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Chapter 8: Arrays

TRUE/FALSE

1. You can declare an array variable by placing curly brackets after the array name.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 398

2. When an application contains an array and you want to use every element of the array in some task, it
is common to perform loops that vary the loop control variable from 0 to one less than the size of the
array.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 406

3. When you want to determine whether a variable holds one of many valid values, one option is to use a
do…while loop to compare the variable to a series of valid values.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 418

4. When using parallel arrays, if one array has many possible matches, it is most efficient to place the
less common items first so that they are matched right away.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 420

5. Many programmers feel that breaking out of a for loop early disrupts the loop flow and makes the
code harder to understand.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 421

6. When initializing an array, you must initialize all elements or none.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 404

7. When you create an array variable, memory space is automatically reserved.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 399

8. When array elements are passed by value, a copy of the value is made and used within the receiving
method.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 426-427

9. Since an array name is a reference, you are able to use the = operator for assigning and the == operator
for comparisons.

ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 427

10. When returning an array reference, square brackets are included with the return type in the method
header.

ANS: T PTS: 1 REF: 429

MULTIPLE CHOICE

1. After you create an array variable, you still need to ____ memory space.
a. create c. reserve
b. organize d. dump
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 399

2. In Java, the size of an array ____ declared immediately following the array name.
a. can be c. is never
b. is always d. should be
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 399

3. Languages such as Visual Basic, BASIC, and COBOL use ____ to refer to individual array elements.
a. ( ) c. { }
b. [ ] d. < >
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 399

4. A(n) ____ is an integer contained within square brackets that indicates one of an array’s variables.
a. postscript c. variable header
b. subscript d. indicator
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 399

5. When you declare an array name, no computer memory address is assigned to it. Instead, the array
variable name has the special value ____, or Unicode value ‘\u0000’.
a. empty c. false
b. null d. zero
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 404

6. In Java, boolean array elements automatically are assigned the value ____.
a. null c. true
b. ‘\u0000’ d. false
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 404

7. When you create an array of objects, each reference is assigned the value ____.
a. null c. true
b. ‘\u0000’ d. false
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 404

8. You use a ____ following the closing brace of an array initialization list.
a. . c. :
b. ; d. ,
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 404

9. Providing values for all the elements in an array is called ____ the array.
a. populating c. filling
b. declaring d. irrigating
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 404
10. When any ____ type (boolean, char, byte, short, int, long, float, or double) is passed
to a method, the value is passed.
a. array c. element
b. dummy d. primitive
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 427

11. The length ____ contains the number of elements in the array.
a. box c. area
b. field d. block
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 407

12. A(n) ____ loop allows you to cycle through an array without specifying the starting and ending points
for the loop control variable.
a. do…while c. enhanced for
b. inner d. enhanced while
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 407

13. If a class has only a default constructor, you must call the constructor using the keyword ____ for each
declared array element.
a. default c. first
b. new d. object
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 411

14. Comparing a variable to a list of values in an array is a process called ____ an array.
a. validating c. checking
b. using d. searching
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 418

15. A ____ array is one with the same number of elements as another, and for which the values in
corresponding elements are related.
a. cloned c. property
b. parallel d. two-dimensional
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 419

16. When you initialize parallel arrays, it is convenient to use ____ so that the values that correspond to
each other visually align on the screen or printed page.
a. tabs c. spacing
b. indentation d. dashes
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 420

17. When you perform a ____, you compare a value to the endpoints of numerical ranges to find the
category in which a value belongs.
a. range match c. reference
b. sort d. search
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 422

18. It is a good programming practice to ensure that a subscript to an array does not fall below zero,
causing a(n) ____.
 a. array dump c. conundrum
b. runtime error d. compiling error
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 423

19. Individual array elements are ____ by value when a copy of the value is made and used within the
receiving method.
a. sorted c. received
b. passed d. stored
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 426-427

20. Primitive type variables are always passed by ____.

a. value c. location
b. reference d. memory
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 428

21. When a method returns an array reference, you include ____ with the return type in the method header.
a. { } c. < >
b. ( ) d. [ ]
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 429

22. Which of the following println statements will display the last myScores element in an array of
10?
a. System.out.println(vals[0]); c. System.out.println(vals[9]);
b. System.out.println(vals[1]); d. System.out.println(vals[10]);
ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 400

23. Which of the following statements correctly declares and creates an array to hold five double scores
values?
a. integer[] scores = new double[5] c. double[] = new scores[5]
b. double[] scores = new integer[5] d. double[] scores = new double[5]
ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 400

24. Which of the following statements correctly initializes an array with an initialization list?
a. int[] nums = {2, 4, 8}; c. int nums = [2, 4, 8];
b. int[] nums = (2, 4, 8); d. int nums() = int{2, 4, 8}
ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 404

25. In which of the following statements is the value of myVals null?

a. int myVals = "" c. myVals = int[null]
b. int [] myVals; d. int[null] = myVals
ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 404

COMPLETION

1. A(n) ____________________ is a named list of data items that all have the same type.

ANS: array
 PTS: 1 REF: 398

2. When you declare or access an array, you can use any expression to represent the size, as long as the
expression is a(n) ____________________.

ANS: integer

PTS: 1 REF: 400

3. When you declare int[] someNums = new int[10];, each element of someNums has a value
of ____________________ because someNums is a numeric array.

ANS:
0
zero

PTS: 1 REF: 404

4. An instance variable or object field is also called a(n) ____________________ of the object.

ANS: property

PTS: 1 REF: 407

5. When any primitive type is passed to a method, the ____________________ is passed.

ANS: value

PTS: 1 REF: 427

MATCHING

Match each term with the correct statement below.

a. array variable f. length
b. reference type g. foreach loop
c. elements h. reference types
d. int i. return
e. Java object names
1. Numbered beginning with 0
2. An array field
3. An enhanced for loop
4. Declared in the same way you declare any simple variable
5. A nonprimitive object
6. A primitive type
7. Represent computer memory addresses
8. A statement used to return an array from a method
9. Hold memory addresses where values are stored

1. ANS: C PTS: 1 REF: 399

2. ANS: F PTS: 1 REF: 407
3. ANS: G PTS: 1 REF: 408
 4. ANS: A PTS: 1 REF: 398
5. ANS: B PTS: 1 REF: 427
6. ANS: D PTS: 1 REF: 427
7. ANS: E PTS: 1 REF: 403
8. ANS: I PTS: 1 REF: 429
9. ANS: H PTS: 1 REF: 427

SHORT ANSWER

1. Describe a situation in which storing just one value at a time in memory does not meet your needs.

ANS:
At times you might encounter situations in which storing just one value at a time in memory does not
meet your needs. For example, a sales manager who supervises 20 employees might want to determine
whether each employee has produced sales above or below the average amount. When you enter the
first employee’s sales value into an application, you can’t determine whether it is above or below
average because you don’t know the average until you have all 20 values. Unfortunately, if you
attempt to assign 20 sales values to the same variable, when you assign the value for the second
employee, it replaces the value for the first employee.

PTS: 1 REF: 398

2. What is a subscript and how are the array’s elements numbered?

ANS:
A subscript is an integer contained within square brackets that indicates one of an array’s variables, or
elements. In Java, any array’s elements are numbered beginning with 0, so you can legally use any
subscript from 0 to 19 when working with an array that has 20 elements.

PTS: 1 REF: 399

3. What does an array’s name represent and what value does it hold when declared?

ANS:
Array names represent computer memory addresses; that is, array names contain references, as do all
Java objects. When you declare an array name, no computer memory address is assigned to it. Instead,
the array variable name has the special value null, or Unicode value ‘\u0000’. When you declare
int[] someNums;, the variable someNums has a value of null.

PTS: 1 REF: 404

4. When working with arrays, why is it beneficial to use a loop with a declared symbolic constant equal
to the size of the array?

ANS:
It is convenient to declare a symbolic constant equal to the size of the array and use the symbolic
constant as a limiting value in every loop that processes the array. That way, if the array size changes
in the future, you need to modify only the value stored in the symbolic constant, and you do not need
to search for and modify the limiting value in every loop that processes the array.

PTS: 1 REF: 407

5. When using an array with all elements used, why would a programmer use a loop control variable
from 0 to one less than the size of the array? Give an example.

ANS:
When an application contains an array and you want to use every element of the array in some task, it
is common to perform loops that vary the loop control variable from 0 to one less than the size of the
array. For example, if you get input values for the elements in the array, alter every value in the array,
sum all the values in the array, or display every element in the array, you need to perform a loop that
executes the same number of times as there are elements.

PTS: 1 REF: 406

6. How would you use a method that belongs to an object that is part of the array? Use an example and
demonstrate with Java code.

ANS:
To use a method that belongs to an object that is part of an array, you insert the appropriate subscript
notation after the array name and before the dot that precedes the method name. For example, to print
data for seven Employees stored in the emp array, you can write the following:

for(int x = 0; x < NUM_EMPLOYEES; ++x)

System.out.println (emp[x].getEmpNum() + " " +
emp[x].getSalary());

PTS: 1 REF: 411

7. Why would you use spacing when initializing parallel arrays?

ANS:
When you initialize parallel arrays, it is convenient to use spacing so that the values that correspond to
each other visually align on the screen or printed page.

PTS: 1 REF: 420

8. How would a programmer perform a range match when writing an application that takes into
consideration different discount rates for customers? Give an example.

ANS:
Create two corresponding arrays and perform a range match, in which you compare a value to the
endpoints of numerical ranges to find the category in which a value belongs. For example, one array
can hold the five discount rates, and the other array can hold five discount range limits. If you only use
the first figure in each range, you can create an array that holds five low limits:

int[] discountRangeLimit= {1, 13, 50, 100, 200};

A parallel array can hold the five discount rates:

double[] discountRate = {0, 0.10, 0.14, 0.18, 0.20};

Then, starting at the last discountRangeLimit array element, for any numOfItems greater than
or equal to discountRangeLimit[4], the appropriate discount is discount[4]. In other
words, for any numOrdered less than discountRangeLimit[4], you should decrement the
subscript and look in a lower range.
 PTS: 1 REF: 422

9. What is different about passing an array to a method rather than passing a primitive type to a method?

ANS:
The outcome is quite different when you pass an array (that is, pass its name) to a method. Arrays, like
all nonprimitive objects, are reference types; this means that the object actually holds a memory
address where the values are stored and the receiving method gets a copy of the array’s actual memory
address. Therefore, the receiving method has access to, and the ability to alter, the original values in
the array elements in the calling method.

PTS: 1 REF: 426-427

10. How can you use the enhanced for loop?

ANS:
You can use the enhanced for loop to cycle through an array of objects. For example, to display data
for seven Employees stored in the emp array, you can write the following:

for(Employee worker : emp)

System.out.println(worker.getEmpNum() + " " + worker.getSalary();

In this loop, worker is a local variable that represents each element of emp in turn. Using the
enhanced for loop eliminates the need to use a limiting value for the loop and eliminates the need for
a subscript following each element.

PTS: 1 REF: 412

11. When populating an array with an initialization list, you do not need to use the new keyword or
provide an array size. Explain why this is the case.

ANS:
When you populate an array upon creation by providing an initialization list, you do not
give the array a size because the size is assigned based on the number of values you place in the
initializing list. Also, when you initialize an array, you do not need to use the keyword new. New
memory is assigned based on the length of the list of provided values.

PTS: 1 REF: 404

12. Why is the length field a good option when writing a loop that manipulates an array? What
programming error is common when attempting to use length as an array method?

ANS:
You can use a field (instance variable) that is automatically assigned a value for every array you
create. The length field contains the number of elements in the array. Later, if you modify the size
of the array and recompile the program, the value in the length field of the array changes
appropriately. When you work with array elements, it is always better to use a symbolic constant or the
length field when writing a loop that manipulates an array.

A frequent programmer error is to attempt to use length as an array method, referring to

xxx.length(). However, length is not an array method; it is a field. An instance
 variable or object field such as length is also called a property of the object.

PTS: 1 REF: 407

13. While you can provide any legal identifier you want for an array, conventional rules are typically
followed. List and describe the naming conventions for naming arrays.

ANS:
Java programmers conventionally name arrays by following the same rules they use for variables:
Array names start with a lowercase letter.
Use uppercase letters to begin subsequent words.

Additionally, many programmers observe one of the following conventions to make it

more obvious that the name represents a group of items:
Arrays are often named using a plural noun such as studentScores.
Arrays are often named by adding a final word that implies a group, such as salesList.

PTS: 1 REF: 398-399

14. int[] sixNumbers = {1, 2, 3, 4};

The above code creates an array named sixNumbers. Describe how array sizes are determined when
using an initialization list and how memory is assigned.

ANS:
When you populate an array upon creation by providing an initialization list, you do not give the array
a size—the size is assigned based on the number of values you place in the initializing list. For
example, the sixNumbers array in the sample code has a size of 4. Also, when you initialize an
array, you do not need to use the keyword new because new memory is assigned based on the length
of the list of provided values. In Java, you cannot directly initialize part of an array. For example, you
cannot create an array of 10 elements and initialize only five; you must initialize either every element
or none of them.

PTS: 1 REF: 404

15. The following statement declares an array:

int[] increaseValues = new int[5]

final int PLUSTWO = 2;

Create a loop that will add 2 to every array element. Use a symbolic constant named PLUSTWO and
use the length field in the loop that will contain the number of elements in the array.

ANS:
for(counter = 0; counter < increaseValues.length; ++counter)
increaseValues[counter] += PLUSTWO;

PTS: 1 REF: 406-407

CASE

1. public class CostArray

 {
public static void main(String[] args)
{
double[] costs = new double[3];
costs[0] = 5.00;
costs[1] = 7.00;
costs[2] = 9.00;
System.out.println(costs[3]);
}
}

Once the above code is compiled and executed, an error message is generated. Explain the error
message that will result and explain the reason for the error.

ANS:
An out-of-bounds error is generated when the code is compiled and executed. The last executable line
in the code is an output statement that attempts to display a costs value using a subscript that is
beyond the range of the array: System.out.println(costs[3]). The program will run
successfully when the subscript used with the array is 0, 1, or 2. However, when the subscript reaches
3, the ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException error is generated. The message indicates that the
subscript is out of bounds and that the offending index is 3.

PTS: 1 REF: 403

2. String[] countyNames = {"Clark", "Delaware", "Madison"};

Using the above statement, what will be the value of countyNames[0], countyNames[1], and
countyNames[2]?

ANS:
countyNames[0] will hold the value “Clark”
countyNames[1] will hold the value “Delaware”
countyNames[2] will hold the value “Madison”

PTS: 1 REF: 412

3. Write the statement to create an array named studentScores that will store five integer value
student scores. Initialize the array using an initialization list with the values 70, 85, 92, 67, and 76.

ANS:
int[] studentScores = {70, 85, 92, 67, 76};

PTS: 1 REF: 404

4. Using just one statement, declare and create an array that will reserve memory locations for 10
scores values that are type double.

ANS:
double[] scores = new double[10];

PTS: 1 REF: 399

5. Write the statement to declare an array of integers that will hold studentScores.
 ANS:
int[] studentScores;

PTS: 1 REF: 398

6. double[] studentScores;
double studentScores[];

Are both of the above statements valid for declaring an array variable? Why or why not?

ANS:
You declare an array variable in the same way you declare any simple variable, but you insert a pair of
square brackets after the type. To declare an array of double values to hold studentScores, you
can write the following:

double[] studentScores;

In Java, you can also declare an array variable by placing the square brackets after the array name, as
in double studentScores[];. This format is familiar to C and C++ programmers, but the
preferred format among Java programmers is to place the brackets following the variable type and
before the variable name.

PTS: 1 REF: 398

7. String[] countyNames = {"Clark", "Delaware", "Madison"};

What will be the value of countyNames[0].length(), countyNames[1].length(), and

countyNames[2].length()?

ANS:
countyNames[0].length() will have a value of 5
countyNames[1].length() will have a value of 8
countyNames[2].length() will have a value of 7

PTS: 1 REF: 407

8. public static int[] sampleArray()

{
int studentScores = {72, 91, 83};
____
}

Using the above code, write the statement that will return the array name.

ANS:
return studentScores;

PTS: 1 REF: 429

9. Write the statement to declare an array variable named studentScores with type double. Write a
second statement to create an array of 10 objects.
 ANS:
double[] studentScores;
studentScores = new double [10];

PTS: 1 REF: 399

10. double[] studentScores = new double[3];

studentScores[0] = 93;
studentScores[1] = 77;
studentScores[2] = 85;

Write a println statement to display the last element of the studentScores array.

ANS:
System.out.println(studentScores[2]);

PTS: 1 REF: 399-400

Other documents randomly have
different content
century. Naples criticises; Rome translates; Mantua and Ferrara form
a system of education; Venice commits the literature of the classics
to the press. By the combined and successive activity of the chief
Italian centres, not only is the culture of antiquity regained; it is also
appropriated in all its various branches, discussed and illustrated,
placed beyond the reach of accident, and delivered over in its
integrity to Europe. The work thus performed by the Italians was
begun in peace; but it had to be continued under the pressure of
wars and national disasters unparalleled in the history of any other
modern people. Not for a single moment did the students relax their
energy. In the midst of foreign armies, deafened by the roar of
cannon and the tumult of sacked towns, exiled from their homes,
robbed of their books, deprived of their subsistence, they advanced
to their end with the irresistible obstinacy of insects. The drums and
tramplings of successive conquests and invasions by four warlike
nations—Frenchmen, Spaniards, Germans, Swiss—could not disturb
them. Drop by drop, Italy was being drained of blood; from the first
the only question was which of her assailants should possess the
beauty of her corpse. Yet the student, intent upon his manuscripts,
paid but little heed. So non-existent was the sense of nationality in
Italy that the Italians did not know they were being slowly
murdered. When the agony was over, and the ruin was
accomplished, they congratulated themselves on being still the
depositaries of polite literature. Nations that are nations, seek to
inspire fear, or at least respect. The Italians were contented with
admiration, and looked confidently to the world for gratitude. The
task of two toilsome, glorious centuries had been accomplished. The
chasm between Rome and the Renaissance was bridged over, and a
plain way was built for the progressive human spirit. Italy,
downtrodden in the mire of blood and ruins, should still lead the van
and teach the peoples. It was a sublime delusion, the last phase of
an impulse so powerful in its origin that to prophesy an ending was
impossible. Yet how delusive was the expectation is proved by the
immediate history of Italy, enslaved and decadent, outstripped by
the nations she had taught, and scorned by the world that owed her
veneration.
The humanists, who were the organ of this intellectual movement,
formed, as we have seen, a literary commonwealth, diffused through
all the Courts and cities of Italy. As the secretaries of Popes and
princes, as the chancellors of republics, as orators on all occasions of
public and private ceremony, they occupied important posts of
influence, and had the opportunity of leavening society with their
opinions. Furthermore, we have learned to know them in their
capacity of professors at the universities, of house-tutors in the
service of noblemen, and of authors. Closely connected among
themselves by their feuds no less than by their friendships, and
working to one common end of scholarship, it was inevitable that
these men, after the enthusiasm for antiquity had once become the
fashion, should take the lead and mould the genius of the nation.
Their epistles, invectives, treatises, and panegyrics, formed the
study of an audience that embraced all cultivated minds in Italy.
Thus the current literature of humanism played the same part in the
fifteenth century as journalism in the nineteenth, and the humanists
had the same kind of coherence in relation to the public as the
quatrième état of modern times. The respect they inspired as the
arbiters of praise and blame, was only equalled by their vast
pretensions. Eugenius IV., living at the period of their highest
influence, is reported to have said that they were as much to be
feared for their malice as to be loved for their learning. While they
claimed the power of conferring an immortality of honour or
dishonour, no one dared to call their credit with posterity in question.
Nothing seemed more dreadful than the fate reserved for Paul II. in
the pages of Platina; and even so robust a ruler as Francesco Sforza
sought to buy the praises of Filelfo. Flattery in all its branches,
fulsome and delicate, wholesale and allusive, was developed by
them as an art whereby to gain their living. The official history of
this period is rendered almost worthless by its sustained note of
panegyrical laudation. Our ears are deafened with the eulogies of
petty patrons transformed into Mæcenases, of carpet knights
compared to Leonidas, of tyrants equalled with Augustus, and of
generals who never looked on bloodshed tricked out as Hannibals or
Scipios. As a pendant to panegyric, the art of abuse reached its
climax in the invectives whereby the scholars sought to hand their
comrades down to all time 'immortally immerded,' or to vilify the
public enemies of their employers. As in the case of praise, so also in
the case of blame, it is impossible to attach importance to the
writings of the humanists. Their vaulting ambition to depreciate each
other overleaped itself. All their literature of defamation serves now
only to throw light on the general impurity of an age in which such
monstrous charges carried weight. Unluckily, this double vice of
humanism struck deep roots into Italian literature. Without the
scholars of the fifteenth century, it is hardly possible that such a
brigand as Pietro Aretino, who levied black mail from princes at the
point of his venomous quill, or such an unprincipled biographer as
Paolo Giovio, who boasted that he wrote with a golden or a silver
pen, as pleased him best, could have existed. Bullying and fawning
tainted the very source of history, and a false ideal of the writer's
function was established by the practice of men like Poggio.
It is obvious and easy to compare the humanists of the Renaissance
with the sophists of antiquity. Whether we think of the rivals of
Socrates at Athens, or of the Greek rhetoricians of the Roman
period,[508] the parallel is tolerably close. From certain points of view
the Italian scholars remind us of the former class; from others,
again, they recall the latter. The essence of sophism is the
substitution of semblance for reality, indifference to truth provided a
fair show be made, combined with verbal ingenuity and practice in
the art of exposition. The sophist feels no need of forming opinions
on a sound basis, or of adhering to principles. Regarding thought as
the subject-matter of literary treatment, he is chiefly concerned with
giving it a fair and plausible investiture in language. Instead of
recognising that he must live up to the standard he professes, he
takes delight in expressing with force the contrary of what he acts.
The discord between his philosophy and his conduct awakes no
shame in him, because it is the highest triumph of his art to
persuade by eloquence and to dazzle by rhetoric. Phrases and
sentences supply the place of feelings and convictions. Sonorous
cadences and harmonies of language are always ready to conceal
the want of substance in his matter or the flimsiness of his
argument. At the same time the sophist's enthusiasm for a certain
form of culture, and his belief in the sophistic method, may be
genuine.
The literature of the Revival is full of such sophism. Men who lived
loose lives, were never tired of repeating the commonplaces of the
Ciceronian ethics, praising simplicity and self-control with the pen
they used for reproducing the scandals of Martial, mingling impudent
demands for money and flatteries of debauched despots with
panegyrics of Pætus Thrasea and eulogies of Cincinnatus.
Conversely, students of eminent sobriety, like Guarino da Verona,
thought it no harm to welcome Beccadelli's 'Hermaphroditus' with
admiration; while the excellent Nicholas V. spent nine days in
perusing the filthy satires of Filelfo. It was enough that the form was
elegant, according to their standards of taste, the Latinity copious
and sound:—the subject-matter raised no scruples.
This vice of regarding only the exterior of literature produced a fatal
weakness in the dissertations of the age. If a humanist wanted to
moralise the mutability of fortune or the disadvantages of
matrimony, he did not take the trouble to think, or the pains to
borrow illustrations from his own experience. He strung together
quotations and classical instances, expending his labour on the
polish of the style, and fancying he had proved something by
piquancy displayed in handling old material. When he undertook
history, the same fault was apparent. Instead of seeking to set forth
the real conditions of his native city, to describe its political
vicissitudes and constitutional development, or to paint the
characters of its great men, he prepared imaginary speeches and
avoided topics incapable of expression in pure Latin. The result was
that whole libraries of ethical disquisitions and historical treatises,
bequeathed with proud confidence by their authors to the
admiration of posterity, are now reposing in unhonoured dust,
ransacked at rare intervals by weary students with restless fingers in
search of such meagre scraps of information as even a humanist
could not succeed in excluding.
The humanists resembled the sophists again in their profession to
teach wisdom for pay. What philosophy was for the early Greeks,
classic culture was for Italy in the Renaissance; and this the scholars
sold. Antiquity lay before them like an open book. From their seat
among the learned they doled out the new lore of life to eager
pupils. And as the more sober-minded of the Athenians regarded the
educational practice of the sophists with suspicion, so the humanists
came to be dreaded as the corrupters of youth. The peculiar turn
they gave to mental training, by diverting attention from patriotic
duties to literary pleasures, by denationalising the interests of
students, and by distracting serious thought from affairs of the
present to interests of the past, tended to confirm the political
debility of the Italians; nor can it be doubted that the substitution of
Pagan for Christian ideals intensified the demoralisation of the age.
Many arguments used by Aristophanes and Xenophon might be
repeated against these sophists of the Renaissance.[509]
On this point it is worth observing that, though humanism took the
Papal Court by storm and installed itself in pomp and pride within
the Vatican, the lower clergy and the leaders of religious revivals, in
no mere spirit of blind prejudice, but with solid force of argument,
denounced it. S. Bernardino and Savonarola were only two among
many who preached against the humanists from the pulpit. And yet,
while we admit that the influences of the Revival injured morality,
and gave a cosmopolitan direction to energies that ought to have
been concentrated on the preservation of national existence, we are
unable to join with these ecclesiastical antagonists in their crusade.
Humanism was a necessary moment in the evolution of the modern
world; and whatever were its errors, however weakening it may
have been to Italy, this phase had to be passed through, this nation
had to suffer for the general good.
The intrusion of the humanists into the Papal Curia was a victory of
the purely secular spirit. It is remarkable how very few scholars took
orders except with a view of holding minor benefices. They remained
virtual laymen, drawing the emoluments of their cures at a distance.
If Filelfo, after the death of his second wife, proposed to enter the
Church, he did so because in his enormous vanity he hoped to gain
the scarlet hat, and thought this worth the sacrifice of
independence. The only great monastic litteratus was Ambrogio,
General of the Camaldolese Order. Maffeo Vegio is the single
instance I can remember of a poet-philologer who assumed the
cowl. These statements, it will be understood, refer chiefly to the
second or aggressive period of the Revival. Classic erudition was so
common in the fourth that to be without a humanistic tincture was,
even among churchmen, the exception rather than the rule. In the
age of Leo, moreover, the humanists as a class had ceased to exist,
merged in the general culture of the nation. Their successors were
for the most part cardinals and bishops, elevated to high rank for
literary merit. This change, however, really indicated the complete
triumph of an ideal that for a moment had succeeded in paganising
the Papacy, and substituting its own standard of excellence for
ecclesiastical tradition.
This external separation between the humanists and the Church
corresponded to their deep internal irreligiousness. If contemporary
testimony be needed to support this assertion, I may quote freely
from Lilius Gyraldus, Battista Mantovano, and Ariosto, not to mention
the invectives that record so vast a mass of almost incredible
licentiousness. A rhetorical treatise, addressed to Gian Francesco
Pico by Lilius Gyraldus, himself an eminent professor at Ferrara,
acquaints us with the opinion formed in Italy, after a century's
experience, of the vices and discordant lives of scholars.[510] 'I call
God and men to witness,' he writes, 'whether it be possible to find
men more affected by immoderate disturbances of soul, by such
emotions as the Greeks called πάθη, or by such desires as they
named ὁρμαὶ, more easily influenced, driven about, and drawn in all
directions. No class of human beings are more subject to anger,
more puffed up with vanity, more arrogant, more insolent, more
proud, conceited, idle-minded, inconsequent, opinionated,
changeable, obstinate; some of them ready to believe the most
incredible nonsense, others sceptical about notorious truths, some
full of doubt and suspicion, others void of reasonable
circumspection. None are of a less free spirit, and that for the very
reason I have touched before, because they think themselves so far
more powerful. They all of them, indeed, pretend to omniscience,
fancy themselves superior to everything, and rate themselves as
gods, while we unlearned little men are made of clay and mud, as
they maintain.' Having for some space discoursed concerning their
mad ways of life, Gyraldus proceeds to arraign the humanists in
detail for vicious passions, want of economy, impiety, gluttony,
intemperance, sloth, and incontinence.[511] This invective reads like
a paradoxical thesis supported for the sake of novelty by a clever
rhetorician; and, indeed, it might pass for such were it not for the
confirmation it receives in Ariosto's seventh satire addressed to
Pietro Bembo.[512] The poet, anxious to find a tutor for his son,
dares not commit the young man to the care of a humanist. His
picture of their personal immorality, impiety, pride, and gluttony
acquires weight from the well-known tolerance of the satirist, and
from his genial parsimony of expression. To cite further testimony
from the personal confessions of Pacificus Maximus would hardly
strengthen the argument, though students may be referred to his
poems for details.[513]
The alternations of fortune to which the humanists were exposed—
living at one time in the lap of luxury, caressed and petted; then cast
forth to wander in almost total indigence, neglected and derided—
encouraged a Bohemian recklessness injurious to good manners.
Their frequent change of place told upon their character in the same
way, by exposing them to fresh temptations and withdrawing them
from censure. They had no country but the dreamland of antiquity,
no laws beyond the law of taste and inclination. They acknowledged
no authority superior to their own exalted judgment; they bowed to
no tribunal but that of posterity and the past. Thus they lived within
their own conceits, outside of custom and opinion; nor was the
world, at any rate before the period of their downfall, scrupulous to
count their errors or correct their vices.
Far more important, however, than these circumstances was their
passion for a Pagan ideal. The study of the classics and the effort to
assimilate the spirit of the ancients, undermined their Christianity
without substituting the religion or the ethics of the old world. They
ceased to fear God; but they did not acquire either the self-restraint
of the Greek or the patriotic virtues of the Roman. Thus exposed
without defence or safeguard, they adopted the perilous attitude of
men whose regulative principle was literary taste, who had left the
ground of faith and popular convention for the shoals and shallows
of an irrecoverable past. On this sea they wandered, with no
guidance but the promptings of undisciplined self. It is not,
therefore, a marvel that, while professing Stoicism, they wallowed in
sensuality, openly affected the worst habits of Pagan society, and
devoted their ingenuity to the explanation of foulness that might
have been passed by in silence. Licentiousness became a special
branch of humanistic literature. Under the thin mask of humane
refinement leered the untamed savage; and an age that boasted not
unreasonably of its mental progress, was at the same time notorious
for the vices that disgrace mankind. These disorders of the scholars,
hidden for a time beneath a learned language, ended by
contaminating the genius of the nation. The vernacular Capitoli of
Florence say plainly what Beccadelli, Poggio, and Bembo piqued
themselves on veiling.
Another notable defect of the humanists, equally inseparable from
the position they assumed in Italy, was their personal and
professional vanity. Battista Mantovano, writing on the calamities of
the age in which he lived, reckons them among the most eminent
examples of pride in his catalogue of the deadly sins. Regarding
themselves as resuscitators of a glorious past and founders of a new
civility, they were not satisfied with asserting their real merits in the
sphere of scholarship. They went further, and claimed to rank as
sages, political philosophers, writers of deathless histories, and
singers of immortal verse. The most miserable poetasters got
crowned with laurels. The most trivial thinkers passed verdict upon
statecraft. Mistaking mere cultivation for genius, they believed that,
because they had perused the authors of antiquity and could imitate
Ovid at a respectful distance, their fame would endure for all ages.
On the strength of this confidence they gave themselves
inconceivable airs, looking down from the height of their attainment
on the profane crowd. To understand that, after all, antiquity was a
school wherein to train the modern intellect for genuine production,
was not given to this epoch of discovery. Posterity has sadly belied
their expectations. Of all their treatises and commentaries, poems
and translations, how few are now remembered; how rarely are their
names upon the lips of even professed students! The debt of
gratitude we owe them is indeed great, and should be amply paid by
our respectful memory of all they wrought for us with labour in the
field of learning. Yet Filelfo would turn with passionate
disappointment in his grave, if he could know that men of wider
scope and sounder erudition appreciate his writings solely as shed
leaves that fertilised the soil of literature.
Before turning, as is natural at this point, to form an estimate of the
humanists in their capacity of authors, it will be right briefly to
qualify the condemnation passed upon their characters. Taken as a
class, they deserve the hardest words that have been said of them.
Yet it must not be forgotten that they numbered in their ranks such
men as Ambrogio Traversari, Tommaso da Sarzana, Guarino, Jacopo
Antiquari, Vittorino da Feltre, Pomponius Lætus, Ficino, Pico, Fabio
Calvi, and Aldus Manutius. The bare enumeration of these names
will suffice for those who have read the preceding chapters. Piety,
sobriety of morals, self-devotion to public interests, the purest
literary enthusiasm, the most lofty aspirations, fairness of judgment,
and generosity of feeling distinguish these men, and some others
who might be mentioned, from the majority of their fellows. Nor,
again, is it fair to charge the humanists alone with vices common to
their age. The picture I ventured to draw of Papal and despotic
manners in a previous volume, shows that a too strict standard
cannot be applied to scholars, holding less responsible positions than
their patrons, and professing a far looser code of conduct. Much,
too, of their inordinate vanity may be ascribed to the infatuation of
the people. Such scenes as the reception of the supposed author of
'Hermaphroditus' in Vicenza were enough to turn the heads of even
stronger men.[514]
It is difficult to appraise humanistic literature at a just value, seeing
that by far the larger mass of it, after serving a purpose of
temporary utility, is now forgotten. Not itself, but its effect, is what
we have to estimate; and the ultimate product of the whole
movement was the creation of a new capacity for cultivation. To
have restored to Europe the knowledge of the classics, and to have
recovered the style of the ancients, so as to use Latin prose and
verse with freedom at a time when Latin formed an universal
medium of culture, is the first real merit of the humanists. Nothing
can rob them of this glory; however much we may be forced to feel
that their critical labours have been superseded, that their
dissertations are dull, that their poems at the worst fall far below the
level of an Oxford prize exercise, and at the best supply a decent
appendix to the 'Corpus Poetarum.' Nor can we defraud them of the
fame of having striven to realise Petrarch's ideal.[515] That ideal,
only partially attained at any single point, developed in one direction
by Milton, in another by Goethe, still guides, and will long guide, the
efforts of the modern intellect.
The most salient characteristic of this literature was study of style.
The beginners of the humanistic movement were conscious that
what separated them more than anything else from their Roman
ancestors, was want of elegance in diction. They used the same
language; but they used it clumsily. They could think the same
thoughts, but they had lost the art of expressing them with
propriety. To restore style was therefore a prime object.
Exaggerating its importance, they neglected the matter for the form,
and ended by producing a literature of imitation. The ideal they
proposed in composition included limpidity of language, simplicity in
the structure of sentences however lengthy, choiceness of phrase,
and a copious vocabulary. To be intelligible was the first requisite; to
be attractive the second. Having mastered elementary difficulties,
they proceeded to fix the rules for decorative writing. Cicero had
said that nothing was so ugly or so common but that rhetoric could
lend it charm. This unfortunate dictum, implying that style, as
separate from matter, is valuable in and for itself, led the Italians
astray. To form commonplace books of phrases culled from the
'Tusculans' and the 'Orations,' to choose some trivial theme for
treatment, and to make it the occasion for verbal display, became
their business. In the coteries of Rome and Florence scholars
measured one another by their ingenuity—in other words, by their
aptness for producing Ciceronian and Virgilian centos. Few indeed,
like Pico, raised their voices against such trifling, or protested that
what a man thought and felt was at least as important as his power
of clothing it in rhetoric.
The appearance of Valla's 'Elegantiæ' marked an epoch in the
evolution of this stylistic art. It reached its climax in the work of
Bembo. What the humanists intended, they achieved. Purity and
perspicuity of language were made conditions of all literature that
claimed attention; nor is it, perhaps, too much to say that Racine,
Pascal, and Voltaire owe something of their magic to the training of
these worn-out pedagogues. Yet the immediate effect in Italy, when
Machiavelli's vigour had passed out of the nation, and the stylistic
tradition survived, was deplorable. Nothing strikes a northern
student of the post-Renaissance authors more than the empty
smoothness of their writing, their faculty of saying nothing with a
vast expenditure of phrase, their dread of homely details, and the
triviality of the subjects they chose for illustration. When a man of
wit like Annibale Caro could rise to praise the nose of the president
before a learned academy in periods of this ineptitude—'Naso
perfetto, naso principale, naso divino, naso che benedetto sia fra
tutti i nasi; e benedetta sia quella mamma che vi fece così nasuto, e
benedette tutte quelle cose che voi annusate!'[516]—we trace no
more than a burlesque of humanistic seeking after style. It must,
however, be admitted that it is not easy for a less artistic nation to
do the Italians justice in this respect. They derived an æsthetic
pleasure from refinements of speech and subtle flavours of
expression, while they remained no less conscious than we are that
the workmanship surpassed the matter. The proper analogue to their
rhetoric may be found in the exquisite but too unmeaning
arabesques in marble and in wood, which belong to Cinque Cento
architecture. Viewed as the playthings of skilled artists, these are not
without their value; and we are apt, perhaps, unduly to depreciate
them, because we lack the sense for their particular form of beauty.
If the most marked feature of humanistic literature was the creation
of a Latin style, the supreme dictators were Cicero in prose and Virgil
in verse. That Cicero should have fascinated the Italians in an age
when art was dominant, when richness of decoration, rhetorical
fluency, and pomp of phrase appealed to the liveliest instincts of a
splendour-loving, sensitive, declamatory race, is natural. The
Renaissance found exactly what it wanted in the manner of the most
obviously eloquent of Latin authors, himself a rhetorician among
philosophers, an orator among statesmen, the weakness of whose
character was akin to that which lay at the root of fifteenth-century
society. To be the 'apes of Cicero,' in all the branches of literature he
had cultivated, was regarded by the humanists as a religious duty.
[517] Though they had no place in the senate, the pulpit, or the law
court, they were fain to imitate his oratory. Therefore public
addresses to ambassadors, to magistrates on assuming office, and
to Popes on their election; epithalamial and funeral discourses;
panegyrics and congratulations—sounded far and wide through Italy.
The fifteenth century was the golden age of speechification. A man
was measured by the amount of fluent Latinity he could pour forth;
copiousness of quotations secured applause; and readiness to
answer on the spur of the moment in smooth Ciceronian phrases,
was reckoned among the qualities that led to posts of trust in
Church and State. On the other hand, a failure of words on any
ceremonial occasion passed for one of the great calamities of life.
The common name for an envoy, oratore, sufficiently indicates the
public importance attached to rhetoric. It formed a necessary part of
the parade which the Renaissance loved, and, more than that, a part
of its diplomatic machinery. To compose orations that could never be
recited was a fashionable exercise; and since the 'Verrines' and the
'Philippics' existed, no occasion was lost for reproducing something
of their spirit in the invectives whereof so much has been already
said. The emptiness of all this oratory, separated from the solid
concerns of life, and void of actual value, tended to increase the
sophistic character of literature. Eloquence, which ought to owe its
force to passionate emotion or to gravity of meaning, degenerated
into a mere play of words; and to such an extent was verbal
cleverness over-estimated, that a scholar could ascribe the fame of
Julius Cæsar to his 'Commentaries' rather than his victories.[518] It
does not seem to have occurred to him that Pompey would have
been glad if Cæsar had always wielded his pen, and that Brutus
would hardly have stabbed a friendly man of letters. When we read
a genuine humanistic speech, we find that it is principally composed
of trite tales and citations. To play upon the texts of antiquity, as a
pianist upon the keys of his instrument, was no small part of
eloquence; and the music sounded pleasant in ears greedy of the
very titles of old writings. Vespasiano mentions that Carlo Aretino
owed his early fame at Florence to one lecture, introducing
references to all the classic authors.
The style affected for moral dissertation was in like manner
Ciceronian. The dialogue in particular became fashionable; and since
it was dangerous to introduce matter unsuited to Tully's phrases,
these disquisitions are usually devoid of local colouring and
contemporary interest. Few have such value as attaches to the
opening of Poggio's essay on Fortune, to Valeriano's treatise on the
misfortunes of the learned, or to Gyraldi's attack upon the
humanists.
Another important branch of literature, modelled upon Ciceronian
masterpieces, was letter-writing. The epistolography of the
humanists might form a separate branch of study, if we cared to
trace its history through several stages, and to sift the stores at our
disposal. Petrarch, after discovering the familiar letters of the Roman
orator, first gave an impulse to this kind of composition. In his old
age he tells how he was laughed at in his youth for assuming the
Latin style of thou together with the Roman form of superscription.
[519] I have already touched upon the currency it gained through the
practice of Coluccio Salutato and the teaching of Gasparino da
Barzizza.[520] In course of time books of formulæ and polite letter-
writers were compiled, enabling novices to adopt the Ciceronian
mannerism with safety.[521] The Papal Curia sanctioned a set of
precedents for the guidance of its secretaries, while the epistles of
eminent chancellors served as models for the despatches of
republican governments.
The private letters of scholars were useful in keeping up
communication between the several centres of culture in Italy. From
these sources too we now derive much interesting information
respecting the social life of the humanists. They seem to have
avoided political, theological, and practical topics, cultivating a style
of urbane compliment, exchanging opinions about books, asking
small favours, acknowledging obligations, recommending friends to
favourable notice, occasionally describing their mode of life,
discussing the qualities of their patrons with cautious reserve, but
seeking above all things to display grace of diction and elegant
humour rather than erudition. The fact that these Latin epistles were
invariably intended for circulation and ultimate publication, renders it
useless to seek for insight from them into strictly private matters.
[522] For the historian the most valuable collections of Renaissance
letters are composed in Italian, and are not usually the work of
scholars, but of agents, spies, and envoys. Compared with the
reports of the Venetian ambassadors, the correspondence of the
humanists is unimportant. In addition to familiar letters, it not
unfrequently happened, however, that epistles upon topics of public
interest were indited by students. Intended by their diffusion to
affect opinion, and addressed to influential friends or patrons, these
compositions assumed the form of pamphlets. Of this kind were the
letters on the Eastern question sent by Filelfo to Charles VII. of
France, to the Emperor, to Matthias Corvinus, to the Dukes of
Burgundy and Urbino, and to the Doge of Venice. The immortality
expected by the humanists from their epistles, has hardly fallen to
their lot; though much of Poliziano's, Pico's, Antiquari's, and
Piccolomini's correspondence is still delightful and instructive
reading. The masses extant in MS. exceed what has been printed;
while the printed volumes, with some rare exceptions, among which
may be mentioned Poliziano's letter to Antiquari on the death of
Lorenzo, are only used by students.[523]
Since Cicero had left no specimen of history, the humanists were
driven to follow other masters in this branch of literature. Livy was
the author of their predilection. Cæsar supplied them with a model
for the composition of commentaries, and Sallust for concise
monographs. Suetonius was followed in such minute studies of
character as Decembrio's 'Life of Filippo Maria Visconti.' I do not find
that Tacitus had any thoroughgoing imitators; the magniloquence of
rhetoric, rather than the pungency of sarcasm, suited the taste of
the age. The faults of the humanistic histories have been already
pointed out.[524]
The services of the humanists, as commentators, translators, critics
of texts, compilers of grammars and dictionaries of all kinds,
collectors of miscellaneous information, and writers on antiquities,
still remain to be remembered. Their industry in this field was quite
different from the labour they devoted to the perfecting of style.
Whatever we may think of them as men of letters, we are bound to
give their erudition almost unqualified praise. Not, indeed, that their
learning any more than their literature was final. It too has been
superseded; but it formed the basis of a sounder method, and
rendered the attainment of more certain knowledge possible. It is
not too much to say that modern culture, so far as it is derived from
antiquity, owes everything to the indefatigable energy of the
humanists. Before the age of printing, scholars had to store their
memories with encyclopædic information, while the very want of a
critical method, by preventing them from exactly discerning the good
and the bad, enabled them to take a broader and more
comprehensive view of classical literature than is now at any rate
common. Antiquity as a whole—not the authors merely of the Attic
age or the Augustan—claimed their admiration; and though they
devoted special study to Cicero and Virgil for the purposes of style,
they eagerly accepted every Greek or Latin composition from the
earliest to the latest. To this omnivorous appetite of the elder
scholars we are perhaps indebted for the preservation of many
fragments which a more delicate taste would have rejected.
Certainly we owe to them the conception of the classics in their
totality, as forming the proper source of culture for the human race.
The purism of Vida and Bembo, though it sprang from more refined
perceptions, was in some respects a retrogression from the wide and
liberal erudition of their predecessors. Discipleship under Virgil may
make a versifier; but he who would fain comprehend the Latin
genius must know the poets of Rome from Ennius to Claudian.
Finally we have to render the tribute due to the humanists for their
diffusion of a liberal spirit. Sustained by the enthusiasm of antiquity,
they first ventured to take a standpoint outside catholicity; and
though they made but bad use of this spiritual freedom, inclining to
levity and godlessness instead of fighting the battle of the reason,
yet their large and human survey of the world was in itself
invigorating. Poggio at the Council of Constance regarded Jerome of
Prague not as a heretic, not as a fanatic, but as a Stoic. In other
words, he was capable of divesting his mind of temporary
associations and conventional prejudices, and of discerning the true
character of the man who suffered heroically for his opinions. This
instance illustrates the general tone and temper of the humanists.
Their study of antiquity freed them from the scholastic pedantries of
theologians, and from the professional conceits of jurists and
physicians. There is nothing great and noble in human nature that
might not, we fancy, have grown and thriven under their direction, if
the circumstances of Italy had been more favourable to high
aspirations. As it was, the light was early quenched and clouded by
base vapours of a sensual, enslaved, and priest-corrupted society.
The vital force of the Revival passed into the Reformation; the
humanists, degraded and demoralised, were superseded. Still it was
they who created the new atmosphere of culture, wherein whatever
is luminous in art, literature, science, criticism, and religion has since
flourished. Though we may perceive that they obeyed a false
authority—that of the classics, and worshipped a false idol—style,
yet modern liberty must render them the meed of thanks for this.
When we consider that before the sixteenth century had closed, they
had imbued the whole Italian nation with their views, forming a new
literature, directing every kind of mental activity, and producing a
new social tone, and furthermore that Italy in the sixteenth century
impressed her spirit on the rest of Europe, we have a right to hail
the humanists as the schoolmasters of modern civilisation.
As schoolmasters in a stricter sense of the term, it is not easy to
exaggerate the influence exercised by Italian students. They first
conceived and framed the education that has now prevailed through
Europe for four centuries, moulding the youth of divers nations by
one common discipline, and establishing an intellectual concord for
all peoples. In spite of changes in government and creed, in spite of
differences caused by race and language, we have maintained an
uniformity of culture through the simultaneous prosecution of classic
studies on the lines laid down for teachers by the scholars of the
fifteenth century. The system of our universities and public schools is
in truth no other than that devised by Vittorino and Guarino. Thus
humanism in modern Europe has continued the work performed
during the Middle Ages by the Church, uniting in one confederation
of spiritual activity nations widely separated by all that tends to keep
the human families apart.
Until quite recently in England, the litteræ humaniores were
accepted as the soundest training for careers in Church and State,
for the learned professions, and for the private duties of gentlemen.
If the old ideal is yielding at last to theories of a wider education
based on science and on modern languages, that is due partly to the
extension of useful knowledge, and partly to the absorption of
classic literature into the modern consciousness. The sum of what a
cultivated man should know, in order to maintain a place among the
pioneers of progress, is so vast, that learners, distracted by a variety
of subjects, resent the expenditure of precious time on Greek and
Latin. Teachers, on the other hand, through long familiarity with
humane studies, have fallen into the languor of routine. Besides, as
knowledge in each new department increases, the necessity of
specialising with a view to adopting a professional career, makes
itself continually felt with greater urgency. It may therefore be
plausibly argued that we have outgrown the conditions of
humanism, and that a new stage in the history of education has
been reached. Have not the ancients done as much for us as they
can do? Are not our minds permeated with their thoughts? Do not
the masterpieces of modern literature hold in solution the best that
can be got from them for future uses?
These questions can perhaps be met by the counter-question
whether the arts and letters of the Greeks and Romans will not
always hold their own, not only in the formation of pure taste, but
also in the discipline of character and the training of the intelligence.
Just as well might we cease to study the sacred books of the Jews,
because we have incorporated their ethics into our conscience, and
possess their religion in our liturgy. No transmission of a spirit at
second or third hand can be the same as its immediate contact; nor
can we afford, however full our mental life may be, to lose the vivid
sense of what men were and what they wrought in ages far
removed from us, especially when those men were our superiors in
certain spheres. Again, it may be doubted whether we should
understand the masterpieces of modern literature, when we came to
be separated from the sources of their inspiration. If Olympus
connoted less than Asgard, or Hercules were no more familiar to our
minds than Rustem, or the horses of the Sun stood at the same
distance from us as the cows of Indra—if, in fact, we abandoned
Greek as much as we have abandoned Scandinavian, Persian, and
Sanskrit mythology, would not some of the most brilliant images of
our own poets fade into leaden greyness, like clouds that have lost
the flush of living light upon them?
It is therefore not improbable that for many years to come the
higher culture of the race will still be grounded upon humanism: true
though it be that the first enthusiasm for antiquity shall never be
restored, nor the classics yield that vital nourishment they offered in
the spring-time of the modern era. For average students, who have
no special vocation for literature and no æesthetic tastes, it may well
happen that new methods of teaching the classics will have to be
invented. Why should they not be read in English versions, and the
time expended upon Greek and Latin grammar be thus saved? The
practice of Greek and Latin versification has been virtually doomed
already; nor is there any reason why Latin prose should form a
necessary part of education in an age that has ceased to publish its
thoughts in a now completely dead language. Our actual relation to
the ancients, again, justifies some change. We know far more about
them now than in the period of the Renaissance; but they are no
longer all in all for civilised humanity, eager to reconstitute the realm
of thought, and find its nobler self anew in the image of a glorious
past, reconquered and inalienable. The very culture created by the
study of antiquity through the last four centuries stands between
them and our apprehension, so that they seem at the same moment
more distinct from us and more a part of our familiar selves.
When we seek the causes which produced the decay of learning in
Italy about the middle of the sixteenth century, we are first led to
observe that the type of scholarship inaugurated by Petrarch had
been fully developed. Nothing new remained to be worked out upon
the lines laid down by him. Meanwhile the forces of the nation, both
creative and receptive, were exhausted in the old fields of
humanism. The reading public had been glutted with epistles,
invectives, poems, orations, histories of antiquities, and disquisitions
of all kinds. The matter of the ancient literatures had been absorbed,
if superficially, at least entirely, and their forms had been reproduced
with wearisome reiteration. The Paganism that had so long ruled as
a fashion, was now passing out of vogue, because of its inadequacy
to meet the deeper wants and satisfy the aspirations of the modern
world. The humanists, moreover, as a class, had fallen into disrepute
through faults and vices whereof enough has been already said.
Nothing short of the new impulse which a new genius, equal at least
in power to Petrarch, might have communicated, could have given a
fresh direction to the declining enthusiasm for antiquity. But for this
display of energy the Italians were not prepared. As in the ascent of
some high peak, the traveller, after surmounting pine woods and
Alpine pastures, comes upon bare grassy slopes that form an
intermediate region between the basements of the mountain and the
snowfields overhead, so the humanists had accomplished the first
stage of learning. But it requires a fresh start and the employment of
other faculties to scale the final heights; and for this the force was
wanting. Erasmus, at the opening of the century, had, indeed,
initiated a second age of scholarship. The more exact methods of
criticism and comparison were already about to be instituted by the
French, the Germans, and the Dutch. It was too much, however, to
expect that the Italians, who had expended their vigour in
recovering the classics and reviving a passion for knowledge, should
compete upon the ground of modern erudition with these fresh and
untried races.
What they might have done, if circumstances had been less
unfavourable, and if the way of progress had been free before them,
cannot be conjectured. As it was, all things contributed to the
decline of intellectual energy in Italy. The distracting wars of half a
century told more heavily upon the literati, who depended for their
very existence upon the liberality of patrons, than on any other
section of the people. What miseries they endured in Lombardy may
be gathered from the prefaces and epistles of Aldus Manutius; while
the blow inflicted on them by the sack of Rome is vividly described
by Valeriano.[525] When comparative peace was restored, liberty had
been extinguished. Florence, the stronghold of liberal learning, was
enslaved. Scholarship no less than art suffered from the loss of
political independence. Rome, terror-stricken by the Reformation,
turned with rage against the very studies she had helped to
stimulate. The engines of the Inquisition, wielded with all the
mercilessness of panic by men who had the sombre cruelty of Spain
to back them up, destroyed the germs of life in science and
philosophy.
To some extent, again, the Italian scholars had prepared their own
suicide by tending more and more to subtleties of taste and
affectations of refinement. The purism of the sixteenth century was
itself a sort of etiolation, and the puerilities of the academies
distracted even able men from serious studies. It was one of the
inevitable drawbacks of humanism that the new culture separated
men of letters from the nation. Dante and the wool-carders of the
fourteenth century understood each other; there was then no thick
veil of erudition between the teacher and the taught. But neither
Bembo nor Pomponazzi had anything to say that could be
comprehended by the common folk. Therefore scholarship was left
in mournful isolation; suspected, when it passed from trifles to grave
speculations, by the Church; viewed with indifference by the people;
unsustained by any sympathy, and, what was worse, without a
programme or a watchword. The thinkers, whose biography belongs
to the history of the Counter-Reformation in Italy, were all solitary
men, voices crying in the wilderness with none to listen, bound
together by no common bond, unnoticed by the nation, extinguished
singly on the scaffold by an ever-watchful league of tyrants spiritual
and political.
Before the end of the sixteenth century Greek had almost ceased to
be studied in Italy. This was the sign of intellectual death. All that
was virile in humanism fled beyond the Alps. This transference of
intellectual supremacy from Italy to Germany was speedily
accomplished. 'When I was a boy,' said Erasmus,[526] 'sound letters
had begun to revive among the Italians; but by reason of the
printer's art being as yet undiscovered or known to few, no books
had reached us, and in the deep tranquillity of dulness there reigned
a set of men who taught in all our towns the most illiterate learning.
Rodolph Agricola was the first to bring to us from Italy some breath
of a superior culture.' Again, he says of Italy, 'In that land, where
even the very walls are both more learned and more eloquent than
men with us; so that what here seems beautifully said, and elegant
and full of charm, cannot be held for aught but clumsy, stupid, and
uncultivated there.' Less than half a century after Erasmus had
gained the right to hold the balance thus between the nations of the
North and South—that is, in 1540 or thereabouts—Paolo Giovio, at
the close of his 'Elogia Literaria,' while speaking of the Germans, felt
obliged to confess that 'not only Latin letters, to our disgrace, but
Greek and Hebrew also have passed into their territory by a fatal
simultaneous migration.'
Thus Italy, after receiving the lamp of learning from the dying hands
of Hellas, in the days of her own freedom, now, in the time of her
adversity and ruin, gave it to the nations of the North. Her work was
ended. Three centuries of increasing decrepitude, within our recent
memory at length most happily surmounted, were before her. Can
history, we wonder, furnish a spectacle more pathetic than that of
the protagonist of spiritual liberty falling uneasily asleep beneath the
footstool of the Spaniard and the churchman, while the races who
had trampled her to death went on rejoicing in the light and culture
she had won by centuries of toil? This is the tragic aspect of the
subject which has occupied us through the present volume. At the
conclusion of the whole matter it is, however, more profitable to
remember, not the intellectual death of Italy, but what she wrought
in that bright period of her vigour. She was the divinely appointed
birthplace of the modern spirit, the workshop of knowledge for all
Europe, our mistress in the arts and sciences, the Alma Mater of our
student years, the well-spring of mental freedom and activity after
ages of stagnation. If greater philosophers have since been
produced by Germany and France and England, greater scholars,
greater men of science, greater poets even, and greater pioneers of
progress in the lands divined by Christopher Columbus beyond the
seas—this must not blind us to the truth that at the very outset of
the era in which we live and play our parts, Italy embraced all
philosophy, all scholarship, all science, all art, all discovery, alone.
Such is the Lampadephoria, or torch-race, of the nations. Greece
stretches forth her hand to Italy; Italy consigns the sacred fire to
Northern Europe; the people of the North pass on the flame to
America, to India, and the Australasian isles.
 FOOTNOTES
[1] To the original edition of this volume.
[2] The analogy of the individual might be quoted. We are aware
within ourselves of times when thought is fertile and insight clear,
times of conception and projection, followed by seasons of slow
digestion, assimilation, and formation, when the creative faculty
stagnates, and the whole force of the intellect is absorbed in
mastering through years what it took minutes to divine.
[3]See Vol. I., Age of Despots, pp. 239, 350-356, 415-420, where I
have endeavoured to treat these topics more at length.
[4]It would be easy to multiply these contrasts, comprising, for
example, the Cardinals Inghirami and Bibbiena and the Leo of
Raphael with the Farnesi portraits at Modena or the grave faces of
Moroni's patrons at Bergamo.
[5]Portrait in the Uffizzi, ascribed to Giorgione, but more probably by
some pupil of Mantegna.
[6] Paradiso, vi. 112.
[7] Notably Purg. xi. 100-117.
[8] A curious echo of this Italian conviction may be traced in
Fletcher's Elder Brother.
[9]Vespasiano, Vita di Piero de' Pazzi. Compare the beautiful letter of
Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini to his nephew (Ep. Lib. i. 4). He reminds
the young man that fair as youth is, and delightful as are the
pleasures of the May of life, learning is more fair and knowledge
more delightful. 'Non enim Lucifer aut Hesperus tam pulcher est
quam sapientia quæ studiis acquiritur litterarum.'
 It is enough to refer to Luther's Table Talk upon the state of
[10]
Rome in Leo's reign.
[11]Poliziano, Pontano, Sannazzaro, and Bembo divided their powers
between scholarship and poetry, to the injury of the latter.
[12] For the low state of criticism, even in a good age, see Aulus
Gellius, lib. xiv. cap. vi. He describes the lecture of a rhetor, quispiam
linguæ Latinæ literator, on a passage in the seventh Æneid. The
man's explanation of the word bidentes proves an almost more than
mediæval puerility and ignorance.
[13] Most of the following quotations will be found in Comparetti,
Virgilio nel Medio Evo, vol. i., a work of sound scholarship and
refined taste upon the place of Virgil in the Middle Ages.
[14] Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore minus, for example, was
altered into Hoc est quod pueri tangar amore nihil; for lusisset
amores was substituted dampnasset amores, and so forth.
[15]The hymn quoted above in the text refers to a legend of S. Paul
having visited the tomb of Virgil at Naples:—

'When to Maro's tomb they brought him

Tender grief and pity wrought him
To bedew the stone with tears;
What a saint I might have crowned thee,
Had I only living found thee,
Poet first and without peers!'

[16]The common use of the word grammarie for occult science in

our ballads illustrates this phase of popular opinion. So does the
legend of Friar Bacon. See Thoms, Early English Prose Romances.
[17]Didot, in his Life of Aldus, tries to make out that Greek learning
survived in Ireland longer than elsewhere.
[18]The word Humanism has a German sound, and is in fact
modern. Yet the generic phrase umanità for humanistic culture, and
the name umanista for a professor of humane studies, are both pure
Italian. Ariosto, in his seventh satire, line 25, writes—
'Senza quel vizio son pochi umanisti.'
[19] See the interesting letter to Luca di Penna, De Libris Ciceronis,
p. 946, and compare De Ignorantiâ sui ipsius, &c. p. 1044. These
references, as well as those which follow under the general sign
Ibid., are made to the edition of Petrarch's collected works, Basle,
1581.
[20] Ibid. p. 948. Cf. the fine letter on the duty of collecting and
preserving codices (Fam. Epist. lib. iii. 18, p. 619). 'Aurum,
argentum, gemmæ, purpurea vestis, marmorea domus, cultus ager,
pictæ tabulæ, phaleratus sonipes, cæteraque id genus mutam
habent et superficiariam voluptatem: libri medullitus delectant,
colloquuntur, consulunt, et vivâ quâdam nobis atque argutâ
familiaritate junguntur.'
[21] De Libris Ciceronis, p. 949. Cf. his Epistle to Varro for an account
of a lost MS. of that author. Ibid. p. 708.
[22] Ibid. p. 948. Cf. De Ignorantiâ, pp. 1053, 1054. See, too, the
letter to Nicolaus Syocerus of Constantinople, Epist. Var. xx. p. 998,
thanking him for the Homer and the Plato, in which Petrarch gives
an account of his slender Greek studies. 'Homerus tuus apud me
mutus, immo vero ego apud illum surdus sum. Gaudeo tamen vel
aspectu solo, et sæpe illum amplexus et suspirans dico.... Plato
philosophorum princeps ... nunc tandem tuo munere Philosophorum
principi Poetarum princeps asserit. Quis tantis non gaudeat et
glorietur hospitibus?... Græcos spectare, et si nihil aliud, certe juvat.'
The letter urging Boccaccio to translate Homer—'an tuo studio, meâ
impensâ fieri possit, ut Homerus integer bibliothecæ huic, ubi
pridem Græcus habitat, tandem Latinus accedat'—will be found Ep.
Rer. Sen. lib. iii. 5, p. 775. In another letter, Ep. Rer. Sen. lib. vi. 2, p.
807, he thanks Boccaccio for the Latin version.
[23] De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ, p. 43. A plea for public as
against private collections of useful books. 'Multos in vinculis tenes,'
&c.
[24] See the four books of Invectives, Contra Medicum quendam, and
the treatise De sui ipsius et aliorum Ignorantiâ. Page 1038 of the last
dissertation contains a curious list of frivolous questions discussed by
the Averrhoists. Cf. the letter on the decadence of true learning, Ep.
Var. 31, p. 1020; the letter to a friend exhorting him to combat
Averrhoism, Epist. sine titulo, 18, p. 731; two letters on physicians,
Epist. Rerum Senilium, lib. xii. 1 and 2, pp. 897-914; a letter to
Francesco Bruno on the lies of the astrologers, Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. i.
6, p. 747; a letter to Boccaccio on the same theme, Epist. Rer. Sen.
lib. iii. 1, p. 765; another on physicians to Boccaccio, Epist. Rer. Sen.
lib. v. 4, p. 796. Cf. the Critique of Alchemy, De Remediis utriusque
Fortunæ, p. 93.
[25]In comparing the orator and the poet, Petrarch gives the palm
to the former. He thought the perfect rhetorician, capable of
expressing sound philosophy with clearness, was rarer than the
poet. See De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ, lib. ii. dial. 102, p. 192.
[26] See, among other passages, Inv. contra Medicum, lib. i. p. 1092.
'Poetæ studium est veritatem veram pulchris velaminibus adornare.'
Cf. p. 905, the paragraph beginning 'Officium est ejus fingere,' &c.
[27]See the preface to the Epistolæ Familiares, p. 570. 'Scribendi
enim mihi vivendique unus (ut auguror) finis erit.'
[28] For his lofty conception of poetry see the two letters to
Boccaccio and Benvenuto da Imola, pp. 740, 941. Epist. Rerum
Senilium, lib. i. 4, lib. xiv. 11.
[29] The references to Augustine as a 'divine genius,' equal to Cicero
in eloquence, superior to the classics in his knowledge of Christ, are
too frequent for citation. See, however, Fam. Epist. lib. ii. 9, p. 601;
the letter to Boccaccio, Variarum, 22, p. 1001; and Fam. Epist. lib. iv.
9, p. 635. The phrase describing the Confessions, quoted in my text,
is from Petrarch's letter to his brother Gerard, Epist. Var. 27, p. 1012,
'Scatentes lachrymis Confessionum libros.'
[30]'Sum sectarum negligens, veri appetens.' Epist. Rer. Sen. lib. i.
5, p. 745. 'Nam apud Horatium Flaccum, nullius jurare in verba
magistri, puer valde didiceram.' Epist. Fam. lib. iv. 10, p. 637.
[31] See the letters addressed to Cicero and Seneca, pp. 705, 706.
[32] 'Ægritudo' is a phrase that constantly recurs in his epistles to
indicate a restless, craving habit of the soul. See, too, the whole
second book of the De Contemptu Mundi.
[33] See the treatise De Vitâ Solitariâ, pp. 223-292, and the letters
on 'Vaucluse,' pp. 691-697.
[34]See the discussion of this point in Baldelli's Vita del Boccaccio,
pp. 130-135.
[35] Compare the chapter in the dissertation De Remediis on
troublesome notoriety, p. 177, with the letter on his reception at
Arezzo, p. 918, the letter to Nerius Morandus on the false news of
his death, p. 776, and the letter to Boccaccio on his detractors, p.
749.
[36] See the Epistles to Rienzi, pp. 677, 535.
[37]Epistle to the Roman people, beginning 'Apud te invictissime
domitorque terrarum popule meus,' p. 712.
[38] Epistle to Charles IV., De Pacificandâ Italiâ, p. 531. This
contradiction struck even his most ardent admirers with painful
surprise. See Boccaccio quoted in Baldelli's Life, p. 115.
[39] Rerum memorandarum, lib. ii. p. 415.
[40]This is particularly noticeable in the miscellaneous collection of
essays called De Remediis utriusque Fortunæ, where opposite views
on a wide variety of topics are expressed with great dexterity.