CHAPTER IX.

ON THE SCIENTIFIC AND MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE OF EUROPE FROM 1520 to 1550.

SECT. I.

_On Mathematical and Physical Science._

|Geometrical treatises.|

1. The first translation of Euclid from the Greek text was made by Zamberti of Venice, and appeared in 1505. It was republished at Basle in 1537. The Spherics of Theodosius and the Conics of Apollonius were translated by men, it is said, more conversant with Greek than with geometry. A higher praise is due to Werner of Nuremberg, the first who aspired to restore the geometrical analysis of the ancients. The treatise of Regiomontanus on triangles was first published in 1533. It may be presumed that its more important contents were already known to geometers. Montucla hints that the editor Schæner may have introduced some algebraic solutions which appear in this work; but there seems no reason to doubt, that Regiomontanus was sufficiently acquainted with that science. The treatise of Vitello on optics, which belongs to the thirteenth century, was first printed in 1533.[832]

[832] Montucla, Kästner.

|Fernel.|

|Rhœticus.|

2. Oronce Finée, with some reputation in his own times, has, according to Montucla, no pretension to the name of a geometer; and another Frenchman, Fernel, better known as a physician, who published a Cosmotheoria in 1527, though he first gave the length of a degree of the meridian, and came not far from the truth, arrived at it by so unscientific a method, being in fact no other than counting the revolutions of a wheel along the main road, that he cannot be reckoned much higher.[833] These are obscure names in comparison with Joachim, surnamed Rhœticus from his native country. After the publication of the work of Regiomontanus on trigonometry, he conceived the project of carrying those labours still further; and calculated the sines, tangents, and secants, the last of which he first reduced to tables, for every minute of the quadrant, to a radius of unity followed by fifteen cyphers; one of the most remarkable monuments, says Montucla, of human patience, or rather of a devotion to science, the more meritorious that it could not be attended with much glory. But this work was not published till 1594, and then not so complete as Rhœticus had left it.[834]

[833] Montucla, ii. 316. Kästner, ii. 329.

[834] Montucla, i. 582. Biogr. Univ., art. Joachim Kästner, i. 561.

|Cardan and Tartaglia.|

|Cubic equations.|

3. Jerome Cardan is, as it were, the founder of the higher algebra; for, whatever he may have borrowed from others, we derive the science from his Ars Magna, published in 1545. It contains many valuable discoveries; but that which has been most celebrated is the rule for the solution of cubic equations, generally known by Cardan’s name, though he had obtained it from a man of equal genius in algebraic science, Nicolas Tartaglia. The original inventor appears to have been Scipio Ferreo, who, about 1505, by some unknown process, discovered the solution of a single case; that of _x_³ + _p_ _x_ = _q_. Ferreo imparted the secret to one Fiore, or Floridus, who challenged Tartaglia to a public trial of skill, not unusual in that age. Before he heard of this, Tartaglia, as he assures us himself, had found out the solution of two other forms of cubic equation; _x_³ + _p_ _x_² = _q_; and _x_³ - _p_ _x_² = _q_. When the day of trial arrived, Tartaglia was able not only to solve the problems offered by Fiore, but to baffle him entirely by others which resulted in the forms of equation, the solution of which had been discovered by himself. This was in 1535; and four years afterwards Cardan obtained the secret from Tartaglia under an oath of secrecy. In his Ars Magna, he did not hesitate to violate this engagement; and though he gave Tartaglia the credit of the discovery, revealed the process to the world.[835] He has said himself, that by the help of Ferrari, a very good mathematician, he extended his rule to some cases not comprehended in that of Tartaglia; but the best historian of early algebra seems not to allow this claim.[836]

[835] Playfair, in his second dissertation in the Encyclopædia Britannica, though he cannot but condemn Cardan, seems to think Tartaglia rightly treated for having concealed his discovery; and others have echoed this strain. Tartaglia himself says in a passage I have read in Cossali, that he meant to have divulged it ultimately; but in that age money as well as credit was to be got by keeping the secret; and those who censure him wholly forget, that the solution of cubic equations was, in the actual state of algebra, perfectly devoid of any utility to the world.

[836] Cossali, Storia Critica d’Algebra (1797), ii. 96, &c. Hutton’s Mathematical Dictionary-Montucla, i. 591. Kästner, i. 152.

|Beauty of the discovery.|

4. This writer, Cossali, has ingeniously attempted to trace the process by which Tartaglia arrived at this discovery;[837] one which, when compared with the other leading rules of algebra, where the invention, however useful, has generally lain much nearer the surface, seems an astonishing effort of sagacity. Even Harriott’s beautiful generalisation of the composition of equations was prepared by what Cardan and Vieta had done before, or might have been suggested by observation in the less complex cases.[838]

[837] Ibid. p. 145. Tartaglia boasts of having discovered that the cube of _p_ + _q_ = _p_³ + _p_² _q_ + _p_ _q_² + _q_³. Such was the ignorance of literal algebra; yet in this state of the science he solved cubic equations.

[838] Cardan strongly expresses his sense of this recondite discovery. And as the passage in which he retraces the early progress of algebra is short, and is quoted from Cardan’s works, which are scarce in England, by Kästner, who is himself not very commonly known here, I shall transcribe the whole passage, as a curiosity for our philomaths. Hæc ars olim a Mahomete Mosis Arabis filio initium sumpsit. Etenim hujus rei locuples testis Leonardus Pisanus. Reliquit autem capitula quatuor, cum suis demonstrationibus quas nos locis suis ascribemus. Post multa vero temporum intervalla tria capitula derivativa addita illis sunt, incerto autore, quæ tamen cum principalibus a Luca Paciolo posita sunt. Demum etiam ex primis, alia tria derivativa, a quodam ignoto viro inventa legi, hæc tamen minimè in lucem prodierant, cum essent aliis longe utiliora, nam cubi et numeri et cubi quadrati æstimationem docebant. Verum temporibus nostris Scipio Ferreus Bononiensis, capitulum cubi et rerum numero æqualium [_x_³ + _p_ _x_ = _q_] invenit, rem sane pulchram et admirabilem: _cum omnem humanam subtilitatem, omnis ingenii mortalis claritatem ars hæc superet, donum profecto cœleste, experimentum autem virtutis animorum, atque adeo illustre, ut qui hæc attigerit nihil non intelligere posse se credat_. Hujus æmulatione Nicolaus Tartalea Brixellensis, amicus noster, cum in certamen cum illius discipulo Antonio Maria Florido venisset, capitulum idem ne vinceretur invenit, qui mihi ipsum multis precibus exoratus tradidit. Deceptus enim ego verbis Lucæ Pacioli, qui ultra sua capitula generale ullum aliud esse posse negat (quanquam tot jam antea rebus a me inventis sub manibus esset, desperabam) tamen [et?] invenire _q._ quærere non audebam. [sic, sed perperam nonnihil scribi liquet]. Inde autem illo habito demonstrationem venatus, intellexi complura alia posse haberi. Ac eo studio, auctaque jam confidentia, per me partim, ac etiam aliqua per Ludovicum Ferrarium, olim alumnum nostrum, inveni. Porro quæ ab his inventa sunt, illorum nominibus decorabuntur, cætera quæ nomine carent nostra sunt. At etiam demonstrationes, præter tres Mahometis, et duas Ludovici, omnes nostræ sunt, singulæque capitibus suis præponentur, inde regula addita, subjicietur experimentum. Kästner, p. 152. The passage in Italics is also quoted by Cossali, p. 159.

|Cardan’s other discoveries.|

5. Cardan, though not entitled to the honour of this discovery, nor even equal, perhaps, in mathematical genius to Tartaglia, made a great epoch in the science of algebra; and, according to Cossali and Hutton, has a claim to much that Montucla has unfairly or carelessly attributed to his favourite Vieta. “It appears,” says Dr. Hutton, “from this short chapter (lib. x. cap. 1. of the Ars Magna), that he had discovered most of the principal properties of the roots of equations, and could point out the number and nature of the roots, partly from the signs of the terms, and partly from the magnitudes and relations of the coefficients.” Cossali has given the larger part of a quarto volume to the algebra of Cardan; his object being to establish the priority of the Italian’s claim to most of the discoveries ascribed by Montucla to others, and especially to Vieta. Cardan knew how to transform a complete cubic equation into one wanting the second term; one of the flowers which Montucla has placed on the head of Vieta; and this he explains so fully, that Cossali charges the French historian of mathematics with having never read the Ars Magna.[839] Leonard of Pisa had been aware that quadratic equations might have two positive roots; but Cardan first perceived, or at least first noticed, the negative roots, which he calls “fictæ radices.”[840] In this perhaps there is nothing extraordinary; the algebraic language must early have been perceived by such acute men as exercised themselves in problems to give a double solution of every quadratic equation; but, in fact, the conditions of these problems, being always numerical, were such as to render a negative result practically false, and impertinent to the solution. It is therefore, perhaps, without much cause that Cossali triumphs in the ignorance shown of negative values by Vieta, Bachet, and even Harriott, though Cardan had pointed them out;[841] since we may better say, that they did not trouble themselves with what, in the actual application of algebra, could be of no utility. Cardan also discovered that every cubic equation has one or three real roots; and that there are as many positive or true roots as changes of signs in the equation; that the coefficient of the second term is equal to the sum of the roots, so that where it is wanting, the positive and negative values must compensate each other;[842] and that the known term is the product of all the roots. Nor was he ignorant of a method of extracting roots by approximation; but in this again the definiteness of solution, which numerical problems admit and require, would prevent any great progress from being made.[843] The rules are not perhaps all laid down by him very clearly; and it is to be observed that he confined himself chiefly to equations not above the third power; though he first published the method of solving biquadratics, invented by his coadjutor Ferrari. Cossali has also shown that the application of algebra to geometry, and even to the geometrical construction of problems, was known in some cases by Tartaglia and Cardan; thus plucking another feather from the wing of Vieta, or of Descartes. It is a little amusing to see that, after Montucla had laboured with so much success to despoil Harriott of the glory which Wallis had, perhaps with too national a feeling, bestowed upon him for a long list of discoveries contained in the writings of Vieta, a claimant by an older title started up in Jerome Cardan, who, by help of his very accomplished advocate, seems to have established his right at the expense of both.

[839] P. 164.

[840] Montucla gives Cardan the credit due for this; at least in his second edition (1799), p. 595.

[841] i. 23.

[842] It must, apparently, have been through his knowledge of this property of the coefficient of the second term, that Cardan recognised the existence of equal roots, even when affected by the same sign (Cossali, ii. 362); which, considered in relation to the numerical problems then in use, would seem a kind of absurdity.

[843] Kästner, p. 161. In one place Cossali shows, that Cardan had transported all the quantities of an equation on one side, making the whole equal to zero; which Wallis has ascribed to Harriott, as his leading discovery, p. 324. Yet in another passage we find Cossali saying: una somma di quantità uguale al zero avea un’aria mostruosa, e non sapeasi di equazion si fatta concepire idea, p. 159.

|Imperfections of algebraic language.|

6. These anticipations of Cardan are the more truly wonderful, when we consider that the symbolical language of algebra, that powerful instrument not only in expediting the processes of thought, but in suggesting general truths to the mind, was nearly unknown in his age. Diophantus, Fra Luca, and Cardan make use occasionally of letters to express indefinite quantities, besides the _res_ or _cosa_, sometimes written shortly, for the assumed unknown number, of an equation. But letters were not yet substituted for known quantities; and it has been seen in a note, that Tartaglia first discovered, and that by a geometrical construction, what appears so very simple as the equation between the cube of a line and that of any two parts into which it may be divided. Michael Stifel, in his Arithmetica Integra, Nuremberg, 1544, is said to have first used the signs + and -, and numeral exponents of powers.[844] It is very singular that discoveries of the greatest convenience, and not above the ingenuity of a parish schoolmaster, should have been overlooked by men of extraordinary acuteness, like Tartaglia, Cardan, and Ferrari, and hardly less so, that by dint of this acuteness, they dispensed with the aid of these contrivances in which we almost fancy the utility of algebraic expression consists.

[844] Hutton, Kästner.

|Copernicus.|

7. But the great boast of science during this period is the treatise of Copernicus on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, in six books, published at Nuremberg, in 1543.[845] This founder of modern astronomy was born at Thorn, of a good family, in 1473; and after receiving the best education his country furnished, spent some years in Italy, rendering himself master of all the mathematical and astronomical science at that time attainable. He became possessed afterwards of an ecclesiastical benefice in his own country. It appears to have been about 1507, that after meditating on various schemes besides the Ptolemaic, he began to adopt and confirm in writing that of Pythagoras, as alone capable of explaining the planetary motions with that simplicity which gives a presumption of truth in the works of nature.[846] Many years of exact observation confirmed his mind in the persuasion that he had solved the grandest problem which can occupy the astronomer. He seems to have completed his treatise about 1530; but perhaps dreaded the bigoted prejudices which afterwards oppressed Galileo. Hence he is careful to propound his theory as an hypothesis; though it is sufficiently manifest that he did not doubt of its truth. It was first publicly announced by his disciple Joachim Rhœticus, already mentioned for his trigonometry, in the Narratio de Revolutionibus Copernici, printed at Dantzic, in 1540. The treatise of Copernicus himself, three years afterwards, is dedicated to the pope, Paul III., as if to shield himself under that sacred mantle. But he was better protected by the common safeguard against oppression. The book reached him on the day of his death; and he just touched with his hands the great legacy he was to bequeath to mankind. But many years were to elapse before they availed themselves of the wisdom of Copernicus. The progress of his system, even among astronomers, as we shall hereafter see, was exceedingly slow.[847] We may just mention here, that no kind of progress was made in mechanical or optical science during the first part of the sixteenth century.

[845] The title-page and advertisement of so famous a work, and which so few of my readers will have seen, are worth copying from Kästner, ii. 595. Nicolai Copernici Torinensis, de Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, libri vi.

Habes in hoc opere jam recens nato et edito, studiose lector, motus stellarum tam fixarum quam erraticarum, cum ex veteribus tum etiam ex recentibus observationibus restitutos; et novis insuper ac admirabilibus hypothesibus ornatos. Habes etiam tabulas expeditissimas, ex quibus eosdem ad quodvis tempus quam facillime calculare poteris. Igitur eme lege, fruere. Αγεωμετρητος ουδεις εισιτω [Ageômetrêtos oudeis eisitô]. Noribergæ, apud Joh. Petreium, anno MDxliii.

[846] This is the proper statement of the Copernican argument, as it then stood; it rested on what we may call a metaphysical probability, founded upon its beauty and simplicity; for it is to be remembered that the Ptolemaic hypothesis explained all the phenomena then known. Those which are only to be solved by the supposition of the earth’s motion were discovered long afterwards. This excuses the slow reception of the new system, interfering as it did with so many prejudices, and incapable of that kind of proof which mankind generally demand.

[847] Gassendi, Vita Copernici. Biogr. Univ. Montucla. Kästner. Playfair. Gassendi, p. 14-22, gives a short analysis of the great work of Copernicus, de orbium Cœlestium Revolutionibus, p. 22. The hypothesis is generally laid down in the first of the six books. One of the most remarkable passages in Copernicus is his conjecture that gravitation was not a central tendency, as had been supposed, but an attraction common to matter, and probably extending to the heavenly bodies, though it does not appear that he surmised their mutual influences in virtue of it: gravitatem esse affectionem non terræ totius, sed partium ejus propriam, qualem soli etiam et lunæ cæterisque astris convenire credibile est. These are the words of Copernicus himself, quoted by Gassendi, p. 19.

SECT. II.

_On Medicine and Anatomy._

|Revival of Greek medicine.|

8. The revival of classical literature had an extensive influence where we might not immediately anticipate it, on the science of medicine. Jurisprudence itself, though nominally and exclusively connected with the laws of Rome, was hardly more indebted to the restorers of ancient learning than the art of healing, which seems to own no mistress but nature, no code of laws but those which regulate the human system. But the Greeks, among their other vast superiorities above the Arabians, who borrowed so much, and so much perverted what they borrowed, were not only the real founders, but the best teachers of medicine; a science which in their hands seems, more than any other, to have anticipated the Baconian philosophy; being founded on an induction proceeding by select experience, always observant, always cautious, and ascending slowly to the generalities of theory. But instead of Hippocrates and Galen, the Arabians brought in physicians of their own, men doubtless of considerable, though inferior merit, and substituted arbitrary or empirical precepts for the enlarged philosophy of the Greeks. The scholastic subtilty also obtruded itself even into medicine; and the writings of the middle ages on these subjects are alike barbarous in style and useless in substance. Pharmacy owes much to this oriental school, but it has retained no reputation in physiological or pathological science.

|Linacre and other physicians.|

9. Nicolas Leonicenus, who became professor at Ferrara before 1470, was the first restorer of the Hippocratic method of practice. He lived to a very advanced age, and was the first translator of Galen from the Greek.[848] Our excellent countryman, Linacre, did almost as much for medicine. The College of Physicians, founded by Henry VIII. in 1518, venerates him as its original president. His primary object was to secure a learned profession, to rescue the art of healing from mischievous ignorance, and to guide the industrious student in the path of real knowledge, which at that time lay far more through the regions of ancient learning than at present. It was important not for the mere dignity of the profession, but for its proper ends, to encourage the cultivation of the Greek language, or to supply its want by accurate versions of the chief medical writers.[849] Linacre himself, and several eminent physicians on the continent, Cop, Ruel, Gonthier, Fuchs, by such labours in translation, restored the school of Hippocrates. That of the Arabians rapidly lost ground, though it preserved through the sixteenth century an ascendancy in Spain; and some traces of its influence, especially the precarious empiricism of judging diseases by the renal secretion, without sight of the patient, which was very general in that age, continued long afterwards in several parts of Europe.[850]

[848] Biogr. Univ. Sprengel, Hist. de la Médecine (traduit par Jourdan), vol. ii.

[849] Johnson’s Life of Linacre, p. 207, 279. Biogr. Britann.

[850] Sprengel, vol. iii. passim.

|Medical innovators.|

|Paracelsus.|

10. The study of Hippocrates taught the medical writers of this century to observe and describe like him. Their works, chiefly indeed after the period with which we are immediately concerned, are very numerous, and some of them deserve much praise, though neither the theory of the science, nor the power of judiciously observing and describing, was yet in a very advanced state. The besetting sin of all who should have laboured for truth, an undue respect for authority, made Hippocrates and Galen, especially the former, as much the idols of the medical world, as Augustin and Aristotle were of theology and metaphysics. This led to a pedantic erudition, and contempt of opposite experience, which rendered the professors of medicine an inexhaustible theme of popular ridicule. Some, however, even at an early time, broke away from the trammels of implicit obedience to the Greek masters. Fernel, one of the first physicians in France, rejecting what he could not approve in their writings, gave an example of free inquiry. Argentier of Turin tended to shake the influence of Galen by founding a school which combated many of his leading theories.[851] But the most successful opponent of the orthodox creed was Paracelsus. Of his speculative philosophy, or rather the wild chimæras which he borrowed or devised, enough has been said in former pages. His reputation was originally founded on a supposed skill in medicine; and it is probable that, independently of his real merit in the application of chemistry to medicine, and in the employment of very powerful agents, such as antimony, the fanaticism of his pretended philosophy would exercise that potency over the bodily frame, to which disease has, in recent experience, so often yielded.[852]

[851] Sprengel, iii. 204. “Argentier,” he says, “was the first to lay down a novel and true principle, that the different faculties of the soul are not inherent in certain distinct parts of the brain.”

[852] Sprengel, vol. iii.

|Anatomy.|

|Berenger.|

11. The first important advances in anatomical knowledge since the time of Mundinus were made by Berenger of Carpi, in his commentary upon that author, printed at Bologna in 1521, which it was thought worth while to translate into English as late as 1664, and in his Isagogæ Breves in Anatomiam, Bologna, 1522. He followed the steps of Mundinus in human dissection, and thus gained an advantage over Galen. Hence we owe to him the knowledge of several specific differences between the human structure and that of quadrupeds. Berenger is asserted to have discovered two of the small bones of the ear, though this is contested on behalf of Achillini. Portal observes, that though some have regarded Berenger as the restorer of the science of anatomy, it is hard to strip one so much superior to him as Vesalius of that honour.[853]

[853] Hist. de l’Anatomie, i. 277. Portal remarks in his preface, p. xii, that many discoveries supposed to be modern may be detected in the old anatomists; thus Berenger knew that the thorax is larger in man, and the pelvis in woman, which a living anatomist, he says, has assumed as his own. But the Greek sculptors surely knew this as well as Berenger or Portal.

|Vesalius.|

12. Every early anatomist was left far behind when Vesalius, a native of Brussels, who acquired in early youth an extraordinary reputation on this side of the Alps, and in 1540 became professor of the science at Pavia, published at Basle, in 1543, his great work De Corporis Humani Fabrica. If Vesalius was not quite to anatomy what Copernicus was to astronomy, he has yet been said, a little hyperbolically, to have discovered a new world. A superstitious prejudice against human dissection had restrained the ancient anatomists in general to pigs and apes, though Galen, according to Portal, had some experience in the former. Mundinus and Berenger, by occasionally dissecting the human body, had thrown much additional light on its structure; and the superficial muscles, those immediately under the integuments, had been studied by Da Vinci and others for the purposes of painting and sculpture. Vesalius first gave a complete description of the human body, with designs which, at the time, were ascribed to Titian. We have here therefore a great step made in science; the precise estimation of Vesalius’s discoveries must be sought, of course, in anatomical history.[854]

[854] Portal p. 394-433.

|Portal’s account of him.|

13. “Vesalius,” says Portal, in the rapturous strain of one devoted to his own science, “appears to me one of the greatest men who ever existed. Let the astronomers vaunt their Copernicus, the natural philosophers their Galileo and Torricelli, the mathematicians their Pascal, the geographers their Columbus, I shall always place Vesalius above all their heroes. The first study for man is man. Vesalius has had this noble object in view, and has admirably attained it, he has made on himself and his fellows such discoveries as Columbus could only make by travelling to the extremity of the world. The discoveries of Vesalius are of direct importance to man; by acquiring fresh knowledge of his own structure, man seems to enlarge his existence; while discoveries in geography or astronomy affect him but in a very indirect manner.” He proceeds to compare him with Winslow, in order to show how little had been done in the intermediate time. Vesalius seems not to have known the osteology of the ear. His account of the teeth is not complete; but he first clearly described the bones of the feet. He has given a full account of the muscles, but with some mistakes, and was ignorant of a very few. In his account of the sanguineous and nervous systems, the errors seem more numerous. He describes the intestines better than his predecessors, and the heart very well; the organs of generation not better than they, and sometimes omits their discoveries; the brain admirably, little having since been added.

|His human dissections.|

14. The zeal of Vesalius and his fellow-students for anatomical science led them to strange scenes of adventure. Those services, which have since been thrown on the refuse of mankind, they voluntarily undertook.

Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.

They prowled by night in charnel-houses, they dug up the dead from the grave, they climbed the gibbet, in fear and silence, to steal the mouldering carcase of the murderer; the risk of ignominious punishment, and the secret stings of superstitious remorse, exalting no doubt the delight of these useful, but not very enviable pursuits.[855]

[855] Portal, p. 395.

|Fate of Vesalius.|

15. It may be mentioned here, that Vesalius, after living for some years in the court of Charles and Philip as their physician, met with a strange reverse, characteristic enough of such a place. Being absurdly accused of having dissected a Spanish gentleman before he was dead, Vesalius only escaped capital punishment, at the instance of the inquisition, by undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, during which he was shipwrecked, and died of famine in one of the Greek islands.[856]

[856] Portal, Tiraboschi, ix. 34. Biogr. Univ.

|Other anatomists.|

16. The best anatomists were found in Italy. But Francis I. invited one of these, Vidus Vidius, to his royal college at Paris; and from that time France had several of respectable name. Such were Charles Etienne, one of the great typographical family, Sylvius, and Gonthier.[857] A French writer about 1540, Levasseur, appears to have known, at least, the circulation of the blood through the lungs, as well as the valves of the arteries and veins, and their direction, and its purpose; treading closely on an anticipation of Harvey.[858] Portal has erroneously supposed the celebrated passage of Servetus on the circulation of the blood to be contained in his book de Trinitatis Erroribus, published in 1531,[859] whereas it is really found in the Christianismi Restitutio, which did not appear till 1553. This gives Levasseur a priority of some importance in anatomical history.

[857] Portal, i. 330 et post.

[858] Portal p. 373, quotes the passage, which seems to warrant this inference, but is rather obscurely worded. It contains, to my apprehension, a much nearer approximation to the theory of a general circulation than the more famous passage in Servetus; in which I can only perceive an acquaintance with that through the lungs.

[859] P. 300.

|Imperfection of the science.|

17. The practice of trusting to animal dissection, from which it was difficult for anatomists to extricate themselves, led some men of real merit into errors. They seem also not to have profited sufficiently by the writings of their predecessors. Massa of Venice, one of the greatest of this age, is ignorant of some things known to Berenger. Many proofs occur in Portal, how imperfectly the elder anatomists could yet demonstrate the more delicate parts of the human body.

SECT. III.

_On Natural History._

|Botany.|

|Botanical gardens.|

18. The progress of natural history, in all its departments, was very slow, and should of course be estimated by the additions made to the valuable materials collected by Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, and Pliny. The few botanical treatises that had appeared before this time were too meagre and imperfect to require mention. Otto Brunfels of Strasburg was the first who published, in 1530, a superior work, Herbarum Vivæ Eicones in three volumes folio, with 238 wooden cuts of plants.[860] Euricius Cordus of Marburg, in his Botanilogicon, or dialogues on plants, displays, according to the Biographie Universelle, but little knowledge of Greek, and still less observation of nature. Cordus has deserved more praise (though this seems better due to Lorenzo de’ Medici), as the first who established a botanical garden. This was at Marburg, in 1530.[861] But the fortunes of private physicians were hardly equal to the cost of an useful collection. The university of Pisa led the way by establishing a public garden in 1545, according to the date which Tiraboschi has determined. That of Padua had founded a professorship of botany in 1533.[862]

[860] Biogr. Univ.

[861] Biogr. Univ. Andrès, xiii. 80. Eichhorn, iii. 304. See too Roscoe’s Leo. X., iv. 125, for some pleasing notices of the early studies in natural history. Pontanus was fond of it; and his poem on the cultivation of the lemon, orange, and citron (de Hortis Hesperidum) shows an acquaintance with some of the operations of horticulture. The garden of Bembo was also celebrated. Theophrastus and Dioscorides were published in Latin before 1500. But it was not till about the middle of the sixteenth century that botany, through the commentaries of Matthioli on Dioscorides, began to assume a distinct form, and to be studied as a separate branch.

[862] ix. 10.

|Ruel.|

19. Ruel, a physician of Soissons, an excellent Greek scholar, had become known by a translation of Dioscorides in 1516, upon which Huet has bestowed high praise. His more celebrated treatise de Natura Stirpium appeared at Paris in 1536, and is one of the handsomest offsprings of that press. It is a compilation from the Greek and Latin authors on botany, made with taste and judgment. His knowledge, however, derived from experience, was not considerable, though he has sometimes given the French names of species described by the Greeks, so far as his limited means of observation and the difference of climate enabled him. Many later writers have borrowed from Ruel their general definitions and descriptions of plants, which he himself took from Theophrastus.[863]

[863] Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars.)

|Fuchs.|

20. Ruel, however, seems to have been left far behind by Leonard Fuchs, professor of medicine in more than one German university, who has secured a verdant immortality in the well-known Fuchsia. Besides many works on his own art, esteemed in their time, he published at Basle in 1542 his Commentaries on the History of Plants, containing above 500 figures, a botanical treatise frequently reprinted, and translated into most European languages. “Considered as a naturalist, and especially as a botanist, Fuchs holds a distinguished place, and he has thrown a strong light on that science. His chief object is to describe exactly the plants used in medicine; and his prints, though mere outlines, are generally faithful. He shows that the plants and vegetable products mentioned by Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Hippocrates, and Galen had hitherto been ill known.”[864]

[864] Biogr. Univ. (by M. du Petit Thouars.)

|Matthioli.|

21. Matthioli, an Italian physician, in a peaceful retreat near Trent, accomplished a laborious repertory of medical botany in his Commentaries on Dioscorides, published originally, 1544, in Italian, but translated by himself into Latin, and frequently reprinted throughout Europe. Notwithstanding a bad arrangement, and the author’s proneness to credulity, it was of great service at a time when no good work on that subject was in existence in Italy; and its reputation seems to have been not only general, but of long duration.[865]

[865] Tiraboschi, ix. 2. Andrès, xiii. 85. Corniani, vi. 5.

|Low state of zoology.|

22. It was not singular that much should have been published, imperfect as it might be, on the natural history of plants, while that of animal nature, as a matter of science, lay almost neglected. The importance of vegetable products in medicine was far more extensive and various; while the ancient treatises, which formed substantially the chief knowledge of nature possessed in the sixteenth century, are more copious and minute on the botanical than the animated kingdom. Hence we find an absolute dearth of books relating to zoology. P. Jovius de Piscibus Romania is rather the work of a philologer and a lover of good cheer than a naturalist, and treats only of the fish eaten at the Roman tables.[866] Gillius de Vi et Natura Animalium is little else than a compilation from Ælian and other ancient authors, though Niceron says that the author has interspersed some observations of his own.[867] No work of the least importance, even for that time, can perhaps be traced in Europe on any part of zoology, before the Avium præcipuarum Historia of our countryman Turner, published at Cologne in 1548, though this is confined to species described by the ancients. Gesner, in his Pandects, which bear date in the same year, several times refers to it with commendation.[868]

[866] Andrès, xiii. 143. Roscoe’s Leo X. ubi suprà.

[867] Vol. xxili Biogr. Univ. Andrès, xiii. 144.

[868] Pandect. Univers., lib. 14. Gesner may be said to make great use of Turner; a high compliment from so illustrious a naturalist. He quotes also a book on quadrupeds lately printed in German by Michael Herr. Turner, whom we shall find again as a naturalist, became afterwards dean of Wells, and was one of the early puritans. See Chalmers’s Dictionary.

|Agricola.|

23. Agricola, a native of Saxony, acquired a perfect knowledge of the processes of metallurgy from the miners of Chemnitz, and perceived the immense resources that might be drawn from the abysses of the earth. “He is the first mineralogist,” says Cuvier, “who appeared after the revival of science in Europe. He was to mineralogy what Gesner was to zoology; the chemical part of metallurgy, and especially what relates to assaying, is treated with great care, and has been little improved down to the end of the eighteenth century.” It is plain that he was acquainted with the classics, the Greek alchemists, and many manuscripts. Yet he believed in the goblins, to whom miners ascribe the effects of mephitic exhalations.[869]

[869] Biogr. Univ.

SECT. IV.

_On Oriental Literature._

|Hebrew.|

|Elias Levita.|

|Pellican.|

24. The study of Hebrew was naturally one of those which flourished best under the influence of protestantism. It was exclusively connected with scriptural interpretation; and could neither suit the polished irreligion of the Italians, nor the bigotry of those who owned no other standard than the Vulgate translation. Sperone observes in one of his dialogues, that as much as Latin is prized in Italy, so much do the Germans value the Hebrew language.[870] We have anticipated in another place the translations of the Old Testament by Luther, Pagninus, and other Hebraists of this age. Sebastian Munster published the first grammar and lexicon of the Chaldee dialect in 1527. His Hebrew grammar had preceded in 1525. The Hebrew lexicon of Pagninus appeared in 1529; and that of Munster himself in 1543. Elias Levita, the learned Jew who has been already mentioned, deserves to stand in this his natural department above even Munster. Among several works that fall within this period we may notice the Masorah (Venice, 1538, and Basle, 1539), wherein he excited the attention of the world by denying the authority and antiquity of vowel points, and a lexicon of the Chaldee and Rabbinical dialects, in 1541. “Those,” says Simon, “who would thoroughly understand Hebrew should read the treatises of Elias Levita, which are full of important observations necessary for the explanation of the sacred text.”[871] Pellican, one of the first who embraced the principles of the Zwinglian reform, has merited a warm eulogy from Simon for his Commentarii Bibliorum, (Zurich, 1531-1536, five volumes in folio), especially for avoiding that display of rabbinical learning which the German Hebraists used to affect.[872]

[870] P. 102 (edit. 1596).

[871] Biogr. Univ.

[872] Id.

|Arabic and Oriental literature.|

25. Few endeavours were made in this period towards the cultivation of the other Oriental languages. Pagnino printed an edition of the Koran at Venice in 1530; but it was immediately suppressed; a precaution hardly required, while there was no one able to read it. But it may have been supposed, that the leaves of some books, like that recorded in the Arabian Nights, contain an active poison that does not wait for the slow process of understanding their contents. Two crude attempts at introducing the Eastern tongues were made soon afterwards. One of these was by William Postel, a man of some parts and more reading, but chiefly known, while he was remembered at all, for mad reveries of fanaticism, and an idolatrous veneration for a saint of his own manufacture, la mère Jeanne, the Joanna Southcote of the sixteenth century. We are only concerned at present with his collection of alphabets, twelve in number, published at Paris in 1538. The greater part of these are Oriental. An Arabic grammar followed the same year; but the types are so very imperfect, that it would be difficult to read them. A polyglott alphabet on a much larger scale appeared at Pavia the next year, through the care of Teseo Ambrogio, containing forty languages. Ambrogio gave also an introduction to the Chaldee, Syriac, and Armenian; but very defective, at least as to the two latter. Such rude and incorrect publications hardly deserve the name of beginnings. According to Andrès, Arabic was publicly taught at Paris by Giustiniani, and at Salamanca by Clenardus. The Æthiopic version of the New Testament was printed at Rome in 1548.

SECT. V.

_On Geography and History._

|Geography of Grynæus.|

26. The curiosity natural to mankind had been gratified by various publications since the invention of printing, containing either the relations of ancient travellers, such as Marco Polo, or of those under the Spanish or Portuguese flags, who had laid open two new worlds to the European reader. These were for the first time collected, to the number of seventeen, by Simon Grynæus, a learned professor at Basle, in Novus Orbis Regionum et Insularum Veteribus incognitarum, printed at Paris in 1532. We find also in this collection, besides an introduction to cosmography by Sebastian Munster, a map of the world bearing the date 1531. The cosmography of Apianus, professor at Ingoldstadt, published in 1524, contains also a map of the four quarters of the world. In this of Grynæus’s collection, a rude notion of the eastern regions of Asia appears. Sumatra is called Taprobane, and placed in the 150th meridian. A vague delineation of China and the adjacent sea is given; but Catay is marked further north. The island of Gilolo, which seems to be Japan, is about 240° east longitude. This is so far remarkable, that no voyages had yet been made in that sea. South America is noted as Terra Australis recenter inventa, sed nondum plane cognita; and there is as much of North America as Sebastian Cabot had discovered, a little enlarged by lucky conjecture. Magellan, by circumnavigating the world, had solved a famous problem. We find accordingly in this map an attempt to divide the globe by the 360 meridians of longitude. The best account of his voyage, that by Pigafetta, was not published till 1556; but the first, Maximilianus de Insulis Moluccis, appeared in 1523.

|Apianus.|

|Munster.|

27. The Cosmography of Apianus, above mentioned, was reprinted with additions by Gemma Frisius in 1533 and 1550. It is however, as a work of mere geography, very brief and superficial; though it may exhibit as much of the astronomical part of the science as the times permitted. That of Sebastian Munster, published in 1546, notwithstanding its title, extends only to the German empire.[873] The Isolario of Bordone (Venice, 1528) contains a description of all the islands of the world, with maps.[874]

[873] Eichhorn, iii. 294.

[874] Tiraboschi, ix. 179.

|Voyages.|

|Oviedo.|

28. A few voyages were printed before the middle of the century, which have, for the most part, found their way into the collection of Ramusio. The most considerable is the history of the Indies, that is, of the Spanish dominions in America, by Gonzalo Hernandez, sometimes called Oviedo, by which name he is placed in the Biographie Universelle. The author had resided for some years in St. Domingo. He published a summary of the general and natural history of the Indies in 1526; and twenty books of this entire work in 1535. The remaining thirty did not appear till 1783. In the long list of geographical treatises given by Ortelius, a small number belong to this earlier period of the century. But it may be generally said, that the acquaintance of Europe with the rest of the world could as yet be only obtained orally from Spanish and Portuguese sailors or adventurers, and was such as their falsehood and blundering would impart.

|Historical works.|

29. It is not my design to comprehend historical literature, except as to the chief publications, in these volumes; and it is hitherto but a barren field; for though Guicciardini died in 1540, his great history did not appear till 1564. Some other valuable histories, those of Nardi, Segni, Varchi, were also kept back through political or other causes, till a comparatively late period. That of Paulus Jovius, which is not in very high estimation, appeared in 1550, and may be reckoned, perhaps, after that of Machiavel, the best of this age. Upon this side of the Alps, several works of this class, to which the historical student has recourse, might easily be enumerated; but none of a philosophical character, or remarkable for beauty of style. I should, however, wish to make an exception for the Memoirs of the Chevalier Bayard, written by his secretary, and known by the title of Le Loyal Serviteur; they are full of warmth and simplicity. A chronicle bearing the name of Carion, but really written by Melanchthon, and published in the German language, 1532, was afterwards translated into Latin, and became the popular manual of universal history.[875] But ancient and mediæval history was as yet very imperfectly made known to those who had no access to its original sources. Even in Italy little had yet been done with critical or even extensive erudition.

[875] Bayle, art. Carion. Eichhorn, iii. 285.

* * * * *

|Italian academies.|

30. Italy in the sixteenth century was remarkable for the number of her literary academies; institutions, which, though by no means peculiar to her, have in no other country been so general or so conspicuous. We have already taken notice of that established by Aldus Manutius at Venice early in this century, and of those of older dates which had enjoyed the patronage of princes at Florence and Naples, as well as of that which Pomponius Lætus and his associates, with worse auspices, had endeavoured to form at Rome. The Roman academy, after a long season of persecution or neglect, revived in the genial reign of Leo X. “Those were happy days,” says Sadolet in 1529, writing to Angelo Colocci, a Latin poet of some reputation, “when in your suburban gardens, or mine on the Quirinal, or in the Circus, or by the banks of the Tiber, we held those meetings of learned men, all recommended by their own virtues and by public reputation. Then it was that after a repast, which the wit of the guests rendered exquisite, we heard poems or orations recited to our great delight, productions of the ingenious Casanuova, the sublime Vida, the elegant and correct Beroaldo, and many others still living or now no more.”[876] Corycius, a wealthy German, encouraged the good-humoured emulation of these Roman luminaries.[877] But the miserable reverse, that not long after the death of Leo befell Rome, put an end to this academy, which was afterwards replaced by others of less fame.

[876] Sadolet, Epist. p. 225 (edit. 1554). Roscoe has quoted this interesting letter.

[877] Roscoe, iii. 480.

|They pay regard to the language.|

31. The first academies of Italy had chiefly directed their attention to classical literature; they compared manuscripts, they suggested new readings, or new interpretations, they deciphered inscriptions and coins, they sat in judgment on a Latin ode, or debated the propriety of a phrase. Their own poetry had, perhaps, never been neglected; but it was not till the writings of Bembo founded a new code of criticism in the Italian language, that they began to study it minutely, and judge of compositions with that fastidious scrupulousness they had been used to exercise upon modern Latinity. Several academies were established with a view to this purpose, and became the self-appointed censors of their native literature. The reader will remember what has been already mentioned, that there was a peculiar source of verbal criticism in Italy, from the want of a recognised standard of idiom. The very name of the language was long in dispute. Bembo maintained that Florentine was the proper appellation. Varchi and other natives of the city have adhered to this very restrictive monopoly. Several, with more plausibility, contended for the name Tuscan; and this, in fact, was so long adopted, that it is hardly yet altogether out of use. The majority, however, were not Tuscans, and while it is generally agreed that the highest purity of their language is to be found in Tuscany, the word Italian has naturally prevailed as its denomination.

|Their fondness for Petrarch.|

32. The academy of Florence was instituted in 1540 to illustrate and perfect the _Tuscan_ language, especially by a close attention to the poetry of Petrarch. Their admiration of Petrarch became an exclusive idolatry; the critics of this age would acknowledge no defect in him, nor excellence in any different style. Dissertations and commentaries on Petrarch, in all the diffuseness characteristic of the age and the nation, crowd the Italian libraries. We are, however, anticipating a little in mentioning them; for few belong to so early a period as the present. But by dint of this superstitious accuracy in style, the language rapidly acquired a purity and beauty which has given the writers of the sixteenth century a value in the eyes of their countrymen, not always so easily admitted by those who, being less able to perceive the delicacy of expression, are at leisure to yawn over their frequent tediousness and inanity.

|They become numerous.|

33. The Italian academies, which arose in the first half of the century, and we shall meet with others hereafter, are too numerous to be reckoned in these pages. The most famous were the Intronati of Siena, founded in 1525, and devoted, like that of Florence, to the improvement of their language; the Infiammati of Padua, founded by some men of high attainments in 1534; and that of Modena, which, after a short career of brilliancy, fell under such suspicions of heresy, and was subjected to such inquisitorial jealousy about 1542, that it never again made any figure in literary history.[878]

[878] Tiraboschi, viii. ch. 4, is my chief authority about the Italian academies of this period.

|Their distinctions.|

34. Those academies have usually been distinguished by little peculiarities, which border sometimes on the ridiculous, but serve probably, at least, in the beginning, to keep up the spirit of such societies. They took names humorously quaint; they adopted devices and distinctions, which made them conspicuous, and inspired a vain pleasure in belonging to them. The Italian nobility, living a good deal in cities, and restrained from political business, fell willingly into these literary associations. They have, perhaps, as a body, been better educated, or, at least, better acquainted with their own literature and with classical antiquity, than men of equal rank in other countries. This was more the case in the sixteenth century than at present. Genius and erudition have been always honoured in Italy; and the more probably that they have not to stand the competition of overpowering wealth, or of political influence.

|Evils connected with them.|

35. Academies of the Italian kind do not greatly favour the vigorous advances in science, and much less the original bursts of genius, for which men of powerful minds are designed by nature. They form an oligarchy, pretending to guide the public taste, as they are guided themselves, by arbitrary maxims and close adherence to precedents. The spirit of criticism they foster is a salutary barrier against bad taste and folly, but is too minute and scrupulous in repressing the individualities which characterise real talents, and ends by producing an unblemished mediocrity, without the powers of delight or excitement, for which alone the literature of the imagination is desired.

|They succeed less in Germany.|

36. In the beginning of this century several societies were set on foot in Germany, for the promotion of ancient learning, besides that already mentioned of the Rhine, established by Camerarius of Dalberg, and Conrad Celtes, in the preceding age. Wimpfeling presided over one at Strasburg in 1514, and we find another at Augsburg in 1518. It is probable that the religious animosities which followed stood in the way of similar institutions; or they may have existed without obtaining much celebrity.[879]

[879] Jugler, in his Hist. Litteraria, mentions none between that of the Rhine, and one established at Weimar in 1617, p. 1994.

|Libraries.|

37. Italy was rich, far beyond any other country, in public and private libraries. The Vatican, first in dignity, in antiquity, and in number of books, increased under almost every successive pope, except Julius II., the least favourable to learning of them all. The Laurentian library, purchased by Leo X., before his accession to the papacy, from a monastery at Florence, which had acquired the collection after the fall of the Medici in 1494, was restored to that city by Clement VII., and placed in the newly-erected building which still contains it. The public libraries of Venice and Ferrara were conspicuous; and even a private citizen of the former, the Cardinal Grimani, is said to have left one of 8000 volumes; at that time, it appears, a remarkable number.[880] Those of Heidelberg and Vienna, commenced in the fifteenth century, were still the most distinguished in Germany; and Cardinal Ximenes founded one at Alcala.[881] It is unlikely that many private libraries of great extent existed in the empire; but the trade of bookselling, though not yet, in general, separated from that of printing, had become of considerable importance.

[880] Tiraboschi, viii. 197-219.

[881] Jugler, Hist. Litteraria, p. 206 et alibi.