Curiosities of Literature (Vol. 1-3). Disraeli Isaac

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      RECOVERY OF MANUSCRIPTS.

       Table of Contents

      Our ancient classics had a very narrow escape from total annihilation. Many have perished: many are but fragments; and chance, blind arbiter of the works of genius, has left us some, not of the highest value; which, however, have proved very useful, as a test to show the pedantry of those who adore antiquity not from true feeling, but from traditional prejudice.

      We lost a great number of ancient authors by the conquest of Egypt by the Saracens, which deprived Europe of the use of the papyrus. They could find no substitute, and knew no other expedient but writing on parchment, which became every day more scarce and costly. Ignorance and barbarism unfortunately seized on Roman manuscripts, and industriously defaced pages once imagined to have been immortal! The most elegant compositions of classic Rome were converted into the psalms of a breviary, or the prayers of a missal. Livy and Tacitus "hide their diminished heads" to preserve the legend of a saint, and immortal truths were converted into clumsy fictions. It happened that the most voluminous authors were the greatest sufferers; these were preferred, because their volume being the greatest, most profitably repaid their destroying industry, and furnished ampler scope for future transcription. A Livy or a Diodorus was preferred to the smaller works of Cicero or Horace; and it is to this circumstance that Juvenal, Persius, and Martial have come down to us entire, rather probably than to these pious personages preferring their obscenities, as some have accused them. At Rome, a part of a book of Livy was found, between the lines of a parchment but half effaced, on which they had substituted a book of the Bible; and a recent discovery of Cicero De Republicâ, which lay concealed under some monkish writing, shows the fate of ancient manuscripts.13

      That the Monks had not in high veneration the profane authors, appears by a facetious anecdote. To read the classics was considered as a very idle recreation, and some held them in great horror. To distinguish them from other books, they invented a disgraceful sign: when a monk asked for a pagan author, after making the general sign they used in their manual and silent language when they wanted a book, he added a particular one, which consisted in scratching under his ear, as a dog, which feels an itching, scratches himself in that place with his paw—because, said they, an unbeliever is compared to a dog! In this manner they expressed an itching for those dogs Virgil or Horace!14

      There have been ages when, for the possession of a manuscript, some would transfer an estate, or leave in pawn for its loan hundreds of golden crowns; and when even the sale or loan of a manuscript was considered of such importance as to have been solemnly registered by public acts. Absolute as was Louis XI. he could not obtain the MS. of Rasis, an Arabian writer, from the library of the Faculty of Paris, to have a copy made, without pledging a hundred golden crowns; and the president of his treasury, charged with this commission, sold part of his plate to make the deposit. For the loan of a volume of Avicenna, a Baron offered a pledge of ten marks of silver, which was refused: because it was not considered equal to the risk incurred of losing a volume of Avicenna! These events occurred in 1471. One cannot but smile, at an anterior period, when a Countess of Anjou bought a favourite book of homilies for two hundred sheep, some skins of martins, and bushels of wheat and rye.

      In those times, manuscripts were important articles of commerce; they were excessively scarce, and preserved with the utmost care. Usurers themselves considered them as precious objects for pawn. A student of Pavia, who was reduced, raised a new fortune by leaving in pawn a manuscript of a body of law; and a grammarian, who was ruined by a fire, rebuilt his house with two small volumes of Cicero.

      At the restoration of letters, the researches of literary men were chiefly directed to this point; every part of Europe and Greece was ransacked; and, the glorious end considered, there was something sublime in this humble industry, which often recovered a lost author of antiquity, and gave one more classic to the world. This occupation was carried on with enthusiasm, and a kind of mania possessed many, who exhausted their fortunes in distant voyages and profuse prices. In reading the correspondence of the learned Italians of these times, their adventures of manuscript-hunting are very amusing; and their raptures, their congratulations, or at times their condolence, and even their censures, are all immoderate. The acquisition of a province would not have given so much satisfaction as the discovery or an author little known, or not known at all. "Oh, great gain! Oh, unexpected felicity! I intreat you, my Poggio, send me the manuscript as soon as possible, that I may see it before I die!" exclaims Aretino, in a letter overflowing with enthusiasm, on Poggio's discovery of a copy of Quintilian. Some of the half-witted, who joined in this great hunt, were often thrown out, and some paid high for manuscripts not authentic; the knave played on the bungling amateur of manuscripts, whose credulity exceeded his purse. But even among the learned, much ill-blood was inflamed; he who had been most successful in acquiring manuscripts was envied by the less fortunate, and the glory of possessing a manuscript of Cicero seemed to approximate to that of being its author. It is curious to observe that in these vast importations into Italy of manuscripts from Asia, John Aurispa, who brought many hundreds of Greek manuscripts, laments that he had chosen more profane than sacred writers; which circumstance he tells us was owing to the Greeks, who would not so easily part with theological works, but did not highly value profane writers!

      These manuscripts were discovered in the obscurest recesses of monasteries; they were not always imprisoned in libraries, but rotting in dark unfrequented corners with rubbish. It required not less ingenuity to find out places where СКАЧАТЬ