We must take care not to
rejoice too soon, when we meet among these men a figure which seems
immaculate; on further inquiry there is always a danger of meeting with
some foul charge, which, even if it is incredible, still discolors the
picture. The mass of indecent Latin poems in circulation, and such
things as ribaldry on the subject of one's own family, as in Pontano's
dialogue 'Antonius,' did the rest to discredit the class. The sixteenth
century was not only familiar with all these ugly symptoms, but had
also grown tired of the type of the humanist. These men had to pay both
for the misdeeds they had done, and for the excess of honour which had
hitherto fallen to their lot. Their evil fate willed it that the
greatest poet of the nation, Ariosto, wrote of them in a tone of calm
and sovereign contempt.
Of the reproaches which combined to excite so much hatred, many were
only too well founded. Yet a clear and unmistakable tendency to
strictness in matters of religion and morality was alive in many of the
philologists, and it is a proof of small knowledge of the period, if
the whole class is condemned. Yet many, and among them the loudest
speakers, were guilty.
Three facts explain and perhaps diminish their guilt: the overflowing
excess of fervour and fortune, when the luck was on their side; the
uncertainty of the future, in which luxury or misery depended on the
caprice of a patron or the malice of an enemy; and finally, the
misleading influence of antiquity.
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