefeltro,Urbino, and Durante."
Among the traits of literary taste displayed by Duke Federigo, we learn from his biographer Muzio, that it was his custom to repair weekly to the Franciscan convent, and to encourage among its learned society debates and discussions on subjects analogous to their studies. Upon this somewhat loose foundation, he has been claimed as founderof theAssorditi, and it has been ranked among the earliest academies in Italy. We need not pause to investigate their respective titles to honours so questionable, now that such associations are generally recognised as prolific of two enormous literary nuisances, pedantry and puerility. From their antipathic contact genius long has fled, leaving the field open to triumphant mediocrity. Pretending to no original efforts, it was their narrow aim to imitate standard productions, or to ring the changes upon them in prosing and pointless commentaries. To indite two tomes of scholia on a sonnet of Petrarch was the dreary task that qualified for admission into the Florentine Academy; to string Platonic nothings into rhyme was the high ambition which numbered votaries by hundreds. TheAssorditiwere no exception from the usual category of mediocrity; and whether they were first associated under Federigo's protection, or, as Tiraboschi alleges, sprang into existence under Guidobaldo II., is of little moment to the literary history of Urbino.
In times when letters flourished chiefly at courts, patronage was the grand end of authorship, every work being inscribed to at least one high personage. The character and position of Federigo subjected him to a large share of such incense; but among the many dedications laid at his feet none perhaps was more fulsome, and at the same time more ingenious, than that prefixed by Marsilio Ficino to his Latin version of Plato'sEssay on Monarchy. It narrates that Jupiter, willing to found on earth a model sovereignty, resolved to send down the beau-ideal of a ruler for its guidance. He, therefore, summoned the gods in full convocation, and presented to them his new creation, under the titleFideregum Orbinatem Ducem, which may be literally interpreted "Royal faith, ruler of the world," but which was corrupted by human idiom intoFederigo Urbinate Duce. Pallas and Mercury thereupon, in presence of Truth, endowed the new prince with crown and sceptre;and the Academy, as a humble handmaid of these deities, inscribed to him Plato's work upon mundane sovereignty. Although we have had occasion to notice in ourtenth chapterthis Duke's taste for the graver studies of theology, philosophy, history, and Grecian literature, and to commemorate the fruit it produced in a variety of other dedications, yet few who distinguished themselves in these pursuits are sufficiently identified with Urbino to authorise our dwelling at any length upon their names. Guarino of Verona, Poggio Bracciolini, Donato Acciaiolo, Poliziano, and others of mark, may therefore be omitted; and we shall thus have very few prose authors to bring before our readers.
Gentile de' Becciwas probably a native of Urbino, but the interest attaching to his name is owing rather to the distinction attained by his pupils than to his own. He was selected by Pietro de' Medici to train up his son Lorenzo the Magnificent; and to have educated such a mind is an unexceptionable title to fame. Yet the Christian philanthropist who sighs over the dross which mingled with its ore, the impure uses to which its bright metal was in some respects misdirected, by a master who might have moulded it to holier purposes, and might have enriched by its talents the treasury of truth and the triumphs of religion, may well hesitate ere he grants to the preceptor of Lorenzo a reflected share of his glory, without also holding him responsible for that pagan epicureanism which spread like a pestilence from the Medicean court throughout Italy. Nor do the notices remaining of Becci tend to nullify such an inference. The favour of his patrons naturally obtaining for him rapid promotion, he was raised to the see of Arezzo in 1473. But his life was that of a statesman rather than that of a good pastor. We read of his tact as a diplomatist, his skill in public affairs, his dexterous civil administration of his diocese,by directing towards commercial industry energies which had wasted themselves on faction; we are assured that his popularity was confirmed by his encouragement of liberal arts, by his mild and courteous character; we are told that in political science his pen was ably employed. But regarding his theological attainments, the purity of his morals, the zeal of his clerical ministrations, his eulogists are silent. We may add that to him Guicciardini in some degree imputes the miscarriage of the proposed league of Italy against the French invasion in 1492, in consequence of his personal ambition, when sent to conduct the negotiations at Rome on the part of the Medici, whilst his thoughtless extravagance there wasted resources of the Florentines which might have been better spent on military preparations.
OfLudovico Odasioit is unnecessary to add anything to what we have already had occasion to say.[69]Francesco Venturiniof Urbino is reputed the first after the revival who wrote a complete Latin grammar. It was dedicated to Count Ottaviano Ubaldini, and was printed at Florence in 1482, and again in his native town by Henry of Cologne, in 1493-4.[70]Among his pupils he is said to have numbered both Raffaele and Michael Angelo.[*71]BesidesBerni da Gubbio, whose Diary has been edited in the Scriptores of Muratori, there were several annotators of events in their native duchy, whose prose writings remain in the Vatican Library, and have supplied us with useful information; but they were not historians, and it is unnecessary to bring them forth from their obscurity. Of one name, however, we may make an exception.
Polydoro di Vergiliowas born at Urbino about 1470, and studied at Bologna. His relation, Adrian Castellesi, who, when Cardinal of Corneto, was well known both in England and at Rome,[72]had been sent by Innocent VIII. as legate to Scotland, but remained at London in consequence of the death of James III. at the battle of Stirling. There he was joined by Polydoro, who, on taking priest's orders, had, through his influence, obtained from Alexander VI. the collectorship of an old house-tax in England calledRomescot, or Peter's pence, originally imposed in Saxon times for the maintenance of English pilgrims to Rome. Aliens being there frequently objects of church preferment, he, in 1503, obtained the rectory of Church Langton in Leicestershire; and, on his patron's appointment in the following year to the see of Bath and Wells, the path of further promotion was opened to him. In 1507 he became prebendary of Lincoln and of Hereford, and archdeacon of Wells, on which he resigned his collectorship. In 1515 he shared an imprisonment in theTower, brought upon Adrian by the jealousy of Wolsey, whose haughty spirit, disappointed of the purple, attributed the delayed honours to the Bishop's influence. Letters were consequently written by Sadoleto in Leo's name to the English court on behalf of Polydoro, and Wolsey having received the much coveted scarlet hat, there was no further pretext for his detention. The date of his return home is variously stated at 1534 or 1550, and he carried from Henry VIII. a recommendation which procured him letters of nobility from his own sovereign. His literary talents being probably somewhat overrated in Italy, the long residence he made in the hotbed of heresy, without exercising his pen in defence of his Church, appears to have brought the purity of his faith under suspicion. That there was no tangible ground for the imputation may be presumed from his spending the rest of his life unquestioned at Urbino, where he died in 1555, and was buried in the Duomo.
The favour which Vergilio obtained in Adrian's eyes was partly owing to his success in cultivating the niceties of the Latin tongue, to restore which in its purity was a favourite project of the Cardinal. Before quitting Italy he had dedicated to Guidobaldo I. hisProverbiorum Libellus, a volume scarcely meriting the controversy upon which he entered with Erasmus as to the priority of suggesting such a collection. In 1499 he finished his treatiseDe Inventoribus Rerum, which was placed in the index of prohibited works, in consequence of tracing certain liturgical observances back to pagan superstitions; Grossi, however, vindicates his orthodoxy by ascribing the obnoxious passages to heretical interpolation. His essayDe Prodigiisis an attempt to explain upon natural principles all omens, auguries, and other superstitious observances. As it is inscribed to Duke Francesco Maria I., he probably returned to Italy before 1538.
But what chiefly interests us is a LatinHistory ofEngland, which he is said to have undertaken at the suggestion of Henry VII., or more probably of Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, who procured him access to certain archives. This work, from being the first general compilation of the sort given to the public, obtained more consideration than its superficial and inaccurate matter deserved; and Mr. Roscoe well observes that it has not gained the suffrages of posterity, either by ability or freedom from bias. Among the impugners of its veracity are Whear, Humphrey Lloyd, Henry Savile, and Bishop Bale. Some of these excuse his blunders on the questionable plea of his ignorance of English government, dialects, and manners, while Leland regrets that a writer so little trustworthy should have cast over his deceptions the graces of style. Anticipating perhaps such an aspersion, he, in his dedication of the work to Henry VIII., dated from London in 1530, compared the chronicles of Bede and Gildas, crude in form and phraseology, to meat served without the salt which it was his object to supply. Yet while the English blame him for misrepresentations,—avenged in the stinging Latin epigram,
Giovio cites the testimony of French and Scotch authors to his partiality for the land of his adoption. More serious, but unestablished, is a charge greatly resented by his countrymen, that, after garbling records and ancient muniments thrown open to his examination, he consummated the outrage by destroying the evidence of his villainy. It may, however, be well to keep in view that, although Bale claims him as a willing reformer of certain Romish abuses, his adherence to that Church brought on him distrust of the Protestants, in an age when theological disputes were matter affecting life and limb.
In the Vatican is preserved a MS. of this history in twovolumes folio, of 1210 pages, in twenty-five books, ending with the death of James IV. of Scotland in 1512. The narrative is preceded by a dedication in Latin to Francesco Maria II., from Antonio Vergilio Battiferri, grand-nephew of the author, which is dated in 1613, and mentions the MS. as autograph. Yet on the last leaf is this colophon, apparently in the same hand: "Rogo ut bene conserventur, simul cum aliis in cenobio venerand. monalium Sce. Clare de Urbino, quousque bella, Deo favente, cessabunt. Ego Federicus Ludovici Veterani Urbinus scripsi totum opus." But though not the original, that transcriber's name guarantees the accuracy of this copy. An extract from it inII. of the Appendixproves that the Leyden edition of 1651 is in fact a loose paraphrase of the work.[73]
Vespasiano Filippi[*74]was a Florentine bibliopole, in an age when that commerce was carried on by persons of learning, whose business it was to transcribe, collate, and critically master the MSS. which formed its staple. He was thus in familiar intercourse not only with the literary men of the age, but with such princes and prelates as turned their attention to the promotion of reviving letters by multiplication and preservation of books. Of many such he has left us biographical notices, recently given to the world by Cardinal Mai from three MSS. in the Vatican library,[75]and in the Riccardiana of Florence. His collection of lives of illustrious ladies remains unedited. In the former work no memoir is so fully extended as that of Duke Federigo of Urbino, upon which we have in part drawn in ourSecond Book. It was inscribed to DukeGuidobaldo I., in a dedication which not only testifies to his father's martial skill, and a prowess that never knew defeat, but also to the prudence of his sway, and assures us that the great powers of Italy had frequent recourse to his judicious counsels. Unlike the pedantic writers among whom he lived, Vespasiano composed these memoirs in the language of the people for whose information he intended them; but the long interval that elapsed before they saw the light has necessarily prevented them from becoming in any degree popular. Muratori, though unable to give an account of their author, has printed his lives of Eugene IV. and Nicholas V., and characterises his style as possessing a simplicity more precious than eloquence.
Two members only of the brilliant and lettered court of Guidobaldo have gained enduring celebrity from their writings—CastiglioneandBembo.[*76]The former may be considered a pattern of gentlemanly writing, the latter of scholarlike composition. We have already said what is necessary of both, and have introduced into our narrative an idea of Count Baldassare'sCortegiano, its objects and style. It is said to have been suggested by Louis XII., and written about 1516, but the author's preface seems to point at an earlier date. Two of his published letters to Bembo show how anxiously he awaited the suffrage of his friends, among whom it was handed about; but it was sent to press in 1528, only in consequence of the alarm of a pirated edition being in preparation, from a MS. which had been submitted to thefamed Vittoria Colonna, Marchioness of Pescara. The number of reprints which issued during the next fifty years was at least forty-two. A variety of circumstances conduced to this extensive and continued popularity. Books professing to initiate the many into habits and mysteries of refined society ever have claims on public curiosity, but the attraction was here increased by the dazzling reputation of the palace-circle at Urbino, as well as by the charms of erudition, wit, elegance, and worldly wisdom which sparkle in every page. It has, however, been remarked that most translations of theCortegianohave failed to obtain the applause bestowed upon the original. The observation may be taken as a compliment to the polish of its diction, and to those delicacies of expression that bear no transplanting into another idiom. It also proves that the celebrity of this work rests much upon its style. The subject could scarcely be treated at such length without falling into that diffuseness and repetition, which, though clothed in beauty by the rich fluency of the Italian language, must always degenerate into monotony when rendered by the bold expletives of a less copious tongue.
CastiglioneCASTIGLIONEAfter the picture by Raphael in the Louvre
Castiglione
CASTIGLIONE
After the picture by Raphael in the Louvre
In a period when princes and courts little resembled what they have since become, we possess from the pens of Machiavelli and Castiglione generalised portraits of both; and they may be relied on as genuine, although the Tuscan, like thetenebristipainters, overloaded his darker shadows, whilst the Mantuan Count employed the roseate tinting of licensed flattery. Roscoe considers theCortegianoan ethical treatise, yet it belongs as much to belles-lettres as to moral philosophy. Its author has been called the Chesterfield of Italy, and the parallel is singularly apt. The Count and the Earl have each supplied "a glass of fashion and a mould of form" for the guidance of their courtly contemporaries, and the posthumous reputation of both with the world at large rests more upon their dictaas arbiters of politeness, than upon their rare diplomatic address and statesmanlike attainments. With all its interest as a picture of manners and a test of civilisation in that proverbially refined age, with every charm which elegance of style can impart, it is impossible to dwell on theCortegianowithout feeling that its influence was then fraught with evil. In the pages of that essay were first systematically embodied precepts of tact, lessons of adulation, all repugnant to the stern manners and wholesome independence of antecedent generations. The homely bearing of honest burghers, the rough and ready speech of men who lived in harness, were there put out of fashion by studied phrase and cringing flattery, too easy preparations for the effeminate euphuism and fulsome servility which Spanish thraldom soon after imposed upon Italy.
Another work of Castiglione, to which we have already had occasion to refer, is his letter, written in Latin, to Henry VIII., containing an account of Guidobaldo's death, with a somewhat meagre sketch of his character. But there is in its composition an air of effort, a straining at rhetorical effect, which leave upon us the inevitable conclusion that he thought more of his style than his hero. These faults and deficiencies belong, however, in a still greater degree to that more ambitious disquisition, wherein Bembo has sought to honour the memory of the Duke and Duchess, whose favour he had amply enjoyed. His few fugitive poems well merit the preference accorded to them by Tiraboschi over most contemporary effusions, from force of sentiment not less than felicitous expression. It would be difficult to rival in the literature of any age the pathos of that ode wherein his beloved wife is supposed to sigh over his prolonged absence, and send him the sympathetic yearnings of her long-suppressed affection. Of this, however, and his Tirsis, we have already said enough.[77]
The courtly qualities of Count Baldassare are acknowledged wherever his native literature is known; that they were not inconsistent with his observance of parental feelings is proved by an interesting Latin letter addressed to his children the year before his death, which has been preserved by Negrini in hisElogii Historiciof the Castiglione family.
"To my beloved children, Camillo, Anna, and Ippolita."It is my belief, dearest son Camillo, that you, above all things, desire my return home, for nature and the laws equally inculcate veneration for our parents next to God; and in your case there may be a special duty, since I, content with but one boy, would not have another to share with you my property and parental affection. That I may not have to repent of such a resolution, I shall own myself free of doubt as to yourself; yet would I have you aware that I look for such duty at your hands rather as a debt, than with the indifference of most parents. It will be easily paid, if you regard in the light of a father that excellent preceptor obtained by your friends, and implicitly follow his advice. From my prolonged absence, I have nothing to inculcate upon you beyond this line of Virgil, which I may without ostentation quote:"From me, my son, learn worth and honest toil;Fortune from others take."[78]"And do you, Anna, who first endeared to me a daughter's name, so perfect yourself in moral graces, that whatever beauty your person may develop, shall be the handmaid of your virtues, and shall figure last in the compliments paid you. And you, Ippolita, reflect on my love for her whose name you bear; and how charming it would be foryour merits to surpass your sister's as much as her years do yours. Go on both, as you are doing, and, having lost the mother who bore you before you could know her to be so, do you imitate her qualities, that all may remark how greatly you resemble her. Adieu."From Monzoni, the 13th July, 1528."Your father,"Balthassar Castilion."
"To my beloved children, Camillo, Anna, and Ippolita.
"It is my belief, dearest son Camillo, that you, above all things, desire my return home, for nature and the laws equally inculcate veneration for our parents next to God; and in your case there may be a special duty, since I, content with but one boy, would not have another to share with you my property and parental affection. That I may not have to repent of such a resolution, I shall own myself free of doubt as to yourself; yet would I have you aware that I look for such duty at your hands rather as a debt, than with the indifference of most parents. It will be easily paid, if you regard in the light of a father that excellent preceptor obtained by your friends, and implicitly follow his advice. From my prolonged absence, I have nothing to inculcate upon you beyond this line of Virgil, which I may without ostentation quote:
"And do you, Anna, who first endeared to me a daughter's name, so perfect yourself in moral graces, that whatever beauty your person may develop, shall be the handmaid of your virtues, and shall figure last in the compliments paid you. And you, Ippolita, reflect on my love for her whose name you bear; and how charming it would be foryour merits to surpass your sister's as much as her years do yours. Go on both, as you are doing, and, having lost the mother who bore you before you could know her to be so, do you imitate her qualities, that all may remark how greatly you resemble her. Adieu.
"From Monzoni, the 13th July, 1528.
"Your father,
"Balthassar Castilion."
The position whichBemboholds in the literature of Italy's golden age is not less singular than prominent. As an historian and poet, a philologist and rhetorician, and as a voluminous writer of official and private letters, he challenges criticism and has gained applause. It is, however, as a reformer of style that his claims have been most freely accorded, and his example held up to general imitation. Following the fashion of his day, he regarded classical, and especially Latin, attainments, as the attribute most needful for an accomplished man. But he went further; and, aware of the coarse and rugged manner into which literature had fallen, sought to correct Latin composition, and to perfect his own tongue, after the purest ancient standards. On this object he spared no pains, till by long and laborious practice he wrote in both with equal precision. He is said to have subjected each of his works to forty separate critical revisions, and no one can read a page without feeling that, as with too many of his countrymen, the manner has occupied quite as much thought as the matter. This naturally tended to an opposite extreme, for the studied structure of his sentences, and the fatiguing recurrence of mythological allusion, are blemishes greatly detracting from the pleasure afforded by his works.[79]Scaliger, accordingly, has scourged hispagan misnomers of divine things, while his "childish heresy" of abject Ciceronian imitation is ridiculed by Lansius and Lipsius. Yet there is justice in the test applied to them by Tiraboschi; for great and wide-spread evils require extreme remedies, and the prevailing laxity of style having been once brought into discredit by his example, those who followed were able to avail themselves of his guidance and taste, without falling into the rigidity and constraint which blemish his compositions. Indeed, notwithstanding these obvious blots, which hero-worship has mistaken for beauties, his History of Venice, his Essay on Imitation, his diplomatic and familiar correspondence, and even his poetry, must, when tried by then-received standards, be allowed a merit entitling them to the general suffrage of contemporaries. It is to his Latin prose that our strictures are most applicable. Forgetting, in his zealous imitation of Cicero, the allowance due to modern themes, principles, and feelings, he so slavishly followed that heathen philosopher's idioms, as to clothe what he meant for Christianity in the words of paganism. Even his letters, running in name of the successor of St. Peter, transmuted the Almighty into a pantheistic generality, our Saviour into a hero, and the Madonna into a goddess of Loreto. It may be feared that this latitudinarianism was not limited to manner, for an anecdote alleges him to have seriously recommended a young divine to avoid reading St. Paul's Epistles, lest they might mar his style.
Compositions conceived and executed in so eclectic a spirit could scarcely avoid falling into coldness and pedantry; and such are prominent faults in his Venetian history, and his tribute to Duke Guidobaldo,—two works especially connected with the subject of these pages. The former is the most important production of his pen, and was begun in 1529, by desire of the Signory, in continuation of Sabellico's narrative, It is comprised intwelve books, extending from 1487 to 1513, where it remained unfinished at his death, but was continued by Paruta. From a contemporary possessing talent, industry, leisure, and high literary reputation, as well as many opportunities of personal observation, very large expectations might be legitimately entertained. But as a churchman, he is said to have been jealously excluded from the Venetian archives, a condition which, in the judgment of Tiraboschi, ought to have disqualified him from the task, and which may account for, if it cannot excuse, the superficial character of the narrative, the poverty of graphic details, and the teasing absence of dates. On the composition, too, his classic mania has left its withering traces. It was his ambition here to rival the Commentaries of Cæsar; and, in perfecting the idiom of a dead language, he has constrained freedom of thought, and polished away the life and spirit of his theme. We have examined his pages, as an indispensable authority upon events which occupy several chapters of our work; but those who read Italian history for pleasure will generally prefer to do so either in the Italian tongue or their own. Conscious probably of this, the author himself translated the work into his vernacular language, and both versions were published soon after his death.
His dissertation on the characters of the Duke and Duchess of Urbino is written in Latin, and exhibits all those blemishes of style to which we have just referred, and which so strangely jar upon the fulsome flattery and elaborate verbiage which he labours to reduce into Ciceronian terseness. Though entitled a "Book," the whole occupies but a hundred pages in the octavo edition of his works (1567), whereof scarcely one third is original matter. It is addressed to Nicolò Tiepolo, a literary gentleman of Venice, and professes to have been committed to writing for the satisfaction of some Venetianswho, feeling an interest in Guidobaldo as their former guest, had applied to the father of Bembo for some account of his death. It is thrown into a dialogue between himself, Sadoleto, Filippo Beroaldo the younger, and Sigismondo [Conti?] of Foligno. The last-named personage supplies to their inquiries a narrative of the Duke's closing hours, addressed to Julius II., by Federigo Fregoso, along with the funeral oration pronounced at his obsequies by his preceptor Odasio. The former of these is written in a strain beseeming a heathen philosopher, rather than a Christian dignitary; the latter, which Tiraboschi has detected as very different from the printed oration, is to the full as turgid and tiresome as are most such efforts of Italian adulation; neither of them tell anything of importance that Castiglione has not better given us.
The whole discourse is, as I have had occasion to mention,[80]of but trifling value to the biographer of these personages. Facts are generalised until no substance remains; incidents and traits of character are lost in the multiplicity of epithets; and thus we have, instead of a speaking likeness, a vague and showy picture, overladen with ornaments until individuality is gone. The warmer emotions of the heart could scarcely, perhaps, be happily clothed in the abstractions of a dead tongue, unadapted to the times, and to circumstances which required the outpourings of unaffected grief; at all events, these measured periods and studied phrases give no real pleasure. Bembo was an elegant Latinist, but in such a work the language of nature could alone afford satisfaction. When we seek to know the true characters of his distinguished patrons, we are dismissed with an inflated rhetorical exercise; we are offered bread, and find it a stone. These strictures apply to the long funeral oration, but still more to the dull didactic discourse of the four friends,which wants the fire and feeling of the eulogy, and is soiled by gross details gratuitously introduced on a point at which good taste would have barely glanced. In all respects, the most interesting portion of the work is Fregoso's letter, upon which we have drawn in describing the death-bed of Guidobaldo. On the whole, this production may be dismissed with a doubt whether its prosiness or its pruriency is most offensive. Nor will the perusal of those papal brieves, extended by the same writer, which despoiled of his inheritance the Duke's adopted child, blasphemously ejecting him from the pale of Christendom, give a higher opinion of the sincerity of this ungrateful sycophant.
His other works, having no immediate reference to our subject, may be dismissed with few words.The Prose, a treatise upon rhetoric, intended to fix the standard of pure Italian composition, is a dialogue, to which Giuliano de' Medici and Federigo Fregoso are parties.Gli Asolani, a more juvenile production, was named from the castle of Asolo, at which some youths are represented as discussing the tender passion in all its moods and modifications. This theme, notwithstanding the tedious manner in which it is treated, gave it great popularity over western Europe in the sixteenth century, but the style and substance alike render it unpalatable to modern amateurs of light reading. His Latin treatiseDe Imitationeis a dull defence of his Ciceronian mannerisms; his essay in the same language upon Virgil and Terence a laboured philological critique; hisDe Ætna Libera report of physical observations during an early residence near that volcano. His poetry, both Latin and Italian, enjoyed high reputation at a period when imitations of Petrarch had degenerated into common-place; for he succeeded in brushing away the rust of ages, and restoring much of the bright polish peculiar to the bard of Arqua. Lastly, his very numerous private and official letters have preserved to us a valuablestore of facts, and much curious illustration of coeval manners and individual character.
The share of laborious learning voluntarily borne by ladies of the highest birth in the fifteenth century is a singular problem. There was scarcely a sovereign family that could not boast among its daughters some votary of intellectual pursuits, in an age when mental cultivation was of a sort more calculated to overburden genius, than to give wings to fancy in her flight after knowledge. A familiar acquaintance with Latin was then requisite, being the key to modern as well as classic and biblical literature, and also the current language of diplomacy or courtly intercourse.[*81]The abstruse distinctions of ancient philosophy, the complex tenets of dogmatic theology, the fatiguing jargon of scholastic disputation, were all included in the circle of female accomplishments. Such were the graces for which Bianca d'Este, Isotta Nogarolo, and Veronica Gambara were famed; while another Isotta, paramour of the truculent Lord of Rimini, divided contemporary adulation between the beauties of her person and her mind. The vagueness of such eulogies might well justify scepticism as to the profundity of that lore they were intended to vaunt; but in the case of Ippolita Maria Sforza, daughter of Francesco Duke of Milan, and wife of Alfonso King of Naples, chance has afforded us a standard of the knowledge mastered by these learned ladies. It was for this princess that Constantine Lascaris composed the earliest Greek Grammar; and in the convent library of Sta. Croce at Rome there is a transcript by her of Cicero De Senectute, followed by a juvenile collection of Latin apophthegms curiously indicative of her character and studies. The house of Montefeltro could boast a fullshare of such distinction, in Princess Battista, wife of the wretched Galeazzo Lord of Pesaro, to whose literary celebrity we have elsewhere paid our tribute, and whose progeny we have seen maintaining the prestige of her accomplishments to the third generation. Her great-granddaughter Battista Sforza rivalled her accomplishments, and those of her cousin Ippolita Maria, and, when placed by her marriage at the head of the court at Urbino, contributed much to the literary reputation which it then first obtained. Its two succeeding duchesses of the Gonzaga race, although women of remarkable talent, did not carry so far the cultivation of their natural powers; but we have found, in their relative and associate Emilia Pia, one whose learning was scarcely less notable than her wit.
Such were the examples of female genius which emanated from the courts of Italy, and, spreading to her universities, installed feminine erudition in professorial chairs. Nor was this questionable practice limited within the Italian peninsula. Many Spanish dames were conspicuous in scholarship, and, at the close of the century, Salamanca and Alcala saw their professorships held with applause by ladies equally distinguished for birth and accomplishments.
Poetry under the Montefeltri—Sonnets—The Filelfi—Giovanni Sanzi—Porcellio Pandonio—Angelo Galli—Federigo Veterani—Urbani Urbinate—Antonio Rustico—Naldio—Improvisatori—Bernardo Accolti—Serafino d’Aquila—Agostino Staccoli—Early comedies—La Calandra—Corruption of morals—Social position of women.
Poetry under the Montefeltri—Sonnets—The Filelfi—Giovanni Sanzi—Porcellio Pandonio—Angelo Galli—Federigo Veterani—Urbani Urbinate—Antonio Rustico—Naldio—Improvisatori—Bernardo Accolti—Serafino d’Aquila—Agostino Staccoli—Early comedies—La Calandra—Corruption of morals—Social position of women.
WERE the lettered court of Duke Federigo to be judged by its minstrels, a harsh sentence might perhaps be awarded. Nor would this be quite fair. Their cold and common-place ideas, their rude and vapid verses, are indeed far beneath the standard of our fastidious age, and scarcely repay those who decipher them in venerable parchments. Yet have we ample evidence of their superiority to many poetasters of Italy, who then emulated Virgil's hexameters, or abused the facilities of their vernacular versification; and it is just the fact of these laureates of Urbino so long surviving the countless rhymers of other principalities, that proves the discriminating patronage of a sovereign, who attached to his court the best writers of his time. Nor must we fail to remember that the now prominent blemishes of their works were then their most admired qualities. The classical sympathies which we usually leave in schools and colleges, or which, when carried prominently about us in the busy world are stigmatised as a pedantic and ungraceful encumbrance, were then in high fashion. They were indispensable to the man of liberal education as his sword and buckler to the soldier; they were adopted among the conventional elements of all literature, poetry, and taste. A standardbeing thus set up so antipathic to the ideas of our practical age, we are called upon, before proceeding to judgment, to divest ourselves of prejudices which may in their turn become the marvel and ridicule of our posterity.
The inherent defects of that minstrelsy,
"Whose melody gave ease to Petrarch's wounds,"
have been aptly set forth by Roscoe, but he appears to overlook its special adaptation for the Italian tongue. Limited to one theme, which it is required to exhaust in a fixed number of lines, and fettered by the frequent and stated recurrence of a few rhymes, no language less copious and pliant can be woven into a sonnet, without occasionally betraying, in bald, formal, or rugged versification, the torture to which it has been subjected. Again, the constraint and mannerism which often deform this metrical composition in other idioms are here its safeguard from a mellifluous but insipid verbiage, so often fatal to the lyrics of Italy: on a poetry habitually turgid and redundant, terseness is thus absolutely imposed.
With these few words of apology for doggerel hexameters and indifferent sonnets, we shall shortly pass in review some of those who thus wooed the muses in the Montefeltrian court.
Among the most widely known names of this age wasFrancesco Filelfo, whose venal pen often wantoned in biting lampoons, whose sickening vanity was obtruded in the most repulsive egotism, and whose vagrant habits strangely combined assiduous study with lax morals. In most respects he anticipated the bad notoriety acquired a century later by Pietro Aretino, and like him alternately fawned upon and flagellated princely patrons of literature. Were his life to be written, it would be difficult to extract truth by balancing his own self-vaunting letters againstthe scurrilous philippics of his untiring enemy Poggio Bracciolini. But we are fortunately spared this task, and may refer to Tiraboschi, Roscoe, and Shepherd for illustrations of his restless existence and fractious temper.[82]In both these respectsGian Maria,[*83]the son, seems to have resembled Francesco the father, whilst he even exceeded him in the number and variety of his compositions. He sought audiences in many cities of Italy and Provence for his prelections in grammar and philosophy, as well as for his improvisations of Latin or Italian verse; and among the numerous patrons he thus courted was the good King René, who bestowed on him the laurel crown, a guerdon which his rude numbers ill-deserved at the hands of that graceful troubadour. Tiraboschi makes no allusion to his intercourse with Duke Federigo, whereof we know little beyond two works which he inscribed to that Prince, and which remain unedited in the Vatican Urbino Library. The former of these, dated at Modena in 1464, was corrected by the author, "doctor in arts and both faculties of law, knight, and poet laureat," he being then in his thirty-eighth year. It is numbered 702, and contains about two thousand five hundred Latin hexameters and pentameters, entitledMartiados, an obvious imitation of his father'sSfortiados. The theme is thus set forth in a dedication to the Duke of Urbino:—
The very moderate anticipations raised by this proemium, which we leave in its rugged original, are not surpassed in the context, dull and common-place as it is in sentiment, prosaic and unpolished in style. Losing sight of his avowed object of keeping apart the deeds of Mars, the ancient divinity, from those of Federigo, his living type, in order to illustrate the parallel which it is his plan to draw between them, he strangely jumbles both; and, following the new-born classicism of the day, he has crammed his rough verses with nearly every name that heathen mythology, history, or geography can muster, in senseless and jarring confusion. With a view to exalt his hero as a second Hercules, he enumerates a series of labours and achievements from his childhood, when he sprang from bed and strangled a snake that had frightened all his attendants. This is followed by a farrago of allegorical struggles, combats, and triumphs over temptations or evil principles, anticipating somewhat the idea of thePilgrim's Progress, but with this important difference, that the motives, arms, and aids are all borrowed from pagan mythology. So entirely is Federigo lost among the gods and demigods who crowd the stage, that his character or actions are seldom brought on the foreground at all, and never with sufficient idiosyncracy to avail for the development of either. Finally, we find him deified in Olympus, and the epic closes with an empty bravado that none ever more worthily emulated Alcides.
The other MS. of Gian Maria Filelfo which demands a passing note is No. 804 of the same library, and is dated seven years later than theMartiados. It contains some six thousand Italian verses, consisting for the most part of minor poems on a variety of subjects; the volume is dedicated to Federigo, but many of theCanzoni moraliare inscribed to distinguished personages, not omitting the Duke's rancorous foe Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta, to whose vanity such incense could not have been unpalatable. In treating of religious topics, the author, for the time, and by an effort, lays aside the pagan strain which prevails in his other lays, and though generallyselecting the sonnet orterza rima, he thus affects to disclaim all rivalry with their mighty masters:—
Yet there is considerable ambition in the rhythm, and although prolix, like other contemporary compositions, and inflated by superabundant episodes, it is not devoid of occasional poetic feeling. In the dedicatory address he thus speaks of his volume:—
As we shall give a place in ourAppendixto Giovanni Sanzi's judgment upon the painters of his day, we may here insert Filelfo's sonnet to Gentile Bellini.
When compared with contemporary efforts, these specimens, and others which it would be easy to add, deserve a better fate than the neglect to which, in common with most of their author's works, they have been consigned; nor do they bear out the imputation of careless haste, alleged by Tiraboschi as the prevailing error of his very numerous and various productions. The paucity of these which have issued from the press may, however, be taken as confirming that judgment, as well as the suppression of his narrative of the campaign of Finale in 1447, after it had been printed by Muratori for his Scriptores. But poetry may be accounted his forte,—a somewhat remarkable circumstance, considering the unrivalled reputation he established as animprovisatoreof verses on any number not exceeding one hundred themes suddenly proposed, as such facility has rarely been conjoined with true poetic fire.
It were to be desired that we knew more of his intercourse with Duke Federigo. In one of his dedicatoryepistles, after alluding to the likelihood of that prince reading the work, he, in a vein of fulsome compliment and impudent conceit, complains of neglect from friends, and hints at a visit to Urbino. It is difficult to glean facts from the vague common-places of such letters; but in 1468 he thanks his patron for retaining at his court Demetrio Castreno, a learned Greek fugitive from Constantinople. Equally mannered and cold are his flattery and his condolence, on the death of Countess Battista in 1472. Next year he writes that, having begun a commentary on Federigo's life, and completed two books, he had been induced to submit them to the Duke of Milan, from whom he never could recover the manuscript.
Anotherprotégéof Duke Federigo wasPorcellio Pandonio, of Naples,[*84]whose pen was ever at command of the readiest patron, as historiographer or laureate. From his partiality to the designations of bard and secretary to Alfonso of Naples, it would seem that he chiefly rested his fame on his poetical compositions. From this judgment Muratori differs, protesting that in historical narrative none excelled his ease and elegance of diction.[85]Abject classicism, in thought and style, was then a common weakness of the learned; and however correctly Porcellio may have caught the Latin phraseology, it is difficult to get over the jarring effect of an idiom and nomenclature foreignto the times and incidents which it is his object vividly to portray. In his printed work, on the campaigns of 1451-2, between Venice and Milan, he uniformly disguises Sforza and Piccinino, their respective commanders, as Scipio and Hannibal, under whichnoms de guerreit requires a constant effort to recognise mediæval warriors, or to recollect that we are considering events dating some two thousand years after those who really bore them had been committed to the dust. The same affectation, common to many authors of his day, mars his unpublished writings which we have had occasion to examine in the Vatican Urbino Library, and their authority is greatly impaired by what Muratori well calls "prodigality of praise" to his heroes, that is, to his generous patrons. In a beautifully elaborated MS. (No. 373) he has collected, under the title of Epigrams, nearly fifty effusions in honour of our Duke and Duchess, and of members of their family or court, a favourite theme being the love-inspired longings of Battista for her lord's return from the wars. In the same volume is his Feltria, an epic composed at Rome about 1472, and narrating Federigo's campaigns, from that of 1460-1, under the banner of Pius II., by whose command Porcellio undertook to sing his general's prowess in three thousand Virgilian verses. Its merits may be fairly appreciated from extracts already given,[86]and from this allusion to the state of Italy at the outbreak of the war:—
Such were the foreign poets who frequented Duke Federigo's court. Its native bards left few works meriting particular notice, with one interesting exception. We have elsewhere to discuss Giovanni Sanzi or Santi,[*87]of Urbino, his merits as a painter, and the celebrity reflected on him from the eminence of his son, the unequalled Raffaele. Here we shall speak of his epic on that Duke's life, of which we have made frequent use in ourfirst volume, and which demands attention on account of its excellence, as well as from the intimate connection with our subject of its author and theme.
This poem, having remained unedited in the Vatican arcana, long escaped the literary historians of the Peninsula, but it has been recently quoted by two writers, Pungileone and Passavant, the former of whom had not seen it.[88]Although, in his dedication to Duke Guidobaldo, composed after 1490, the author accounts for his becoming a painter, as we shall see inchapter xxviii., he gives no further explanation of the motives which inspired the labour of a poem, containing some twenty-four thousand lines, than "that after anxious thought and consideration of such new ideas as offered themselves, I wished to sing in this little used style ofterza rima, the story of your most excellent and most renowned father's glorious deeds," whose "brilliant reputation not only was and is well known throughout Italy, but is, if I may say so, the subject of discourse beyond the Caucasus," "not without a conscious blush at the idea of dipping so mean a vessel in the water of this limpid and sparkling spring."With equal modesty, he deprecates all rivalry with the learned commentators who had celebrated the same theme in Latin, limiting the ambition of his "rude and brief compend" to rendering its interest accessible to more ordinary readers; but, looking back upon his twenty-three ample cantos, he fervently thanks the Almighty that an undertaking of so extended time and toil had at length attained its termination, and concludes by "humbly beseeching that you will regard the hero's far-famed actions, rather than the baseness of my style, whose only grace is the sincere devotion of a faithful servant to his lord." A similar tone marks the outset of his Chronicle:—
Compared with contemporary epics, the rhythm is smooth and flowing, and the style dignified, interspersed with highly poetical episodes and finely expressed moral reflections as well as apt illustrations from ancient history and mythology. The epithets, though abundant, are more than usually appropriate, and many terse maxims are happily introduced. Yet, in his object of placing his poem and his hero among the popular literature of the day, Giovanni must have failed, the Vatican MS. being the only known copy. Readers it, however, doubtless had, one of whom has curiously commemorated his admiration by jotting on the margin, "Were you but as good a painter as a poet, who knows!" Modern critics, contrasting his fresco at Cagli with the rhyming Chronicle, would probably arrive at an inverse conclusion, especially were they to pronounce upon the latter from the preamble which called forth that exclamation—an allegorical vision, told in nine weary chapters, wherein figure a motley crowd of mythological and heroic personages belonging to ancient and contemporary times.
It would occasion much useless repetition to enter here into any detailed analysis of the work, as we have formerly drawn upon its most valuable portions for the history of Duke Federigo. When considering the state of the fine arts, we shall have to notice a very important part of the poem touching upon that subject—an æsthetic episode on the art and artists of his day, which is introduced on occasion of the Duke's visit to Federigo I., Marquis of Mantua. In regard to the merit of this epic, due allowance must be made for the taste of the age. Its great length necessarily infers a tediousness of detail much more adapted to prose than verse, indeed inherently prosaic. Yet it contains not a few continuous passages of sustained beauty, and it would not be difficult to cull many a sparkling thought and bright simile, while from time to time the dull narrative is enlivened by lyric touches and strokes of poetic fancy, adorning sentiments creditable to the genius and the heart of its author, who, with much sweetness of disposition, appears to have possessed endowments beyond his humble sphere. His patriotic indignation at the ceaseless broils and strifes which convulsed his fatherland may supply us with an example or two:—
The following sentiments were likely to find little sympathy among his contemporaries:—
A long and somewhat tedious chapter of moralities on the uncertain tenure of life among princes, introduced after describing the assassination of Galeazzo Maria Duke of Milan, in 1476, opens finely:—
The bland transition from a rigorous winter to balmy Italian spring is thus apostrophised:—
The poet's eloquent tribute to Florentine freedom, and its value to the cause of liberty, must close our sparing extracts.[89]
In Sanzi's Chronicle we seek in vain for the riper beauties of succeeding epics; but the flashes of poetry which it embodies are not the less effective from their simple diction, nor from the comparatively unpolished narrative which they adorn.
No. 699 of the Urbino MSS. contains the collected minor poems and songs ofAngelo Galliof Urbino, knight, and secretary to Duke Federigo. They are three hundred and seventy-six in number, all in Italian, and unedited, but beautifully transcribed on vellum by Federigo Veterani. Although varied by the introduction of sacred subjects, most of them are occasional amorous effusions, wherein names of the Montefeltri, Malatesta, Sforza, and other Umbrian families frequently occur. The dates affixed to them extend from 1428 to 1457. It appears that the author attended the Council of Basle in 1442, and he is said by Crescimbeni to have survived until 1496. His mellowed versification is in general superior to that of the age, while his trite and limited matter is pleasingly relieved by many happy turns of thought and graces of language. Though unable to supply any particulars of one who has almost escaped notice, we give place to two specimens of his muse. His canzonet addressed to Caterina, "the noble, beautiful, discreet, charming, gentle, and generous Countess of Urbino," runs thus:
The other is upon Costanza Varana, wife of Alessandro Sforza, and mother of Battista Countess of Urbino.
Federigo Veteranihas been repeatedly mentioned as a transcriber of MSS. for Duke Federigo, whom he also served as librarian and secretary, besides being one of the judges at Urbino. Those who have had occasion to examine the library formed by that prince, are well acquainted with his beautiful autograph, and might imagine his whole life to have been spent upon its fair volumes. One of them, containing the Triumphs of Petrarch, No. 351, is subscribed by him, with a memorandum that it was the last of about sixty volumes he had written out before the death of Federigo, which he thus deplores:—