Kitabı oku: «Essays in Librarianship and Bibliography», sayfa 8

Leaving the question of what the Renaissance printers and publishers of Italy might have done, we proceed to illustrate what they did by a brief analysis of the character of their productions during the first few years of their activity, especially in Rome and Venice. The survey is necessarily very imperfect, for a large proportion of their productions are not dated, and the exact year is usually a matter of conjecture. We must confine ourselves to the list of dated books given by Panzer, which might admit of considerable extension. It is not likely, however, that this would materially affect the mutual proportion of the various classes of literature, the point with which we are principally concerned.

Printing was established at Rome in 1467 by the removal of Sweynheym and Pannartz from Subiaco. Five books are recorded to have been printed there in that year; two classics (Cicero's "De Oratore" and "Epistolæ ad Familiares"), two editions of the fathers, and one grammatical work. In 1468 six more make their appearance, one classical, three patristic, one theological, and one medical. In 1469 commences the great run upon classical writers, which continued for some years. Of the twelve books enumerated by Panzer as produced in this year, all but one are classics, and the apparent exception is a defence of Plato by Cardinal Bessarion. All but one are printed by Sweynheym and Pannartz, with prefaces by the Bishop of Aleria as editor-general. This striking development of activity indicates the first organised attempt to monopolise a special department of the book-trade, which might possibly have succeeded if Rome had then, as now, been the capital of an united Italy. The other Italian cities, however, had no intention of being excluded from the practice of the new art, and the same year witnessed the introduction of typography into its true Italian metropolis, Venice, combined, however, with an audacious attempt to obtain a monopoly. Joannes de Spira, the first printer in Venice, not content with obtaining protection for his publications, claimed and obtained the sole right of printing books in the city for five years. Men had evidently as yet but little conception of the importance of the new art; but the death of the printer within the year released the Venetian State from the obligation it had so inconsiderately undertaken, and it was by this time sufficiently enlightened not to renew it in favour of his brother Vindelinus, who, however, remained for some time among the most distinguished of Venetian printers.¹⁷

Before leaving the year 1469, we should mention the first Italian instance of a printed translation of a Greek classic, the Italian Strabo, published by Sweynheym and Pannartz without date, but which is known to have belonged to this year. In 1470 the run on classics continues, the same number as in the previous year being printed, mostly by Sweynheym and Pannartz, but a revival is apparent in other branches of literature, the number of books in theology being nearly equal to that of the classics. Another translation from the Greek appears, that of Plutarch's Lives, rendered by various hands, with the preface of J. A. Campanus. The most remarkable production of the Roman press for this year, however, is a small tract, which affords the first example of recourse to printing by a Pope for an official purpose. It is the brief of Pope Paul II., enacting that the Jubilee shall henceforth be celebrated every twenty-fifth year, and consequently in 1475, which he did not live to see. This interesting document has been recently acquired by the British Museum. In 1471, as is most probable, another Government publication appeared, "The Civic Statutes of Rome," as revised by Paul II.; and the election of his successor Sixtus, in the same year, produced the first two examples of official publications, afterwards very frequent, the congratulatory harangues pronounced by ambassadors upon occasion of their tendering homage to the Pope.

Twelve classical publications grace the year, mostly from the press of Sweynheym and Pannartz, as well as the first volume of their great edition of the "Biblical Commentary" of Nicolaus de Lyra. The remaining four volumes appeared in the year following, and the last was freighted with the memorable appeal to Pope Sixtus IV., composed by the Bishop of Aleria in the name of the printers, which throws so vivid a light on the vicissitudes of the book-trade in Rome. They have printed 12,475 sheets, acervum ingentem, for which it is marvellous that paper or types should have been found. Their spacious premises are choked with unbound sheets in quinions (quinterniones), but void of victual and drink. Will the Pope give them some little office, by aid of which they may be able to provide for themselves and their families? Rome was manifestly no place for classical publishers, even under a Pope who did so much for the encouragement of learning as Sixtus. The forlorn estate of Sweynheym and Pannartz, contrasted, as we shall see, with the flourishing condition of the Venetian book-trade at the time, shows that even at a period when reading, to say nothing of the scholarship required to master the literature of the day, was not a general accomplishment, the bookseller's best patron was the public. Probably, however, the hardships of the firm may have been somewhat exaggerated by the eloquent pen of the Bishop of Aleria; for in this very year they appear as printing ten books, and in the following year seven. Two of these are new editions of works previously issued by them, showing not only that the original impression was sold out, but that it was thought profitable to undertake another.

In 1474 the names of the printers entirely disappear as partners. Sweynheym is known to have died before 1478 (when the Ptolemy, which he had begun to prepare for the press, was published by Arnold Buckingk), but at what particular time is uncertain. Pannartz comes forward by himself in December 1474, and in the following year he occurs as the printer of eight books, chiefly classical. In 1476 he prints three, but his activity abruptly terminates in March, a period coinciding with a collapse in Roman publishing, best illustrated by a comparative table: —

No doubt many undated books were published in these years, and after 1480 some revival is apparent, but the quality of the publication is greatly lowered. Classics continued to be printed, but they retire into the background before canon and civil law, and the apparent number is greatly helped out by ephemeral pamphlets, such as papal briefs and addresses on public occasions. The endeavour to render Rome an intellectual centre had manifestly failed, nor has she deserved this character at any subsequent period, except for the few years during which wits and scholars gathered around Leo X. Before leaving the subject, nevertheless, a tribute should be paid to the merits of Joannes Philippus de Lignamine, a native of Messina, apparently a man of good family, and not improbably the first native Italian to exercise the typographic art, in whose productions may be traced rudimentary ideas of a higher order than were vouchsafed to his mercantile contemporaries. It can hardly be by accident that the same man who in 1472 prints the first vernacular book that had appeared in Rome, should in the same year publish, although in Latin, the first biography of an Italian contemporary, his own memoir of his own sovereign, Ferdinand of Naples; should in 1473 issue the vernacular poetry of Petrarch; and in 1474 a book of such national interest as the "Italia Illustrata" of Flavio Biondo. His publications are always of high quality, and it would be interesting to learn more respecting him. He is described as a member of the Pope's household, and was certainly something more than a professional printer.

The establishment of printing at Rome had naturally ensued upon the migration of the printers from the small adjoining town of Subiaco, and the choice of the latter place as the cradle of Italian typography had probably been determined by the German nationality of the majority of the inmates of its celebrated monastery. The introduction of printing into Venice, two years after Rome, was probably less the effect of accident. Joannes de Spira, who, as we have seen, so promptly secured a monopoly of so much value as the exclusive exercise of printing for five years, must have been an enterprising and far-seeing man, to whom the opulence and comparative freedom of Venice would offer greater attractions than the doubtful patronage of an Italian despot. This view of his character is confirmed by the boldness of his first undertakings. Before obtaining any privilege he had produced two of the most voluminous works of antiquity then accessible – Pliny's Natural History and Cicero's Epistolæ ad Familiares. The soundness of his judgment was evinced by the demand for a second edition of his Cicero within four months, an unusual occurrence in the history of early printing. Tacitus followed, and the German printer's patriotism is indicated by his description of the Germania as "libellus aureus." His brother and successor, Vindelinus, displays even greater energy, producing fifteen books within the year 1470, among them so important a work as Livy's History, and gaining especial honour as the first printer of Petrarch. The rest are almost entirely classical, and so are the few books printed in this year by his rival, Nicolas Jenson, the most elegant of all the Italian printers. In 1471 Venetian printing takes a wider range; law books increase; Jensen produces books of morals and of religious edification in the vernacular; Christopher Valdarfer publishes the Decameron of Boccaccio. More important still is the appearance of two independent Italian translations of the Bible, one from the press of Vindelinus, one without name of printer. As no other Italian city emulated the example of Venice, an example frequently repeated by her before the close of the century, we are justified in assuming that in no other Italian city could such a thing be done. Interesting too is a vernacular translation of Cardinal Bessarion's exhortation to the Italian princes to take arms against the Turk, showing a public for productions of contemporary interest, outside the ranks of those who could read Latin. In the following year, 1472, printed editions of no fewer than six classical authors make their appearance at Venice, Cicero's Tusculan Questions; Catullus, with Tibullus and Propertius, and the Silvæ of Statius; Ausonius, with a considerable appendix of minor poets; Macrobius's commentary on the "Somnium Scipionis," and the authors of "De Re Rustica." Although some of the cities dependent upon Venice – Padua, Treviso, Verona – were beginning to have printing-presses, their typographers were not equal to such undertakings, and Venice must have been the headquarters of production and distribution for her extensive and opulent territory, and probably for many of the neighbouring states. Her abundant capital and industry, liberal administration in non-political matters, and the confluence of strangers must be reckoned among the principal causes of this activity, to which Mr. Horatio Brown adds another, the abundance and excellence of paper, which the Venetian senate had protected a century before by prohibiting the export of rags from their dominions.

The extent and growth of the Venetian book-trade will appear by the following notice of the number of works printed from 1469 to 1486, which would be considerably augmented if dates could be safely assigned to undated books: —

By 1495 the number of publications has risen to 119, the general character of the books remaining much as before. The productions of the Venetian press from 1469 to 1500 occupy more space in Panzer's catalogue than those of Rome, Florence, Naples, Milan, Bologna, Brescia, Ferrara, Padua, Parma, and Treviso put together.

Space allows only a brief glance at the typographical productions of the five most important of the seven Italian cities which possessed printing-presses by 1471 – Bologna, Ferrara, Florence, Milan and Naples. Bologna, as might be expected in a university city, especially produces erudite books, particularly in philosophy, mathematics, and medicine. Petrarch and Boccaccio, however, relieve the general aridity, and there is a fair sprinkling of classics. Ferrara's taste lies much in the same direction, but it is remarkable for a school of Hebrew printing, and does itself honour by the editio princeps of Seneca's tragedies, and even more so by that of Boccaccio's "Teseide," the first publication of an Italian epic poem other than the "Divina Commedia." Florence appears more tardy in developing the new art than might have been expected under Medicean rule; and her early productions would seem comparatively unimportant but for Bettini's "Monte Sancto di Dio" (1477), the first example of a printed book containing copperplate engraving, and the famous Dante of 1481, partly illustrated in the same manner. The artistic eminence of Florence renders the production of this work within her precincts especially significant; and in 1490 a school of wood-engraving arises which surpasses the Venetian, and often confers great artistic value upon typographical productions otherwise of little account. Another interesting feature of Florentine typography, from about 1480 until the end of the century, is the number of original publications by native men of letters, such as Politian, the Pulcis, and, in quite a different manner, Savonarola. Florence understood the duty of encouraging contemporary talent better than any other Italian city; yet, although she was the Athens of Italy, and possessed its Pericles, the comparison between the extent of her typographical production and that of Venice shows that the public is the better patron. When, at a much later period, wealth and public spirit departed from Venice to an extent which they never did from Florence, the lead passed to the latter city.

Milan is, for the first few years, principally devoted to the classics, upon which law and theology gradually gain ground. Its great glory is the first book printed in Greek – Lascaris's Grammar, 1476. Simoneta's "History of Francesco Sforza," put forth by the authority of Lodovico Sforza about 1479, is also a memorable book. Naples, where printing was never very active, does little for classical literature, but produce numerous works by local writers of distinction, from Archbishop Caraccioli to the licentious Masuccio. The number of Hebrew books is a remarkable feature.

This slight degustation – analysis it cannot be called – of the fruits of Italian Renaissance literature confirms the proposition with which we began, that it was far more utilitarian than that of ages often stigmatised as matter-of-fact and prosaic. The reproductions of classical authors were not in general stimulated by enthusiasm for their beauties, but by their utility, either for the information they contained, or as books for school or college. Outside their circle very little of a fanciful or imaginative character appeared, and this chiefly in the shape of impressions of vernacular authors, such as Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Original genius was at almost as low an ebb as it has ever been, although a band of most gracefully accomplished men of letters surrounded Lorenzo de' Medici, and Ariosto and Machiavelli were growing up. In partial explanation of this circumstance, it may be remarked that the fifteenth century, brilliant in its inventions and discoveries, was, in a literary point of view, one of the most unproductive periods in European history. Petrarch and Boccaccio in Italy, Chaucer in England, left no successors; with the exception of Æneas Sylvius, it would be difficult to point to any writer of the first half of the century eminent by his achievements in elegant literature. Had printing been invented in the thirteenth century, or in the age of Elizabeth, we might have had a different story to record; but it must now be said that for a long time it did little for the encouragement of genius, hardly even of high talent. Yet the age as a whole was by no means flat or prosaic, only its imagination was more powerfully attracted to art than to letters, and a spiritual charm is chiefly recognisable among its books in proportion as art has influenced them, whether in the design of exquisite type or of beautiful illustration. This utilitarian character of literature, as we have remarked, tended to discourage readers for amusement or for the love of letters; and this in turn discouraged printers and publishers from any serious effort to provide vernacular reading. Literature accordingly remained for a long time the property of the humanists, which is as much as to say that it was imitative and not creative. The merits and defects of this excellent class of men cannot be better exhibited than by their attitude towards Greek. It was not one of indifference, they translated Greek authors into Latin with exemplary pains; but they thought this quite sufficient, and made no effort to render the originals accessible. They valued Greek authors for their information, not for their style, and had no idea of the value of the language as an instrument of education. A creative epoch was required for this, such as speedily came with the overthrow of the old order of Italy, with the discovery of America, above all, with the Reformation. No age can bestow so great a boon upon literature as the fifteenth century did by the invention of printing; but it was not an age in which the hero flourished conspicuously as man of letters.

SOME BOOK-HUNTERS OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY¹⁸

I feel that I owe an apology for presenting you with anything so scrappy and disconnected as the paper you are to hear to-night. Being unexpectedly called upon to fill a gap at a time when pressure of occupation prevented my writing anything requiring care or study, I bethought me of the story of the minister who, when about to officiate as a substitute for another, received at the same time a hint that the congregation were particular about quantity no less than quality, and that they would expect the length of his public exercises to attain the average of the regular incumbent. The absent gentleman was remarkable for fluency, the locum tenens was a man of few words. He did his best, but by-and-by found himself with a vacant quarter of an hour and a vacant head; when suddenly a happy thought flashed into the void, and he exclaimed, "And now, O Lord, I will relate an anecdote." I too in my emergency have taken refuge in anecdotage, and, in default of anything of my own, I am about to bore or entertain you with some anecdotes of book-collectors of the seventeenth century, borrowed from that illustrious gossip and anecdote monger, Nicius Erythræus, with a brief account of whom I will preface my paper.

I scarcely think that I shall underrate the amount of information respecting Nicius Erythræus current at this time in this country by remarking that the name is probably best known as a pseudonym of Coleridge, under which his poem of "Lewti," a Circassian love-chant, was first given to the world, and most readers will have deemed his adoption of it a mere freak. I confess that I am myself unable to discover what Nicius Erythræus has to do with the Circassians, but it is not an imaginary name, being the Latinisation of that of Vittorio dé Rossi, an Italian Jesuit, who flourished during the last quarter of the sixteenth, and the first half of the seventeenth century, and, always writing in Latin, translated his vernacular appellation into that language. The circumstance of his having written in Latin is no doubt one principal reason why he is now so little remembered. He was one of the pioneers of a reviving form of literature, the anecdotic. Poggio Bracciolini had written a very popular book of anecdotes in the fifteenth century, but his tales are often mere Joe Millers, and not always authentic. Nicius's stories are bona-fide anecdotes or reminiscences of actual personages, with most of whom he had conversed. All roads, it is said, lead to Rome, and his position as an ecclesiastic about the Papal court, albeit a hungry and discontented one (he had sorely prejudiced himself by a romance, the "Eudemia," in which he had made too free with the characters of influential people), brought him into contact with every man of mark who resorted to it, whether a denizen of Rome or a foreign visitor. His gallery of portraits includes two persons of much interest to Britain, John Barclay, Scot by descent if French by birth, author of the "Argenis"; and Teresa, the fair Armenian, who wedded our countryman Sir Robert Sherley, in his adventurous Persian travels. In my opinion he is a most entertaining writer, lively and animated, with a bright descriptive touch; an elegant Latinist, and though much given to relating stories which the subjects of them would have wished to consign to oblivion, he is at bottom very good-natured. His principal work is his "Pinacotheca," or Portrait Gallery, in three parts, each containing a hundred sketches of contemporaries, all people of some note, if only for their eccentricities, and many of whom, but for him, would now be utterly unknown. He doubtless retails much gossip at second-hand, but I do not think that he has invented anything, and I believe that we see his contemporaries in his pages much as they really were. For proofs, authorities, pièces justificatives, you must look elsewhere, and Nicius shuns a date as if it were the number of the beast.

Perhaps the most interesting of the particulars relating to library matters imparted by my author are those respecting a man second only to Grolier as a patron of fine binding, but of whose personal character and habits, were it not for Nicius, we should know nothing. Every one interested in the bibliopegic art is more or less acquainted with the beautiful bindings executed for Demetrius Canevarius, physician to Urban VII., elected Pope in 1590, but whom all his leech's skill could not keep alive upon the Papal throne for more than twelve days. This certainly does not seem to have been the fault of the physician, who was, Nicius tells us, a Genoese of noble family, who condescended to the medical profession in the hope of becoming rich. In this there is nothing to criticise; but unfortunately, avarice seems to have been his master passion, indeed his only passion, except the love of books, which has given him an honourable place in literary history. Having removed from Genoa to Rome, he soon obtained the confidence of many of the Cardinals, and became the most celebrated and opulent physician of his day. But his habits were most parsimonious; he never, in his own house, says Nicius, tasted fowl or fish, or anything that any sumptuary law could have forbidden in any age. He lived by himself; his meals, consisting of bread, soup, and a scrap of meat, were brought him by an old woman who never entered the house, and drawn up to the first floor in a basket. He bought his new clothes ready made, and his second-hand clothes from the Jews. As soon as he got any money, he put it out to interest, and when he got the interest upon that, he put it out again. The one exception to this parsimony was the expense to which he went in buying books. Dry as pumice, says Nicius, in every other respect, in this he was most liberal; if you look, that is, to the total sum he expended, and not to the prices he gave for individual books. For he beat the booksellers down unrelentingly, and would carry off their books at much lower prices than they asked, notwithstanding their lamentations and complaints that they were going to be ruined. How could he achieve this? By the magic of ready money; the bibliopole found it better after all to part with the book at a small profit for money down than to keep it on his shelves till some one bought it and forgot to pay. Thus was Canevarius unknowingly a forerunner of the political economists, and an initiator of the principle of small profits and quick returns. Of the bindings which constitute his glory with posterity Nicius says nothing; but ascribes his prowess as a collector in great measure to a love of fame. No unworthy motive either, but it is likely that public spirit had quite as much to do with it; for Canevarius not merely collected the library which he expected to perpetuate his name with posterity, but bequeathed it to his native city of Genoa, and left by his will an annuity of two hundred crowns to a caretaker. It would be interesting to learn what became of the books and the pension; if the facts are not already upon record they ought to be investigated. From the preface to a posthumous work of Canevarius, published by his brother, it would almost seem that the family had some control over it, and if so they may have dilapidated it. If the library, when transmitted to Genoa, contained all the elaborate bindings which are now esteemed so precious, it was a bequest of more value than could have been supposed at the time. Though stingy and covetous in his life, Canevarius was a benefactor to many at his death. He left, Nicius says, such a multitude of legacies, and such a host of minute directions to be observed after his decease, that his will was as big as a book. The ruling passion of parsimony remained with him, and he gave a remarkable instance of it in his last illness. "When," says Nicius, "ten days before his death, an old woman who had come to nurse him gave him an egg to suck, and then took a new napkin from a cupboard to wipe his lips; 'What mean you,' cried he, 'by spoiling a new napkin? was there never a tattered one in the house? Depart to the infernal regions!'" Yet even here Canevarius emerges victorious, for the disparaging biographer is constrained to admit that he had a new napkin.

The next chapter of bibliographical anecdote which I propose to cite from Nicius Erythræus is not derived from his Pinacotheca, but from his Epistles. It relates to persons of more importance than Demetrius Canevarius, to no less a man, indeed, than Cardinal Mazarin, and to the eminent French scholar Gabriel Naudé, then (1645) employed as his agent in collecting the first Mazarin Library, so unhappily destroyed and dispersed a few years afterwards by the hostile Parliament of Paris. Naudé has deplored the fate of the collection in a book devoted to it, and Nicius, his intimate friend and correspondent, powerfully confirms the loss which letters thus received by his description of Naudé's exertions as a collector, in a letter he writes to Cardinal Chigi, Papal nuncio in Germany. After mentioning that Naudé had seventeen years before obtained great credit by a work "On the Formation of Public Libraries," and that Mazarin having laid the foundation of his library by buying that of a Canon of Limoges, consisting of six thousand volumes, Naudé had doubled this number by purchases within one year; he adds, "Finding nothing more to buy in Paris he went to Belgium, and there took the pick of the market; and this year has come to Italy, where the booksellers' shops seem devastated as by a whirlwind. He buys up everything, printed or manuscript, in all languages, leaves the shelves empty behind him, and sometimes comes down upon them with a rule, and insists upon taking their contents by the yard. Often, seeing masses of books accumulated together, he asks the price of the entire lot; it is named; differences ensue; but, by dint of urging, bullying, storming, our man gets his way, and often acquires excellent books among the heap, for less than if they had been pears or lemons. When the vendor comes to think over the matter, he concludes that he has been bewitched, and complains that he would have fared better with the butterman, or the grocer. Did you see our Naudé coming out of a bookseller's shop you could never help laughing, so covered from head to foot is he with cobwebs, and that learned dust which sticks to books, from which neither thumps nor brushes, it seems, would ever be able to free him. I have seen multitudes of Hebrew books in his bedroom, so stained and greasy and stinking, that one's nose seemed damaged irrecoverably; they must have been disinterred from Jewish kitchens, smelling as they did of smoke, soup, cheese, pickles, or rather of a mixture of each and all these aromas. If he gives them a place in his library, he will undoubtedly bring in the mice; they will flock in from Paris and the suburbs, hold their feasts, convoke their parliaments, and deliberate on the ways and means of resisting the cats, their capital enemies. But, without joking, Naudé means that Paris shall have the finest public library in Europe."

I need not dwell further on the sad fate of this magnificent collection, nor remind you that Mazarin formed a second which, especially for one book's sake, has endeared him to many who know little of him as a statesman, and that little not always to his advantage. After hearing of his munificence and indomitable spirit in the collection of books, we may feel more reconciled to the first book ever printed in Europe being popularly associated with his name, although "Gutenberg Bible" would still be the more appropriate designation.

My next anecdote relates to a book-hunter not less enthusiastic and determined than Mazarin or Naudé, but much less known to fame, unknown, in fact, were it not for our good Nicius Erythræus. Prosper Podianus, a Perugian, but living at Rome, cared, says Nicius, from his youth upwards but to find out who had written a book upon any subject, at what price it was to be had, and how he was to get it. His life was consequently spent in frequenting booksellers' shops and stalls, which latter seem to have become an established institution in Nicius's time, although, as would appear, the dealers were not always sufficiently civilised to have actual stalls, but merely strewed the books upon the ground. (It would be highly interesting could we ascertain when and where the art of printing first acquired sufficient development to make it practicable and profitable to set up a second-hand bookstall.) As Podianus really was a connoisseur, and knew well what he was about, he frequently picked up some precious volume for a trifle, and was far from imitating the conscientiousness of Giovenale Ancina, Bishop of Saluzzo. This excellent prelate, it is credibly reported, having observed a valuable book amid a pile heaped upon the ground, as above mentioned, on learning that it was to be had for a penny, turned short upon the bookseller, rated him soundly for his ignorance, and gave him a scudo. Different indeed from the conduct of a lady narrated to me the other day, who, seeing a copy of the first edition of George Meredith's Poems, commercially worth ten or twelve guineas, priced at two shillings, and knowing its value right well, marched with it into the shop and beat the bookseller down to eighteenpence. I know not whether I more admire or execrate that woman.