CHAPTER VII.

HISTORY OF SPECULATIVE, MORAL, AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, AND OF JURISPRUDENCE IN EUROPE, FROM 1520 TO 1550.

SECT. I. 1520-1550.

_Speculative Philosophy._

|Logic included under this head.|

1. Under this head we shall comprehend not only what passes by the loose, yet not unintelligible, appellation metaphysics, but those theories upon the nature of things, which, resting chiefly upon assumed dogmas, could not justly be reduced to the division of physical science. The distinction may sometimes be open to cavil; but every man of a reflecting mind will acknowledge the impossibility of a rigorous classification of books. The science of logic, not only for the sake of avoiding too many partitions, but on account of its peculiar connection, in this period of literature, with speculative philosophy, will be comprised in the same department.

|Slow defeat of scholastic philosophy.|

2. It might be supposed that the old scholastic philosophy, the barbarous and unprofitable disputations which occupied the universities of Europe for some hundred years, would not have endured much longer against the contempt of a more enlightened generation. Wit and reason, learning and religion, combined their forces to overthrow the idols of the schools. They had no advocates able enough to say much in their favour; but established possession, and that inert force which ancient prejudices retain, even in a revolutionary age, especially when united with civil and ecclesiastical authority, rendered the victory of good sense and real philosophy very slow.

|It is sustained by the universities and regulars.|

3. The defenders of scholastic disputation availed themselves of the commonplace plea, that its abuses furnished no conclusion against its use. The barbarousness of its terminology might be in some measure discarded; the questions which had excited ridicule might be abandoned to their fate; but it was still contended that too much of theology was involved in the schemes of school philosophy erected by the great doctors of the church to be sacrificed for heathen or heretical innovations. The universities adhered to their established exercises; and though these, except in Spain, grew less active, and provoked less emulation, they at least prevented the introduction of any more liberal course of study. But the chief supporters of scholastic philosophy, which became, in reality or in show, more nearly allied to the genuine authority of Aristotle, than it could have been, while his writings were unknown or ill translated, were found, after the revival of letters, among the Dominican or Franciscan orders; to whom the Jesuits, inferior to none in acuteness, lent, in process of time, their own very powerful aid.[722] Spain was, above all countries, and that for a very long time, the asylum of the schoolmen; and this seems to have been one among many causes, which have excluded, as we may say, the writers of that kingdom, with but few exceptions, from the catholic communion of European literature.

[722] Brucker, iv. 117, et post. Buhle has drawn copiously from his predecessor, ii. 448.

|Commentators on Aristotle.|

4. These men, or many of them, at least towards the middle of the century, were acquainted with the writings of Aristotle. But commenting upon the Greek text, they divided it into the smallest fragments, gave each a syllogistic form, and converted every proposition into a complex series of reasonings, till they ended, says Buhle, in an endless and insupportable verbosity. “In my own labours upon Aristotle,” he proceeds, “I have sometimes had recourse, in a difficult passage, to these scholastic commentators, but never gained anything else by my trouble than an unpleasant confusion of ideas; the little there is of value being scattered and buried in a chaos of endless words.”[723]

[723] ii. 417.

|Attack of Vives on scholastics.|

5. The scholastic method had the reformers both of religion and literature against it. One of the most strenuous of the latter was Ludovic Vives, in his great work, De corruptis Artibus et tradendis Disciplinis. Though the main object of this is the restoration of what were called the studies of humanity (humaniores literæ), which were ever found incompatible with the old metaphysics, he does not fail to lash the schoolmen directly in parts of this long treatise, so that no one, according to Brucker, has seen better their weak points or struck them with more effect. Vives was a native of Valencia, and at one time preceptor to the princess Mary in England.[724]

[724] Brucker, iv. 87. Meiners (Vergleich. der Sitten, ii. 730-755), has several extracts from Vives as to the scholasticism of the beginning of this century. He was placed by some of his contemporaries in a triumvirate with Erasmus and Budæus.

|Contempt of them in England.|

6. In the report of the visitation of Oxford, ordered by Henry VIII. in 1535, contempt for the scholastic philosophy is displayed in the triumphant tone of conquerors. Henry himself had been an admirer of Thomas Aquinas. But the recent breach with the see of Rome made it almost necessary to declare against the schoolmen, its steadiest adherents. And the lovers of ancient learning, as well as the favourers of the Reformation, were gaining ground in the English government.[725]

[725] Wood’s Hist. of University of Oxford. The passage wherein Antony Wood deplores the “setting Duns in Bocardo” has been often quoted by those who make merry with the lamentations of ignorance.

|Veneration for Aristotle.|

7. But while the subtle, though unprofitable, ingenuity of the Thomists and Scotists was giving way, the ancient philosophy, of which that of the scholastic doctors was a corruption, restored in its genuine lineaments, kept possession of the field with almost redoubled honour. What the doctors of the middle ages had been in theology, that was Aristotle in all physical and speculative science; and the church admitted him into an alliance of dependency for her own service. The Platonic philosophy, to which the patronage of the Medici and the writings of Ficinus had given countenance in the last century, was much fallen, nor had, at this particular time, any known supporters in Europe. Those who turned their minds to physical knowledge, while they found little to their purpose in Plato, were furnished by the rival school with many confident theories and some useful truth. Nor was Aristotle without adherents among the conspicuous cultivators of polite literature; who willingly paid that deference to a sage of Greece, they blushed to show for a barbarian dialectician of the thirteenth century. To them at least he was indebted for appearing in a purer text, and in more accurate versions; nor was the criticism of the sixteenth century more employed on any other writer. By the help of philology, as her bounden handmaid, philosophy trimmed afresh her lamp. The true peripatetic system, according to so competent a judge as Buhle, was first made known to the rest of Europe in the sixteenth century; and the new disciples of Aristotle, endeavouring to possess themselves of the spirit, as well as literal sense of his positions, prepared the way for a more advanced generation to poise their weight in the scale of reason.[726]

[726] Buhle, ii. 462.

|Melanchthon countenances him.|

8. The name of Aristotle was sovereign in the continental universities; and the union between his philosophy, or what bore that title, and the church, appeared so long established, that they must stand or fall together. Luther accordingly, in the commencement of the Reformation, inveighed against the Aristotelian logic and metaphysics, or rather against those sciences themselves; nor was Melanchthon at that time much behind him. But time ripened in this, as it did in theology, the disciple’s excellent understanding; and he even obtained influence enough over the master to make him retract some of that invective against philosophy, which at first threatened to bear down all human reason. Melanchthon became a strenuous advocate of Aristotle, in opposition to all other ancient philosophy. He introduced into the university of Wittenberg, to which all protestant Germany looked up, a scheme of dialectics and physics, founded upon the peripatetic school, but improved, as Buhle tells us, by his own acuteness and knowledge. Thus in his books logic is taught with a constant reference to rhetoric; and the physical science of antiquity is enlarged by all that had been added in astronomy and physiology. It need hardly be said, that the authority of Scripture was always resorted to as controlling a philosophy, which had been considered unfavourable to natural religion.[727]

[727] Buhle, ii. 427.

|His own philosophical treatises.|

9. I will not contend, after a very cursory inspection of this work of Melanchthon, against the elaborate panegyric of Buhle; but I cannot think the Initia Doctrinæ Physicæ much calculated to advance the physical sciences. He insists very fully on the influence of the stars in producing events which we call fortuitous, and even in moulding the human character; a prejudice under which this eminent man is well known to have laboured. Melanchthon argues sometimes from the dogmas of Aristotle, sometimes from a literal interpretation of Scripture, so as to arrive at strange conclusions. Another treatise, entitled De Animâ, which I have not seen, is extolled by Buhle as comprehending not only the psychology but the physiology also of man, and as having rendered great service in the age for which it was written. This universality of talents, and we have not yet adverted to the ethics and dialectics of Melanchthon, enhanced his high reputation; nor is it surprising, that the influence of so great a name should have secured the preponderance of the Aristotelian philosophy in the protestant schools of Germany for more than a century.

|Aristotelians of Italy.|

10. The treatise of the most celebrated Aristotelian of his age, Pomponatius, on the immortality of the soul, has been already mentioned. In 1525 he published two books, one on incantations, the other on fate and free will. They are extremely scarce, but, according to the analysis of Brucker, indicate a scheme of philosophy by no means friendly to religion.[728] I do not find any other of the Aristotelian school who falls within the present thirty years, of sufficient celebrity to deserve mention in this place. But the Italian Aristotelians were divided into two classes; one to which Pomponatius belonged, following the interpretation of the ancient Greek scholiasts, especially Alexander of Aphrodisea; the other, that of the famous Spanish philosopher of the twelfth century, Averroes, who may rather be considered an heresiarch in the peripatetic church, than a genuine disciple of its founder. The leading tenet of Averrhoism was the numerical unity of the soul of mankind, notwithstanding its partition among millions of living individuals.[729] This proposition, which it may seem difficult to comprehend, and which Buhle deems a misapprehension of a passage in Aristotle, natural enough to one who read him in a bad Arabic version, is so far worthy of notice, that it contains the germ of an atheistical philosophy, which spread far, as we shall hereafter see, in the latter part of this century, and in the seventeenth.

[728] Brucker, iv. 166.

[729] See Bayle, Averroes, note E, to which I omitted to refer on a former mention of the subject, p. 98.

|University of Paris.|

11. Meantime the most formidable opposition to the authority of Aristotle sprung up in the very centre of his dominions; a conspiracy against the sovereign in his court itself. For, as no university had been equal in renown for scholastic acuteness to that of Paris, there was none so tenacious of its ancient discipline. The very study of Greek and Hebrew was a dangerous innovation in the eyes of its rulers, which they sought to restrain by the intervention of the civil magistrate. Yet here, in their own schools, the ancient routine of dialectics was suddenly disturbed by an audacious hand.

|New logic of Ramus.|

12. Peter Ramus (Ramée) a man of great natural acuteness, an intrepid, though too arrogant a spirit, and a sincere lover of truth, having acquired a considerable knowledge of languages as well as philosophy in the university, where he originally filled, it is said, a menial office in one of the colleges, began publicly to attack the Aristotelian method of logic, by endeavouring to substitute a new system of his own. He had been led to ask himself, he tells us, after three years passed in the study of logic, whether it had rendered him more conversant with facts, more fluent in speech, more quick in poetry, wiser, in short, any way than it had found him; and being compelled to answer all this in the negative, he was put on considering, whether the fault were in himself, or in his course of study. Before he could be quite satisfied as to this question, he fell accidentally upon reading some dialogues of Plato; in which, to his infinite satisfaction, he found a species of logic very unlike the Aristotelian, and far more apt, as it appeared, to the confirmation of truth. From the writings of Plato, and from his own ingenious mind, Ramus framed a scheme of dialectics, which immediately shook the citadel of the Stagyrite; and, though in itself it did not replace the old philosophy, contributed very powerfully to its ultimate decline. The Institutiones Dialecticæ of Ramus were published in 1543.

|It meets with unfair treatment.|

13. In the first instance, however, he met with the strenuous opposition which awaits such innovators. The university laid their complaint before the parliament of Paris; the king took it out of the hands of the parliament, and a singular trial was awarded as to the merits of the rival systems of logic, two judges being nominated by Goveanus, the prominent accuser of Ramus, two by himself, and a fifth by the king. Francis, it seems, though favourable to the classical scholars, whose wishes might generally go against the established dialectics, yet, perhaps, from connecting this innovation with those in religion, took the side of the university; and after a regular hearing, though, as is alleged, a very partial one, the majority of the judges pronouncing an unfavourable decision, Ramus was prohibited from teaching, and his book was suppressed. This prohibition, however, was taken off a few years afterwards, and his popularity as a lecturer in rhetoric gave umbrage to the university. It was not till some time afterwards that his system spread over part of the continent.[730]

[730] Launoy de Variâ Aristot. Fortuna in Acad. Paris. The sixth stage of Aristotle’s fortune, Launoy reckons to be the Ramean controversy, and the victory of the Greek philosopher. He quotes a passage from Omer Talon, which shows that the trial was conducted with much unfairness and violence, p. 112. See also Brucker, v. 548-583, for a copious account of Ramus; and Buhle, ii. 579-602; also Bayle.

|Its merits and character.|

14. Ramus has been once mentioned by Lord Bacon, certainly no bigot to Aristotle, with much contempt, and another time with limited praise.[731] It is however generally admitted by critical historians of philosophy, that he conferred material obligations on science, by decrying the barbarous logic of the schoolmen. What are the merits of his own method, is a different question. It seems evidently to have been more popular and convenient than that in use. He treated logic as merely the art of arguing to others, _ars disserendi_; and, not unnaturally from this definition, comprehended in it much that the ancients had placed in the province of rhetoric, the invention and disposition of proofs in discourse.

[731] Hooker also says with severe irony: “In the poverty of that other new-devised aid, two things there are notwithstanding singular. Of marvellous quick despatch it is, and doth show them that have it as much almost in three days, as if it had dwelt threescore years with them,” &c. Again: “Because the curiosity of man’s wit doth many times with peril wade farther in the search of things, than were convenient, the same is hereby restrained into such generalities, as everywhere offering themselves, are apparent unto men of the weakest conceit that need be: so as following the rules and precepts thereof, we may find it to be an art, which teacheth the way of speedy discourse, and restraineth the mind of man, that it may not wax over-wise.” Eccles. Pol. i. § 6.

|Buhle’s account of it.|

15. “If we compare,” says Buhle, “the logic of Ramus with that which was previously in use, it is impossible not to recognise its superiority. If we judge of it by comparison with the extent of the science itself and the degree of perfection it has attained in the hands of modern writers, we shall find but an imperfect and faulty attempt.” Ramus neglected, he proceeds to say, the relation of the reason to other faculties of the mind, the sources of error, and the best means of obviating them, the precautions necessary in forming and examining our judgments. His rules display the pedantry of system as much as those of the Aristotelians.[732]

[732] Buhle, ii. 593, 595.

16. As the logic of Ramus appears to be of no more direct utility than that of Aristotle in assisting us to determine the absolute truth of propositions, and consequently could not satisfy Lord Bacon, so perhaps it does not interfere with the proper use of syllogisms, which indeed, on a less extended scale than in Aristotle, form part of the Ramean dialectics. Like all those who assailed the authority of Aristotle, he kept no bounds in depreciating his works; aware perhaps that the public, and especially younger students, will pass more readily from admiration to contempt, than to a qualified estimation, of any famous man.

|Paracelsus.|

17. While Ramus was assaulting the stronghold of Aristotelian despotism, the syllogistic method of argumentation, another province of that extensive empire, its physical theory, was invaded by a still more audacious, and we must add, a much more unworthy innovator, Theophrastus Paracelsus. Though few of this extraordinary person’s writings were published before the middle of the century, yet as he died in 1541, and his disciples began very early to promulgate his theories, we may introduce his name more appropriately in this than in any later period. The system, if so it may be called, of Paracelsus had a primary regard to medicine, which he practised with the boldness of a wandering empiric. It was not unusual in Germany to carry on this profession; and Paracelsus employed his youth in casting nativities, practising chiromancy, and exhibiting chemical tricks. He knew very little Latin, and his writings are as unintelligible from their style as their substance. Yet he was not without acuteness in his own profession; and his knowledge of pharmaceutic chemistry was far beyond that of his age. Upon this real advantage he founded those extravagant theories, which attracted many ardent minds in the sixteenth century, and were afterwards woven into new schemes of fanciful philosophy. His own models were the oriental reveries of the Cabbala, and the theosophy of the mystics. He seized hold of a notion which easily seduces the imagination of those who do not ask for rational proof, that there is a constant analogy between the macrocosm, as they called it, of external nature, and the microcosm of man. This harmony and parallelism of all things, he maintains, can only be made known to us by Divine revelation; and hence all heathen philosophy has been erroneous. The key to the knowledge of nature is in the Scriptures only, studied by means of the Spirit of God communicating an interior light to the contemplative soul. So great an obscurity reigns over the writings of Paracelsus, which, in Latin at least, are not originally his own, for he had but a scanty acquaintance with that language, that it is difficult to pronounce upon his opinions, especially as he affects to use words in senses imposed by himself; the development of his physical system consisted in an accumulation of chemical theorems, none of which are conformable to sound philosophy.[733]

[733] Brucker, iv. 646-684, has copiously descanted on the theosophy of Paracelsus; and a still more enlarged account of it will be found in the third volume of Sprengel’s Geschichte der Arzneykunste, which I use in the French translation. Buhle is very brief in this instance, though he has a general partiality to mystical rhapsodies.

|His impostures.|

18. A mixture of fanaticism and imposture is very palpable in Paracelsus, as in what he calls his Gabalistic art, which produces by imagination and natural faith, “per fidem naturalem ingenitam,” all magical operations, and counterfeits by these means whatever we see in the external world. Man has a sidereal as well as material body, an astral element, which all do not partake in equal degrees; and therefore the power of magic which is in fact the power of astral properties, or of producing those effects which the stars naturally produce, is not equally attainable by all. This astral element of the body survives for a time after death, and explains the apparition of dead persons; but in this state it is subject to those who possess the art of magic, which is then called necromancy.

|And extravagancies.|

19. Paracelsus maintained the animation of everything; all minerals both feed and render their food. And besides this life of every part of nature, it is peopled with spiritual beings, inhabitants of the four elements, subject to disease and death like man. These are the silvains (sylphs), undines, or nymphs, gnomes, and salamanders. It is thus observable that he first gave these names, which rendered afterwards the Rosicrucian fables so celebrated. These live with man, and sometimes, except the salamanders, bear children to him; they know future events and reveal them to us; they are also guardians of hidden treasures, which may be obtained by their means.[734] I may perhaps have said too much about paradoxes so absurd and mendacious; but literature is a garden of weeds as well as flowers; and Paracelsus forms a link in the history of opinion, which should not be overlooked.

[734] Sprengel, iii. 305.

|Cornelius Agrippa.|

20. The sixteenth century was fertile in men, like Paracelsus, full of arrogant pretensions, and eager to substitute their own dogmatism for that they endeavour to overthrow. They are, compared with Aristotle, like the ephemeral demagogues who start up to a power they abuse as well as usurp on the overthrow of some ancient tyranny. One of these was Cornelius Agrippa, chiefly remembered by the legends of his magical skill. Agrippa had drunk deep at the turbid streams of cabbalistic philosophy, which had already intoxicated two men of far greater merit, and born for greater purposes, Picus of Mirandola and Reuchlin. The treatise of Agrippa on occult philosophy is a rhapsody of wild theory and juggling falsehood. It links, however, the theosophy of Paracelsus and the later sect of Behmenists with an oriental lore, venerable in some measure for its antiquity, and full of those aspirations of the soul to break her limits, and withdraw herself from the dominion of sense, which soothed, in old time, the reflecting hours of many a solitary sage on the Ganges and the Oxus. The Jewish doctors had borrowed much from this eastern source, and especially the leading principle of their Cabbala, the emanation of all finite being from the infinite. But this philosophy was in all its successive stages mingled with arbitrary, if not absurd, notions as to angelic and demoniacal intelligences, till it reached a climax in the sixteenth century.

|His pretended philosophy.|

21. Agrippa, evidently the precursor of Paracelsus, builds his pretended philosophy on the four elements, by whose varying forces the phenomena of the world are chiefly produced; yet not altogether, since there are occult forces of greater efficacy than the elementary, and which are derived from the soul of the world, and from the influence of the stars. The mundane spirit actuates every being, but in different degrees, and gives life and form to each; form being derived from the ideas which the Deity has empowered his intelligent ministers, as it were by the use of his seal, to impress. A scale of being, that fundamental theorem of the emanative philosophy, connects the higher and lower orders of things; and hence arises the power of magic; for all things have, by their concatenation, a sympathy with those above and below them, as sound is propagated along a string. But besides these natural relations, which the occult philosophy brings to light, it teaches us also how to propitiate and influence the intelligences, mundane, angelic, or demoniacal, which people the universe. This is best done by fumigations with ingredients corresponding to their respective properties. They may even thus be subdued, and rendered subject to man. The demons are clothed with a material body, and attached to the different elements; they always speak Hebrew, as the oldest tongue.[735] It would be trifling to give one moment’s consideration to this gibberish, were it not evidently connected with superstitious absurdities, that enchained the mind of Europe for some generations. We see the credence in witchcraft and spectral appearances, in astrology and magical charms, in demoniacal possessions, those fruitful springs of infatuation, wretchedness, and crime, sustained by an impudent parade of metaphysical philosophy. The system of Agrippa is the mere creed of magical imposture, on which Paracelsus, and still more Jacob Behmen, grafted a sort of religious mysticism. But in their general influence these theories were still more pernicious than the technical pedantry of the schools. A Venetian monk, Francis Georgius, published a scheme of blended Cabbalistic and Platonic, or Neo-platonic, philosophy, in 1525; but having no collateral pretensions to fame, like some other worshippers of the same phantom, he can only be found in the historians of obsolete paradoxes.[736]

[735] Brucker, iv. 410. Sprengel, iii. 226. Buhle, ii. 368.

[736] Brucker, iv. 374-386. Buhle, ii. 367.

|His sceptical treatise.|

22. Agrippa has left, among other forgotten productions, a treatise on the uncertainty of the sciences, which served in some measure to promote a sceptical school of philosophy; no very unnatural result of such theories as he had proposed. It is directed against the imperfections sufficiently obvious in most departments of science, but contains nothing which has not been said more ably since that time. It is remarkable that he contradicts much that he had advanced in favour of the occult philosophy, and of the art of Raymond Lully.[737]

[737] Brucker, Buhle.

|Cardan.|

23. A man far superior to both Agrippa and Paracelsus was Jerome Cardan; his genius was quick, versatile, fertile, and almost profound; yet no man can read the strange book on his own life, wherein he describes, or pretends to describe, his extraordinary character, without suspecting a portion of insanity; a suspicion which the hypothesis of wilful falsehood would, considering what the book contains, rather augment than diminish. Cardan’s writings are extremely voluminous; the chief that relate to general philosophy are those entitled De Subtilitate et Varietate Rerum. Brucker praises these for their vast erudition, supported by innumerable experiments and observations on nature, which furnish no trifling collection of facts to readers of judgment; while his incoherence of ideas, his extravagance of fancy, and confused method, have rendered him of little service to philosophy. Cardan professed himself a staunch enemy of Aristotle.[738]

[738] Brucker, v. 85. Cardan had much of the same kind of superstition as Paracelsus and Agrippa. He admits as the basis of his physical philosophy a sympathy between the heavenly bodies and our own; not only general, but distributive: the sun being in harmony with the heart, the moon with the animal juices. All organised bodies he held to be animated, so that there is no principle which may not be called nature. All is ruled by the properties of numbers. Heat and moisture are the only real qualities in nature; the first being the formal, the second the material cause of all things. Sprengel, iii. 278.

SECT. II. 1520-1550.

_On Moral and Political Philosophy._

|Influence of moral writers.|

24. By moral philosophy, we are to understand not only systems of ethics, and exhortations to virtue, but that survey of the nature or customs of mankind, which men of reflecting minds are apt to take, and by which they become qualified to guide and advise their fellows. The influence of such men, through the popularity of their writings, is not the same in all periods of society; it has sensibly abated in modern times, and is chiefly exercised through fiction, or at least a more amusing style than was found sufficient for our forefathers; and from this change of fashion, as well as from the advance of real knowledge, and the greater precision of language, many books, once famous, have scarcely retained a place in our libraries, and never lie on our tables.

|Cortegiano of Castiglione.|

25. In this class of literature, good writing, such at least as at the time appears to be good, has always been the condition of public esteem. They form a large portion of the classical prose in every language. And it is chiefly in this point of view that several of the most distinguished can deserve any mention at present. None was more renowned in Italy than the Cortegiano of Castiglione, whose first edition is in 1528. We here find both the gracefulness of the language in this, perhaps its best age, and the rules of polished life in an Italian court. These, indeed, are rather favourably represented, if we compare them with all we know of the state of manners from other sources; but it can be no reproach to the author that he raised the standard of honourable character above the level of practice. The precepts however are somewhat trivial, and the expression diffuse; faults not a little characteristic of his contemporaries. A book that is serious, without depth of thought or warmth of feeling, cannot be read through with pleasure.

26. At some distance below Castiglione in merit, and equally in reputation, we may place the dialogues of Sperone Speroni, a writer whose long life embraced two ages of Italian literature. These dialogues belong to the first, and were published in 1544. Such of them as relate to moral subjects, which he treats more theoretically than Castiglione, are solemn and dry; they contain good sense in good language; but the one has no originality, and the other no spirit.

|Marco Aurelio of Guevara.|

27. A Spanish prelate in the court of Charles obtained an extraordinary reputation in Europe by a treatise so utterly forgotten at present, that Bouterwek has even omitted his name. This was Guevara, author of Marco Aurelio con el Relox de Principes, as the title-page awkwardly runs. It contains several feigned letters of the emperor Marcus Aurelius, which probably in a credulous age passed for genuine, and gave vogue to the book. It was continually reprinted in different languages for more than a century; scarce any book except the Bible, says Casaubon, has been so much translated, or so frequently printed.[739] It must be owned that Guevara is dull; but he wrote in the infancy of Spanish literature. The first part of this book is properly entitled Marco Aurelio, and is filled with the counterfeited letters; the second, Relox de Principes, the Watch or Dial of Princes, is but a farago of trite moral and religious reflections, with an intermixture of classical quotations. It is fair to observe, that Guevara seems uniformly a friend to good and just government, and that he probably employs Roman stories as a screen to his satire on the abuses of his time. Antonio and Bayle censure this as a literary forgery more severely than is quite reasonable. Andrès extols the style very highly.[740]

[739] Bayle speaks of Guevara’s Marco Aurelio with great contempt; its reputation had doubtless much declined before that time.

[740] vii. 148. In 1541, Sir Thomas Elyot published “The Image of Government, compiled of the Acts and Sentences of Alexander Severus,” as the work of Encolpius, an imaginary secretary to that emperor. Some have thought this genuine, or at least no forgery of Elyot’s; but I see little reason to doubt that he imitated Guevara. Fabric. Bibl. Lat. and Herbert.

|His Menosprecio di Corte.|

28. Guevara wrote better, or more pleasingly, in some other moral essays. One of them Menosprecio di Corte y Alabanza d’Aldea, indifferently translated into English by Thomas Tymme in 1575, contains some eloquent passages; and being dictated apparently by his own feelings, instead of the spirit of book-making, is far superior to the more renowned Marco Aurelio. Antonio blames Guevara for affectation of antithesis, and too studious desire to say everything well. But this sententious and antithetical style of the Spanish writers is worthy of our attention; for it was imitated by their English admirers, and formed a style much in vogue in the reigns of Elizabeth and James. Thus, to take a very short specimen from Tymme’s translation: “In the court,” says Guevara, “it profits little to be wise, forasmuch as good service is soon forgotten, friends soon fail and enemies augment, the nobility doth forget itself, science is forgotten, humility despised, truth cloaked and hid, and good counsel refused.” This elaborately condensed antithetical manner cannot have been borrowed from the Italians, of whom it is by no means a distinguishing feature.

|Perez d’Oliva.|

29. Bouterwek has taken notice of a moral writer contemporary with Guevara, though not so successful in his own age, Perez d’Oliva. Of him, Andrès says, that the slight specimen he has left in his dialogue on the dignity of man, displays the elegance, politeness, and vigour of his style. It is written, says Bouterwek, in a natural and easy manner; the ideas are for the most part clearly and accurately developed, and the oratorical language, particularly where it is appropriately introduced, is powerful and picturesque.[741]

[741] Bouterwek, p. 309. Andres, vii. 149.

|Ethical writings of Erasmus and Melanchthon.|

30. The writings of Erasmus are very much dedicated to the inculcation of Christian ethics. The Enchiridion Militis Christiani, the Lingua, and, above all, the Colloquies, which have this primary object in view, may be distinguished from the rest. The Colloquies are, from their nature, the most sportive and amusing of his works; the language of Erasmus has no prudery; nor his moral code, though strict, any austerity; it is needless to add, that his piety has no superstition. The dialogue is short and pointed, the characters display themselves naturally, the ridicule falls, in general, with skill and delicacy; the moral is not forced, yet always in view; the manners of the age, in some of the Colloquies, as in the German Inn, are humorously and agreeably represented. Erasmus, perhaps, in later times, would have been successful as a comic writer. The works of Vives breathe an equally pure spirit of morality. But it is unnecessary to specify works of this class, which, valuable as they are in their tendency, form too much the staple literature of every generation to be enumerated in its history. The treatise of Melanchthon, Moralis Philosophiæ Epitome, stands on different grounds. It is a compendious system of ethics, built in great measure on that of Aristotle, but with such variation as the principles of Christianity, or his own judgment, led him to introduce. Hence, though he exhorts young students, as the result of his own long reflection on the subject, to embrace the Peripatetic theory of morals, in preference of those of the Stoic or Epicurean school,[742] and contends for the utility of moral philosophy, as part of the law of God, and the exposition of that of nature, he admits that the reason is too weak to discern the necessity of perfect obedience, or the sinfulness of natural appetite.[743] In this epitome, which is far from servilely following the Aristotelian dogmas, he declares wholly against usury, less wise in this than Calvin, and asserts the magistrate’s right to punish heretics.

[742] Ego vero qui has sectarum controversias diu multumque agitavi, ἄνω καὶ κάτω στρέφων [anô kai katô strephôn], ut Plato facere præcipit, valde adhortor adolescentulos, ut repudiatis Stoicis et Epicureis, amplectantur Peripatetica. Præfat. ad. Mor. Philos. Epist. (1549).

[743] Id. p. 4. The following passage, taken nearly at random, may serve as a fair specimen of Melanchthon’s style:

Primum cum necesse sit legem Dei, item magistratuum leges nosse, ut disciplinam teneamus ad coercendas cupiditates, facile intelligi potest, hanc philosophiam etiam prodesse, quæ est quædam domestica disciplina, quæ cum demonstrat fontes et causas virtutum, accendit animos ad earum amorem; abeunt enim studia in mores, atque hoc magis invitantur animi, quia quo propius aspicimus res bonas, eo magis ipsas et admiramur et amamus. Hic autem perfecta notitia virtutis quæritur. Neque vero dubium est, quin, ut Plato ait, sapientia, si quod ejus simulacrum manifestum in oculos incurreret, acerrimos amores excitaret. Nulla autem fingi effigies potest, quæ propius exprimat virtutem et clarius ob oculos ponat spectantibus, quam hæc doctrina. Quare ejus tractatio magnam vim habet ad excitandos animos, ad amorem rerum honestarum, præsertim in bonis ac mediocribus ingeniis, p. 6.

He tacitly retracts in this treatise all he had said against free will in the first edition of the Loci Communes; in hac quæstione moderatio adhibenda est, ne quas amplectamur opiniones immoderatas in utramque partem, quæ aut moribus officiant, aut beneficia Christi obscurent, p. 34.

|Sir T. Elyot’s Governor.|

31. Sir Thomas Elyot’s Governor, published in 1531, though it might also find a place in the history of political philosophy, or of classical literature, seems best to fall under this head; education of youth being certainly no insignificant province of moral science. The author was a gentleman of good family, and had been employed by the king in several embassies. The Biographia Britannica pronounces him “an excellent grammarian, poet, rhetorician, philosopher, physician, cosmographer, and historian.” For some part of this sweeping eulogy we have no evidence; but it is a high praise to have been one of our earliest English writers of worth, and though much inferior in genius to Sir Thomas More, equal perhaps in learning and sagacity to any scholar of the age of Henry VIII. The plan of Sir Thomas Elyot in his Governor, as laid down in his dedication to the king, is bold enough. It is “to describe in our vulgar tongue the form of a just public weal, which matter I have gathered as well of the sayings of most noble authors, Greek and Latin, as by mine own experience, I being continually pained in some daily affairs of the public weal of this most noble realm almost from my childhood.” But it is far from answering to this promise. After a few pages on the superiority of regal over every other government, he passes to the subject of education, not of a prince only, but any gentleman’s son, with which he fills up the rest of his first book.

|Severity of education.|

32. This contains several things worthy of observation. He advises that children be used to speak Latin from their infancy, and either learn Latin and Greek together, or begin with Greek. Elyot deprecates “cruel and _yrous_ schoolmasters, by whom the wits of children be dulled, whereof we need no better author to witness, than daily experience.”[744] All testimonies concur to this savage ill-treatment of boys in the schools of this period. The fierceness of the Tudor government, the religious intolerance, the polemical brutality, the rigorous justice, when justice it was, of our laws, seem to have engendered a hardness of character, which displayed itself in severity of discipline, when it did not even reach the point of arbitrary or malignant cruelty. Every one knows the behaviour of Lady Jane Grey’s parents towards their accomplished and admirable child; the slave of their temper in her brief life, the victim of their ambition in death. The story told by Erasmus of Colet is also a little too trite for repetition. The general fact is indubitable; and I think we may ascribe much of the hypocrisy and disingenuousness, which became almost national characteristics in this and the first part of the next century, to the rigid scheme of domestic discipline so frequently adopted; though I will not say but that we owe some part of the firmness and power of self-command, which were equally manifest in the English character, to the same cause.

[744] Chap. x.

|He seems to avoid politics.|

33. Elyot dwells much and justly on the importance of elegant arts, such as music, drawing, and carving, by which he means sculpture, and of manly exercises, in liberal education; and objects with reason to the usual practice of turning mere boys at fifteen to the study of the laws.[745] In the second book he seems to come back to his original subject, by proposing to consider what qualities a governor ought to possess. But this soon turns to long commonplace ethics, copiously illustrated out of ancient history, but perhaps, in general, little more applicable to kings than to private men, at least those of superior station. It is plain that Elyot did not venture to handle the political part of his subject as he wished to do. He seems worthy, upon the whole, on account of the solidity of his reflections, to hold a higher place than Ascham, to whom, in some respects, he bears a good deal of resemblance.

[745] Chap. xiv.

|Nicholas Machiavel.|

34. Political philosophy was not yet a common theme with the writers of Europe, unless so far as the moral duties of princes may have been vaguely touched by Guevara or Elyot, or their faults strongly, but incidentally adverted to by Erasmus and More. One great luminary, however, appeared at this time, though, as he has been usually deemed, rather a sinister meteor than a benignant star. It is easy to anticipate the name of Nicolas Machiavel. His writings are posthumous, and were first published at Rome early in 1532, with an approbation of the pope. It is certain, however, that the treatise called The Prince was written in 1513, and the Discourses on Livy about the same time.[746] Few are ignorant that Machiavel filled for nearly fifteen years the post of secretary to that government of Florence which was established between the expulsion of the Medici in 1494 and their return in 1512. This was in fact the remnant of the ancient oligarchy, which had yielded to the ability and popular influence of Cosmo and Lorenzo de’ Medici. Machiavel, having served this party, over which the gonfalonier Pietro Soderini latterly presided, with great talents and activity, was naturally involved in their ruin; and having undergone imprisonment and torture on a charge of conspiracy against the new government, was living in retired poverty when he set himself down to the composition of his two political treatises. The strange theories, that have been brought forward to account for The Prince of Machiavel, could never be revived after the publication of Ginguéné’s history of Italian literature, and the article on Machiavel in the Biographie Universelle, if men had not sometimes a perverse pleasure in seeking refinements, after the simple truth has been laid before them.[747] His own language may assure us of what surely is not very improbable, that his object was to be employed in the service of Julian de’ Medici, who was at the head of the state in Florence, almost in the situation of a prince, though without the title; and that he wrote this treatise to recommend himself in his eyes. He had been faithful to the late powers; but these powers were dissolved; and in a republic, a dissolved government, itself the recent creature of force and accident, being destitute of the prejudice in favour of legitimacy, could have little chance of reviving again. It is probable, from the general tenor of Machiavel’s writings, that he would rather have lived under a republic than under a prince; but the choice was not left; and it was better, in his judgment, to serve a master usefully for the state, than to waste his life in poverty and insignificance.

[746] There are mutual references in each of these books to the other, from which Ginguéné has reasonably inferred that they were in progress at the same time. Hist. Litt. de l’Italie, viii. 46.

[747] Ginguéné has taken great pains with his account of Machiavel, and I do not know that there is a better. The Biographie Universelle has a good anonymous article. Tiraboschi had treated the subject in a most slovenly manner.

|His motives in writing The Prince.|

35. We may also in candour give Machiavel credit for sincerity in that animated exhortation to Julian which concludes the last chapter of The Prince, where he calls him forth to the noble enterprise of rescuing Italy from the barbarians. Twenty years that beautiful land had been the victim of foreign armies, before whom in succession every native state had been humiliated or overthrown. His acute mind easily perceived that no republican institution would possess stability or concert enough to cast off this yoke. He formed therefore the idea of a prince; one raised newly to power, for Italy furnished no hereditary line; one sustained by a native army, for he deprecates the employment of mercenaries; one loved, but feared also, by the many; one to whom, in so magnanimous an undertaking as the liberation of Italy, all her cities would render a willing obedience. It might be, in part, a strain of flattery, in which he points out to Julian of Medici a prospect so disproportionate, as we know historically, to his opportunities and his character; yet it was one also perhaps of sanguine fancy and unfeigned hope.

|Some of his rules not immoral.|

36. None of the explanations assigned for the motives of Machiavel in The Prince is more groundless than one very early suggested, that by putting the house of Medici on schemes of tyranny, he was artfully luring them to their ruin. Whether this could be reckoned an excuse, may be left to the reader; but we may confidently affirm that it contradicts the whole tenor of that treatise. And, without palliating the worst passages, it may be said that few books have been more misrepresented. It is very far from true, that he advises a tyrannical administration of government, or one likely to excite general resistance, even to those whom he thought, or rather knew from experience, to be placed in the most difficult position for retaining power, by having recently been exalted to it. The Prince, he repeatedly says, must avoid all that will render him despicable or odious, especially injury to the property of citizens, or to their honour.[748] This will leave him nothing to guard against but the ambition of a few. Conspiracies, which are of little importance while the people are well affected, become unspeakably dangerous as soon as they are hostile.[749] Their love, therefore, or at least the absence of their hatred, is the basis of the governor’s security, and far better than any fortresses.[750] A wise prince will honour the nobility, at the same time that he gives content to the people.[751] If the observance of these maxims is likely to subvert a ruler’s power, he may be presumed to have designed the ruin of the Medici. The first duke in the new dynasty of that house, Cosmo I., lived forty years in the practice of all Machiavel would have advised, for evil as well as good; and his reign was not insecure.

[748] c. xvii. and xix.

[749] c. xix.

[750] c. xx. la miglior fortezza che sia è non essere odiato de’ popoli.

[751] c. xix.

|But many dangerous.|

37. But much of a darker taint is found in The Prince. Good faith, justice, clemency, religion, should be ever in the mouth of the ideal ruler; but he must learn not to fear the discredit of any actions which he finds necessary to preserve his power.[752] In a new government, it is impossible to avoid the charge of cruelty; for new states are always exposed to dangers. Such cruelties perpetrated at the outset and from necessity, “if we may be permitted to speak well of what is evil,” may be useful; though when they become habitual and unnecessary, they are incompatible with the continuance of this species of power.[753] It is best to be both loved and feared; but if a choice must be made, it should be of the latter. For men are naturally ungrateful, fickle, dissembling, cowardly, and will promise much to a benefactor, but desert him in his need, and will break the bonds of love much sooner than those of fear. But fear does not imply hatred; nor need a prince apprehend that, while he abstains from the properties and the wives of his subjects. Occasions to take the property of others never cease, while those of shedding blood are rare; and besides, a man will sooner forgive the death of his father, than the loss of his inheritance.[754]

[752] c. xvi., xviii.

[753] c. viii.

[754] c. xvii.

|Its only palliation.|

38. The eighteenth chapter, on the manner in which princes should observe faith, might pass for a satire on their usual violations of it, if the author did not too seriously manifest his approbation of them. The best palliation of this, and of what else has been justly censured in Machiavel, is to be derived from his life and times. These led him to consider every petty government as in a continual state of self-defence against treachery and violence, from its ill-affected citizens, as well as from its ambitious neighbours. It is very difficult to draw the straight line of natural right in such circumstances; and neither perhaps the cool reader of a remote age, nor the secure subject of a well-organised community, is altogether a fair arbiter of what has been done or counselled in days of peril and necessity; relatively, I mean, to the persons, not to the objective character of actions. There is certainly a steadiness of moral principle and Christian endurance, which tells us that it is better not to exist at all, than to exist at the price of virtue; but few indeed of the countrymen and contemporaries of Machiavel had any claim to the practice, whatever they might have to the profession, of such integrity. His crime, in the eyes of the world, and it was truly a crime, was to have cast away the veil of hypocrisy, the profession of a religious adherence to maxims which at the same moment were violated.[755]

[755] Morhof has observed that all the arts of tyranny which we read in Machiavel, had been unfolded by Aristotle; and Ginguéné has shown this in some measure from the eleventh chapter of the fifth book of the latter’s politics. He might also have quoted the Œconomics; the second book, however, of which, full of the stratagems and frauds of Dionysius, though nearly of his age, is not genuine. Mitford, with his usual partiality to tyrants (chap. xxxi. sect. 8), seems to think them all laudable.

|His discourses on Livy.|

39. The Discourses of Machiavel upon the first books of Livy, though not more celebrated than The Prince, have been better esteemed. Far from being exempt from the same bias in favour of unscrupulous politics, they abound with similar maxims, especially in the third book; but they contain more sound and deep thinking on the spirit of small republics, than could be found in any preceding writer that has descended to us; more probably, in a practical sense, than the Politics of Aristotle, though they are not so comprehensive. In reasoning upon the Roman government, he is naturally sometimes misled by confidence in Livy; but his own acquaintance with modern Italy was in some measure the corrective that secured him from the errors of ordinary antiquaries.

|Their leading principles.|

40. These discourses are divided into three books, and contain 143 chapters with no great regard to arrangement; written probably as reflections occasionally presented themselves to the author’s mind. They are built upon one predominant idea; that the political and military annals of early Rome having had their counterparts in a great variety of parallel instances which the recent history of Italy furnished, it is safe to draw experimental principles from them, and to expect the recurrence of similar consequences in the same circumstances. This reasoning, founded upon a single repetition of the event, though it may easily mislead us, from an imperfect estimate of the conditions, and does not give a high probability to our anticipations, is such as those intrusted with the safety of commonwealths ought not to neglect. But Machiavel sprinkles these discourses with thoughts of a more general cast, and often applies a comprehensive knowledge of history, and a long experience of mankind.

41. Permanence, according to Machiavel, is the great aim of government.[756] In this very common sentiment among writers accustomed to republican forms, although experience of the mischiefs generally attending upon change might lead to it, there is, no doubt, a little of Machiavel’s original taint, the reference of political ends to the benefit of the rulers rather than that of the community. But the polity which he seems for the most part to prefer, though he does not speak explicitly, nor always perhaps consistently, is one wherein the people should at least have great weight. In one passage he recommends, like Cicero and Tacitus, the triple form, which endeavours to conciliate the power of a prince with that of a nobility and a popular assembly; as the best means of preventing that cycle of revolutions through which, as he supposes, the simpler institutions would naturally, if not necessarily, pass; from monarchy to aristocracy, from that to democracy, and finally to monarchy again; though, as he observes, it rarely happens that there is time given to complete this cycle, which requires a long course of ages, the community itself, as an independent state, being generally destroyed before the close of the period.[757] But, with his predilection for a republican polity, he yet saw its essential weakness in difficult circumstances; and hence observes that there is no surer way to ruin a democracy than to set it on bold undertakings, which it is sure to misconduct.[758] He has made also the profound and important remark, that states are rarely either formed, or reformed, except by one man.[759]

[756] l. i. c. 2.

[757] c. 2 and 6.

[758] c. 53.

[759] c. 9. Corniani, iv. 70, has attempted to reduce into system the Discourses of Machiavel, which have no regular arrangement, so that nearly the same thoughts recur in different chapters.

|Their use and influence.|

42. Few political treatises can even now be read with more advantage than the Discourses of Machiavel; and in proportion as the course of civil society tends farther towards democracy, and especially if it should lead to what seems the inevitable consequence of democracy, a considerable subdivision of independent states, they may acquire an additional value. The absence of all passion, the continual reference of every public measure to a distinct end, the disregard of vulgar associations with names or persons, render him, though too cold of heart for a very generous reader, a sagacious and useful monitor for any one who can employ the necessary methods of correcting his theorems. He formed a school of subtle reasoners upon political history, which, both in Italy and France, was in vogue for two centuries; and, whatever might be its errors, has hardly been superseded for the better by the loose declamation that some dignify with the name of philosophical politics, and in which we continually find a more flagitious and undisguised abandonment of moral rules for the sake of some idol of a general principle, than can be imputed to The Prince of Machiavel.

|His History of Florence.|

43. Besides these two works, the History of Florence is enough to immortalise the name of Nicolas Machiavel. Seldom has a more giant stride been made in any department of literature, than by this judicious, clear, and elegant history: for the preceding historical works, whether in Italy or out of it, had no claims to the praise of classical composition, while this has ranked among the greatest of that order. Machiavel was the first who gave at once a general and a luminous development of great events in their causes and connections, such as we find in the first book of his History of Florence. That view of the formation of European societies, both civil and ecclesiastical, on the ruins of the Roman empire, though it may seem now to contain only what is familiar, had never been attempted before, and is still, for its conciseness and truth, as good as any that can be read.

|Treatises on Venetian government.|

44. The little treatises of Giannotti and Contarini on the republic of Venice, being chiefly descriptive of actual institutions, though the former, a Florentine by birth, sometimes reasons upon and even censures them, would not deserve notice, except as they display an attention to the workings of a most complicated, and at the same time a most successful machine. The wonderful permanency, tranquillity, and prosperity of Venice became the admiration of Europe, and especially, as was most natural, of Italy; where she stood alone, without internal usurpation or foreign interference, strong in wisdom more than in arms, the survivor of many lines of petty princes, and many revolutions of turbulent democracy, which had, on either side of the Apennine, run their race of guilt and sorrow for several preceding centuries.[760]

[760] These are both published in Grævius, Thesaur. Antiq. Italiæ. See too Ginguéné, viii. 186.

|Calvin’s political principles.|

45. Calvin alone, of the reformers in this period, has touched upon political government as a theme of rational discussion; though he admits that it is needless to dispute which is the best form of polity, since private men have not the right of altering that under which they live. The change from monarchy to despotism, he says, is easy; nor, is that from aristocracy to the dominion of a few much more difficult; but nothing is so apt to follow as sedition from a popular regimen. But upon the whole he considers an aristocratic form to be far better than the other two, on account of the vices and infirmity of human nature.[761]

[761] Calv. Inst. l. iv. c. 20, § 8.

SECT. III. 1501-1510.

_Jurisprudence._

|Jurisprudence confined to Roman law.|

46. Under the name of jurisprudence, we are not yet to seek for writings on that high department of moral philosophy, which treats of the rules of universal justice, by which positive legislation and the courts of judicature ought to be directed. Whatever of this kind may appear in works of this period, arises incidentally out of their subject, and does not constitute their essence. According to the primary and established sense of the word, especially on the Continent, jurisprudence is the science of the Roman law, and is seldom applied to any other positive system, but least of all to the law of nature. Yet the application of this study has been too extensive in Europe, and the renown of its chief writers too high, to admit of our passing wholly over this department of literature, as we do some technical and professional subjects.

|The laws not well arranged.|

47. The civil or Roman law is comprehended in four leading divisions (besides some later than the time of Justinian), very unequal in length, but altogether forming that multifarious collection usually styled the Corpus Juris Civilis. As this has sometimes been published in a single, though a vast and closely printed volume, it may seem extraordinary, that by means of arranged indexes, marginal references, and similar resources, it was not, soon after it came into use as a standard authority, or, at least, soon after the invention of printing, reduced into a less disorderly state than its present disposition exhibits. But the labours of the oldest jurists, in accumulating glosses or short marginal interpretations, were more calculated to multiply than to disentangle the intricacies of the Pandects.

|Adoption of the entire system.|

48. It is at first sight more wonderful, that many nations of Europe, instead of selecting the most valuable portion of the civil law, as directory to their own tribunals, should have bestowed decisive authority on that entire unwieldy body which bore the name of Justinian; laws, which they could not understand, and which, in great measure, must, if understood, have been perceived to clash with the new order of human society. But the homage paid to the Roman name, the previous reception of the Theodosian code in the same countries, the vague notion of the Italians, artfully encouraged by one party, that the Conrads and Frederics were really successors of the Theodosii and Justinians, the frequent clearness, acuteness, and reasonableness of the decisions of the old lawyers which fill the Pandects, the immense difficulty of separating the less useful portion, and of obtaining public authority for a new system, the deference, above all, to great names, which cramped every effort of the human mind in the middle ages, will sufficiently account for the adoption of a jurisprudence so complicated, uncertain, unintelligible, and ill-fitted to the times.

|Utility of general learning to lawyers.|

49. The portentous ignorance of the earlier jurists in everything that could aid their textual explanations has been noticed in the first chapter of this volume. This could not hold out long after the revival of learning. Budæus, in his Observations on the Pandects, was the first to furnish better verbal interpretations; but his philological erudition was not sustained by that knowledge of the laws themselves which nothing but long labour could impart.[762] Such a knowledge of the Latin language as even after the revival of letters was given in the schools, or we may add, as is now obtained by those who are counted learned among us, serves but little towards the understanding those Roman lawyers, whose short decisions, or, as we should call them, opinions, occupy the fifty books of the Pandects. They had not only a technical terminology, as is perhaps necessary in professional usage, but many words and phrases not merely technical occur, as to the names and notions of things, which the classical authors, especially such as are commonly read, do not contain. Yet these writers of antiquity, when diligently pursued, throw much light upon jurisprudence; they assist conjecture, if they do not afford proof, as to the meaning of words; they explain allusions, they connect the laws with their temporary causes or general principles; and if they seem a little to lead us astray from the great object of jurisprudence, the adjudication of right, it was still highly important, in the conditions that Europe had imposed upon herself, to ascertain what it was that she had chosen to obey.

[762] Gravina, Origines Jur. Civ. p. 211.

|Alciati; his reform of law.|

50. Ulric Zasias, a professor at Friburg, and Garcia d’Erzilla, whose commentaries were printed in 1515, should have the credit, according to Andrès, of leading the way to a more elegant jurisprudence.[763] The former of these is known, in some measure, as a scholar and a correspondent of Erasmus; for the latter I have to depend on the testimony of his countrymen. But the general voice of Europe has always named Andrew Alciati of Milan as the restorer of the Roman law. He taught, from the year 1518 to his death in 1550, in the universities of Avignon, Milan, Bourges, Paris, and Bologna. Literature became with him the handmaid of law; the historians of Rome, her antiquaries, her orators and poets, were called upon to elucidate the obsolete words and obscure allusions of the Pandects; to which, the earlier as well as the most valuable and extensive portion of the civil law, this method of classical interpretation is chiefly applicable. Alciati had another advantage, denied to his predecessors of the middle ages, in the possession of the Byzantine jurists, with whom, says Gravina, the learning of Roman law had been preserved in a more perfect state amidst other vestiges of the empire, and while almost extinguished in Italy by the barbarians, had been in daily usage at Constantinople down to its capture. Alciati was the first who taught the lawyers to write with purity and elegance. Erasmus has applied to him the eulogy of Cicero on Scævola, that he was the most jurisprudent of orators, and the most eloquent of lawyers. But he deserved also the higher praise of sweeping away the rubbish of conflicting glosses, which had so confounded the students by their contrary subtilties, that it had become a practice to count, instead of weighing, their authorities. It has been regretted that he made little use of philosophy in the exposition of law; but this could not have been attempted in the sixteenth century without the utmost danger of misleading the interpreter.[764]

[763] Andrès, xvi. 143. Savigny agrees with Andrès as to the merits of Zasius, and observes that the revival of the study of the laws in their original sources, instead of the commentators, had been announced by several signs before the sixteenth century. Ambrogio Traversari had recommended this, and Lebrixa wrote against the errors of Accursius, though in a superficial manner. Gesch. des Römischen Rechts, vi. 364.

[764] Bayle, art. Alciati. Gravina, p. 206. Tiraboschi, ix. 115. Corniani, v. 57.

|Opposition to him.|

|Agustino.|

51. The practical lawyers, whose prejudices were nourished by their interests, conspired with the professors of the old school to clamour against the introduction of literature into jurisprudence. Alciati was driven sometimes from one university to another by their opposition; but more frequently his restless disposition and his notorious desire of gain were the causes of his migrations. They were the means of diffusing a more liberal course of studies in France as well as Italy, and especially in the great legal university of Bourges. He stood not however alone in scattering the flowers of polite literature over the thorny brakes of jurisprudence. An eminent Spaniard, Antonio Agustino, might perhaps be placed almost on a level with him. The first work of Agustino, Emendationes Juris Civilis, was published in 1544. Andrès, seldom deficient in praising his compatriots, pronounces such an eulogy on the writings of Agustino, as to find no one but Cujacius worthy of being accounted his equal, if indeed he does not give the preference in genius and learning to the older writer.[765] Gravina is less diffusely panegyrical; and in fact it is certain that Agustino, though a lawyer of great erudition and intelligence, has been eclipsed by those for whom he prepared the way.

[765] Vol. xvi. p. 148.