sisted in encouragement by familiar converse and gifts of money to men of letters, in purchasing manuscripts or in having them copied for the library of the Dominican convent of St. Mark, or the Medicean library, as it was called, in founding a Platonic academy-in short, his money and influence were constantly devoted to this object. "Not a scholar himself" we use the words of Voigt-" but mentally stimulated in various ways and well read, quick of comprehension, with a fine sense of beauty, he was with all this inclined to put a due value on the scientific merits even of the driest minds. The industrious critic who copied and compared the rare manuscript, the poet whose fingers rolled off hexameters with genial facility, the teacher of the elements of language, the translator from Greek, the deeply learned philosopher and theologian, the artist who drew plans of churches, palaces, villas, and bridges, or adorned them with statues and pictures,— all belonged in the eyes of Cosimo as links to one and the same chain. Their works ornamented the town, made the state illustrious."

Among the men whom Cosimo employed more or less was one Vespasiano, a bookseller, called learned by Tiraboschi. "The lives of illustrious men," one hundred and three in number, written by this man, a simple hearted undiscriminating work, was first published in 1839, by Cardinal Mai. We have read with pleasure a number of the lives, but it seems to us that the authority of the man ought not to be relied upon, where his facts lie beyond his own sphere.

But the principal friend and factotum of Cosimo, in the purchase of books, was Niccolò Niccoli, the son of a Florentine merchant, who, content with a moderate inheritance, gave himself up to study, to the companionship of scholars and to virtu. His zeal for learning was more an outside zeal perhaps, and an eager curiosity for new manuscript treasures, than one built on real scholarship; whether it was his exquisite taste or some peculiar self distrust, he rarely committed his thoughts to Latin, and he had little or no knowledge of Greek. But his house, where he lived unmarried with a single female servant, and where his taste was shown in a collection

of antique curiosities, served as a kind of centre for the literati of Florence and for strangers, and his friendships or his quarrels, for he seems to have had a bitter domineering temper, figure largely in the literary correspondence and history of that period. He copied manuscripts with his own hand for his own library, which amounted at his death, in 1437, to eight hundred* codices, and was purchased by Cosimo for the library of St. Mark, also called the Medicean.

One of his leading friends, but afterwards his bitter enemy, was Leonardo Bruni of Arezzo, called from his birth-placethat city from which sprang Petrarch, Charles Marsuppini, Peter Aretin, and others-Leonard Aretin. Born in or near the year 1369, and devoted at first to the study of civil law, he formed the acquaintance and fell under the patronage of Salutato, who treated him with the kindness of a parent, as he says, and to whom he was indebted for his proficiency in ancient learning. He was at Florence when Chrysoloras awakened so much zeal and curiosity for the study of Greek. For 700 years, said he to himself, nobody in Italy has been acquainted with Greek literature, and yet we know that all learning is derived from the Greeks. So upon beginning the study under the new professor, "I gave myself," says he, "to Chrysoloras with such zeal that what I learned in the day time, in sleep itself I repeated over. I had a number of fellow disciples, but especially two noble Florentines, who made advances beyond the rest in these studies,-Roberto Rossi and Palla Strozzi. There was in the same school a certain Jacopo d'Angelo, to whom the coming of Chrysoloras was chiefly due. There came there afterwards Pietro Vergerio of Justinople (Capo d'Istria), who, although enjoying a great name in the University of Padua, had come to Florence solely to hear him. Among these, Roberto, Vergerio, and Jacopo d'Angelo were considerably older than I was. Palla was about of the same age. For more than two years I frequented with great advan

They were valued at four thousand zecchini or sequins. The sequin was a gold coin, especially of Venice, worth about $2.20.

tage to myself the school of Chrysoloras, until, on the arrival of the Greek emperor, Chrysoloras, being sent for by him, left Florence, and went to Milan to join him."*

On the recommendation of Salutato and through the intervention of Poggio, Leonardo obtained the place of apostolical secretary, in the year 1405, under the Roman Pope, Innocent VII. In this service he spent several of the subsequent years, with the exception that for a short time he discharged the duties of the Chancellor of Florence. Innocent, as he reports, made him the offer of a bishopric, but he declined it, laid aside the clerical habit, which the Pope's scribes, without being clergymen, generally adopted, and cut himself off from ecclesiastical preferment by taking a wife. He accompanied Pope John XXIII. to the Council of Constance, and when the affairs of that worthless man began to grow desperate, broke off connection with his party by an abrupt flight. A number of years now flowed by without any public employment on his part, during which his history of Florence and other works appear to have been written. For his history he was rewarded with citizenship. His knowledge of law, with his reputation as a scholar and a Latinist, procured for him in 1427 the place filled by his patron and friend Salutato, of Chancellor of the Republic, or clerk of the Priors. Besides this life-long office he attained to other state dignities. He was elected several times into the Council of the ten Priors, was sent on embassies, and was looked upon both by his townsmen and by foreigners as one of the magnates of the republic. On his death in 1443, he was honored with a public burial, and a funeral oration by Manetti, one of the first citizens and scholars of Florence. His temples were crowned with laurels within his coffin, and his body was laid in the church of Santa Croce.

Vergerio, born in 1349, was now learning Greek at 50; Rossi, the preceptor of Cosimo de' Medici, was probably not very much younger. The same zeal was kindled for the study of civil law at an earlier period, so that old men and young sat on the learners' benches together, at the University of Bologna.

So Tiraboschi, and after him Heeren and Shepherd. Voigt says the place was given him while Boniface IX. was Pope, who died late in 1404.

Leonardo Bruni seems to have been a self-important, reserved, stately man, inclined to be jealous of others and depreciate them, yet withal a man of high character and deservedly respected. Probably in Latin writing he was not surpassed by any of his time, and in Greek learning was among the best of the generation which flourished before the use of printing. His works are translations from the Greek, more in number and mass than those of any of his contemporaries, historical works in Latin, viz: the history of Florence, two books on the events of his own time, some small unpublished tracts on the origin of Mantua, on that of Rome, on the nobility of the city of Florence, two books on the Carthaginian war, which are merely extracts from Polybius, commentaries on Greek history, four books on the war against the Goths, which was merely an extract from Procopius, an invective against Niccolò Niccoli, translations, and of course a collection of letters.*

With Leonard Aretin we may associate a somewhat younger contemporary, from the same town, Carlo Marsuppini, or Charles of Arezzo, born about 1399, and, therefore, never the disciple of Chrysoloras, as has been affirmed, the son of a noble citizen of Arezzo, who was a Doctor of Laws and Secretary of the French King, Charles VI. He came to Florence for his education, supplanted Filelfo in the chair of eloquence when he had become distasteful to Niccoli and to Cosmo de' Medici, and continued, for some time, one of the lights of the University. He received from Pope Eugenius IV., then residing at Florence, the honorary title of Apostolical Secretary, about 1441, and in 1444 was made Chancellor or Secretary of the Republic, in place of Leonardo Bruni, deceased. His death occurred nine years afterwards, when he was honored with a public funeral and coronation and with a funeral eulogy pronounced by Matteo Palmieri. He not only hated the monks and their ways, but has been charged with being a disbeliever of Christianity. "He died without confession and communion," says a nearly contemporary writer,† "and not as a good Christian."

* Bruni's letters were edited anew by Mehus and published at Florence in 2 vols., 8vo., in 1741.

Niccolò Ridolfi, cited by Tiraboschi, vi. 1596. ed. 2.

Of his works, consisting of Latin poetry and translations from the Greek, only the Battle of the Frogs and Mice, rendered into Latin verse, has been printed.

A far more celebrated name is that of Poggio Bracciolini, less of a scholar in Greek than many of his contemporaries, as a Latinist even inferior to Valla and others, yet as a man of genius and of wit the foremost nearly of his age, and better known to posterity than any other of the humanists of the 15th century. Of Poggio we could say much but must content ourselves with little. His life has been concisely written by Recanati to accompany his edition of Poggio's Florentine histories, and more at large, in an entertaining way, learnedly, but without much discrimination or acuteness, by the Rev. William Shepherd, of Liverpool.*

Poggio, the son of poor parents-his father keeping asses to hire, according to the doubtful assertion of an enemy, Laurentius Valla-was born at a place not far from Arezzo, in 1380, and received his literary education, it is said, under John of Ravenna and Chrysoloras. Having acquired an excellent knowledge of Latin and some skill in Greek, he became a "repetitor," and also, by copying, eked out his support, as well as added to his stock of books. In 1402 he went to Rome in order to improve his fortunes, and was appointed one of the apostolical scribes, or writers of letters for the Pope; and in this service, exchanging only the lower rank of scribe for the higher one of secretary, after the accession of John XXIII., he continued for half a century. His duties, however, did not confine him to Rome. He often visited Florence, which, indeed, for some years, under Pope Eugenius IV. (from 1433 to 1443), was his home, and traveled to other places, perhaps in the service of the Pope. His life at the Roman Court was a merry, we must add an immoral one. His scandalous book, entitled

The first ed. of this work, which was suggested by Mr. Roscoe's Life of Lo. renzo de' Medici, appeared in 1802, in quarto; the second, in 1837, in octavo.

More accurately, John made him writer of the letters of the Penitentiary, and, although acting as secretary, he was not such until the reign of Callixtus III., 1455. But in 1452 he quitted Rome and became Chancel or of Florence, on the death of Carlo Marsuppini. See Tiraboschi, vi. 1026, ed. of 1824.