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we are told that a number of manuscripts were sent by the Pope from Rome to Cologne to be there copied. Many of the manuscripts presented by Hildebald still exist in the Cathedral library. Corvei, in Westphalia, was founded in 822 by monks from the Anglo-Saxon house at Corbie, near Amiens. The most notable figure in the movement was Servatus Lupus, Abbot of Ferrières from 842 to 862, who had himself received his education at Fulda. The letters of Servatus show that he was a genuine forerunner of the Italian renaissance. He obtained manuscripts from Fulda, Tours, York, and Rome. He was also interested in textual criticism, and was accustomed to borrow manuscripts, e. g. of Cicero's Letters and the Verrines, with the help of which he corrected his own copies. He quotes out-of-the-way authors, e. g. Catullus, to illustrate a point of prosody.

This short sketch will suffice to show the extent to which the preservation of classical manuscripts is due to the Irish monks in the seventh century, and to the revival of learning in the eighth, which was largely due to Anglo-Saxon influence. It was in the monasteries founded at this time that the Italians of the fifteenth century made most of their discoveries. The favourite authors in the Middle Ages were:

(a) Poets: Virgil, Horace, Terence, Persius, Juvenal, Ovid, Lucan, and Statius.

(b) Historians: Sallust, Justin, Val. Maximus, Q. Curtius, Prosper.

(c) Rhetorical writers: Ad Herennium, Cic. de Inventione, Topica.

(d) Philosophers: Cicero, de Officiis, de Senectute, Tus

culans.

(e) Grammarians: Priscian, Servius, Macrobius. Most others were rare, and a number of famous works have descended to us from single copies. Also, in some cases where we have a number of fairly ancient manuscripts, it can be

proved that all are derived from a single copy. Thus, one-half of Cicero's philosophical works (Nat. D., Div., Tim., Fat., Top., Parad., Lucull., Leg.), found in seven manuscripts ranging from the ninth to the eleventh century, is shown by common dislocations and mutilations to go back to a single manuscript not older than the eighth century. It is therefore a matter of accident whether an author survived or was lost.

Mediaeval readers were also under some singular misapprehensions. Virgil, as is well known, was supposed to be a magician. Statius was confused with a Christian martyr of Toulouse, and was supposed to have been converted to Christianity by reading Virgil's fourth Eclogue. This error has caused Dante to admit him to Purgatory and ultimate salvation. Caesar was generally known as Celsus, on account of a colophon, found in many manuscripts, which attests a revision of the text by Julius Celsus. Still more strangely Martial was known as Cocus, the error being due to manuscripts containing all his poems with the inscription Martialis totus.

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The Middle Ages end with Dante, and the new era is inseparably connected with the name of Petrarch (1304–74). The essential point to remember in connexion with him, is that he introduced a new conception of the classical authors. To previous ages they were 'dead', to him they were alive. Cicero was his father', Virgil his brother'; the writers of antiquity were his friends', who were present with him in spirit. He looked on the authors whose names were known to him as a company, and every vacant place seemed to him an intolerable loss. He was convinced that their writings contained all wisdom and rules of right conduct. This is the very kernel of humanism, viz. the application of learning and culture to human life. The development of this idea was the supreme achievement of Petrarch's genius, and it was on lines laid down by him that the whole course of the Renaissance proceeded.

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Whereas in the Middle Ages Virgil had been the chief figure in Latin literature, Petrarch's gaze was chiefly fixed on Cicero, from whose philosophical works he derived many ideas which made especial appeal to him. Throughout his life he sought with ardour for new works of his hero. Petrarch made his first discovery of a new text in 1333, when 29 years of age. This was Cicero's speech pro Archia, which he found in Liège. He made a transcript of it, from which all the Italian copies are descended. He recorded the fact that in so large a town as Liège he had great difficulty in procuring any ink, and that the little which he could get was of the colour of saffron.

His great discovery, which was made in 1345, consisted of Cicero's Letters to Atticus, a very rare work in the Middle Ages. The manuscript belonged to the library of the cathedral at Verona. Although Petrarch was the first person to proclaim the discovery to the world, and to make a copy of the manuscript, it was previously known to the author of a work known as Flores Morales, written at Verona in 1329; and to Pastrengo, the writer of an encyclopaedia, who was a friend of Petrarch and lived in Verona. We may, therefore, suspect that Pastrengo brought the manuscript to Petrarch's notice. It is from this memorable year that modern knowledge of Cicero dates. To previous ages he had been superhuman, 'the god of eloquence', free from all mortal weakness. Petrarch now found that his idol was a mortal man, weak, timorous, and vacillating. He wrote a famous letter, dated June 1345, from Franciscus Petrarcha among the living' to Cicero, in which he records his emotions. He says:

'I read very eagerly thy letters for which I had made long ' and anxious search, and which I found where I least expected 'them. I heard thee speaking at length, making many com'plaints, oft changing thy tone, Marcus Tullius. Long ago 'I had known thee as the counsellor of others, now at last

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'I know what thou wert unto thyself. Listen in thy turn, 'wheresoever thou art, to this lament, I will not call it 'counsel, prompted by true love, which one of thy posterity, 'devoted to thy name, pours forth amid his tears. Thou ever restless and anxious, or to quote to thee thine own words, thou headstrong and ill-starred elder, what hadst 'thou to do with all this strife and with feuds which could 'not profit thee? Why did the false glamour of glory entangle thee when old in the battles of younger men, and after a stormy career drag thee to a death unworthy of a philosopher? Alas, forgetful of thy brother's advice and all thy own sound maxims, like a wayfarer at night, bearing a lantern in the darkness, thou didst shew a path 'to them that were to follow, and didst thyself stumble in piteous fashion.' He reproaches Cicero for the inconsistency of his behaviour towards Caesar and Pompey, and for attacking Antony, while allying himself with Octavian. He winds up by saying I grieve as a friend for thy sake. I am ashamed and sorry for thy errors, and, like Brutus, I set at nought "the accomplishments for which I know thee to have been so remarkable. What good is it forsooth to teach others, to speak ever in flowery language about the virtues, if thou dost not meanwhile listen to thyself? How much better 'it would have been, for a philosopher above all men, to have grown old in the quiet of the country, thinking, as 'thou thyself sayest somewhere, of the eternal life, not of this short one here; never to have held the fasces, to have 'coveted triumphs, to have been puffed up with the thought of Catiline? But this is now too late. Farewell for ever, ' dear Cicero. Written among the living, on the right bank ' of the Adige, in the Italian city, Verona, beyond the Padus on the 16th of June, in the year 1345 after the birth of the 'God whom thou knewest not.'

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Petrarch had a large collection of manuscripts, among them

being copies of two very rare authors, viz. Catullus and Propertius. The Catullus was, without doubt, drawn from the unique copy which survived in the Verona library, which had already been used by the author of the Flores. Nothing is known of the source from which he got Propertius. He seldom quotes these authors, since their spirit was repugnant to him. With Petrarch Boccaccio was intimately associated. Boccaccio in later life renounced all follies, and became an austere scholar. He was dominated by Petrarch, who snubbed and bullied him mercilessly, much in the same way as Johnson treated Boswell. Boccaccio, like Petrarch, made discoveries, the most important being Tacitus, Annals xi–xvi, and Hist. i-v. The Laurentian library contains the manuscript of Tacitus, the only one in which this part of the author has come down to us, together with Apuleius, again the manuscript from which all extant copies are derived: also another manuscript of Varro, de lingua Latina, and Cicero, pro Cluentio. This work of Varro survived in this manuscript only, and all manuscripts of the pro Cluentio were derived from this copy until another and more complete one came into the hands of Poggio. The two manuscripts, therefore, are of extraordinary interest. They are both written in the South Italian, or Beneventan, script, the centre of which was Monte Cassino. We know that Boccaccio visited the library there since Benvenuto da Imola describes the squalor in which he found it. We are told that he found the room which 'contained this treasure without a door or key, and when he entered, he saw grass growing in the windows and all the 'books and shelves covered with a thick layer of dust. When 'he turned over the MSS. he found many rare and ancient 'works with whole sheets cut out, or with the margins ruthlessly clipped. As he left the room he burst into tears ' and, on asking a monk whom he had met in the cloister to ' explain the neglect, was told that some of the monks, wishing

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