At last, when his money was all gone, the
Medici put their purse at his disposal for any sum which his purpose
might require. We owe to him the later books of Ammianus Marcellinus,
the 'De Oratore' of Cicero, and other works; he persuaded Cosimo to buy
the best manuscript of Pliny from a monastery at Lubeck. With noble
confidence he lent his books to those who asked for them, allowed all
comers to study them in his own house, and was ready to converse with
the students on what they had read. His collection of 800 volumes,
valued at 6,000 gold florins, passed after his death, through Cosimo's
intervention, to the monastery of San Marco, on the condition that it
should be accessible to the public.
Of the two great book-finders, Guarino and Poggio, the latter, on the
occasion of the Council of Constance and acting partly as the agent of
Niccoli, searched industriously among the abbeys of South Germany. He
there discovered six orations of Cicero, and the first complete
Quintilian, that of St. Gallen, now at Zurich; in thirty-two days he is
said to have copied the whole of it in a beautiful handwriting. He was
able to make important additions to Silius Italicus, Manilius,
Lucretius, Valerius Flaccus, Asconius Pedianus, Columella, Celsus,
Aulus Gellius, Statius, and others; and with the help of Leonardo
Aretino he unearthed the last twelve comedies of Plautus, as well as
the Verrine orations.
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