utters abominable things, only fit for the brothel. Thus the authority of the classics takes the place of that of the church. But the author knows well that men will judge of his morality by his poetry, he therefore says, on his own behalf, that one can readily be an obscene poet, and yet a pure and chaste

man.

"Nam castum esse decet pium poetam

Ipsum; versiculos nihil necesse est,

Qui tum denique habent salem ac leporem,
Si sunt molliculi ac parum pudici,

Et quod pruriat incitare possint."

He forgot that out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh, and he did not perceive that these very lines were his condemnation before God and man.

Poggio's "facetio," as Mr. Voigt remarks, are a worthy companion to the Hermaphroditus of Beccadelli. When he collected and published them he was already in his seventieth year. The old servant of the Papal Curia felt not the least hesitation in regard to interweaving monks, nuns, and even the holy ceremonies of the church into his profane jests. Nor did he take the trouble to justify what he had written by the example of worthy predecessors. The rigorists need not read the book; he had written it to entertain himself and to exercise his intellect, with laughter-loving and humane readers in view, for the mind must have refreshment from its works and cares, and skill in Latin writing must be applied to the humbler forms of composition. It is remarkable that Poggio received not even the slightest molestation on account of his book from any of the defenders of things sacred. Twenty years before this Beccadelli's work was furiously set upon, and nearly all the copies were destroyed; but the facetic were read in France, Germany, Spain, and Britain, and before the year 1500 they appeared twenty-six times in print, and in three Italian translations. Did the opposition of the monks give out so soon, and in the freeminded age of Nicholas V. disappear so entirely, or did Poggio's poisonous wit inspire even these foes with fear?

Other similar works either remained unprinted or failed to

attain to an equal celebrity. "Porcello de' Pandoni is referred to as Beccadelli's rival, and the essence of impurity seemed to attach itself to the person as well as the name of the poet. ." Nor was Filelfo backward to contribute to this kind of literature. His work de jocis et seriis, a collection of epigrams in ten books of a thousand verses apiece, which has never been edited, is declared by his biographer, Rosmini, to contain "horrible obscenities and expressions taken from the streets and the brothels." In his convivia Mediolanensia, the banquet is seasoned with a similar kind of spice, and his satires often reach the shamelessness of his Roman models. Even a grave and solemn man like Leonardo Bruni yielded to the suggestions of Niccolò Niccoli, and composed a most exceptionable discourse on the different sorts of voluptuous indulgence. And to give but one instance more, Eneas Sylvius, in his youthful poems, imitated and almost equaled the frivolity of Poggio. "His letters on erotic subjects, which are now frivolous defenses of love, that is of lust, now half serious exhortations to chastity, his slippery novel, Euryalus and Lucretia, his jests and historiettes, were no less widely dif fused in Germany than Poggio's facetio were in Italy, and appeared the more attracting after their author had condemned his youthful sins from the papal chair."

We must impute one more serious fault to the humanists,— the inordinate love of reputation-which led to numberless jealousies, quarrels, and invectives.

In our remarks on Petrarch and on this characteristic of his life we have represented the love of literary fame as having been fostered by the revived study of the classics. A spirit new in degree if not kind, which overlooked the higher motives urged by medieval Christianity, and drew its inspiration from heathen examples and precepts, now took possession of

* Porcello or Porcellio was born in Naples, suffered imprisonment at Rome in 1434, on the charge of disturbing the papal government, was secretary of Alfonso, King of Naples, and by him sent to the camp of the Venetians about 1452, to write the achievements of Jacopo Piccinino, which task he fulfilled. He was afterwards employed by Frederic, Duke of Urbino, and Sigismund Malatesta. lord of Rimini.

the minds of men of letters. This spirit was worldly, as looking no higher than the opinions of men; it was selfish, as seeking an end in which self was the center; it lacked earnestness, as striving not for truth and knowledge but for honor; it was dishonest, as making opinion and not reality the measure of its judgments. It made the humorists rivals of one another, encouraged envy, exaggerated a feeling of personal importance, excited quarrels and led to violent denunciations. It seems to us as if the example of the humanists gave to literary men a false direction, as if the angry and foul-mouthed Latin of the controversies in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries justified itself, and derived its responsibility from their permitted sins against good temper and good

manners.

Petrarch, the father of humanism, was the author of the first modern invective. During the illness of Pope Clement V. he sent a lettter to the Pope, in which he warned him against the physicians, as being ignorant impostors. One of the Pope's physicians expressed his opinion that Petrarch should not meddle with what he did not understand, and advised him to stick to the work of composing fictions. This brought out the poet's "four books of invectives against a certain physician," in which he defended poetry, and attacked the medical practice with such biting jests, that he flattered himself he had cut his foe to pieces for all eternity. And his irritated feelings against the medical profession continued from this time, when he was comparatively young, through his whole life.

But the literary wars of the later humanists, when they had become a numerous and definitely marked body of men, were for the most part waged against one another. To several of these quarrels we have already alluded; if we should speak of them all at length it would involve the writing of numerous lives. First we notice Leonardo Bruni, at sword's points with Niccoli on grounds most disgraceful to the latter, and publishing an invective against him, entitled "Nebulo Maleficus." The same Niccoli seems to have given way to his jealousy and indulged his biting tongue especially against the foreign

ers who had been invited to Florence, for whom he thus made it an uncomfortable place. Poggio again was a most rabid and unwearied brawler. Filelfo, Guarino, Valla, the order of Minorites, the bishop of Feltre, and many others experienced his malignity. Guarino was treated vilainously by him because he had opposed an opinion of Poggio's that Scipio Africanus was to be put before Julius Cæsar. In his work on hypocrites he assigns to that class a number of the worthiest ecclesiastics of his time among the rest, Ambrogio Traversari.* George of Trebisond and he had a falling out in consequence of the claim of George to have had the principal hand in Poggio's translations of the Anabasis and of Diodorus Siculus. On one occasion, when George had found fault with Poggio and he had given him the lie, the other slapped him on the cheek, and the two fell to blows with such fury that their colleagues could hardly separate them.

Filelfo's difficulties with almost all the humanists at Florence and with Cosimo their protector, we have already spoken of. We may ascribe the origin of this great quarrel in part to the immense arrogance and assumption of the man. It grew up probably before he took sides in politics against the Medici, and before the assassin had sought his life. He now burst out into the most violent rage, especially after Poggio, from amid his friends at Florence, pursued the exiled scholar with the most foul-mouthed abuse. Specimens may be found in Shepherd's Poggio both of his nasty and lying prose, and of Filelfo's more lofty and somewhat truer poetical satire.

Filelfo seems to have regarded his satires as one of the sure foundations of his literary renown. He knew how to abuse and to flatter. His satires he sent to his former pupil, Pius II., representing himself as a veteran in honorable war. A little later he seems to have been imprisoned for abusing this same Pius II., who probably had not awarded him according to his own measure of his merits.

Lorenzo Valla was almost as jealous and as bitter as Poggio. During his residence at Naples he was at variance with Fazio

* So Tiraboschi, vi. 3, § 31.

and Beccadelli, the former of whom having criticized some passages in Valla's life of Ferdinand, father of king Alfonso, was replied to in a fierce and personal invective, which attacked Beccadelli also. Another invective, in print among Valla's works, like the former, was directed against Antonio da Ro, a Minorite and professor of rhetoric, who had found fault with something in Valla's elegantia, without however mentioning his name. At Rome, whither he went at the invitation of Nicholas V., he occupied the professorial chair, as he himself asserts, to defend Quintilian against George of Trebisond, who was undervaluing him. In a few years the violent quarrel broke out between Poggio and Valla, arising from a severe criticism on certain of Poggio's letters which he imputed to Valla. In this dispute Nicholas Perotti, also, as one of Valla's friends, was involved. The angry minds of the two scholars are manifested in the invectives of Poggio,-five in all, of which, however, one is lost,-and in Valla's antidotes and dialogues against his foe. "These are, perhaps," says the mild Tiraboschi, "the most infamous libels that have ever seen the light. There is no calumny or reproach that the one does not vomit against the other; no obscenity or ribald conduct that they do not tax each other with; yet, worthy of blame as both are, Valla is less so than Poggio, because, if it be true, that the criticism against the letters was not his, he took up his pen in self-defense. What seems strange to me is that Valla feared not to direct his antidotes to Nicholas V., and we do not find him endeavoring to extinguish so great a flame. Who would believe that Francis Filelfo, a man otherwise so proud and fierce in combatting his own enemies, could feel shocked at this literary war and could exert himself to bring it to an end? Yet such was the case." Another proof of Valla's resentful and proud character, adds Tiraboschi, is given by Paul Cortese, (de Cardinal, 2. 88), "who relates that Valla, having had some request denied by I know not what Pope, and being indignant at the cardinals, perhaps because he imputed the repulse to them, published against each of them many pungent distichs, charging them with grievous vices."