IN THE FIFTEENTH, SIXTEENTH, AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. BY HENRY HALLAM, F. R. A. S., CORRESPONDING MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES ⚫ De modo autem hujusmodi historiæ conscribendæ, illud imprimis monemus, ut materia et copia ejus nor IN TWO VOLUME S. VOL. L NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS 1856. PREFACE. THE advantages of such a synoptical view of literature as displays its various departments in their simultaneous condition through an extensive period and in their mutual dependency, seem too manifest to be disputed. And, as we possess little of this kind in our own language, I have been induced to undertake that to which I am, in some respects at least, very unequal, but which no more capable person, as far as I could judge, was likely to perform. In offering to the public this introduction to the literary history of three centuries-for I cannot venture to give it a title of more pretension-it is convenient to state my general secondary sources of information, exclusive of the acquaintance I possess with original writers; and, at the same time, by showing what has already been done and what is left undone, to furnish a justification of my own undertaking. The history of literature belongs to modern, and chiefly to almost recent times. The nearest approach to it that the ancients have left us, is contained in a single chapter of Quintilian, the first of the tenth book, wherein he passes rapidly over the names and characters of the poets, orators, and historians of Greece and Rome. This, however, is but a sketch; and the valuable work of Diogenes Laertius preserves too little of chronological order to pass for a history of ancient philosophy though it has supplied much of the materials for all that has been written on the subject. In the sixteenth century, the great increase of publications, and the devotion to learning which distinguished that period, might suggest the scheme of a universa literary history. Conrad Gesner, than whom no one, by extent and variety of eru dition, was more fitted for the labour, appears to have framed a plan of this kind. What he has published, the Bibliotheca Universalis, and the Pandectæ Universales, are, taken together, the materials that might have been thrown into an historical form; the one being an alphabetical catalogue of authors and their writings; the other a digested and minute index to all departments of knowledge, in twenty-one books, each divided into titles, with short references to the texts of works on every head in his comprehensive classification. The order of time is therefore altogether disregarded. Possevin, an Italian Jesuit, made a somewhat nearer approach to this in his Bibliotheca Selecta, published at Rome in 1593. Though his partitions are rather encyclopædic than historical, and his method, especially in his first volume, is chiefly argumentative, he gives under each chapter a nearly chronological catalogue of authors, and sometimes a short account of their works. Lord Bacon, in the second book De augmentis scientiarum, might justly deny, notwithstanding these defective works of the preceding century, that any real his. tory of letters had been written; and he compares that of the world, wanting this, to a statue of Polypheme deprived of his single eye. He traces the method of supplying this deficiency in one of those luminous and comprehensive passages which bear the stamp of his vast mind: the origin and antiquities of every science, the methods by which it has been taught, the sects and controversies it has occa. sioned, the colleges and academies in which it has been cultivated, its relation to civil government and common society, the physical or temporary causes which have influenced its condition, form, in his plan, as essential a part of such a history, as the lives of famous authors and the books they have produced. No one has presumed to fill up the outline which Bacon himself could but sketch, and most part of the seventeenth century passed away with few efforts on the part of the learned to do justice to their own occupation; for we can hardly make an exception for the Prodromus Historia Literariæ (Hamburg, 1659) of Lambecius; a very learned German, who, having framed a magnificent scheme of a universal history of letters, was able to carry it no farther than the times of Moses and Cad. mus. But, in 1688, Daniel Morhof, professor at Kiel, in Holstein, published his well-known Polyhistor, which received considerable additions in the next age at the hands of Fabricius, and is still found in every considerable library. Morhof appears to have had the method of Possevin in some measure before his eyes; but the lapse of a century, so rich in erudition as the seventeenth, had prodigiously enlarged the sphere of literary history. The precise object, however, of the Polyhistor, as the word imports, is to direct, on the most ample plan, the studies of a single scholar. Several chapters, that seem digressive in an historical light, are to be defended by this consideration. In his review of books in every prov. ince of literature, Morhof adopts a sufficiently chronological order; his judgments are short, but usually judicious; his erudition so copious that later writers have freely borrowed from, and, in many parts, added little to the enumeration of the Polyhistor. But he is far more conversant with writers in Latin than the mod. ern languages; and, in particular, shows a scanty acquaintance with English liter ature. Another century had elapsed, when the honour of first accomplishing a compre. hensive synopsis of literary history, in a more regular form than Morhof, was the reward of Andrès, a Spanish Jesuit, who, after the dissolution of his order, passed the remainder of his life in Italy. He published at Parma, in different years, from 1782 to 1799, his Origine Progresso e Stato attuale d'ogni Litteratura. The first edition is in five volumes quarto; but I have made use of that printed at Prato in 1806, in twenty octavo volumes. Andrès, though a Jesuit, or, perhaps, because a Jesuit, accommodated himself in some measure to the tone of the age wherein his book appeared, and is always temperate, and often candid. His learning is very extensive in surface, and sometimes minute and curious, but not, generally speaking, profound; his style is flowing, but diffuse and indefinite; his characters of books have a vagueness unpleasant to those who seek for precise notions; his taste is correct, but frigid; his general views are not injudicious, but display a moderate degree of luminousness or philosophy. This work is, however, an extraordinary performance, embracing both ancient and modern literature in its full extent, and, in many parts, with little assistance from any former publication of the kind. is far better known on the Continent than in England, where I have not frequently seen it quoted; nor do I believe it is common in our private libraries. It A few years after the appearance of the first volumes of Andrès, some of the most eminent among the learned of Germany projected a universal history of mod ern arts and sciences on a much larger scale. Each single province, out of eleven, was deemed sufficient for the labours of one man, if they were to be minute and exhaustive of the subject: among others, Bouterwek undertook poetry and polite letters; Buhle speculative philosophy; Kästner the mathematical sciences; Sprengel anatomy and medicine; Heeren classical philology. The general survey of the whole seems to have been assigned to Eichhorn. So vast a scheme was not fully executed; but we owe to it some standard works, to which I have been con. siderably indebted. Eichhorn published, in 1796 and 1799, two volumes, intended as the beginning of a General History of the Cultivation and Literature of modern Europe, from the twelfth to the eighteenth century. But he did not confine him. self within the remoter limit; and his second volume especially expatiates on the dark ages that succeeded the fall of the Roman empire. In consequence, perhaps, of this diffuseness, and also of the abandonment, for some reason with which I am unacquainted, of a large portion of the original undertaking, Eichhorn prosecuted this work no farther in its original form. But, altering slightly its title, he pub lished, some years afterward, an independent universal "History of Literature" from the earliest ages to his own. This is comprised in six volumes, the first having appeared in 1805, the last in 1811. The execution of these volumes is very unequal. Eichhorn was conversant with Oriental, with theological literature, especially of his own country, and, in general, with that contained in the Latin language. But he seems to be slightly acquainted with that of the moden languages, and with most branches of science. He is more specific, more chronological, more methodical in his distribution than Andrés: his reach of knowledge, on the other hand, is less comprehensive; and, though I could praise neither highly for eloquence, for taste, or for philosophy, I should incline to give the preference in all these to the Spanish Jesuit. But the qualities above mentioned render Eichhorn, on the whole, more satisfactory to the student. These are the only works, as far as I know, which deserve the name of general histories of literature, embracing all subjects, all ages, and all nations. If there are others, they must, I conceive, be too superficial to demand attention. But in one country of Europe, and only in one, we find a national history so comprehensive as to leave uncommemorated no part of its literary labour. This was first executed by Tiraboschi, a Jesuit born at Bergamo, and, in his later years, librarian of the Duke of Modena, in twelve volumes quarto: I have used the edition published at Rome in 1785. It descends to the close of the seventeenth century. In full and clear exposition, in minute and exact investigation of facts, Tiraboschi has few su. periors; and such is his good sense in criticism, that we must regret the sparing use he has made of it. But the principal object of Tiraboschi was biography. Ă writer of inferior reputation, Corniani, in his Secoli della litteratura Italiania dopo il suo risorgimento (Brescia, 9 vols., 1804-1813), has gone more closely to an ap preciation of the numerous writers whom he passes in review before our eyes. Though his method is biographical, he pursues sufficiently the order of chronology to come into the class of literary historians. Corniani is not much esteemed by some of his countrymen, and does not rise to a very elevated point of philosophy; but his erudition appears to me considerable, his judgments generally reasonable; and his frequent analyses of books give him one superiority over Tiraboschi. The Histoire Littéraire de l'Italie, by Ginguéné, is well known: he had the advantage of following Tiraboschi; and could not so well, without his aid, have gone over a portion of the ground, including in his scheme, as he did, the Latin learning of Italy; but he was very conversant with the native literature of the language, and has, not a little prolixly, doubtless, but very usefully, rendered much of easy access to Europe which must have been sought in scarce volumes, and was, in fact, known by name to a small part of the world. The Italians are ungrateful if they deny their obligations to Ginguéné. France has, I believe, no work of any sort, even an indifferent one, on the universal history of her own literature; nor can we claim for ourselves a single attempt of the most superficial kind. Warton's History of Poetry contains much that bears on our general learning; but it leaves us about the accession of Elizabeth. Far more has been accomplished in the history of particular departments of lit. erature. In the general history of philosophy, omitting a few older writers, Brucker deserves to lead the way. There has been of late years some disposition to depreciate his laborious performance, as not sufficiently imbued with a metaphysical spirit, and as not rendering with clearness and truth the tenets of the philosophers whom he exhibits. But the Germany of 1744 was not the Germany of Kant and Fichte; and possibly Brucker may not have proved the worse historian for having known little of recent theories. The latter objection is more material; in some instances he seems to me not quite equal to his subject. But, upon the whole, he is of eminent usefulness; copious in his extracts, impartial and candid in his judgments. In the next age after Brucker, the great fondness of the German learned both VOL. I.-B |