I. Errors in Latin, (a) on the part of the transcriber; (b) on the part of the writer.—II. Diction and Alliterations: Wherein they differ from those of Tacitus.
I.—An anecdote is told of our present sovereign that, on one occasion, conversing with the celebrated scene painter and naval artist, Clarkson Stanfield, her Majesty, hearing that he had been an "able-bodied seaman," was desirous of knowing how he could have left the Navy at an age sufficiently early to achieve greatness by pursuing his difficult art. The reply of Stanfield was that he had received his discharge when quite young in consequence of a fall from the fore-top which had lamed him,—and for the remainder of his life,—whereupon the Queen is stated to have exclaimed: "What a lucky tumble!" In a similar strain the author of the Annals, after he had handed over his work, according to the custom of his time, for transcription, must have been induced to exclaim, when he marked how the monk who had put his thoughts on vellum, had made him write nonsense in almost every other sentence: "What a lucky transcriber!" The knowledge that he would have a transcriber, who was no adept in Latin, must have been one of the greatest factors in his calculations as a forger. Otherwise how could he entertain the shadow of a hope that his book could pass current, when, in order that it should take its place in the first rank of Roman classics, it was imperative that he should write Latin to perfection. That was impossible; and his fabrication must have been detected immediately upon its publication, even though his age was destitute of philological criticism, unless everybody had known that the scribes in convents who copied the classics were famous for committing endless blunders in their transcriptions. Thus, his good fortune stood steadfastly by him all through his extraordinary forgery; at its initiation as well as during the subsequent stages of it.
There was in his time a regular profession of transcribers, who may be looked upon as the precursors of printers. Numbered among them were some who had great fame for transcribing;—learned men, who knew Latin almost, if not quite, as well as they knew their mother-tongue, Cosimo of Cremona, Leonardo Giustiniani of Venice, Guarino of Verona, Biondo Flavio, Gasparino Barzizza, Sarzana, Niccoli, Vitturi, Lazarino Resta, Faccino Ventraria, and some others;—in fact, a host; for nearly all the literary men, in consideration of the enormous sums they obtained for copies of the ancient classics carefully and correctly written, devoted themselves to the occupation of transcription, as, in these times, men of the highest attainments in letters, some, too, of the greatest, even European, celebrity, give their services, for the handsome remunerations they receive, to the newspaper and periodical press. But, in the fifteenth century, the vast majority of writers of manuscripts,—those who were in general employment from not commanding the high prices obtained by the "crack" transcribers, and might be compared to "penny-a-liners" among us, suppliers of scraps of news to the papers,—were still to be found only in convents, knowing more about ploughs than books, and for literary acquirements standing on a par with professors of handwriting and dancing masters of the present day. These monkish transcribers wrote down words as daws or parrots articulate them; for just as these birds do not know the meaning of what they utter, so these scribes in monasteries did not understand the signification of the phrases which they copied. We can easily understand how to these manipulators of the pen an infinite number of passages in the Annals, which are still "posers" to the most expert classical professors in the leading Universities of Europe, must have been as dark as the Delphic Oracle,—or the Punic speech of the Carthaginian in Plautus's Comedy of Poenulus to everybody (except, of course, the great Oriental linguist, Petit, who knew all about it, for in the second book of his "Miscellaneorum Libri Novem" he explains the whole speech, without the slightest fear of anybody correcting the mistakes into which he fell).
The jumble occasioned by the interminable blunders of the monastic writers (for there were two of them, as will he hereafter seen) causes both the codices of the Annals to be phenomena for confusion. Unique as literary gems, and preserved in the Laurentian Medicean Library in Florence, they are the greatest attraction to literary sightseers visiting the lucky library in which they are carefully deposited; and, I believe, have a fancy value set upon them as a fancy value is set upon the Koh-i-noor.
Any member of the medical faculty, even the latest licentiate of the Apothecaries Hall, who knows the fatal effect of wear and tear upon the system caused by ceaseless worry, can explain why Philippo Beroaldi the Younger departed this life five years after undergoing the labour of preparing for the press at the order of Leo X. the MS. found in the Westphalian Convent, containing the first six books of the Annals. When we consider the chaos in which that dismal MS. presented itself to the eyes of the unfortunate Professor in the University of Rome, we can readily conceive how he must have consulted, as he told us he did, "the learned, the judicious and the subtle" about the correction of errors of the knottiest nature which came upon him so fast that, to express their abundance, he instinctively borrows his figure of speech, from water gushing from a fountain or coming down in a cataract:— "the old manuscript," says he, "from which I have undertaken to transcribe and publish this volume,gushes forthwith a multiplicity of blunders:"—"vetus codex, unde hunc ipsum describendum atque invulgandum curavi, pluribus mendisscatet." One example, out of a legion, will suffice:—In the passage in the eleventh book where Narcissus is represented begging pardon of Claudius for not having told him of Messalina's intrigue, the MSS. at Florence and Rome run thus (according to the report of James Gronovius): "Is veniam in praeteritum petens quod ci CIS V&CTICIS PLAUCIO DIMU-lavisset." Half a century before, Vindelinus of Spire,— who distributed books to all the inhabitants of the world as Triptolemus of old distributed corn,—broke the back-bone of this gibberish, when first publishing the concluding books (from that Vatican MS. which is no longer to be found), by editing "quodeicis Vecticis Plautio dissimulavisset." Beroaldi altered this to "quodei cis Vectium Plaucium dissimulavisset." This was retained in all editions, as the best that could be thought of, till Justus Lipsius, who collated the MSS. of Tacitus in the Vatican Library, as he collated the MSS. of other ancient authors in that and the Farnese and Sfortian Libraries, during his two years stay in Rome, changed it to "quodei cis Vectium cis Plautium dissimulavisset." So for a century that remained as the latest improvement till again amended by John Frederic Gronovius, who, seeing the Vatican and Florentine MSS. while searching the treasures of literature in Italy during his tour in that country, editedcis Vectios cis Plautios. Most editors adopt, according to fancy, the rendering of Lipsius or Gronovius, on account of Vectius Valens and Plautius Lateranus being two distinguished Romans in the days of Claudius who intrigued with Messalina. For my own part, I prefer the conjectural emendation of the Bipontine editors who, giving up as hopeless the corrupted passage, edit "quodincestae uxoris flagitia dissimulavisset," which, if not precisely what was written, carries with it the recommendation of being intelligible, and doing away with the unmeaningcis.
On account of the corruption of the text in the two oldest MSS. that supply the Annals,—the First and Second Florence,—I am aware what care must be taken, when touching upon the Latin in the Annals, not to ascribe to the author faults that were the errors of other people. One ought to be guarded when coming across "reditus," which ought to be "rediturus" (II. 63), and "datum," which ought to be "daturum" (II. 73).
I must pause to observe that, here as elsewhere, in examining the Latinity of the Annals, I cite from the original editions of the last six books by Vindelinus of Spire published in 1470, and the first six books by Beroaldus published in 1515, all editions now in use having "rediturus" and "daturum," but without the authority of a single MS.
These blunders we may fairly father on the monkish transcribers, the more so as their handiworks abound with faults, arising from one of these four causes,—inability of perceiving propriety of expression; which people call "stupidity"; disinclination to the requisite exertion; known as "laziness";—misunderstanding the meaning of the author, or destitution of knowledge.
The errors that spring from ignorance are the most striking; they show the purely negative state of the transcribers' minds; how uninformed they were of facts, and how uninstructed in arts, literature or science. Evidently the transcriber of the first Six Books had never heard of the "Sacerdotes Titii," and seeing that the author had mentioned Tatius in the first portion of the clause in a passage in the First Book (54), he writes "Sodales _Ta_tios," instead of "Sodales _Ti_tios";—"ut quondam TitusTatiusretinendis Sabinorum sacris sodalesTatiosinstituerat"; just as evidently, from ignorance of the language, having no notion what the author was saying in another passage in the Second Book (2), but seeing that he had used the word "majorum" in the previous sentence, he writes nonsensically "ipsorummajoribus" for "ipsorummoribus" (II. 2); nor knowing what the "propatulum" was in a Roman house, but misled by the author having almost immediately before (IV. 72) spoken of "soldiers being fastened to the patibulum"—or, as we should say, "hanged on the gallows,"—he writes (IV. 74), "inpropatibuloservitium" instead of "inpropatuloservitium," the "propatulum" being an open uncovered court-yard, differing from the "aedium," as being in the forepart of the dwelling.
How illiterate he and the transcriber of the last Six Books were will be seen in examples and remarks by Kritz in his Prolegomena to Velleius Paterculus; by Döderlein in his Preface to his edition of Tacitus; by Ernesti in his Notes to the Annals; by Sauppe, the able editor of the Oratores Attici, in his Epistolae Criticae, addressed to his learned relation, Godfrey Hermann, and, above all, by Herä, in his "Studia Critica," or elaborate treatise on the Florentine Manuscripts of Tacitus. Both transcribers seem to have had a taste for rhyming and to have thought that the beauty of writing Latin consisted in obtaining jingles, to get which they mix up two words into one, as "san_us_ repert_us_," for "san_e_ is repertus" (VI. 14); or coining, as "templores flores," for "templorum fores" (II. 82); or changing the termination of a word, in order that it may resemble in sound, the word that follows, as "don_aria_ mili_taria_" for "dona militaria" (I. 44); or the word that precedes, as "potu_isset_ tradi_disset_" for "potuisset tradi" (XII. 61).
The same bungling is shown with respect to adjectives, the number, gender and case of which are changed, as "tris_tios_ primordio," for "tris_tiores_ primordio" (I. 7); "amore an odio incert_as_" for "amore an odio incert_um_" (XIII. 9), and "conqueren_tium_ irritum laborem," for "conqueren_te_ irritum laborem" (XV. 17). The number, mood and tense of verbs are also changed as "quotiens concordes agunt sper_nun_tur: Parthus," for "quotiens concords agunt, sper_ni_tur Parthus" (VI. 42); "nationes promptum habe_re_" for "nationes promptum habar_et_," and "neque dubium habe_retur_" for "neque dubium ha_betur_." (XII. 61).
They sometimes succeed, from their stupidity or laziness, in completely puzzling the reader by omitting syllables, and transposing and substituting consonants and vowels, thus producing the most confounding gibberish, as "pars nipulique" for "Pharasmani Polemonique" (XIV. 26); or adding a letter, as "m_orte_m" for "m_ore_m" (III. 26), or omitting a syllable, as "eff_unt_" for "eff_und_unt" (VI. 33). From the same fault they every now and then double a letter, as "Ami_ss_iam" for "Ami_s_iam", or omit one of the double letters, as "antefe_r_entur" for "antefe_rr_entur" (1. 8); or, when two words occur, one ending, and the other beginning with the same letter, they either omit the last letter of the preceding word, as "event_u_ Suetonius" for "event_us_ Suetonius" (XIV. 36), or the first letter of the following word as "quipped _l_apsum" for "quippe _e_lapsum" (V. 10). But it is in single syllables or words or letters that they most abound in errors, frequently omitting them without the mark of alacuna, or any defect; now they omit single letters, when the second word begins with the same letter as that with which the first ends; at times in the first word, as "victori_a_ sacrari," for "victoria_s_ sacrari" (III. 18); at times in the second word, as "ad _e_os" for "ad _d_eos" (I. 11) now they add single letters as "vitae ejus" for "vit_a_ ejus" (I. 9), or "a_u_diturus" for "aditurus" (XV. 36); or voluntarily add a syllable, that the termination of one word may correspond to the commencement of another, as "Stratonicidi_ve_ _ve_neri" for "Stratonicidi Veneri" (III. 63), or repeat syllables or words (what is called "dittography"), as "Cujus adversa pravitatiipsius, prospera ad fortunamipsiusreferebat" (XIV. 38). Puteolanus was the first to throw out the secondipsius, and substitute for it "reipublicae," which most of the editors of Tacitus have retained, though Brotier edits, I cannot help thinking properly, on account of the antithesis in which the Author of the Annals delighted:—"whose adversity he ascribed to his depravity, and whose prosperity to his good fortune":—"cujus adversa, pravitati ipsius; prospera, ad fortunam referebat" (XIV. 38); so that the secondipsiusin the MS. is not wrong, only inelegant and unnecessary.
Having thus seen the nature of the errors committed by the transcribers, we may now pass on to what we must consider as the errors of the writer. There is very little doubt that he alone is responsible for the following: using the poetic form "celebris" for the prose form "celeber"—Romanis haud perindecelebris(II. 88, in fin.), which so startled Ernesti that he is almost sure the author must have written "celebratus;" still he would not dare to alter it on account of its being repeated on two other occasions—Pons Mulvius in eo temporecelebris(XIII. 47): Servilius, diu foro, mox tradendis rebus Romaniscelebris(XIV. 19);—so merely contents himself with the observation that "those who are desirous of writing elegant Latin will not imitate it:" "studiosi elegantiae in scribendo non imitabuntur." Those desirous of attaining an elegant style would not write as in the Annals, "exauctorare," with the meaning of "putting out of the ranks and into the reserve," as when we find it stated that "a discharge should be given to those who had served twenty years, and that those should beput out of the ranks and into the reserve, who had gone through sixteen years' service, there to be kept as auxiliary troops, free from the other duties which it was customary to render to the State, except that of repelling the invasion of an enemy":—"missionem dari vicena stipendia meritis;exauctorari, qui senadena fecissent, ac retineri sub vexillo, ceterorum immunes nisi propulsandi hostis" (An. I. 36);— here we have a meaning of the word "exauctorare" very different from its sense of "a final discharge," in which it is understood by Tacitus towards the opening of his History, when he is describing the distracted state of Rome, and continues: "during such a crisis tribunes werefinally discharged, Antonius Taurus and Antonius Naso, from the body guard; Aemilius Pacensis from the troops garrisoned at Rome, and Julius Fronto from the watch": "exauctoratiper cos dies tribuni, e praetorio Antonius Taurus et Antonius Naso; ex urbanis cohortibus Aemilius Pacensis; e vigiliis Julius Fronto" (Hist. I. 20);—nor would a person desirous of writing graceful Latin use "destinari" for being "elected" to an office, as "destinariconsules" (An. I. 3) where Tacitus uses "designari,"—"consuledesignato" (Hist I. 6).
Grammatical mistakes of the most extraordinary character are sometimes made. There is neglect of indispensable attraction; "non medicinamillud" (I. 49) for "illam," and "non enim, preces suntistud" (II. 38) for "istae;"—proper Latinity requires that, in "nihil reliqui faciunt quominus invidi_am_, misericordi_am_, met_um_ et ir_as_ _per_mov_erent_ (I. 21), the four nouns should be in either the ablative or genitive, and the verb in the present, with (as Dr. Nipperdey says)moveantin preference topermoveant. "An" is used as an equivalent to "vel;"—"metu invidiae,an(vel) ratus" (II. 22,) and as if synonymous with "sive," "sive fatali vecordia,an" (seu, or sive) "imminentium periculorum remedium" (XI. 26.) In the sentence where Tiberius is described as, according to rumour, being pained with grief at his own and the Roman people's contemptible position for no other "reason" more than that Tacfarinas, a robber and deserter, would treat with them like a regular enemy:— we have the only instance in a classical composition reputed to be written by an ancient Roman, of "alias" conveying the idea ofcause, instead of being an adverb oftime:—"Necaliasmagis sua populique Romani contumelia indoluisse Caesarem ferunt, quam quod desertor et praedo hostium more agerat" (III. 73).
These errors we must believe to be the author's; considering their gravity, we are compelled to ask ourselves the question: "Could this writer have been an ancient Roman?" If we answer in the affirmative, how can we explain coming repeatedly across this sort of writing, "lacu IN ipso" (XII. 56), that is, a monosyllabic preposition placed between a substantive and an adjective or pronoun, a kind of composition found in the poets, but disapproved by the prose-writers, who, if so placing a preposition, used a dissyllable and put the adjective first. Independently of a monosyllabic preposition thus standing frequently between a substantive and an adjective or pronoun (judiceabuno: III. 10—urbeexipsa: XII. 56—senatuqueinipso and urbeinipsa: XIV. 42 & 53.—portuinipso XV. 18); there are other occasional abnormal collocations of the preposition, such as, after two words combined by a copulative particle, or two of them: diisque et patriacoram(IV. 8), Poppaea et Tigellinocoram(XV. 61) and between two words connected by apposition: montemapudErycum (IV. 43), uxoreabOctavia (IV. 43—XIII. 12). These usages are not found in the other works ascribed to Tacitus, nor any of the ancient Latin prose-writers; though common enough in the poets, the three instances being found in Virgil;—the first in the Aeneid:—
"Cum litora fervere lateProspiceres arceexsumma:"Aen. IV. 409-10;
"VespereabatroConsurgunt venti:" Aen. V. 19-20
And—
"Graditur bellumadcrudele Camilla:"Ib. XI. 535;
The second in the Georgics:
"Si non tanta quies iret frigusque caloremqueInter:"Georg. II. 344;
And shortly after,
"Pagos et compitacircum:"Ib. 382;
And the third in the Aeneid:
"Duros mille laboresRegesubEurystheo, fatis Junonis iniquae,Pertulerit:"Aen. VIII. 291-3.
The Latinity, therefore, is good; but though good, it can scarcely be said to be that of an ancient Roman; for an ancient Roman never resorted to such inflexions in prose, only when writing poetry to get over the difficulties of rhythm; hence a modern European would easily fall into the error, from taking the Latin of Virgil to be most perfect; and from deeming that what was done in verse could, with equal propriety, be done in prose.
Though nothing could be more natural than for a modern European to think that the right Latin for "good deeds," was "bona facta" (III. 40), an ancient Roman would have written "benefacta," just as he would have used for the expression "if bounds were observed," "si modusadhiberetur," not "si modusadjiceretur" (III. 6). He would have followed "inscitia" with a genitive, as Tacitus, "inscitiam ceterorum" (Hist. I. 54), and not with a preposition, as "finis inscitiaeergadomum suam" (XI. 25), for "an end of ignorance of his family"; nor have used that noun absolutely, as "quo fideminscitiaepararet" (XV. 58); "in order that he should create a belief in his ignorance." Instead of "himolium objectus, hi proximas scaphas scandere" (XIV. 8), for "some clambered up the heights that lay in front of them, some into the skiffs that were nigh at hand," he would have used the participle, "moles objectas"; and written "locaopportuna" instead of "locorumopportuna permunivit" (IV. 24), for "he fortified convenient places."
Ancient writers among the Romans, such as Cicero and Livy, used the comparative in both clauses with quanto and tanto; the more recent writers, such as Tacitus and Sallust, used the comparative with them in, at least, one clause. We find in the Annals these ablatives of quantus and tantus, as if their real force was not known, used with the positive in both clauses. A European putting into Latin: "the more closely he had at one time applied himself to public business, the more wholly he gave himself up to secret debaucheries and vicious idleness;" would think his language quite correct when he wrote: "quantointentusolim publicasadcuras" (mark the place of the monosyllabic preposition), "tanto occultosinluxus" (again), "et malum otiumresolutus" (IV. 67).
A Roman did not use the verb "pergere" in the sense of "continuing or proceeding" in amatter, only of "continuing or proceeding" where there isbodily motion. Yet the author of the Annals for "things would come to a successful issue, that they were going on with," has "prospere cessura, quaepergerent" (I. 28); an ancient Roman would have written "per_a_gerent," as may be seen from Livy, who expresses "I will go on with the achievements in peace and war": "res pace belloque gestasperagam" (II. 1); Pliny, "let us now go on with the remainder": "reliqua nuncperagemus" (N.H. VI. 32, 2); and Cornelius Nepos, "but he went on, not otherwise than one would have thought, in his purpose": "tamen propositum nihilo seciusperegit" (Att. 22). As many will believe, contrary to myself, that this was a blunder of the copyist (notwithstanding that it is not in the style of his blundering), I will not insist upon it; though I must insist upon the following being an error on the part of the writer for "giving praises and thanks":—"laudes et grateshabentem" (I. 69): A Roman could not have said that: had he used "laudes et grates," his phrase would have been "laudes et gratesagentem";—had he used "habentem," his phrase would have been "laudes et grat_iam_" (or grat_ias_) "habentem." "Diisque etpatriacoram)" (IV. 8), is much more in keeping with the ragged language of St. Jerome in his Vulgate than the precision of Tacitus in his History:—There are two mistakes: the first is the collocation of the preposition which has been already noticed; the second is the phrase "standing before theeyesof a country," which is the real meaning of "patriacoram"; it is akin to "looking a matter in theface," which is met with,—(and which I almost deem elegant,)— in the cumbrous oratory of Lord Castlereagh, but which I should be very much astonished to discover had originated from the lips of another statesman, the very opposite in speech of the renowned Foreign Secretary,—the ornate and correct rhetorician, so famed for the concinnity of his phrases, the Earl of Beaconsfield.
II. From the diction point of view, the Annals could not have been written by Tacitus, as the language at times is anybody's but his. When "ubi" signifies "where" (at the place itself), and not "whither" (to a distance from the place where a person stands), "Answer me, Blaesus,whitherhave you thrown the corpse?" "Responde, Blaese,ubi" (quo?) "cadaver abjeceris?" (I. 22) it is the language of Suetonius in that passage in the life of Galba, where he speaks of Patrobius casting the Emperor's head into that place, where by Galba's order Patrobius's patron had been assassinated; "eo loco,ubi" (quo) "jussu Galbae animadversum in patronum suum fuerat, abjecit" (Galb. 20). When two words are coupled with que—que we have the language of the poets, Virgil, Ovid, Terence, Silius Italicus, Manilius, and among prose writers, Sallust (exempli gratia) "meque regnumque" (Jug. 10) when "infecta" is used in the sense of "poisoned," "infected": "the times were so infected and soiled with sycophancy"—"tempora illa adeoinfectaet adulatione sordida fuere" (III. 65), we have the language of Pliny the Elder, when speaking of honey "not being infected with leaves," that is, not having the taste of leaves—"minime fronde infectum" (N.H. XIII. 13); and when "que," as if it were "et," means "too," or "also,"—"till that wasalsoforbidden": "donec id_que_ vetitum" (IV. 74), and "his mines of gold,too": "aurarias_que_ ejus"(VI. 19), we have the language of Pliny the Younger, "me,too, from boyhood," "me_que_ a pueritia" (Ep. IV. 19). Just as Cicero uses "domestic" for "personal;"—"exempla domestica, "my ownspeeches" the author of the Annals uses "at home" for "personal," and "personally";—"domiartes" (III. 69), "personalqualities;"—"domipartam" (XIII. 42), "personallyacquired." When he desires to put into Latin: "How honourable their liberty regained by victory, and how much more intolerable their slavery if again subdued," he writes: "quam decora victoribus libertas, quantointolerantiorservitus iterum victis" (III. 45), misapplying "intolerantior" for "intolerabilior" with Florus (IV. 12), who is clever in committing errors in grammar and geography. There is ringing the changes with Livy, when we read in the Annals (II. 24) "quantoviolentior,tantum" (for tanto) "illa," and in the great Roman historian, "quantum" (for quanto) "laxaverat,tantomagis" (Livy XXXII. 5). It is using, too, in the sense of Livy (XLI. 8, 5) the verb "differere," instead of the customary expression, "rejicere." The language is peculiar to himself when he uses "differre" for "spargere" in the phrase "and to be spread abroad among foreigners": "differique etiam per externos" (III. 12), as the style is peculiar to himself in omitting the past time (fuisse) when no doubt is left by the preceding context or the immediate sequel in the same sentence, that the past time is referred to in the passage where Silius boasts that "his soldiers continued to be loyal, while others fell into sedition; and that his empire would not have remained to Tiberius, if there had been a desire for revolution also in those legions of his": "suum militem in obsequio duravisse, cum alii ad seditiones prolaberentur: neque mansurum Tiberio imperium, si iis quoque legionibus cupido novandi fuisset" (IV. 18), where after "mansurum," according to Dr. Nipperdey, there should be "fuisse."
Further proof is afforded by the use of the word "imperator," that the diction in the Annals is not that of Tacitus. Having lived in the time of the Caesars, he never could have heard a countryman in speech or writing use "Imperator" other than as signifying one individual, not the commander in chief of the army, but the occupant of the supreme civil authority, "Imperator" being the noun proper of "imperium." In this restricted sense Tacitus always uses the word, because it was understood with that signification by every Roman of his time. For example, in his Agricola (39), he means by "imperatoria laus" "the renown in arms of the Emperor," who was then Domitian. The author of the Annals, who was not aware of this nice distinction, uses Imperator, not as it was used in the time of Tacitus, but as it was used in the days of the Republic. He, too, like Tacitus, uses the noun in its adjectival form, but he does not apply it, as Tacitus does, to that which belongs to the Emperor, but to that which belongs to a general; for he means by "imperatoria laus" (II. 52), "the fame of a general," even of Germanicus. He seems to have thought that it could be given to any member of the imperial house, for he applies it without distinction to Germanicus, who was the son of an Emperor, as to the Emperors Caligula, Claudius and Nero, when speaking of the daughter of Germanicus, Agrippina, who was the mother of Nero, wife of Claudius and sister of Caligula: "quamimperatore genitam, sororem ejus, qui rerum potitus sit, et conjugem et matrem fuisse" (XII. 42); he applies it even to the wife of an Emperor's son, for he styles Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, "imperatoria uxor" (I. 41); he gives the title to the barbarian generals among the Germans (II. 45), which no Roman in the time of the Empire, or, perhaps, even of the Republic, could have possibly done; and, further, to military chiefs, who corresponded then to our present generals of division, for, when speaking of Caractacus as "superior in rank to othergeneralsof the Britons," he expresses himself: "ceteros Britannorumimperatorespraemineret" (XII. 33).
That a modern European wrote the Annals is also very clear from the undistinguishing use in that work of the cognate word, "princeps," which, like "imperator," had two different meanings at two different periods of Roman history, meaning, in the time of the Republic, merely "a leading man of the City," and, in the time of the Empire, the Emperor only. This every Roman, of course, discriminated; hence Tacitus everywhere uses the word in its strictly confined sense of "Emperor" (Hist. I. 4, 5, 56, 79et al.). For "the leading men of the Country," his phrase is not, as a Roman would have expressed himself in the Republican period, "principes viri urbis," but "primores civitatis." The author of the Annals, who was in the dark as to this, uses "principes" in the Republican sense of "leading men," as occurs in the observation: "the same thing became not theprincipal citizensand imperial people" (meaning, the aristocracy and freemen), "as became humble" homes (meaning, the dregs of the populace), or, "States" (meaning, the occupants of thrones): "non cadem decoraprincipibus viriset imperatori populo, quae modicis domibus aut civitatibus" (III. 6). He also misapplies the word to the sons of Emperors, as if he were under the impression that they were styled "princes" by the ancient Romans as by modern Europeans, for thus he speaks of the sons of Tiberius, Drusus and Germanicus: "except that Marcus Silanus out of affront to the Consulate sought that office for theprinces": "nisi quod Marcus Silanus ex contumelia consulatus honoremprincipibuspetivit" (III. 57).
The author of the Annals is quite as remarkable as Tacitus for antithesis: sometimes two antitheses occur together in Tacitus in the same clause. He is as remarkable for an equal balancing of phrases. But only in the Annals is the style of Tacitus mingled with the manner of some other Roman writer, as the easy and flowing redundance of Livy (I. 32, 33); the peculiar alliterations, triplets, ring of the sentences and flow of narrative of Sallust (XIV. 60-4), the antiquated expressions, new words, Greek idioms, and concise and nervous diction throughout of that historian; along with words and phrases, borrowed from the poets, especially Tibullus, Propertius, Catullus, above all, Virgil.
There is neither in Tacitus, nor the author of the Annals, the strength and sublimity of expression found in that great master of rhetoric, Cicero. The eloquence of Tacitus is grave and majestic, his language copious and florid. The language of the author of the Annals is cramped; and he maintains a dignified composure, rather than majesty; occasionally he has an inward laugh in a mood of irony, as when commending Claudius for "clemency," in allowing a man,—whom he has sentenced to execution, to choose his own mode of death. His close, dry way, too, of saying things savours of harshness, and differs widely from the Greek severeness of manner observable in Tacitus. The crucial test is to be found in a few trifling matters of style. So far from displaying the same care as Tacitus to avoid a discordant jingle of three like endings, he will write bad Latin to get at the intolerable recurrence. Rather than have a similar ending to three words Tacitus will depart from his rule of composition which is to balance phrases,—"dissipation, industry"; "insolence, courtesy";—"bad, good";—but to avoid a jingle he writes "luxuria, industria";comitate, arrogantia"; "malis bonisque artibus mixtus" (Hist. I. 10), his usual style of composition requiring "luxuri_a_, industri_a_; arroganti_a_, comitate." He prefers incorrect Latin to such sounds. He writes, "coque Poppaeam Sabinam—deposuerat" (Hist. I. 13), instead of what the best Latinity required, "coque j_am_ Poppae_am_ Sabin_am_." The author of the Annals, not having his exquisite ear, nor abhorrence of inharmonious concurrence of sounds, actually goes out of his way, by disregarding grammar, carefully to do Tacitus, also by disregard of grammar, as carefully avoided, to procure three like endings, as "uter_que_ opibus_que_ at_que_ honoribus pervignere" (An. III. 27), when Tacitus would have unquestionably written, "uterque opibusqueet," and, moreover, have written correctly, because the Romans never followed "que" with "atque," always with "et."
The author of the Annals falls into the opposite fault of having three like beginnings as "_a_dhuc Augustum _a_pud" (I. 5), which is in the style of Livy or Cicero, but not Tacitus. At the same time no writer is so fond of alliteration as Tacitus; yet he resorts to it with so much judgment, that it never grates on the ear, and with so much art that it all but passes notice. It is perceptible in the Germany and the Agricola as well as the History; though in the latter work it is carried to greater perfection, and is more systematically used, being found in almost every paragraph. The rule with Tacitus is this:—When he resorts to alliteration in the middle of a sentence where there is no pause, he uses words that differ in length, as "justis judiciisapprobatum" (Hist. I. 3), "tot terrarumorbe" (I. 4), "pars populiintegra" (6); and so throughout the History, till at the close, we find the same thing uniformly going on:—"miscebantur minispromissa" (V. 24); "poena poenitentiamfateantur" (V. 25); "Vespasianum vetusmihi observantiam" (V. 26). But—and particular attention is called to this—when the alliteration is found at the end of a sentence, or (where there is a pause) in the middle of a sentence, he prefers words of the same length, but different quantities, as, at the beginning of the History;—senectuti seposui(I. l); "plerumque permixta; "sterile saeculum" (ibid); and so throughout the work to the end, where we still find the same regularity of identical alliteration: "clamore cognitum" (V. 18); "coeptâ coede" (V. 22); "oequoris electum" (V. 23); "merito mutare" (V. 24). This peculiarity of composition, so distinctive of Tacitus, unfortunately for his forgery, ENTIRELY escaped the attention of the author of the Annals; he seems to have thought that any kind of alliteration, so long as it was constantly carried on, would sufficiently mark the style of Tacitus. Accordingly he has all kinds of alliterations, except the right ones, for they are quite different from, and, indeed, the very reverse of those of Tacitus; sometimes they are twofold (I. 6); sometimes threefold (I. 5); sometimes even four together—"posita, puerili praetexta principes" (I. 8);—from which last Tacitus would have shrunk with horror at the sight, as Mozart is stated to have rebounded and swooned at the discordant blare of a trumpet. As to using in the middle of sentences words that differ in length as a rule they do not, from the first of the kind, "ortum octo" (I. 3), to the last of the kind, "voce vultu" (XVI. 29); at the end of sentences, he uses words that, instead of not differing, do differ in from the first of the kind, "Augustum adsumebatur" (I. 8), to the last of the kind "sortem subiret" (XVI. 32) and "sestertium singulis" (XVI. 33).
After this overwhelming proof of forgery, I need not press another syllable upon the reader. If not convinced by this, he will be convinced by nothing; for here is just that little blunder which a forger is sure to make: so far from being insignificant it is all- important; it swells out into proportions of colossal magnitude, at once disclosing the whole imposture, it being absolutely impossible that Tacitus should have so systematically adhered to a particular kind of alliteration in that part of his history which deals with Galba, Otho, Vitellius and Vespasian, and have so suddenly and utterly neglected or ignored it in that part of the history which deals with Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
Si per se virtus sine fortuna ponderanda sit, dubito an huncprimum omnium ponam.CORNELIUS NEPOS.Thrasybulus.
I. His genius and the greatness of his age.—II. His qualifications. —III. His early career.—IV. The character of Niccolo Niccoli, who abetted him in the forgery.—V. Bracciolini's descriptive writing of the Burning of Jerome of Prague compared with the descriptive writing of the Sham Sea Fight in the Twelfth Book of the Annals.
Though I have dwelt on the harshness of style and manner, and the occasional inaccuracies in grammar and language of the author of the Annals, it must not be supposed that I fail to appreciate his merit. In some of the qualities that denote a great writer he is superior to Tacitus; nor can anyone, not reading him in his original form, conceive an adequate notion of how his powers culminate into true genius,—what a master he is of eloquence, and how happy in expressing his very beautiful sentiments, which, sometimes having the nature of a proverb or an epigram, please by the placing of a word. His general ideas are scarcely retained in a translation: such a reproduction deprives them of the train of images and impressions which cluster round them in his language of poetry and suggestion, giving them spirit and interest, and imparting to them strength and ornament:—As winter is thrown over a landscape by the hand of nature, so coldness is thrown over his page by the hand of a translator: the student who can familiarize himself with his thoughts as expressed in the tongue in which he wrote, and reads a translation, is in the position of a man who can walk in summer along the bank of a majestic river flowing beautifully calm and stately by meadows pranked with flowers and woods waving in varied hues of green, yet prefers visiting the scene in winter when life and freshness are fled, the river being frozen, the flowers and greenness gone from the fields, and the leaves fallen from the trees.
The question arises,—Who was this wonderful man? If unknown, can he not be discovered?
John Leycester Adolphus, famous for his History of George the Third, discovered the author of the Waverley Novels in Sir Walter Scott, when the Wizard of the North was styled "The Great Unknown," by pointing out coincidences in the pieces and poems, known to be the productions of Scott, in such matters as the correct morals, the refined manners, the Scotch words and idioms, the descriptive power, the picturesque and dramatic fancy, the neat, colloquial turns in dialogue, the quaint similes, the sprinkle of metaphors, the love of dogs, the eloquent touches with regard to the pure and tender relations of father and daughter; and clinched the investigation by showing the freedom and correctness in the use of law-terms and phrases, which indicated clearly that the author was a lawyer. It being easy when a way has been shown to follow in the track, I turned to the period in question, which, I knew, must be the first half of the fifteenth century, to look for a writer, whose qualities, literary and moral,—or rather immoral,—could win for him the triumphal car of being the Author of the Annals—if triumph can, in any way, be associated with such ingloriousness as forgery,—and, after a little looking about, I found him in one whose compositions display, not to a remote, but in a close degree the energy, the animation, the feeling, the genius, the true taste, the deep meaning, and glimpses, ever and anon, of that signal power, which, rising into truly awful magnificence, of looking deeply into the darkest recesses of the human heart, runs through the Annals like the shining waters of a river in whose rich sands roll grains of gold.
The age of that writer was instinct with mental power: men were giants of intellect: Italy had soared to the highest pinnacle in the domain of mind, unequalled by preceding ages, except those of Pericles and Augustus: beginning in the fourteenth Century with Dante and Petrarch, and ending at the beginning of the sixteenth with the father of the modern political system, Machiavelli, it rose to the highest point of its altitude, and remained there through the whole of the fifteenth, when such bright lights shone constantly in the meridian of mind, as that Prince of the Church, Cardinal Sadoleti, great as a poet, equally great as a philosopher, whose poems on Curtius and the Curtian Lake and the Statue of Laocoon would have done honour to Virgil, while in his "De Laudibus Philosophiae" Cicero lives again in style and manner of thinking.
During that long interval of splendour, achievements of the intellect are upon record that fully establish the existence of the most remarkable genius. Poliziano in a letter (Ep. XII. 2) to Prince Pico of Mirandola tells of one of these marvellous feats that was done by a youthful prodigy, only eleven years old, of the great family of Orsini (Fabius Ursinus). First young, Fabio Orsini sang; then recited verses of his own: requested to turn the verse into prose, he repeated the same thoughts unfettered by measure in an unassuming manner, and with an appropriate and choice flow of expression. After that subjects were proposed to him for epistolary correspondence, on which he was to dictate ex tempore to five amanuenses at once, the subjects given being "of a nature so novel, various, and withal so ludicrous that he could not have been prepared for them": after a moment's pause he dictated a few words to the first amanuensis on one subject; gave his instructions on a different theme to the second; proceeded in like manner with the rest, then returning to the first, "filled up every chasm and connected the suspended thread of his argument so that nothing appeared discordant or disjointed," and, at the same instant, finished the five letters. "If he lives," concluded Poliziano, "to complete the measure of his days," and "perseveres in the path of fame, as he has begun, he will, I venture to predict, prove a person, whom, for admirable qualities and attainments, mankind must unite to venerate as something more than human."
In that age some men had such an enthusiastic predilection to antiquity that they were animated by an ardent zeal for collecting ancient manuscripts, medals, inscriptions, statues, monumental fragments, and other ancient and classical remains. Others, again, were suspected of the intention to impose their own productions on the public as works of antiquity; one man, who never ceased to regret that it had not been his lot to live in the days of Roman splendour, Peter of Calabria, styled himself in his Commentaries on Virgil, Julius Pomponius Sabinus, and in his notes to Columella, Julius Pomponius Fortunatus, his object in both instances being that he should be mistaken for some Roman who had flourished in the purest ages of Latinity; and Foy-Vaillant, the celebrated numismatist of the seventeenth century, actually places him, in one of his numismatical works, in the list of ancient authors, while Justus Lipsius and Pithaeus both took him to have been a "Grammaticus", or "writer in Latin," of the earlier middle ages, all the time that he was an Italian academician, who flourished in the fifteenth century, having been born in 1425 at a place that has been called "The Garden of Almond Trees,"— Amendolara, in Upper Calabria.
It would be idle to suppose that the author of the Annals was actuated by the simple purpose of Peter of Calabria; there is ground for believing that some deeper, and less pure, motive instigated him to commit forgery. Though no Peter of Calabria, he was a matured Fabio Orsini; and the only drawback from his fabricated work is that it is not to be looked upon as Roman history, always in the most reliable shape, but rather as a form of the imagination which he selected for expressing his views on humanity;—to paint crime; to castigate tyranny; to vindicate honesty; to portray the abomination of corruption, the turpitude of debauchery and the baseness of servility;—to represent fortitude in its strength and grandeur, innocence in its grace and beauty, while standing forth the sturdy admirer of heroism and freedom; the tender friend of virtue in misfortune; the austere enemy of successful criminality, and the inflexible dispenser of good and evil repute.
That a man of such great parts and extensive learning, with such fine thoughts, beautiful sentiments and wise reflections;—such a cool, abstracted philosopher, yet such an over-refined politician;—such a gloomy moralist, yet such an acute, fastidious observer of men and manners, was a cloistered monk or any obscure individual whatever was an idea to be immediately dispelled from the mind, for that the Annals was composed by such a man would have been about as incomprehensible an occurrence, as it would be impossible to conceive that an acrobat who exercises gymnastic tricks upon the backs of galloping horses in an American circus could discharge the functions of a First Lord of the Treasury or a Justice in the High Court of Judicature, or that a pantaloon in a Christmas pantomime could think out the Principia of Sir Isaac Newton or the Novum Organum of Lord Bacon. The fact was, the author was a conspicuous, shining light of his generation; the associate of princes and ministers; who, from the commanding position of his exalted eminence, cast his eyes over wide views of mankind that stretched into sweeping vistas of artifice and dissimulation; and who, for close upon half a century, participated prominently in the active business,—the subdolous and knavish politics,—of his time.
II. Everybody knows the fable of the old man, the boy and the ass; but not one in a thousand knows that it was written nearly four hundred years ago by a man who for forty years was a member of the Secretariate to nine Popes, from Innocent VII. to Calixtus III. First in the Bugiale of the Vatican, where the officers of the Roman Chancery, when discussing the news of the day, were making merry with sarcasms, jests, tales and anecdotes, one of the party having observed that those who craved popularity were chained to a miserable slavery, it being impossible from the variety of opinions that prevailed to please everybody, some approving one course of conduct, and others another, the fable in question was narrated in confirmation of that statement.
Poggio Bracciolini was not only the author of that fable, I am now about to bring forward reasons for believing, and with the view of inducing the reader to agree with me, that he,—and nobody else but he,—was the writer of the Annals of Tacitus.
He was in every way qualified to undertake, and succeed in, that egregious task. He was one of the most profound scholars of his age, more learned than Traversari, the Camaldolese, and if less learned than Andrea Biglia, superior to the Augustinian Hermit in a more natural, easy and cultivated style of composition and in a wider knowledge of the world: acquainted somewhat with Greek and slightly with Hebrew, he possessed a masterly and critical knowledge of Latin which he had carefully studied in his native city, Florence, with the most accomplished Latinist of the day, Petrarch's valued friend, the illustrious Giovanni Malpaghino of Ravenna.
Bracciolini was not of a character to have revolted at the baseness of fabrication;—an inordinate love of riches, more devouring in his breast than his next strongest passion, love of knowledge, was sufficient to egg him on to it. Throughout life, his moral conduct was unfavourably influenced by the scantiness of his means. It was to beguile the anxiety occasioned by his narrow circumstances that he devoted himself to intense study, from knowing that superior attainments combined with splendid talents would secure for him great offices of trust and profit: he saw how those who were esteemed the most learned as well as the most able gained the best lucrative posts under the governments of the Popes and Princes of his day: he, therefore, employed himself in the pursuit of knowledge for the sake of attaining high rank and great wealth; knowledge was, accordingly, only so far pursued by him as it would be productive of money, and get him through the world in honour and affluence. Up to the age of twenty-six he had the run of, what was then considered,—when good manuscripts were uncommonly costly and very scarce,—a magnificent library of 800 volumes, that belonged to his veteran friend, Coluccio Salutati, Chancellor of the Republic of Florence; amid those stores of knowledge he courted the Muses ardently, all the while cultivating diligently the acquaintance of the leaders of society, uniting the character of the scholar with that of the man of the world, and becoming as accomplished in politeness and as profound in mastery of the human heart as in scholarship and learning;—qualities conspicuous in his acknowledged writings, no less than in that extraordinary masterpiece, the Annals of Tacitus.
Notwithstanding that the period in which he flourished was remarkable for its number of men, who, by their genius and learning revived the golden ages of ancient literature, he was admitted by all to be without his equal, be it in erudition or intellect, power of writing or intimacy with Latin. Guarino of Verona, in spite of the severity with which he was treated by him in his controversies, likens him, in one of his Epistles (Ep. Egreg. Viro Poggio Flor. 26 Maji 1455), to "the purest models of antiquity," and commends him for his "vigorous eloquence and encyclopaedic stores of information": "pristini socculi floret, et viget eloquentia, virtutisque thesaurus." Another of the best spirits of that age, Benedotto Accolti of Arezzo, in his work on the Eminent Men of his Time, puts him on a level with, if not superior to any of the ancient historians, Livy and Sallust alone excepted; for he says, "some of whom" (he is speaking, along with Bracciolini, of Bruni, Marsuppini, Guarino, Rossi, Manetti, and Traversari) "so wrote history, that, with the exception of Livy and Sallust, there were none of the ancients to whom they might not justly be considered as equal or superior"—"quorum aliqui ita historias conscripserunt, ut Livio et Sallustio exceptis, nulli veterum sint, quibus illi non pares aut superiores fuisse recte existimentur" (Benedict. Accoltus Arez. in Dial. de Praest. Viris sui aevi. Muratori. t. XX. p. 179). L'Enfant does not make this exception, for, speaking of Bracciolini's History of Florence, he says, that in "reading it one is reminded of Livy, Sallust and the best historians of antiquity":—"A légard de son Histoire, on ne sauroit le lire sans y reconnoître Tite Live, Salluste, et les meilleurs historiens de l'antiquité" (Poggiana, Vol. II. p. 83). Sismondi, too, in the opening pages of the 8th volume of his "Histoire des Républiques Italiennes du Moyen Age," says in a footnote (p. 5) that Bracciolini, in common with Leonardo Bruni and Coluccio Salutati carried off the palm as a Latin writer from all his predecessors in the fourteenth century:—"à la fin du siècle on vit paroitre Leonardo Bruni, dit d'Arétin, Poggio Bracciolini, et Coluccio Salutati, qui devoient l'emporter, comme écrivains Latins, sur tous leurs prédecesseurs." Although Sismondi is quite right as to the date when Bruni and Salutati flourished, he is altogether wrong in supposing that Bracciolini made an appearance before the public at any time in the fourteenth century; quite at the end of it he was only in his twentieth year: the next century had well advanced towards the close of its first quarter before (with the exception of some Epistles) he began to write, which was not until after he had passed his fortieth year.
Along with these superior merits of an intellectual writer thus freely accorded to him by some of his more distinguished contemporaries and by illustrious historians, Bracciolini possessed the plastic power that makes the forger. He wrote in a great variety of styles and manners; sometimes treating subjects with condensation, and sometimes with diffusiveness. His language is elevated and his sentences are rounded and smooth in his Funeral Orations, in which there is no inflation, nothing declamatory, a perfect absence of straining after effect, yet a rising with ease into veins of sublime rhetoric, while he is close, severe and antique:—hence the principal position that is given to him as an orator by Porcellio in a poem where Marsuppini is called upon to chaunt the praises of Ciriano of Ancona (see Tiraboschi, VI. 286): in ascribing to Marsuppini the place of honour, Porcellio leaves others who are inferior in verse-making to follow; such as, he says, "theOrator Poggio, the sublime Vegio, and Flavio, the Historian":—
Tuque, Aretine, prior, qui cantas laude poetam,Karole, sic jubeo, sit tibi primus honos.Post alii subeant: Orator Poggius ille,Vegius altiloquus, Flavius Historicus.
Then it would seem that, as Vegio and Biondo Flavio were, in the opinion of Porcellio, unsurpassed, the first, for the sublimity of his diction, and the second, by his historical writing, so Bracciolini was lifted by his oratory above all his contemporaries. Wit, polish, and keen sarcasm, with abundance of acute observations on the human character, distinguish his Essay on Hypocrisy, published at Cologne in 1535 by Orthuinus Gratius Daventriensis in his "Fasciculus Rerum Expetendarum et Fugiendarum." His Letters are written in an easy, agreeable style, with constant sportiveness and endless felicity of expression. In his Dialogues he is delicate, lively, and careful. Facility and happiness of diction are conspicuous in his "Description of the Ruins of the City of Rome," along with accuracy and picturesqueness in representation of objects. But whatever he did, all his writings (including the Annals), bear the stamp of one mind: they indicate alike the predominance of three powers exercised in an equal and uncommon degree, and without which no one can stand, as he does, on the loftiest pedestal of literary merit,—sensibility, imagination and judgment, working together like one compact, indivisible faculty.
In addition to this versatility in composition, which enabled him to imitate any writer, his career fitted him for the production of the Annals by instilling into his mind the peculiar principles of morals and behaviour which find apt illustration in that work. No one could have written that book who had not been admitted within the veil which hides the daily transactions of the great from the profane eyes of the vulgar; and who had not come into frequent personal contact with courts that were corrupt, and with princes, ministers and leading men of society who were objects of unqualified abhorrence.
III. Young Bracciolini who as the son of a notary of Florence in embarrassed circumstances, inherited no advantages of rank or fortune, when he had attained, at the age of 23, a competent knowledge of the learned languages under the instruction of Malpaghino, Chrysolaras [Endnote 136] and a Jewish Rabbi, made his first entry into life by receiving admission, perhaps,—it being the common custom in the fifteenth century,—by purchase, into the Pontifical Chancery as a writer of the Apostolic Letters. At that early age the scene that opened itself to his eyes was calculated to destroy all faith in the goodness of human nature. He found in the occupant of St. Peter's Chair, in Boniface IX., a man, ambitious, avaricious, insincere in his dealings, and guilty of the most flagrant simony, bestowing all Church preferments upon the best bidder, without regard to merit or learning, and making it his study to enrich his family and relations.
Bracciolini did not come into the closest communion with the Popes till he became their Principal Secretary, which was when he was between forty and fifty years of age, Aeneas Sylvius Piccolomini, afterwards Pius II., stating in the 54th chapter of his History of Europe that he "dictated" (or caused to be written) "the Pontifical Letters during the time of three Popes";-"Poggium … qui Secretarius Apostolicas tribus quondam Romanis Pontificibus dictarat Epistolas";—and though Aeneas Sylvius does not mention the names of the Pontiffs, he must have meant Martin V. (1417), Eugenius IV. (1431) and Nicholas V. (1447). Nevertheless, as one of the writers of the Apostolic Letters, Bracciolini was in a position to have seen a great deal that left a lasting impression on his mind of the wickedness of a corrupt court, the Papal one at this period being thus described by Leonardo Bruni, to Francis, Lord of Cortona:—"full of ill-designing people, too apt to suspect others of crimes, which they themselves would not scruple to commit, and some, out of love for calumny, taking delight in spreading reports, which they themselves did not credit"; so that when Innocent VII. died suddenly of apoplexy, the rumour gained belief that he had been poisoned, a violent death seeming quite a natural end to a life of leniency to murder.
Not one star of light shone across the long and dreary gloom of the papal court experiences of Bracciolini. On the deposition of Gregory XII. for that Pope's duplicity and share in the intrigues and dissensions which disgraced the Pontifical palace for three years, Bracciolini seems to have retired from Rome, and to have remained a resident in Florence during the greater part of the ten months' reign of the mild, pious and philosophical Alexander V., the only able and virtuous divine, who sat in those dark times on St. Peter's throne.
IV. For losing that one glimpse of light in public life, Bracciolini was more than compensated by a beam of beneficent Fortune in his private career, which threw such lustre on his path, that it rescued him from what must have been his inevitable fate, morbid cynicism: it was one of the happiest incidents that ever occurred to him:—he formed the acquaintance of a man, seventeen years his senior—who, in the lapse of a very short time, became to him a father and adviser, to whom present or absent he imparted every one of his schemes, thoughts, cares, sayings and doings; who was the unfailing allayer of his anxieties, alleviator of his sorrows, and most constant support of all his undertakings,—Niccolo Niccoli,—of whom I must take notice, as he was one of the most active stimulators of the forgery of the Annals.
Though by no means affluent, and frequently straitened in circumstances ("homo nequaquam opulens, et rerum persaepe inops," says Bracciolini of him, Or. Fun. III.), nevertheless, he made enough money, as well as possessed the munificent spirit to build at his own expense, and present to the Convent of the Holy Spirit in Florence an edifice in which to deposit the books bequeathed to the Brothers by Boccaccio; and, at his death, he left to the public in the same City his own manuscripts, which he had accumulated at great cost and with much pains. He was one of the few laymen, not to be found out of Italy, who had learning and a knowledge of Latin, which he had acquired with that eminent scholar, philosopher and theologian, about half a dozen of whose works have come down to us, Ludovicus Marsilius; but learning and Latin were essential to the carrying on of his very pleasant and most lucrative occupation;—that of amending and collating manuscripts previous to their disposal for coin; a business, in which, we are told by Bracciolini, that he surpassed everybody in excessive expertness ("solertissimus omnium fuit in emendis ac comparandis libris fructuosissima ac pulcherrima omnium negotiatione," Or. in Fun. Nic. Nic.); we can, consequently, conceive what immense sums he must have received for manuscripts of the best ancient Greek and Roman classics, when properly spelt, correctly punctuated, and freed from errors.
His qualities, as enumerated by his friend, Bracciolini, in a most enthusiastic Funeral Oration over his remains (Pog. Op. 273-4), were such as to show, if there be no exaggeration in the description of him, that he was as much a wonder as any of the great Oracles of his age. His attainments were varied; his information extensive; his judgment sound, and to be relied upon, being given not for the mere sake of assent nor for flattery, but for what he believed to be true; "he got into a considerable sweat," says Bracciolini, "when he read Greek," ("in Graecis literis plurimum insudavit"), but was enabled to range over every department of literature in Latin, of which his knowledge was critical and most masterly, for the same authority assures us "not a word could be mentioned, the force and etymology of which he did not know"—"nullum proferebatur verbum cujus vim et originem ignoraret" in geography he stood without a rival; for, his memory, being like a vice, retaining everything he read, even to names, he knew the minutiae, of every country better than those who had been residents in them; though he rarely practised the art, he was a master of rhetoric; as a conversationist he held his company in entranced silence from the wisdom of his remarks, the dulcet flow of his words, and his transcendent memory bringing together from all quarters, with appropriateness to every subject under discussion, the valuable stock of his miscellaneous reading. Nothing could be more natural than that such a wonderful instance of the human intellect should court the congenial society of lovers of learning; he made his house the resort for them; and he placed at the disposal of the studious his library, which was the best in Florence, now that Salutati's, after his death, had been disposed of by his sons at auction.
Bracciolini was so struck by the attainments and captivated by the character of this man, that an acquaintance casually formed speedily ripened into an intimacy of the most confidential, cordial and communicative kind. Bracciolini, during his stay in Florence, was a guest in the house of Niccoli; and there, for nearly a year, he resumed and pursued his studies with ardour amid the rich stores of the large and select assortment of manuscripts, amounting to not far from a thousand in number. He was thus adding to the treasures of his lore with daily assiduity, when the news reached Florence that Cardinal Cossa had (notwithstanding the well-known virtues of Alexander V.) poisoned his predecessor, and had been elected to the pontifical chair by the title of John XXIII.
Behold Bracciolini once more in the palace of the Pontiffs of Rome; and now acting, in the capacity of Secretary, or, more properly, writer of the Apostolic Letters, to a Pope who was a poisoner. John XXIII. was even worse than that: he was a most atrocious violator of laws, human and divine; and some crimes he committed were so heinous that it would be indecent to place them before the public. One can imagine how agreeable must have been the occupation to that Pope of a military rather than an ecclesiastic turn, and fonder of deeds of violence and bloodshed than of acts of meekness and Christianity, when he was presiding at Constance over that General Council, which sent to the stake those Bohemian followers of the Morning Star of the Reformation, Huss and Jerome of Prague, to be burnt alive, according to general belief, with their clothes and everything about them, even to their purses and the money in them, and their ashes to be thrown into the Rhine; but, as will be immediately seen, from the account of an eye-witness, in a state of perfect nudity.
V. Bracciolini, who witnessed the burning of Jerome of Prague, gives a description of it in one of his Epistles, in a manner equal to anything that may be found in the Annals;—indeed, many of his contemporaries thought that his Epistles reflected the style and spirit of antiquity,—Beccadelli of Bologna, for example, who says, writing to Bracciolini: "Your Epistles, which, in my opinion, reflect the very spirit of the ancients, and, especially, the antique style of Roman expression":—"Epistolae tuae, quae veterum sane, et antiquum illum eloquentiae Romanae morem, prae ceteris, mea sententia exprimunt" (at the end of Lusus ad Vencrem, p. 47). The style is simpler, more unambitious, and more flowing and smooth than is usually found in the Annals; but, (as in the descriptive passages in that work), free play is given to the fancy which works unclogged by verboseness; and judgment marks the circumstances in a description which progresses, apparently without art, to the close of the beautiful climax, and strongly moves the compassion of the reader:—"When he persisted with increased contumacy in his errors, he was condemned of heresy by the Council, and sentenced to be burnt alive. With an unruffled brow and cheerful countenance he went to his end; he was unawed by fire, or any kind of torture, or death. Never did any Stoic suffer death with a soul of so much fortitude and courage, as he seemed to meet it. When he came to the place of death, he stripped himself of his clothes, then dropping on his bended knees clasped the stake to which he was to be fastened: he was first bound naked to the stake with wet ropes, and then with a chain, after which not small, but large logs of wood with sticks thrown in among them were piled around him up to his breast; then when they were being set on fire he began to sing a sort of hymn, which the smoke and the flames hardly put a stop to. This was the greatest mark of his soul of fortitude: when the executioner wanted to light the fire behind his back, so that he should not see it, he called out, 'Come here, and set fire to it before my eyes; for if I had been afraid of it, I never should have come to this place, which it was in my power to have avoided.' Thus did this man, perish, who was excellent in everything but faith. I saw the end of him; I watched every scene of it. Whether he acted from conviction or contumacy, you would have pronounced his the death of a man who belonged to the school of philosophy. I have laid before you a long narrative for the sake of occupation; having nothing to do I wanted to do something, and give an account of things very different, indeed, from the stories of the ancients; for the famous Mutius did not suffer his arm to be burnt with a soul so bold, as this man his whole body; nor Socrates drink poison half so willingly as he endured burning."
I shall now place the passage before the reader in the Latin, as it was written by Bracciolini, with some words in Italics, upon which I shall afterwards comment:—
"Cum pertinaciusin erroribus perseveraret, per Concilium haeresis damnatus est, etignicombustus. Jucunda fronte et alacri vultu adexitumsuumaccessit, nonignemexpavit, non tormenti genus, nonmortis. Nullus unquam Stoicorum fuittam constanti animo, tamfortimortemperpessus, quam isteoppetiissevidetur.Cumvenisset adlocum mortis, se ipsum exuit vestimentis, tumprocumbens, flexis genibus, veneratus estpalum, ad quem ligatus fuit: primum funibus manentibus,tumcatena undus adpalumconstrictus fuit; ligna deinde circumposita pectore tenus non minuscula, sed grossa palaeis interjectis,tumflamma adhibita canere coepit hymnum quendam, quem fumus etignisvix interrupit. Hoc maximumconstantis animisignum:cumlectorignempost tergum, ne idvideret, injicere vellet: —'huc,' inquit, 'accede, atque in conspectu accendeignem; si enim illum timuissem, nunquam ad hunclocumquem effugiendi facultus erat,accessissem.' Hoc modo vir, praeter fidem, egregius, consumptus est.Vidihuncexitum, singulosactusinspexi. Sive perfidia, sivepertinaciaidegerit, certe philosophiae schola interitumviridescripsisses. Longam tibi cantilenamnarraviocii causa, nihilagensaliquidagerevolui, et res tibinarrarepaulum similes histories priscorum. Nam neque Mutius illetamfidentianimopassus est membrum uri, quam iste universum corpus; neque Socratestamsponte venenum bibit, quam isteignemsuscepit." [Endnote 145]
It will be seen, as a peculiarity in composition, that, in this not very long sentence, several words are re-introduced, and sometimes over and over again, when the repetition could have been avoided, as: "accedere," "agere," "videre," "narrare," "pertinacia," "constans," "animus," "mors," "exitus," "ignis," "vir," "locus," "palus," "cum," "tum," "tam," &c. As this runs through the whole of Bracciolini's compositions with much frequency, it is to be expected that it would be found to some extent in the Annals; because a man who so writes, writes thus unconsciously and unavoidably, and even when engaged in a forgery, striving to imitate the style and manner of another, he could not escape from so marked and distinctive a mannerism. Bracciolini, accordingly, is found adhering in the Annals to this uniformity of manner: many passages more forcibly illustrative of this peculiarity might be quoted; but I select the sham sea-fight in the XIIth book, for two reasons, because it is pretty much of the same length as the burning of Jerome of Prague, and because it is of a similar nature,—descriptive:—
"Sub idemtempus, interlacumFucinum amnemque Lirin perrupto monte, quo magnificentiaoperisa pluribusviseretur, lacuin ipso navaleproeliumadornatur; ut quondam Augustus, structo cis Tiberim stagno, sed levibus navigiis et minore copiaediderat.Claudius triremes quadriremesque et undeviginti hominum millia armavit, cinctoratibusambitu, ne vaga effugia forent;actamen spatium amplexus, advimremigii, gubernantium artes, impetusnavium, etproeliosolita. Inratibuspraetoriarum cohortium manipuli turmaeque adstiterant, antepositis propugnaculis, ex quis catapultae ballistaeque tenderentur: reliqualacusclassiarii tectisnavibusobtinebant. Ripas et colles,acmontiumedita, in modum theatrimultitudoinnumera complevitproximise municipiis, et alii urbe ex ipsa,visendi cupidineaut officio inprincipem. Ipse insigni paludamento, neque procul Agrippina chlamyde aurata, praesedere.Pugnatum, quamquam inter sontes, fortium virorum animo;ac, post multum vulnerum, occidioni exempti sunt. Sed perfectospectaculoapertumaquarumiter. Incuriaoperismanifesta fuit, haud satis depressi adlacusima vel media. Eoque,temporeinterjecto, altius effossi specus, et contrahendae rursusmultitudinigladiatorumspectaculum editur, inditis pontibus pedestrem adpugnam. Quin et convivium effluviolacusadpositum, magna formidine cunctos adfecit; quiavis aquarumprorumpensproximatrahebat, convulsis ulterioribus, aut fragore et sonitu exterritis. Simul Agrippina, trepidationeprincipisusa, ministrumoperisNarcissum incusatCupidinis acpraedarum. Nec ille reticet, impotentiam muliebrem nimiasque spes ejus arguens." (An. XII. 56-7).
In this passage it will be observed that the same thing takes place in the repetition of words:—"lacus," "ratis," "vis," "navis," "ac," "multitudo," "Cupido," "princeps," "tempus," "spectaculum," "edere," "proelium," "visere," "proximus," "aqua," "opus" and "pugna." The conjunctive particle "ac," is more particularly to be noted as an out of the way word for the ordinary copulative "et": "actamen spatium amplexus"; "acmontium edita"; "acpost multum vulnerum," occurring so frequently in such a brief sentence is just like the monotony of composition in the extract from Bracciolini with respect to "cum": "cumpertinacius in erroribus perseveraret"; "cumvenisset ad locum mortis"; "cumlictor ignem post tergum," &c.
But this is not all as to the resemblance which the passage from Bracciolini bears to the writing in the Annals. The expression "quam isteoppetiise," i.e. mortem, "videtur," has its exact counterpart in the Second Book of the Annals in the phrase: "vix cohibuere amici, quo minus eodem marioppeteret," i.e. mortem (II. 24). When, too, Bracciolini says of Jerome of Prague, "se ipsum exuitvestimentis," "strips himselfof his clothes," instead of simply, "takes off his clothes,"—"exuit vestimenta,"— we have an expression precisely like that in the Annals, "neutrumdatis a se praemiisexuit," that is, "strips neitherof the rewards which he had given him" (XIV. 55), instead of "takes away the rewards,"—"praemia exuit."
But I will go by-and-bye more fully into matters of this kind. At present it is necessary that I should still pursue the career of Bracciolini,—or rather so much of it as is absolutely needed, in order that the reader may see how curiously it prepared and formed him to be the author of such a peculiar work as the Annals, which in its characteristic singularity, could have proceeded from him only, and by no manner of means from Tacitus.