is revived in ten thousand copies; and each copy is fairer CHAP. than the original. In this form, Homer and Plato would LXVI. peruse with more satisfaction their own writings: and their scholiasts must resign the prize to the labours of our western editors.

ancient

Before the revival of classic literature, the Barbarians Use and in Europe were immersed in ignorance; and their vul- abuse of gar tongues were marked with the rudeness and po- learning. verty of their manners- The students of the more per fect idioms of Rome and Greece, were introduced to a new world of light and science; to the society of the free and polished nations of antiquity; and to a familiar converse with those immortal men who spoke the sublime language of eloquence and reason. Such an intercourse

must tend to refine the taste, and to elevate the genius, of the moderns: and yet, from the first experiments, it might appear that the study of the ancients had given fetters rather than wings, to the human mind. However laudable, the spirit of imitation is of a servile cast; and the first disciples of the Greeks and Romans were a colony of strangers in the midst of their age and country. The minute and laborious diligence which explored the antiquities of remote times, might have improved or adorned the present state of society: the critic and metaphysician were the slaves of Aristotle; the poets, historians, and orators, were proud to repeat the thoughts and words of the Augustan age; the works of nature were observed with the eyes of Pliny and Theophrastus; and some Pagan votaries professed a secret devotion to the gods of Homer and Plato". The Italians were oppressed by the strength and numbers of their

almost all for the first time; several containing different treatises and authors, and of several authors two, three, or four editions (Fabric. Bibliot. Græc. tom. xiii, p. 605, &c.). Yet his glory must not tempt us to forget, that the first Greek book, the Grammar of Constantine Lascaris, was printed at Milan in 1476; and that the Florence Homer of 1488 displays all the luxury of the typographical art. See the Annales Typographici of Mattaire, and the Bibliographie Instructive of de Bure, a knowing bookseller of Paris.

117 I will select three singular examples of this classic enthusiasm. 1. At the synod of Florence, Gemistus Pletho said, in familiar conversation to George of Trebizond, that in a short time mankind would unanimously renounce the gospel and the Koran for a religion similar to that of the Gentiles (Leo Allatius, apud Fabricium, tom. x. p. 751). 2. Paul II. persecuted the Roman academy, which had been founded by Pomponius Lætus; and the principal members were accused of heresy, impiety, and paganism (Tiraboschi, tom. vi. P. i. p. 81, 82). 3. In the next century, some scholars and poets in France celebrated the success of Jodelle's tragedy of Cleopatra, by a festival of Bacchus, and as it is said, by the sacrifice of a goat (Bayle, Diction

LXVI.

CHAP. ancient auxiliaries: the century after the deaths of Petrarch and Boccace was filled with a crowd of Latin imitators, who decently repose on our shelves; but in that æra of learning, it will not be easy to discern a real discovery of science, a work of invention or eloquence, in the popular language of the country. But as soon as it had been deeply saturated with the celestial dew, the soil was quickened into vegetation and life; the modern idioms were refined: the classics of Athens and Rome inspired a pure taste and a generous emulation; and in Italy, as afterwards in France and England, the pleasing reign of poetry and fiction was succeeded by the light of speculative and experimental philosophy. Genius may anticipate the season of maturity; but in the education of a people, as in that of an individual, memory must be exercised, before the powers of reason and fancy can be expanded; nor may the artist hope to equal or surpass, till he has learned to imitate, the works of his predecessors.

aire, JonELLE. Fontenelle, tom. iii. p. 56-61). Yet the spirit of bigotry might often discern a serious impiety in the sportive play of fancy and learning.

118 The survivor Boccace died in the year 1375; and we cannot place before 1480, the composition of the Morgante Maggiore of Pulci, and the Orlando Inamorato of Boyardo (Tiraboschi, tom. vi. P. ii. p. 174-177.)

CHAPTER LXVII.

Schism of the Greeks and Latins.-Reign and Character of Amurath the Second.--Crusade of Ladislaus King of Hungary.His Defeat and Death.--John Huniades.-Scanderbeg.-Constantine Palæologus last Emperor of the East.

LXVII.

Constanti

1

THE respective merits of Rome and Constantino- CHAP. ple are compared and celebrated by an eloquent Greek the father of the Italian schools'. The view of the an-comparicient capital, the seat of his ancestors, surpassed the most son of sanguine expectations of Emanuel Chrysoloras; and he Rome and no longer blamed the exclamation of an old sophist, that nople. Rome was the habitation, not of men, but of gods. Those gods, and those men, had long since vanished; but, to the eye of liberal enthusiasm, the majesty of ruin restored the image of her ancient prosperity. The monuments of the consuls and Cæsars, of the martyrs and apostles, engaged on all sides the curiosity of the philosopher and the Christian; and he confessed, that in every age the arms and the religion of Rome were destined to reign over the earth. While Chrysoloras admired the venerable beauties of the mother, he was not forgetful of his native country, her fairest daughter, her Imperial colony; and the Byzantine patriot expatiates with zeal and truth, on the eternal advantages of nature, and the more transitory glories of art and dominion, which adorned, or had adorned, the city of Constantine. Yet the perfection of the copy still redounds (as he modestly observes) to the honour of the original, and parents are delighted to be renewed, and even excelled, by the superior merit of their children. "Constantinople," says the orator, "is "situate on a commanding point, between Europe and "Asia, between the Archipelago and the Euxine. By "her interposition, the two seas, and the two continents,

1 The epistle of Manuel Chrysoloras to the emperor John Palæologus, will not offend the eye or ear of a classical student (ad calcem Codini de Antiquitatibus C. P. p. 107-126). The superscription suggests a chronological remark, that John Palæologus II. was associated in the empire before the year 1414, the date of Chrysoloras's death. A still earlier date, at least 1408, is deduced from the age of his youngest sons, Demetrius and Thomas, who were both Porphyrogeniti (Ducange, Fam. Byzant. p. 244.247).

CHAP. ❝are united for the common benefit of nations; and the "gates of commerce may be shut or opened at her com"mand. The harbour, encompassed on all sides by the "sea and the continent, is the most secure and capacious ❝in the world. The walls and gates of Constantinople "may be compared with those of Babylon: the towers "are many; each tower is a solid and lofty structure; "and the second wall, the outer fortification, would be "sufficient for the defence and dignity of an ordinary "capital. A broad and rapid stream may be introduced "into the ditches; and the artificial island may be en"compassed, like Athens', by land or water." Two strong and natural causes are alleged for the perfection of the model of new Rome. The royal founder reigned over the most illustrious nations of the globe; and in the accomplishment of his designs, the power of the Romans was combined with the art and science of the Greeks. Other cities have been reared to maturity by accident and time; their beauties are mingled with disorder and deformity; and the inhabitants, unwilling to remove from their natal spot, are incapable of correcting the errors of their ancestors, aud the original vices of situation or climate. But the free idea of Constantinople was formed and executed by a single mind; and the primitive model was improved by the obedient zeal of the subjects and successors of the first monarch. The adjacent isles were stored with an inexhaustible supply of marble; but the various materials were transported from the most remote shores of Europe and Asia; and the public and private buildings, the palaces, churches, aqueducts, cisterns, porticoes, columns, baths, and hippodromes, were adapted to the greatness of the capital of the East. The superfluity of wealth was spread along the shores of Europe aud Asia; and the Byzantine territory, as far as the Euxine, the Hellespont, and the long wall, might be considered as a populous suburb and a perpetual garden. In this flattering picture, the past and the present, the times of prosperity and decay, are artfully confounded; but a sigh and a confession,

2 Somebody observed, that the city of Athens might be circumnavigated (τις είπεν την πολιν των Αθηναίων δυνασθαι και παραπλειν και περιπλειν). But what may be true in a rhetorical sense of Constantinople, cannot be ap plied to the situation of Athens, five miles from the sea, and not intersected or surrounded by any navigable streams.

escape from the orator, that his wretched country was CHAP. the shadow and sepulchre of its former self. The works LXVII of ancient sculpture had been defaced by Christian zeal or Barbaric violence: the fairest structures were demolished; and the marbles of Paros or Numidia were burnt for lime, or applied to the meanest uses. Of many a statue, the place was marked by an empty pedestal; of many a column the size was determined by a broken capital; the tombs of the emperors were scattered on the ground; the stroke of time was accelerated by storms and earthquakes; and the vacant space was adorned, by vulgar tradition, with fabulous monuments of gold and silver. From these wonders, which lived only in me. mory or belief, he distinguishes however the porphyry pillar, the column and colossus of Justinian3, and the church, more especially the dome, of St. Sophia; the best conclusion, since it could not be described according to its merits, and after it no other object could deserve to be mentioned. But he forgets, that a century before, the trembling fabrics of the colossus and the church had been saved and supported by the timely care of Andronicus the elder. Thirty years after the emperor had fortified St. Sophia with two new buttresses or pyramids, the eastern hemisphere suddenly gave way; and the images, the altars, and the sanctuary, were crushed by the falling ruin. The mischief indeed was speedily repaired; the rubbish was cleared by the incessant labour of every rank and age; and the poor remains of riches and industry were consecrated by the Greeks to the most stately and venerable temple of the East.

ter the

The last hope of the falling city and empire was The Greek -placed in the harmony of the mother and daughter, in schism afthe maternal tenderness of Rome, and the filial obedience council of of Constantinople. In the synod of Florence, the Greeks Florence,

3 Nicephorus Gregoras has described the colossus of Justinian (1. vii. 12); but his measures are false and inconsistent. The editor Boivin consulted his friend Girardon; and the sculptor gave him the true proportions of an equestrian statue. That of Justinian was still visible to Peter Gyllius, not on the column, but in the outward court of the Seraglio; and he was at Constantinople when it was melted down, and cast into a brass cannon (de Topograph. C. P. 1. ii. c. 17).

4 See the decay and repairs of St. Sophia, in Nicephorus Gregoras (1. vii. 12.1. xv. 2). The building was propped by Andronicus in 1317, the eastern hemisphere fell in 1345. The Greeks in their pompous rhetoric, exalt the beauty and holiness of the church, an earthly heaven, the abode of angels, and of God himself, &c.

A. D. 1440 -1448.