But of lefs mortal memory by far than popes or kings, died near the fame time their great opponent Luther. Intrepid to perform what his vast mind proposed, he lived till all fear was banished from his followers, and left his præcurfor Erafmus, to fee the regular troops of papacy haraffed by his own flying strokes of wit, till by bold Martin's horse they were trampled if not killed, and nearly deprived of power to do much more harm for the future. Had he been able to infpire mankind with his well-mingled taste of follies and scorn of fools, reformation would have been stopt perhaps when Luther died. The weeds would have been deftroyed, and the fair field, unpoached by coarfer tread, would have preferved its greenness to this hour. CHAP. CHAP. VI. PROGRESS OF SCIENCE, PROGRESS OF DISCOVERY, AND TURKISH EMPIRE REVIEWED. FROM 1550 TO 1600. I followed white we groped F when immerted in the dun night of Gothick barbarism our readers followed while we groped along, watching for tranfient gleams of trembling day, foon snatched from us by fogs which hourly menaced even a permanent obfcurity; if though our retrospective glafs lefs fixed than flickering over each unfteady object, lent a light on which, in worst of times, they willingly bestowed a refolute attention; 'twere to be hoped the remnant of our view more near, more easy to difcern, more luminous, would want for no attractions to continue the flight revifal that we undertook; but every journey in its every stage, finds obstacles unforeseen. A glare of colours now, a crowd of objects perplex our choice, and dazzle the admiring eyes of eager Retrospection. Dark with excess of light that period feems, which boasts like this a galaxy of characters, and leaves us hesitatingly between Charles V. and Henry IV., Elizabeth of England and Solyman the Magnificent, while Sextus V. deserves a volume, and will scarce gain a page, content if our attention be transferred to Sanfovino and Palladio, the glowing tints of Titiano Vecelli, the epic beauties of Torquato Taffo; or the fpontaneity of immortal Corregio. Round Cebes's table too, within this period, state the proud Scaligers, of which the first possest most fire and genius, critics agree, the fecond most erudition. This is natural. Renown called up the parent to her temple, the fon folicited her her hand to help his climbing.* Lafcaris, Wolfius, Frizius, neverdying names; and Voffius happier than them all perhaps, poffeffing fuch a fucceffor as Hector wifhed for in Aftyanax, when he defires that the Greeks may fay how the brave fon tranfcends the father's fame, fo fill rumour's capacious trumpet : They make me that I dare not trust these eyes, Dryden. Nor could the recipe of Sannazarius ftrengthen our fight, though when Frederick king of Naples, in that poet's prefence, confulted physicians for the purpofe, he obferved fhrewdly, Among us au 66 thors, Sir, envy is found of wondrous efficacy for making men "look fharp, and fee fmall faults; I know not what thefe learned gentlemen will find of ufe for kings." My readers and myself have little caufe for envy; our favoured ifland ftood not fo high among surrounding potentates then, as she does this day: for though the princeffes of it read Plato, and Roger Afcham reproached the university with the court maidens' fuperior erudition, Eliza Carter, and Cornelia Knight, fhrink not from the comparison; nor did the learned ladies of that age leave us, as thofe of this day will leave our pofterity, works of acknowledged merit as remembrancers. Warton finds nothing but lady Juliana Berners' book upon hunting among the early works of Henry the eighth's reign, or little fooner, which own a female hand; but hunting, like literature, was confined to the grandees. Lord Grofvenor takes his title, I believe, from the gros veneur of Henry VII. and as to learning fublimated by genius, all his flowers were caught by the upper ranks of life, as those of fulphur per campanam; what ftaid below was coarfe enough methinks, when in the year 1550 a young man was obliged to promife faithfully that he would study hard, and learn to read not alone the Latin Testament, * Adr. Turnebus called Jofeph Scaliger monftrum fine vitio. We must not say ut pictura poefis however, for Godfrey Sckalchen makes pride one of his seven vices, and Scaliger had fome of that I think. VOL. II. P but but even Cornelius Nepos, if need were, before he should folicit holy orders. Till then the Pfeudo Evangelium was our common claffick, and held its poft in the cathedral church of Canterbury fo long, that the hole ftill may be seen in that old pillar it was nailed to. Dean Colet first drove this book out of date by his expofition of St. Paul's Epiftles. He founded that noble inftitution St. Paul's School, dedicated to the infant Jefus, and he made the Accidence for these boys in the great work called Lillie's Grammar, of which Erafmus wrote qui mihi, as Dr. Johnson told me: what part Sir Thomas More contributed I have forgotten; but our fovereign judiciously enough clapping Colet on the back, faid, "Well! let every man chufe his own doctor, this "fhall be mine." Not long before this period Corderius too made his incomparable Baby Dialogues; Erafmus's Colloquies were intended for adults; Corderius's were compofed to divert little John Calvin when a child. Under fuch agricolifts well might the plants flourish; Wolfey took them from the feed-bed to his magnificent nursery at Oxford, where by permiffion from Clement the feventh, forty leffer monafteries had been destroyed to build one beautiful pile, meant by the favourite to have been called Cardinal's College; but after his difgrace the king finished and called it Chriff's Church. 'Twas from that hour he meditated the diffolution of the drones entirely, so he often called monks and friars. The going out of Gothick ideas kept pace with the exit of their architecture. Eton and King's College Cambridge had been fabricated by Henry VI. and yet remain beautiful fpecimens of the art with which our ancestors (unacquainted with Grecian models,) imitated the mingling boughs at the top of a high avenue; and while any affection for nature and the grand objects of it remain among their fons, we fhall, as Milton fays, Yet Love the high embowed roof, And antique pillar's maffie proof. The Oxford fabricks feem to make the fhade between runick and revived Greek ideas of excellence; fo does the fine church at Cremona, I remember; I remember; fo do the poets when the Latin tongue first revived, or if no more a living language, upon the tomb in which it long had flept the fairest flowers were planted. Vida fut de Virgile l'illuftre imitateur, Et Mantoue en Cremone eut une digne fœur. There was indeed a perpetual struggle after anagrams, acrofticks, &c. in that day of refufcitation, when, ftarting like the Greenlander after his half year's fleep, literature looked round and faw things in odd fhapes. When gardening revived, our grounds were filled with yew and box trees, all cut in forms of peacocks, fwans or apes: fantastick toys! like thofe of making verfes that would read backwards as well as forwards, each letter and each word-odo tenet mulum, mappam madidam tenet Anna-with a thousand more, pris et moquez terriblement, a fet of French ftanzas among the reft.* The reafon perhaps continued in tafte, after it had begun in neceffity, like Egypt's hieroglyphicks. Pietro Angelo Margoli fatirizes the Romish church unmercifully in his Zodiac, but although he wrote under protection of Renè d'Efte, the proteftant duchess of Ferrara, he finds it not amifs to conceal his name under an anagram, which the first twenty lines of the poem exprefs befides, acroftically, MARCELLUS PALINGENIUS: The wonder is they all danced fo well in their wooden fhoes. It is obfervable that the poets were almost all in every country well difpofed to the Reformation; for they are covered with the lightest ground, as Dryden fays. Marot was the immediate friend of Calvin, and Villon * Pierre de St. Louis however, carried this folly far before them all. After writang a strange poem in praise of Mary Magdalen, which Monfieur de la Monnoye calls a chef d'œuvre of pious extravagance, he found out that his name, his own name, picking the letters carefully by metagram, formed these words, Il eft de Carmel, and inftantly put on a friar's frock; and in a few years more difcovered that that fame fentence was contained in it, in another language, Latin of courfe. He died foon after this difcovery, and Carmelo fe devovet was written on his tomb. |