ART. III.-Poggii Epistolæ. Editas collegit et emendavit ; plerasque ex Codd. MSS. eruit, ordine chronologico disposuit, notisque illustravit Eques THOMAS DE TONELLIS, J. Č. 8vo. Vol. I. Florentiæ typis L. Marchini: 1832.

I N times of political and religious excitement, passing events almost entirely absorb the public attention; and in an age of transition, which many are pleased to regard as pre-eminently an age of improvement, the record of the transactions of the earlier periods of civil and literary history are either left absolutely unnoticed, or are cursorily glanced at with cold indifference. This appears to be at present the case with the majority of the reading public in our own country, who feel much more interest in a pamphlet on the poor laws, or on the state of Ireland, than they do in discussions on the workings of the feudal system, or in the annals of French, or Italian, or even of English literature. But still we apprehend that there exists in our community a respectable minority of men of cultivated minds, who, occasionally at least, abstract themselves from the agitation of the moment, to enquire what their predecessors have done for the purpose of promoting general instruction, and of quickening the march of intellect.' And perhaps the candid investigator of the progress of mental culture will find, that whilst, in the course of the last five centuries, great and rapidly increasing light has been thrown upon physical science proportionate improvements have not been made in the sciences of morals and of politics. In the latter subjects of study, the writers of ancient Greece and Rome, many of them conversant, as statesmen and soldiers, with the practical affairs of life, had attained to a respectable degree of information; and it will be found, upon an examination of the works of the diligent scholars, to whose exertions we are indebted for the revival of literature in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, that those enthusiastic students of ancient lore had, in the prosecution of their labours, deeply imbibed the spirit which animates with the dignified energy of moral truth the writings of the Greek and Roman orators and philosophers. It is by no means, then, an uninteresting task to those who enjoy the requisite leisure and means of information, to mark the dawning of the human intellect breaking in upon the dawning of the middle ages, and to trace the first advancements of its progress towards its meridian splendour. And as it is the business of reviewers to cater for

the various descriptions of guests who seat themselves at the banquet of literature, we think that we are acting in a manner strictly compatible with our duty in directing the attention of our learned readers to the epistolary communications of an eminent Florentine scholar; and in stating the circumstances which gave rise to their composition. This will lead us to give a brief account of the state of Italy at the period of the revival of letters, and a sketch of the life of their author.

At the commencement of the fourteenth century Italy was divided into a variety of states, differing from each other in the form of their constitution, but all habitually involved, with but short intervals of tranquility, in the turmoils of civil strife and the perils of foreign war. In these circumstances, the flames of discord which had been kindled in most of the districts of that beautiful country were nourished by the quarrels which had long subsisted between two powerful factions, which, under the denominations of Guelphs and Ghibellines, respectively maintained the claims of the papal see, and those of the wearer of the imperial crown, to sovereignty over the different portions of the Roman empire; and especially over what both the Pope and the Emperor affected to call their Italian dominions. In the midst of the struggles which took place between the partisans of these rival potentates, several of the cities of the northern part of the peninsula, such as Milan, Parma, Pavia, Ferrara, Modena, and others, took advantage of favourable contingencies to shake off both the papal and the imperial yoke; but after a short period of nominal freedom, the licentious populace of these cities, inexperienced in the art of self government, and left a prey to anarchy in consequence of the indulgence of their passions, were seduced or compelled to bow their necks to petty tyrants sprung from their own community, who ruled them with a rod of iron. At the period of which we are treating, the kingdom of Naples was distracted by successive disputes of rival dynasties, who vindicated by arms their respective claims to the throne; whilst the skilful concentration of her oligarchical government enabled the republic of Venice to crush all domestic conspiracies entered into from time to time by her malecontent citizens, and also to wage fierce and bloody war against her rivals the Genoese, without any interruption to the extension of her commercial dealings, and of her colonial conquests in the East. At this period, too, the transference of the papal residence from Rome to Avignon, effected by Clement V. in the year 1300, gave an extended scope to that spirit of sedition prevalent among the Roman populace, which had afforded to the ultramontane pontiff a fair pretext for quitting the

capital of Christendom, which may justly be deemed his proper place of abode.

In the fourteenth century the Republic of Florence occupied a distinguished rank among the states of Italy. For some time after its first establishment, its territories were confined within very narow limits, which were however somewhat extended by the liberal grants of adjoining districts which it received from the Emperor Otho I., and by the districts which its citizens afterwards from time to time won, by force of arms or by intrigue, from their neighbours. The city of Florence, having thus increased in importance and in population, was for the purposes of civil government, divided into four, and afterwards into six tribes over each of which presided a magistrate, designated by the title of Consul. But being soon wearied of this constitution, the Florentines, with a view of avoiding the crying evil of the partiality of party in the administration of justice, adopted the strange expedient of appointing foreigners as magistrates, under the title of Podestà. This form of government, however soon proved inefficient and unsatisfactory, and was superseded by a new system, according to the provisions of which the power of the state was vested in a chief magistrate styled Capitano, who was at once aided and controlled in the execution of his duties by twelve of the principal citizens, who bore the appellation of Signori and by twenty subordinate officers, called Gonfalonieri. Faction and civil tumult still prevailing under the new arrangement, towards the end of the thirteenth century the executive government was vested in six magistrates, entitled Priori degli Arti or Priori della Libertà. To these were added, ten years after, a legal officer, called the Gonfaloniere of Justice: and, after the lapse of twenty more years, twelve buoni uomini, or good men and true, were added as assistants to the Priori, whose number was increased to eight. The weighty affairs of the state, however, were discussed and settled by two councils the one called the Council af the People,' and composed principally of the middle and lower classes of the community-the other, entitled the Common Council,' the members of which were chosen from among the citizens of rank and fortune.

Many examples in the history of nations may serve to prove that intestine broils and the prevalence of civil strife in a state, do not necessarily incapacitate it from vigorously maintaining wars, whether defensive or agressive, against foreign powers. France was never more formidable to her enemies than at the time when the chieftains of contending factions followed each other in quick succession to the guillotine. Such, too, was the

case with the Florentines. Though they were from time to time arrayed against each other in fierce hostility as partisans of the Guelphic and Ghibelline factions-which, in their domestic quarrels, respectively assumed the titles of Neri and Bianchi* —though, in the early times of the Republic, we find the nobles in feud against each other, afterwards the united patricians contending against the people, and at a later period the people at variance with the populace, they seem never to have shrunk from a contest with their neighbours. At one time they were engaged in hostilities against the Republic of Pisa; at another, they were called upon to defend themselves against the aggressions of the reigning Pope. But the most pertinacious disturbers of their tranquillity were the successive heads of the family of the Visconti the Lords of Milan, who, with a view of bending these proud republicans beneath their yoke, ravaged their territory by many an incursion, which the Florentines generally repelled by the aid of mercenary troops, hired by that wealth which was the produce of their extensive commerce..

The civil broils in which the Florentines were for so long a space of time involved, were no doubt calamitous to the general state, and particularly to distinguished families; as they were attended by the mutual slaughter of the combatants, and terminated in the exile of the leaders of the vanquished party, and the confiscation of their property. But in the course of human affairs, there hardly occurs any evil so extreme as not to be qualified by some intermixture of good. The collisions of faction and the disorganization of revolutionary movements, call into exercise talent which, in a more tranquil condition of society, would have lain dormant in obscurity. The season of public excitement is the time of harvest to men of ability; and the effects of that ability will be felt when the calm of peace succeeds to the storm of strife, and its true value will then be recognised in its direction to worthy objects. The mental energy excited in the breasts of the citizens of Florence in the prosecution of their domestic quarrels, is pointedly noted by Macchiavelli as having constituted the ornament and the support, and as having been in times of peril the salvation, of the republic. It was in consequence of the exertion of intellect thus incited and sharpened, that, in the midst of the devastations and hazards of foreign war and domestic discord, literature flourished in the Tuscan capital; and it was in circumstances apparently most disastrous and dis

*Blacks and Whites.

couraging, that Petrach, Dante, and Bocaccio, in their immortal works, gave to their native tongue that consistency and polish which has won for it the admiration and the applause of future ages. Nor were these accomplished writers less distinguished in their day by their Latin compositions; on which, though rude and incorrect, they in all probability prided themselves more than they did on those specimens of their skill in their vernacular language which now shed such a lustre on their names. With all their faults, indeed, the Latin epistles and treatises of this illustrious triumvirate and their contemporaries, were the harbingers of the revival of letters. At the period when they flourished, indeed, the Latin language was the medium through which instruction in all arts and sciences was conveyed to students in the European Universities. It was also the means of communication between scholars of different countries. It was, moreover, adopted as the instrument of diplomatic discussions and arrangements, and of recording the treaties made between the powers of the civilized world. It is justly observed by the Abbé de Sade, that Nothing proves better the ascendency which talent and the 'culture of the mind give among the human kind'-(he might have added, that nothing more clearly shows the pre-eminence in literature of the Tuscan Republic in the fourteenth century)' than the fact that twelve citizens of Florence were seen at the same time at the court of Boniface VIII., in the character of 'ambassadors from different powers of Europe and Asia.'* In point of fact, the literary characters of the fourteenth century. were not, as many persons erroneously suppose them to have been, cloistered recluses, whose minds were narrowed and whose faculties were benumbed by the influence of pedantry. On the contrary, they were, in general, men of business, engaged in the active concerns of life. They were admitted into the best society, not as the lions of the season, or as barely tolerated in the quality of dependents, but as habitual associates, and on a confidential footing with people of rank and fortune. In consequence of their reputation for talent, they became the correspondents and friends of statesmen, nobles, and even of sovereign princes. At the beginning of their career, indeed, the scholars of the revival exercised themselves in verbal criticism, and made the writings of the ancient Greeks and Romans the principal subjects of their studies. But they were not content with acquiring a knowledge of words and phrases: They deeply imbibed the

* Vie de Pétrarque, Vol. I. p. 6.