Tacitus and Bracciolini Part 6

A hundred years before the birth of Tacitus, Britain was so monstrously barbarous and obscure, that Julius Caesar, when wanting to invade it and wis.h.i.+ng for information of its state and circ.u.mstances, could not gain that knowledge, because, as he tells us, "scarcely anybody but merchants visited Britain in those times, and no part of it, except the seacoast and the provinces opposite Gaul": ("neque enim temere praeter mercatores illo adiit quisquam, neque iis ipsis quidquam, praeter oram maritimam, atque eas regiones, quae sunt contra Gallias." (Caesar De Bell. Gall. IV. 20).

From this we see that, in the middle of the century before the Christian era, the only trade with Britain was then confined to the sh.o.r.es, and the southern parts, from Kent to Cornwall: it is then, against every probability that, in a period extending over no more than about a hundred years, this trade should have extended up the navigable rivers and have reached London enough for it to have risen up, by the year 60 of our era, into an immense emporium and be known all over the world for its enormous commerce. That this was not the case we know from Strabo, who lived in the time of Augustus, and who, though saying a great deal about our island and its trade, has not a word about London, howbeit that the author of the Annals does record in his work that it was exceedingly famous for the number of the merchants who frequented it and the extent of its commerce; but it is not likely that it was so, if the whole island did no more trade than Strabo informs us, the articles exported from all Britain being insignificant and few;--corn and cattle; such metals as gold, silver, tin, lead and iron; slaves and hunting dogs (Strabo III.

2. 9.--ib. 5. 11.--IV. 5. 2), which Oppian says were beagles.

Musgrave, in his Belgic.u.m Britannic.u.m adds "cheese," from some wretched authority, for Strabo says that the natives at that time were as ignorant of the art of making cheese, as of gardening and every kind of husbandry:--[Greek: "Mae turopoiein dia taen apeirian, apeirous d'einai kai kaepeias kai allon georgikon."] (IV. 5. 2).

The statement, then, that London had the very greatest reputation for the number of its merchants and commodities of trade in Nero's time is utterly unfounded--nothing more nor less than outrageously absurd; the picture, however, is quite true if London be considered at the time when Bracciolini was here. Its merchants then carried on a considerable trade with a number of foreign countries, to an extent far greater, and protected by commercial treaties much more numerous than previous to investigation I could have been led to suppose. The foreign merchants who princ.i.p.ally came to the Port of London were those of Majorca, Sicily, and the other islands in the Mediterranean; the western parts of Morocco; Venice, Genoa, Florence and the other cities of Italy; Spain and Portugal; the subjects of the Duke of Brabant, Lorraine and Luxemburgh; of the Duke of Brittany, and of the Duke of Holland, Zealand, Hanneau and Friesland; the traders of the great manufacturing towns of Flanders; of the Hanse Towns of Germany, 64 in number, situated on the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic, the banks of the Rhine, and the other navigable rivers of Germany; the people of the great seaport towns of Prussia and Livonia, then subject to the Grand Master of the Teutonic Order of Knights, along with the traders of Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Iceland.

In addition to these bringing their goods here in their own bottoms, a great number of other foreign merchants were established in London for managing the trade of their respective States and Cities, performing, in fact, the duties now attached to the office of Consul, first inst.i.tuted by the maligned but enlightened Richard III. These foreign merchants being as powerful as they were numerous, formed themselves into Companies: independently of the German merchants of the Steel Yard, there were the Companies of the Lombards; the Caursini of Rome; the Peruchi, Scaldi, Friscobaldi and Bardi of Florence, and the Ballardi and Reisardi of Lucca. The Government protected them, and, as they were viewed with intense jealousy by the native traders, they were judged, in all disputes, not by the common law, but the merchant law, which was administered by the Mayor and Constables; and of the mediators in these disputes, two only were native, four being foreigners, two Germans and two Italians.

The Londoners had made prodigious advances upon their forefathers in the commodities of merchandize in which they dealt. Their most valuable articles of exportation were wool and woollen clothes in great varieties and great quant.i.ty; corn; metals, particularly lead and tin; herrings from Yarmouth and Norfolk; salmon, salt, cheese, honey, wax, tallow, and several articles of smaller value.

But their great trade was in foreign imports and that was entirely in the hands of foreign merchants who came here in shoals, bringing with them their gold and silver, in coin and bullion; different kinds of wines from the finest provinces in the south of France, and from Spain and Portugal; also from the two last countries (to enter into a nomenclature that's like the catalogue of an auctioneer for monotony of names and unconnectedness of things), figs, raisins, dates, oils, soap, wax, wool, liquorice, iron, wadmote, goat-fell, red-fell, saffron and quicksilver; wine, salt, linen and canvas from Brittany; corn, hemp, flax, tar, pitch, wax, osmond, iron, steel, copper, pelfry, thread, fustian, buckram, canvas, boards, bow-staves and wool-cards from Germany and Prussia; coffee, silk, oil, woad, black pepper, rock alum, gold and cloth of gold from Genoa; spices of all kinds, sweet wines and grocery wares, sugar and drugs, from Venice, Florence and the other Italian States; gold and other precious stones from Egypt and Arabia; oil of palm from the countries about Babylon; frankincense from Arabia; spiceries, drugs, aromatics of various kinds, silks and other fine fabrics from Turkey, India and other Oriental lands; silks from the manufactories established in Sicily, Spain, Majorca and Ivica; linen and woollen cloths of the finest texture and the most delicate colours from the looms of Flanders for the use of persons of high rank; the tapestries of Arras; and furs of various kinds and in great quant.i.ties from Russia, Norway and other northern countries. The native merchants of London, the Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Normans, carried on an enormous inland trade. They supplied all parts of the kingdom with corn from the many granaries which filled the City of London.

There was a constant buying and selling of live horned cattle and sheep. Trade was great among goldsmiths, jewellers, gilders, embroiderers, illuminators and painters; and makers of all kinds of commodities sent their goods from every part of the provinces, knowing that they were wanted and would meet with immediate purchasers.

If those were the days when Florence had its Cosmo de' Medici, who spent millions of florins in building palaces, churches and charitable foundations to beautify his native town; and when Bourges had its Jean Coeur who was rich enough to furnish Lewis VII. with sufficient gold crowns to support the armies with which that monarch recovered his possessions from the English, London, too, had its Hende, Whittington and Norbury affluent and magnificent enough to lend their sovereign immense sums of money, and adorn the city in which they had ama.s.sed their stupendous fortunes with useful and ornamental buildings--Bridewells, Colleges, Hospitals, Guildhalls and Public Libraries. Well might Bracciolini, without the slightest particle of exaggeration, say of London, as he saw it, that it was "COPIA negotiatorum et commeatuum MAXIME CELEBRE" (An. XIV. 33).

In leaving this pa.s.sage I cannot help remarking that the expression, "copia negotiatorum et commeatuum," has a turn that is frequently found in the Annals; it is a cast of phrase not affected by Tacitus; but it is exactly the manner of arranging words in a sentence to which Sall.u.s.t is partial: "frequentiam negotiatorum et commeatuum," he says in his "Jugurtha" (47); it is obvious that in this pa.s.sage Sall.u.s.t means by "commeatuus,"

"supplies of corn and provisions," as it is equally obvious that Bracciolini (though following the phraseology of his favourite Latin author,) gives it, in the sentence quoted from the Fourteenth Book of the Annals, a wider meaning, "commodities of merchandize."

III. If Bracciolini erred with respect to London, in magnifying it into a town of superlative commercial splendour in the days of Nero, which, I repeat, is wildly ridiculous, he more grossly erred with respect to our form of government; for when he decried it, and prophesied its decadence and downfall, his sagacity and judgment were impugned.

When he was here our country was in the infancy of its example as a land ruled by the most admirable political arrangements. It can readily be believed with what interest and surprise the proud Italian, who had seen nothing of the kind in his own land of high civilization, must have witnessed our parliaments regularly meeting, as had been the case for generations, since the reign of Edward I. in 1293, knights and burgesses popularly elected by the inhabitants of the counties and boroughs sitting in council with the king, surrounded by his barons and bishops, priors who were peers and abbots who had mitres. With an outspoken contempt of England, and an overweening admiration of Italy, he avails himself of an opportunity of sneering covertly at our harmonious combination of the three forms of government, the monarchy, the oligarchy and the republic.

It is scarcely necessary to say that, as reference is made to the English Parliament, the editors of Tacitus have all been puzzled as to the meaning of the phrase, "delecta ex his et consociata,"

in the following pa.s.sage, where the author of the Annals speaks of "the commonalty, or the aristocracy, or a monarch ruling every nation and community"; and that "a form of government based on a SELECTION AND CONJUNCTION OF THESE is easier praised than realised; or if it is realized, cannot last":--"cunctas nationes et urbes populus, aut primores, aut singuli regunt: DELECTA EX HIS ET CONSOCIATA reipublicae forma laudari facilius, quam evenire; vel si evenit, haud diuturna esse potest" (IV. 33). Now the phrase, "delecta ex his," selected from these, that is, the monarchy, the oligarchy and the republic, and meaning that the selections were of all the excellences and none of the faults of each, is in every way applicable to only one form of government,-- our Parliamentary government, which is at once legislative and executive, and, as it is now, it almost was in the days when Bracciolini was on a visit to us in the opening days of the infant king, Henry VI. Then not only was the "populus," or "commonalty,"

represented by knights, citizens and burgesses of their own choosing; but the "primores," or "aristocracy," had their representatives also in the larger barons, bishops, priors who were peers and mitred abbots; priors who were not peers, and abbots who had not mitres, as well as many of the smaller barons, not receiving writs of summons: the king himself, being an infant at the breast, had his representative, the "selection" being from his own family, in the person of his uncle Humphry, Duke of Gloucester, who was his subst.i.tute in the Parliament as the Protector or Regent; and even when the king was an adult, and absent in wars, as Edward I. when engaged in the conquest of Wales, he was represented in Parliament by Commissioners, as our sovereign is to this day.

But Bracciolini not only said that the selections were from the monarchic, aristocratic and popular elements, but that they were "a.s.sociated" or "conjoined"--"consociata." Here all the editors of Tacitus by their silence or otherwise fairly admit that the pa.s.sage is utterly beyond their comprehension,--"one of those things," in fact, "which," in the words of Lord Dundreary, "no fellow is supposed to understand." As for the word, "consociata,"

James Gronovius was of opinion that Tacitus must have written "concinnata"; but not having the boldness, after the fas.h.i.+on of Justus Lipsius of making alterations, according to his own sweet pleasure, without the authority of ma.n.u.script or edition, he followed Beroaldi, who, as much puzzled as any of the subsequent editors, had subst.i.tuted "const.i.tuta" for the nonsensical word in the blundering MS. "consciata," though common sense should have told him that "consociata" was meant, it being evident that the transcriber, infinitely more puzzled than the editors, for he could not have had the remotest conception of what he was doing, had merely omitted a vowel in his usual careless way. It was not till Ernesti's time, 1772, that the proper word was restored.

Ernesti, too, fancied that he had discovered something in the Roman government, according to the description by Polybius, which justified the language in the Annals. "I have no doubt," he says, "but that Tacitus had in his mind (along with other historians) Polybius, who, in the 9th and following chapters of the 6th book of his History, praises the Roman Republic for combining the excellences of all the three forms of government, while avoiding the faults of each, and he speaks of that system of government as being alone perfect which is compounded of these three." "Neque dubito, Tacitum in animo habuisse c.u.m alios historicos, tum Polybium qui 6. 9 sqq. rempublicam romanam laudat hoc nomine, quod omnium illarum trium formarum commoda complexa sit, vitatis singularum vitiis, eamque solam rempublicam perfectam esse dicit, quae sit e tribus istis temperata."

Let us then see exactly what it is that Polybius does say. After speaking of a balance between the three forms of government in the Roman administration being so fine that it was no easy matter to decide whether the government was aristocratic, democratic or monarchical (VI. 11), he proceeds to point out the several powers appropriated to each branch of the const.i.tution;--the apparently regal rule of the Consuls, the aristocratic authority of the Senate, and the share taken by the people in the administration of affairs (_ibid._ 12, 13, 14). This done, his endeavour is to show not that there was any "selection and conjunction" as stated in the Annals, of the several forms, but quite on the contrary, "counteraction and co-operation": to this he devotes an entire chapter, with these remarks by way of preface:--"With respect, then, to the several parts into which the government is divided, the nature of every one of them has been shown; and it now remains to be pointed out how each of these forms is enabled to COUNTERACT the others, and how, on the other hand, it can CO-OPERATE with them:--[Greek: "Tina men oun tropon diaergaetai ta taes politeias eis ekaston eidos, eirgaetai tina de tropon ANTIPRATTEIN boulaethenta, kai SYNERGEIN allaelois palin hekasta ton mergan dunatai, nun phaethaesetai."] (VI. 15.)

After this, it cannot be supposed that reference is made to the Commonwealth of Rome. Still less so, when, in the very next sentence the author of the Annals attempts to show that an equally blended administration cannot endure, because of the example afforded by Rome (proving how well he knew that the Romans had mixed together in their government the elements of the three forms); he says, that when the Plebeians had the princ.i.p.al power, there was submission to the will of the populace; when the Patricians held the sway, the wishes of the aristocratic section of the community were consulted; and when Rome had her emperors, the people fared no better than during the reign of the kings: here are his words:--"Therefore as in the olden time" (during the Republic), "when the plebeians were paramount, or when the patricians were superior in power," (in the first instance) "the whim of the populace was ascertained and the way in which their humour was to be dealt with, and" (in the second instance) "those persons were accounted astute in their generation and wise who made themselves thoroughly conversant with the disposition of the Senate and the aristocracy; then when a change took place in the Government" (from the Republic to the Empire), "there was the same state of things as when a King was the ruler":--"Igitur, ut olim, plebe valida, vel c.u.m patres pollerent, noscenda vulgi natura et quibus modis temperanter haberetur, senatusque et optimatium ingenia qui maxime perdidicerant, callidi temporum et sapientes credebantur; sic, converso statu, neque alia rerum quam si unus imperitet." (l.c.)

What he is striving in his usual dark way to establish is this:-- Here was the failure of the Roman form of administration; the Romans were the most accomplished people in the art of government; the English, who are semi-barbarous, can know nothing about government; it is then idle on their part to imagine that they are endowed with such a vast amount of political knowledge as to be qualified by their own reflections alone to build up a new and magnificent form of government; when, too, that form of government is essentially different from our superb oligarchies in Italy, the most civilized and cultivated part of the world in everything, especially politics; the English style of government is, also, strictly based on the old Roman mode of administration, and when that failed, how can any sensible man deem that the English method of administration will ever work successfully. Hence his remarks: "raking up and relating this," (namely, how the Roman government never worked well at any time,) "will be of benefit," (to whom?

forsooth, the English,) "because few" (in matters of statesmans.h.i.+p), "by their own sagacity distinguish the good from the very bad, the practicable from the pernicious; the many gain their wisdom from the acts of others; yet as examples bring benefit so do they meet least with a probation." If that be not the meaning of his words, then they must remain, as in all translations, without meaning.

Yet the Latin, crabbed as it is, (and it is always crabbed in the Annals), seems to me to be simple enough:--"haec conquiri tradique in rem fuerit; quia pauci prudentia honesta ab deterioribus, utilia ab noxiis, discernunt; plures aliorum eventis docentur; ceterum ut profutura ita minimum oblectationis adferunt" (l.c.).

That he does not mean the Roman form of government is further seen by his remark that the kind of administration spoken of is "easier to be commended than _realized_"--"laudari facilius, quam _evenire_"; just as it is easy to see from his language that he has before him an instance of some government framed like that which he says will not exist for any length of time; for whenever he employs the hypothetical particle, "_si_" about anything that is absolute and beyond doubt, he always uses it with the indicative and not the conditional. As he then writes, "si _evenit_," (not "si _eveniat_"), "if it _is_ realized," (not "if it _be_ realized,") he really has in his mind some State const.i.tuted according to his description.

It should now be borne in mind that he was in this country before he forged the Annals, and was in the household of Cardinal Beaufort, who had repeatedly filled the office of Chancellor, on whom devolved the duty of issuing the writs to the members of the Parliament, Commoners as well as Peers; for that great officer the Speaker, was not yet invested with the authority so to do with respect to the Lower House; not only, then, had Bracciolini heard of the English Parliament, but the precise nature of it must have come frequently under his cognizance. In fact, it was no other than the English Parliament to which he refers.

That being accepted, there were several reasons to induce him to doubt the durability of our Parliament: the Crown possessed too great power in those a.s.semblies: it was with difficulty that the great barons could be got to attend, their delight being to reside at their castles in the country, and take no part in political affairs; it was also difficult to get the representatives of the counties and boroughs to attend, on account of the long distances that many had to come, and the great expenses of their attendance; sometimes in a county the properly qualified person,--an actual knight,--could not be found, and there was no representative from a county, until upwards of twenty years after Bracciolini had left us, when esquires and gentlemen could be returned; sometimes a city or borough would not send a member, either by pleading poverty in not being able to pay the wages of the two representatives, or from not finding among their townsmen two burgesses with the qualifications required by the writ, that is, sufficiently hale to bear the fatigue of the journey, and sufficiently sensible to discharge the duties of close attendance on Parliament; for every member was then required to be present at the Parliament; hence each small freeholder from a county and each burgess had to find three or four persons of credit to be sureties for him that he would attend; and the const.i.tuents of each were forced to bear the cost of his attendance.

In addition to these difficulties there were other drawbacks that seemed to threaten a speedy termination to these Parliaments. The session was very short; the business was prepared beforehand, the laws being drawn up by the bishops, earls, barons, justices, and others who formed the king's council; and several statutes and laws were thus hastily and ill considered.

In spite of all these excuses for Bracciolini, experience has proved that his observation was shallow; and it is possible that, with his profound insight into the human mind, he might not have made it had he gone deeply into English character; but it seems that he deemed it unworthy of his study, England being "a country, which," as he says, "he did not like at all,"--"hujus patriae, quam parum diligo" (Ep. I. 2). With such an aversion to us it is no wonder that he had no faith in the continuance of our Parliament, for no stronger reason, probably, than that it was an English inst.i.tution; but had he foreseen its durability he would have been a greater wonder than he was from having his eyes more fully opened than were the eyes of any man at that period to the rare qualities possessed by Englishmen; their unpretending magnanimity; their fine talents for business; their keen views in policy; the great things they had done in the arts of peace and war, as well as their capability of continuing to accomplish still greater achievements in both; the solidity of their understandings and their reflective spirits, which, when directed and applied to political schemes, devise and consummate sound and lasting reforms of the State.

CHAPTER III.

BRACCIOLINI SETTING ABOUT THE FORGERY OF THE ANNALS.

I. The Proposal made in February, 1422, by a Florentine, named Lamberteschi, and backed by Niccoli.--II. Correspondence on the matter, and Mr. Shepherd's view that it referred to a Professors.h.i.+p refuted.--III. Professional disappointments in England determine Bracciolini to persevere in his intention of forging the Annals.--IV. He returns to the Papal Secretarys.h.i.+p, and begins the forgery in Rome in October, 1423.

I. About this period Bracciolini commenced the forgery of the Annals. In noticing the preliminary steps to that fabrication, and then glancing back at a few circ.u.mstances peculiar to his age, while touching upon some incidents. .h.i.therto pa.s.sed over in his biography, we shall have all the necessary lights and shades in his life that will be of use to us in the maintenance and ill.u.s.tration of our theory.

Although he received in exchange for the living of 120 florins a year another of the annual worth of 40 with slighter duties attached to it, he still continued to express dissatisfaction at his fortunes, and desire a sinecure canonry in England that would enable him to live in literary ease at home. When, however, an alternative was presented to him of returning to the Pontifical Secretariate, through the intercession of one of his powerful Italian friends, Cardinal Adimari, Archbishop of Pisa, he rudely scouted the overture upon these grounds: that he would "rather be a free man than a public slave"; that he had "a smaller opinion of the Papacy and its limbs than the world believed"; that "if he had thought as highly of the Secretarys.h.i.+p to the Pope, as many did, he would long before have gone back to it; and that if he lost everything, from what he now had, he would not want."--"Video quae Cardinalis Pisa.n.u.s scribit de Secretariatu. Sane si ego illud officium tantum existimarem, quantum nonnulli, ego jamdudum istuc rediissem: sed si omnia deficerent, hoc quod nunc habeo, non deerit mihi. Ego minus existimo et Pontificatum et ejus membra quam credunt. Cupio enim liber esse, non publicus servus"

(Ep. I. 17).

Just as he was in this bad humour, disgusted with his patron and the world, and in the most cynical of moods, a proposal reached him from Florence, which, as set forth to view by himself in communications to his friend Niccoli, is so dimly disclosed as to be capable of two interpretations: The Rev. William Shepherd in his Life of him understands his ambiguous terms as having reference to a professors.h.i.+p, the words of Mr. Shepherd being:

--"Piero Lamberteschi ... offered him a situation, _the nature of which is not precisely known_, but which was probably that of public professor in one of the Italian Universities" (Life of Poggio Bracciolini, p. 138). Now I conceive, and shall attempt to prove that the proposal was not about a "situation," but to forge additional books to the hopelessly lost History of Tacitus.

Niccolo Niccoli seems to have been at the bottom of the business; at any rate, he appears to have advised his bosom friend to undertake the task; for Bracciolini says that he "thinks he will follow his advice, while writing to him from the London Palace of Cardinal Beaufort, in a letter dated the 22nd of February, 1422, respecting "a suggestion" and "an offer" made by his fellow- countryman, Piero Lamberteschi, who, he says, "will endeavour to procure for me in three years 500 gold sequins. If he will make it 600, I will at once close with his proposal. He holds forth sanguine hopes about several future profitable contingencies, which, I am inclined to believe, may probably be realized; yet it is more prudent to covenant for something certain than to depend on hope alone." "Placent mihi quae Pierus imaginatur, quaeque offert; et ego, ut puto, sequar consilium vestrum. Scribit mihi se daturum operam, ut habeam triennio quingentos aureos: fient s.e.xcenti, et acquiescam. Proponit spem magnam plurium rerum, quam licet existimem futuram veram, tamen aliquid certum pacisci satius est, quam ex sola spe pendere" (Ep. I. 17).

Speaking further on in the letter about Lamberteschi, he says: "I like the occupation to which he has invited me, and hope I shall be able to produce something WORTH READING; but for this purpose, as I tell him in my letters, I require the retirement and leisure that are necessary for literary work." "Placet mihi occupatio, ad quam me hortatur, et spero me nonnihil effecturum DIGNUM LECTIONE; sed, ut ad eum scribo, ad haec est opus quiete et otio literarum."

II. The expression of his hope that he would "produce something worth reading," and the mention of his want, in order that he should accomplish what was required of him, "retirement and leisure for literary work," quite set at rest Mr. Shepherd's theory that the proposal had reference to a Professors.h.i.+p. In the first place, professors in those days did not collect their lectures and publish them for the behoof of those who had not the privilege of hearing them delivered. They did not give their addresses an elaborate form, nor introduce into them the novel views and profound and accurate thought with which Professors now dignify their vocation from chairs in Universities, especially those of Oxford and Cambridge, or places of public instruction, as the Royal Inst.i.tution in Albemarle Street, with its Professor Tyndall, or the Royal School of Mines and Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street, with its Professor Huxley. They could not then "produce something worth reading." In the second place they did not require the "retirement and leisure necessary for literary work"; they talked about what they knew in the most simple and artless manner; made no preparations beforehand; walked into a cla.s.s room, and, book in hand, Greek or Roman cla.s.sic, discoursed to their pupils about the meaning of this or that pa.s.sage or the rendering of this or that word benefiting the juvenile cla.s.s with the spontaneous harvest of their cultivated minds, and giving the opinions of others a great deal more freely than they gave their own: all that they said, too, was detached and trite; and if books are valuable, as consisting of perfectly combined parts, and new or extraordinary contents, the lectures of the fifteenth century professors would not have been worth the paper on which they were written. Bracciolini, then, would never, in the contemplation of turning a professor, have spoken of "producing something worth reading"; nor, for the discharge of professorial duties, would he speak of requiring "retirement and leisure for literary work." It is clear that Mr. Shepherd is altogether wrong in his conjecture.

And now as to mine. If the dim revelations concerned a plan about forging the Annals, then "something worth reading" Bracciolini certainly did produce; for the Annals is,--taking the circ.u.mstances under which it was composed into consideration-- about one of the most wonderful literary creations that we have; on every page there is indication of the "labour limae,"--the filing and polis.h.i.+ng that are the result of the "retirement and leisure necessary to literary work"; and, though not bearing a very striking resemblance to the History of Tacitus, of which it is intended to be the supplement, it was, nevertheless, contrived with so much artfulness that, for more than four hundred years, it has deceived the scholars of Europe: yes, indeed, the author

"Gave out such a seeming To seal their eyes up,--close as oak,-- They thought 'twas Tacitus."

The more the pa.s.sages in these interesting letters are considered, the stronger becomes the impression that they are all about a scheme for forging the Annals of Tacitus. Even those which seem to give a colouring to Mr. Shepherd's view in reality favour mine.

A part of the original scheme appears to have been that Bracciolini was to go to Hungary: what for is not mentioned. It then becomes a matter of conjecture. Mine is, that, on account of the belief current in those days that singular treasures of ancient history were to be found more readily than elsewhere in barbarous countries, and that the more barbarous the country the greater the chance of recovering an ancient cla.s.sic, so Bracciolini was to go, or feign that he had gone to Hungary, and then on returning give out that he had there found some of the lost books of the History of Tacitus. If this be not the right conjecture, it can barely be understood why Bracciolini should make a mystery about this visit. "If I undertake a journey to Hungary," he says, "it will be unknown to everybody but a few, and down the throats of these I shall cram all sorts of speeches, since I will pretend that I have come from here," that is, from England. "Si in Hungariam proficiscar, erit ignotum omnibus, praeter paucos; quin simulabo me huc venturum, et istos pascam verbis." (Ep. I. 18). This intention to keep the journey to Hungary a secret looks as if his going there were connected with the wrong act suggested, seeing that men usually resort to concealment when they commit a wrong act, and endeavour to lead people astray with respect to it (as Bracciolini showed an inclination to do) by misstatements and falsehoods: then Bracciolini knew well that the commission of a forgery would be immediately suspected were it bruited abroad that he had come from Hungary where he had found a long-lost cla.s.sic because those were days when book-finders were in the habit of first forging works, and then visiting far distant lands to report on their return that they had there recovered MSS. which they themselves had written.

Another pa.s.sage strengthens my view, though, at a first glance, it favours Mr. Shepherd's. After observing that his friend "knew well how he preferred liberty and literary leisure to the other things which the vast majority held in the highest estimation and made the objects of their ambition," Bracciolini proceeds thus: "And if I were to see that I should get that which our friend Picro expects, I would go not only to the end of Europe but as far as to the wilds of Tartary, especially as I should have the opportunity of paying attention to Greek literature, which it is my desire to devour with avidity, were it but to avoid those wretched translations, which so torment me that there is more pain in reading than pleasure in acquiring knowledge."--"Id primum scias volo, me libertatem et otium litterarum praeponere rebus caeteris, quae plures existimant permaximi, atque optant. Sique videro id me consecuturum, prout sperat Pierius noster, non solum ad Sarmatas, sed Scythas usque proficiscar, praesertim proposita facultate dandi operam Graecis litteris, quas avide cupio haurire, ut fugiam istas molestas translationes, quae ita me torquent, ut pluris sit molestiae in legendo, quam in discendo suavitatis." (Ep. I. 18.)

This is the pa.s.sage that must have particularly induced Mr.

Shepherd to think that what was offered to Bracciolini was a Professors.h.i.+p; and as Bracciolini spoke of the opportunity that would be afforded to him of studying Greek literature, that the Professors.h.i.+p was of Greek. But Mr. Shepherd ought not to have conjectured that the Professors.h.i.+p must have been in some Italian University; it is clear that if Bracciolini was to carry out the proposal of Lamberteschi, he was, from the original plan, to have gone to Hungary. The Professors.h.i.+p must, therefore, have been in Hungary. But in 1422 no professor was wanted in that country, because it had no university: Hungary then was, and remained a wilderness of unlettered barbarism for nearly half a century after, it not being until 1465, half a dozen years from the death of Bracciolini, that Matthias Corvinus established in Buda the first Hungarian University, filling it with valuable works which he got copied from rare ma.n.u.scripts in the princ.i.p.al cities of Italy, especially Rome and Florence, and inviting to it men as learned as Bracciolini, not only from Italy, but also France and Germany. What Bracciolini really alludes to is not a professors.h.i.+p, but the money he was to get for his forgery,--the 500 or 600 gold sequins; and as money was then worth about twenty times more than it is now, it was a moderate fortune of ten or twelve thousand pounds; and when he should have such means at his disposal, he would have quite sufficient for his purpose; he could then forsake the clerical duties which were so onerous and distasteful to him, to devote himself in peace and comfort to his favourite study of Greek literature, with which he became specially captivated just at this period of his life from reading for the first time in the magnificent library of Cardinal Beaufort the works of the Greek fathers, above all, Chrysostom, whom he looked upon as the greatest of all writers; for writing to Niccoli from the London palace of Cardinal Beaufort in the summer of 1420, he speaks of "preferring Chrysostom to everybody else whom he had ever read,"--"Joannes Chrysostomus, quem omnibus, quos ego unquam legerim, praefero" (Ep. I. 7); and, on another occasion, in a letter to the same friend, again referring to Chrysostom, he bursts into the enthusiastic exclamation: "this man by a good shoulder, or more, overtops everybody":--"hic vir longe humero supereminet omnes" (Ep. I. 8). A still greater, nay, "the greatest reason for his desire of returning to Greek literature," he gives in a letter to Niccoli dated London, the 17th of July, 1420, that, in "skimming over Aristotle during the spring of that year, not for the purpose of studying him then, but reading and seeing what there was in each of his works,"--he had found that sort of "perusal not wholly unprofitable, as he had learnt something every day, superficial though it might be, from understanding Aristotle in his own language, when he found him in the words of translators either incomprehensible or nonsensical." "Ego jam tribus mensibus vaco Aristoteli, non tam discendi causa ad praesens, quam legendi, ac videndi, quid in quoque opere contineatur: nec est tamen omnino inutilis haec lectio; disco aliquid in diem, saltem superficie tenus, et haec est causa potissima, cur amor graecarum litterarum redierit, ut hunc virum quasi elinguem, et absurdum aliena lingua, cognoscam sua."

III. As Bracciolini gave his a.s.sent to the fabrication of additional books to the History of Tacitus, his friends Niccoli and Lamberteschi as well as himself were of opinion that his presence was required in Italy, in order that the three should take counsel together, and, discussing the matter in concert, deliberate fully what was best to be done: "nam maturius deliberare poterimus, quid sit agendum," he says in a letter addressed to Niccoli from London on the 5th of March, 1422; and as he left England for Italy in the summer, and did not begin his forgery till the autumn of the next year, he spent the interval of some eighteen, nineteen or twenty months in continually holding cabinet councils with his two friends, and secretly devising with them on what plan he could best execute the addition to the History of Tacitus; no doubt, he thought they had so cleverly arranged matters in providing against all mishaps that he never would be found out. "Veniam ad vos," he continues in the same letter; "et tunc propositis in unum conditionibus, discussisque in utramque partem rationibus, meliorem, ut spero, eligemus partem."

Bracciolini was, notwithstanding, undesirous of leaving England just yet, from keeping his eye fixed upon the main chance. There was the pleasant prospect before him of his living, which had such heavy duties attached to it, being exchanged for a sinecure worth 20 a year, "all," he said, "he coveted, and no more"; but it being uncertain when such good fortune would attend him, he knew not what to do,--whether, as things now stood, he should return to Italy, and lose all chance of getting the free benefice, or stay a little longer in England and wait the possible exchange. "Credo me inventurum pro hac beneficium liberum, et sine cura XX librarum: hoc si fieri poterit, satis est mihi, nec opto amplius; veruntamen nescio quando hoc inveniam; neque scio, an sit melius isto venire, prout res nunc se habent, an expectare paulum, quaerens an possem hanc facere permutationem" (Ep. I. 18). Three months pa.s.sed without the exchange being effected, whereupon as time progressed, his hopes, like the courage of Bob Acres, "oozed out at his fingers' ends." Still he was unwilling to lose what had cost him a great deal of importunity, as well as much time and anxiety of mind by any fault on his part, such as being in too great a hurry over the matter; so he told his friend Niccoli when writing to him in June; as that "there was nothing else which detained him in England but the business of effecting the exchange of his benefice, which from the badness of the times was a much worse living than it was considered to be:" he also came to the definite determination that if in two months what he had been looking for turned up, he would make his arrangements immediately and be off to his two friends at home; and even if he got nothing, still he would start for Italy in August at the latest. "Ut alia epistola ad te scripsi, nihil aliud me hic tenet, nisi cura permutandi hoc beneficium, quod defectu temporum multo tenuius est, quam ferebatur. Nollem enim, id quod tanto et temporis impendio quaesivi, et animi sollicitudine, nunc amittere vitio festinandi.

Si his duobus mensibus emerserit aliquid, quod cupio, concludam statim, atque ad vos veniam; sin autem nihil invenero, etiam veniam ad vos." (Ep. I. 22 in.)

Cardinal Beaufort had in the April of 1422 promised to get him a prebend for his church,--a simple, as distinguished from a dignitary prebend. If without a dean and chapter inducting him into a prebendal stall, which he did not want, he could go to Italy and there draw every year the stipend granted for the maintenance of a prebendary out of the estate of an English collegiate church, possibly in the diocese of Winchester, he would not have visited England in vain. But when he reminded the Cardinal of his promise, and claimed its performance, Beaufort receded from his position. "To trust the speeches of such persons," said Bracciolini, "is like holding a wolf by the ears,"

(quoting what the old Greeks used to say, [Greek: ton oton echein ton lukon] when they wanted to denote the awkward position of a man holding on to something when it was difficult for him to cling to it, and still more dangerous for him to let it go). From that moment Bracciolini ceased to place any further trust in Cardinal Beaufort, and turned with redoubled zest to the proposal of Lamberteschi as one on which he alone relied: "Quidam me duobus jam mensibus suspensum tenet promittens mihi daturum praebendam quandam pro hac ecclesia: nunc autem c.u.m rem urgerem, et ad calcem cuperem pervenire, recessit a promissis suis. Credere verbis istorum est, ac si auribus lupum teneas. Tu vero da operam, et c.u.m primum Petrus responderit, me de eo facias certiorem: nam hoc solum expecto" (Ep. I. 21). From this time his mind was made up: he would leap the Rubicon: he would go in for the forgery, and his friend must have confidence in him. So speaking of his powers for the great task which he meditated he proceeds thus interestingly in the letter to Niccoli bearing date London, the 10th of June, 1422: "I want you to have no distrust: give me the leisure and the time for 'writing that HISTORY'" (the nearest approach this to a disclosure of the grand secret so frequently hinted at by him in the London letters of the spring and summer of 1422), "and I will do something you will approve. My heart is in the work, though I question my powers." Then quoting the sentiment from Virgil about "labour overcoming everything," he proceeds with unabated interest: "I have not for four years devoted any attention to literature, nor read a single book that can be considered well- written,--as you may judge from these letters of mine which are not what they used to be; but I shall soon get back into my old manner. When I reflect on _the merits of the ancient writers of history, I recoil with fear from the undertaking_" (mark that); "though when I consider what are the writers of the present day, I recover some confidence in the hope that if I strive with all my might, I shall be inferior to few of them." He then implores his friend to let him know the reply of Lamberteschi as soon as possible. "Nec dubites volo; si dabitur otium et tempus DESCRIBENDI GESTA ILLIUS, aliquid agam quod probabis. Cor bonum, adest mihi; nescio an vires aderint: tamen 'labor omnia vincit improbus.' Quatuor his annis nullam dedi operam studiis humanitatis, nec legi librum, quod ad eloquentiam spectaret; quod ex ipsis litteris meis potes conjicere. Non sunt enim quales esse consuevere; sed tamen brevi tempore redigar in priorem statum.

_c.u.m priores rerum scriptores considero, deterreor a scribendo_; c.u.m vero nostri temporis, nonnihil confido, sperans me paucis inferiorem futurum, si omnino nervos intendero. Tuum vero sit studium, ut quam primum certior fiam responsionis Petri" (Ep. I. 21).

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

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

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