By and by
this new and comparatively modern element was treated with greater
emphasis; the historians began to insert descriptions of character, and
collections arose of the biographies of distinguished contemporaries,
like those of Filippo Villani, Vespasiano Fiorentino, Bartolommeo I
Fazio, and lastly of Paolo Giovio.
The North of Europe, until Italian influence began to tell upon its
writers-- for instance, on Trithemius, the first German who wrote the
lives of famous men- -possessed only either legends of the saints, or
descriptions of princes and churchmen partaking largely of the
character of legends and showing no traces of the idea of fame, that
is, of distinction won by a man's personal efforts. Poetical glory was
still confined to certain classes of society, and the names of northern
artists are only known to us at this period in so far as they were
members of certain guilds or corporations.
The poet-scholar in Italy had, as we have already said, the fullest
consciousness that he was the giver of fame and immortality, or, if he
chose, of oblivion. Boccaccio complains of a fair one to whom he had
done homage, and who remained hard-hearted in order that he might go on
praising her and making her famous, and he gives her a hint that he
will try the effect of a little blame. Sannazaro, in two magnificent
sonnets, threatens Alfonso of Naples with eternal obscurity on account
of his cowardly flight before Charles VIII.
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