Your copy of Cicero has been in my possession four years and more. There is good reason, though, for so long a delay; namely, the great scarcity of copyists who understand such work. It is a state of affairs that has resulted in an incredible loss of scholarship. Books that by their nature are a little hard to understand are no longer multiplied, and have ceased to be generally intelligible, and so have sunk into utter neglect, and in the end have perished. This age of ours consequently has let fall, bit by bit, some of the richest and sweetest fruits that the tree of knowledge has yielded; has thrown away the results of the vigils and labors of the most illustrious men of genius, - things of more value, I am almost tempted to say, than anything else in the whole world. . . .

But I must return to your Cicero. I could not do without it, and the incompetence of the copyists would not let me possess it. What was left for me but to rely upon my own resources, and press these weary fingers and this worn and ragged pen into the service? The plan that I followed was this. I want you to know it, in case you should ever have to grapple with a similar task. Not a single word did I read except as I wrote. But how is that, I hear some one say; did you write without knowing what it was that you were writing? Ah! but from the very first it was enough for me to know that it was a work of Tullius, and an extremely rare one too. And then as soon as I was fairly started, I found at every step so much sweetness and charm, and felt so strong a desire to advance, that the only difficulty which I experienced in reading and writing at the same time came from the fact that my pen could not cover the ground so rapidly as I wanted it to, whereas my expectation had been rather that it would outstrip my eyes, and that my ardor for writing would be chilled by the slowness of my reading.

So the pen held back the eye, and the eye drove on the pen, and I covered page after page, delighting in my task, and committing many and many a passage to memory as I wrote. For just in proportion as the writing is slower than the reading does the passage make a deep impression and cling to the mind.

126. Boccaccio's Visit to the Library at Monte Cassino (Note by Benvenuto da Imola, in explaining a passage in Dante; trans. by Symonds, J. A., in his Renaissance in Italy, vol. II, p. 133. London, 1888) Benvenuto, a pupil of Boccaccio, has here left us a melancholy picture of the library of this great Benedictine monastery,

which had evidently fallen into decay at the time of Boccaccio's

visit.

He said that when he was in Apulia, attracted by the celebrity of the convent, he paid a visit to Monte Cassino, whereof Dante speaks. Desirous of seeing the collection of books, which he understood to be a very choice one, he modestly asked a monk - for he was always most courteous in manners to open the library, as a favor, for him. The monk answered stiffly, pointing to a steep staircase, "Go up; it is open." Boccaccio went up gladly; but he found that the place which held so great a treasure, was without a door or key. He entered, and saw grass sprouting on the windows, and all the books and benches thick with dust. In his astonishment he began to open and turn the leaves of first one tome and then another, and

found many
foreign works. Some of them had lost several
sheets; others were snipped and pared all
round the text and mutilated in various ways.
At length, lamenting that the toil and study
of so many illustrious men should have passed
into the hands of most abandoned wretches,
he departed with tears and sighs. Coming
to the cloister, he asked a monk whom he met,
why those valuable books had been so dis-
gracefully mangled. He answered that the
monks, seeking to gain a few soldi, were in the
habit of cutting off sheets and making psalters,
which they sold to boys. The margins too
they manufactured into charms, and sold to

and divers volumes of ancient and

women.

So then, O man of study, go to and rack your brains; make books that you may come to this!

127. The Finding of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory at Saint Gall (Letter of Poggio Bracciolini to a friend, and his reply; trans. by Symonds, J. A., in his Renaissance in Italy, vol. II, pp. 135-37. London, 1888)

The famous Council of Constance met at Constance, Switzerland, from 1414 to 1418, in an attempt to settle a controversy over the Papacy and to secure a reformation in church government. It succeeded in the first, but not in the second.

One of the delegates to the Council was Manual Chrysoloras, the first Greek teacher in the West, who died and was buried at Constance, in 1415. Another of those in attendance was Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459), a pupil of Chrysoloras and a devoted Renaissance scholar. He was then Apostolic Secretary, attending

the Council by virtue of his office. During the intervals of the Council, Poggio searched the neighboring monasteries of Switzerland and southern Germany for lost books. The following selection from one of his letters describes his visit (1416) to the famous Swiss monastery of Saint Gall, and his finding the Quintilian manuscript and other treasures there.

(a) Letter of Poggio Bracciolini

I verily believe that, if we had not come to the rescue, he [Quintilian] must speedily have perished; for it cannot be imagined that a man magnificent, polished, elegant, urbane, and witty could much longer have endured the squalor of the prison-house in which I found him, the savagery of his jailers, the forlorn filth of the place. He was indeed right sad to look upon, and ragged, like a condemned criminal, with rough beard and matted hair, protesting by his countenance and garb against the injustice of his sentence. He seemed to be stretching out his hands, calling upon the Romans, demanding to be saved from so unmerited a doom. Hard indeed it was for him to bear, that he who had preserved the lives of many by his eloquence and aid, should now find no redresser of his wrongs, no saviour from the unjust punishment awaiting him. But as it often happens, to quote Terence, that what you dare not wish for comes to you by chance, so a good fortune for him, but far more for ourselves, led us, while wasting our time in idleness at Constance, to take a fancy for visiting the place where he was held in prison. The Monastery of Saint Gallen lies at the distance of some twenty miles from that city. Thither, then, partly for the sake of amusement and partly of finding books, whereof we heard there was a large collection in the convent, we directed our steps. In the middle of a well-stocked library, too large to catalogue at present, we discovered Quintilian, safe as yet and sound, though covered with dust and filthy with neglect and age. The books, you must know, were not housed according to their worth, but were lying in a most foul and obscure dungeon at the very bottom of a tower, a place into which condemned criminals would hardly have been thrust; and I am firmly persuaded that if any one would but explore those ergastula of the barbarians wherein they incarcerate such men, we should meet with like good fortune in the case of many whose funeral orations have long ago been pronounced. Besides Quintilian, we exhumed the three first books, and a half of the fourth book of the Argonautica of (Valerius) Flaccus, and the Commentaries of Asconius Pedianus upon eight orations of Cicero.

When the manuscript was being copied, his friend, Lionardo Bruni, wrote to him as follows:

(b) Reply of Lionardo Bruni

The republic of letters has reason to rejoice not only in the works you have discovered, but also in those you have still to find. What a glory for you it is to have brought to light by your exertions the writings of the most distinguished authors! Posterity will not forget that manuscripts which were bewailed as lost beyond the possibility of restoration, have been recovered, thanks to you. As Camillus was called the second founder of Rome, so may you receive the title of the second author of the works you have restored to the world. Through you we now possess Quintilian entire; before we only boasted the half of him, and that defective and corrupt in text. O precious acquisition! O unexpected joy! And shall I, then, in truth be able to read the whole of that Quintilian which, mutilated and deformed as it has hitherto appeared, has formed my solace? I conjure you send it me at once, that at least I may set eyes on it before I die.

These two letters reveal something of the spirit and emotions of those engaged in the revival and reconstruction of Latin literature and history.

128. Reproducing Books before the Days of Printing (Sandys, J. E., History of Classical Scholarship, vol. II, p. 24. Cambridge, 1903) Among the volumes found at Saint Gall, and copied by the enthusiasts for the recovery of the ancient manuscripts, was a copy of the Argonautica of the Roman writer, Valerius Flaccus, who died about 90 A.D. The last page and signature of his manuscript (see p. 192) illustrates well the slow method of reproducing books before the days of printing.

129. Italian Societies for studying the Classics (Symonds, J. A., The Renaissance in Italy, vol. II, pp. 359-61. London, 1888) In the fifteenth century there was founded, in almost every important Italian city, one or more Academies to promote the new learning. Those at Venice, Florence, Rome, and Naples were the most famous. They took their name from the Academy of Plato, at Athens. The one at Florence was called the Platonic Academy of Florence. The following description of the Academy at Rome, founded in 1425 by an Italian who assumed the old Roman name of Pomponius Lætus, shows the effect of the revival of classical studies on its devotees. In 1500 a "New Academy of Hellenists" was founded at Venice, after the same plan, the mem

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Last page, colophon, and signature of Valerius Flaccus' Argonautica, copied at Saint Gall, in 1416, by the Florentine Poggio, a pupil of the Greek teacher, Chrysoloras

bers assuming Greek names, the meetings being conducted in Greek, and one of the purposes being to edit some Greek author every month.

Under these Popes [unfriendly to the new learning] humanism had to flourish, as it best could, in the society of private individuals. Accordingly, we find the Roman scholars forming among themselves academies and learned circles. Of these the most eminent took its name from its founder, Julius Pomponius Lætus. . . . Pomponius derived his scholarship from Valla, and devoted all his energies to Latin literature, refusing, it is even said, to learn Greek, lest it should distract him from his favorite studies. He made it the object of his most serious endeavors not only to restore a knowledge of the ancients, but also to assimilate his life and manners to their standard. Men praised in him a second Cato for sobriety of conduct, frugal diet, and rural industry. He tilled his own ground after the methods of Varro and Columella, went a-fishing and a-fowling on holidays, and ate his sparing meal like a Roman Stoic under the spreading branches of an oak on the Campagna. The grand mansions of the prelates had no attractions for him. He preferred his own modest house upon the Esquiline, his garden on the Quirinal. It was here that his favorite scholars conversed with him at leisure; and to these retreats of the philosopher came strangers of importance, eager to behold a Roman